Abstract
In traditional dialectology, prominent geographical conditions are particularly made responsible for linguistic divergence between neighboring dialect areas (e. g. rivers, mountain ranges, etc.). Also modern national borders, territories of the Middle Ages or even older borders between tribal areas are made responsible as factors which consider linguistic areas as “mirror pictures of history” (Bach 1950: 31, translation: CS). Geographical as well as political borders seem to function as points of orientation that speakers use for constructing their cognitive surroundings and which consequently can result in linguistic divergence. In our contribution, we want to focus on the question of how the topographic nature of land-scapes influences the mental construction of linguistic areas by lay speakers. For pursuing this question, we will discuss results from German dialect areas that cover a broad range of different topographic landscape forms. The analyzed areas are located in the utter southwest of Germany (characterized by flat lands along the Rhine valley and low mountain ranges of the Black Forest) and in South Tyrol in the very north of Italy (characterized by mountains and deep valley cuttings). In our contribution, we will argue that speakers in their subjective dialect perception orient themselves toward national borders and topographically prominent points. With regard to topography primarily valleys are used as eponyms for subjective dialect areas.
Highlights
In traditional dialectology, prominent geographical conditions are made responsible for linguistic divergence between neighboring dialect areas (e. g. rivers, mountain ranges, etc.)
Territories of the Middle Ages or even older borders between tribal areas are made responsible as factors which consider linguistic areas as “mirror pictures of history” (Bach 1950: 31, translation: CS)
Geographical as well as political borders seem to function as points of orientation that speakers use for constructing their cognitive surroundings and which can result in linguistic divergence
Summary
Recherchiert man zum Zusammenhang von dialektaler Divergenz und topographischen Eigenschaften des Raumes, so wird offensichtlich, dass in der Dialektologie diesem Zusammenhang von jeher hohe Relevanz zugesprochen wurde. In seinem Untersuchungsgebiet (Bayerisch-Schwaben) erhält er im Ergebnis lediglich für die zwei größten der elf analysierten Flüsse signifikante Ergebnisse (Lech und Donau), womit Flüsse als naturräumliche Faktoren sprachlicher Divergenz eher eine untergeordnete Rolle zu spielen scheinen. Bemerkenswert ist, dass topographische Bezüge weder auf der geographischen Makro-Ebene (Lameli/Purschke/Kehrein 2008) noch auf der Meso-Ebene (Anders 2010) eine besondere Rolle für die mentale Dialektraumkonstruktion zu spielen scheinen. Bei allen Unterschieden, die sich hinsichtlich der räumlich-strukturellen Referenzen zwischen den Studien verschiedener geographischer Größenordnungen ergeben, scheinen jedoch politische (und dabei vor allem nationalstaatliche) Grenzen einen festen Orientierungspunkt als mentale Dialektgrenzen darzustellen. Dies mag einerseits in der Sache selbst begründet liegen, in der Tatsache, dass Staatsgrenzen unabhängig von der Größe des untersuchten Gebiets kategorisch als Dialektschranken wahrgenommen werden, andererseits könnte es auch ein methodisches Artefakt sein, da die meisten ethnodialektologischen Untersuchungen ihren Fokus auf die Wahrnehmung von Dialektgebieten innerhalb eines Staates bzw. Im Folgenden soll dieser Frage anhand eines Vergleichs zwischen zwei topographisch sehr unterschiedlich gearteten Gebieten nachgegangen werden
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