ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a sound change involving the lateral system in Oslo Norwegian from c. 1880 till today. From an early (c. 1880) system comprised of mainly one dental (or alveolar) /l/ in all positions (except for an occasional retroflex [ɭ] for the assimilated cluster [rl]), the retroflex [ɭ] allophone spread during the 20th century to all phonological contexts except following an [a(:)] or [o(:)] in a stressed syllable. Jahr (1975, 1988) claimed that this situation would probably prevail, and the sound change would not be completed and yield a simpler system, because of the attitude of Oslo speakers towards a low-status dialect feature associated with an area southeast of the capital. However, around the turn of the millennium, the development towards a simple one /l/ allophone system nevertheless continued, and children throughout the city started using the retroflex [ɭ] also after [a(:)] and [o(:)].
