Paper long abstract:

This study investigates the usage of the word initial [dʒ] sound in the place of the [j] sound in standard Uzbek among the three generations of Olmachi community speakers in Djizak, Uzbekistan. Analyzing the changes that occur in the community, I hypothesized that the oldest generation of 50-90 year old participants produce the initial [dʒ] sound in certain words most of the time. The middle generation of 31-50 year olds would produce the sound less than the older generation, and the youngest generation of 18-30 years old would produce the least. To test the hypotheses, two types of tests were used that helped to retrieve the usage of the initial [dʒ] sound: Picture Describing Task and Conversation with the research assistant. The differences in production of the initial [dʒ] sound that the two tasks yielded were calculated, and the gender differences in production of the sound were totaled. On the basis of judgment sampling, where the subjects are selected non-randomly based on the characteristics that define them to be the true community members, not influenced by other dialect speakers, the research assistant conversed with 12 participants (6 male and 6 female) from each generational group. Participants talked with an assistant about the years, pronounced as [jɪl] or [dʒɪl] they were born, good [jaχʃɪ] or [dʒaχʃɪ] or bad [jomon] or [dʒomon] things that have happened to them, and about other events that occurred in their lives. After the conversations were over, they were shown 27 pictures that represent words that start with the initial [j] sound in standard Uzbek. The words were such as yo'l [jol] 'road' yamoq [jamoq] 'patch' or yur, [jur] 'go or walk' and others. The conversations and picture-describing task utterances were recorded and a total of 36 participants' responses were transcribed, and the percentage of words that started with the initial [j] or the initial [dʒ] sounds used among the three groups were calculated. The results demonstrated that in the Conversation with the research assistant and in the Picture Describing Tasks the [dʒ] sound was used the most by the oldest generation, less by the middle generation and the least with the youngest generation. In addition, gender differences showed that females used the [dʒ] sound the most in both tasks, and younger generation males were in the forefront of the change towards the production of the initial [j] sound used in standard Uzbek.