Languages in contact: Standard Serbian phonology in an urban setting

Abstract

The first goal of this article is to describe the basic tendencies in the recent development of the (standard) Serbian language - in its prestigious, urban usage: on the level of changes in phonetics and phonology (including the prosodic system). The second goal of the article is to indicate the possible explanations for those tendencies (their causes, consequences, etc.). In the field of the prosodic system, one can identify contact cases of linguistic "Balkanization," while in the vowel and consonant systems, one can identify contact cases of language "internationalization," that is, "Europeanization." © Walter de Gruyter.