If Dialects are languages then dialect contact is language contact: on the ‘Shwitzer’ language of the amish in adams county (Indiana, USA)

Abstract

Radically mixed languages are among the most spectacular outcomes of intensive language contact. In such languages larger linguistic subsystems stem from different parental languages. Most known mixed languages stem from unrelated parental languages, which raises the question as to whether the mixed structure may emerge from contact between closely related languages or dialects, too. The present paper argues that, under appropriate sociolinguistic circumstances, this is possible, too. However, passive intelligibility creates specific conditions for mixed language emergence. We focus on the Amish variety of Shwitzer, a dialect spoken in Indiana (USA) in which many linguistic features of Bernese Swiss German and Pennsylvania Dutch are combined.