Morphological variation in Southwestern Norwegian children’s role-play registers

Abstract This paper presents a study focusing on the morphological variations in Southwestern Norwegian preschool children’s role-play register. Within this register, the children switch between their local Southwestern Norwegian dialect and a Central Eastern Norwegian variety similar to the Oslo dialect. Although the majority of the children (with the exception of two) employ this Central Eastern Norwegian variety in role-play, two children exhibited a significantly greater degree of usage compared to the others. Consequently, these two children were selected for an in-depth analysis. The detailed analysis reveals that while the Central Eastern Norwegian variety is used for most variables by both children, the extent to which they code-switch depends on the individual child and the specific variable in question. The observed variation across variables and between the children is examined and discussed in the paper.