Lecture | PhonGroup
Disguise mechanism interaction in the two Norwegian secret languages Smoi and Bakvendt
- Date
- Monday 5 October 2026
- Time
- Serie
- PhonGroup
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.33
Abstract
The distortion mechanisms of the Norwegian secret languages (or ludlings) Smoi and Bakvendt show cyclicity effects that map neatly on the levels of Stratal Optimality Theory. Unlike most other secret languages, Smoi operates several processes to disguise words. The choice of them is a matter of personal preference and applicability. Often more than one process is applied per word. In these cases, feeding and counter-bleeding relations between them can be observed, which is accounted for by placing some on the stem level and some on the word level of Stratal OT. Bakvendt, spoken by the same community, operates across prosodic phrases, transposing (parts of) prosodic heads between adjacent constituents. The analysis highlights that ludlings exploit the same prosodic and nonconcatenative morphological mechanisms found in natural languages, and that their stratified behaviour supports a three-level Stratal OT architecture for phonology–morphology interaction.