Intra-individual Variation in Nominal Inflection: Analyses of Directly Elicited Data of the Bavarian Linguistic Atlas

Abstract

With the aim of modelling the areal dimension of variation, dialectology has operated with the construct of base dialect. In research projects such as the Bavarian Linguistic Atlas (Bayerischer Sprachatlas), individual performance has been treated as being representative of the local dialect. At the same time, the editors of the Bavarian Linguistic Atlas have been conscious of variation within the dialect data, but a systematic analysis of intra- and inter-individual variation remains a gap in research. In this article, the aspect of variation with regard to the nominal inflectional system will be considered on two levels: Firstly, variant forms of number marking in a given local dialect and variation regarding the inventory of plural markers are systematically analysed. Secondly, systematic variation inherent in Ba-varian inflectional morphology in the form of optional plural marking will be discussed. In an exemplary way, the analyses show that the evaluation of intra-individual variation may aid in the categorisation of plural markers, thus improving our understanding of the nature of inflectional processes as a whole.