Alemannic Dialect Research Articles

Dialect divergence at the state border: the case of Alsatian and German Alemannic

This paper summarizes recent research on the German/French border in the Upper Rhine Region, where the state border cuts across a traditional Alemannic dialect area. It is argued that the present-day divergence of the dialects is due to different repertoire types and different language ideologies in France and Germany, which counteract the positive effects of border permeability. Despite this general tendency for the dialects to diverge at the state border, it is also shown that traditional regional affiliations with and orientations to Alsace continue to impact the speed of dialect levelling on the German side.

Vowel and consonant quantity in two Swiss German dialects and their corresponding varieties of Standard German: effects of region, age, and tempo.

The diglossic situation in German-speaking Switzerland entails that both an Alemannic dialect and a Swiss standard variety of German are spoken. One phonological property of both Alemannic and Swiss Standard German (SSG) is contrastive quantity not only in vowels but also in consonants, namely lenis and fortis. This study aims to compare vowel and plosive closure durations as well as articulation rate (AR) between Alemannic and SSG in the varieties spoken in a rural area of the canton of Lucerne (LU) and an urban area of the canton of Zurich (ZH).In addition to the segment durations, an additional measure of vowel-to-vowel+consonant duration (V/(V+C)) ratios is calculated in order to account for possible compensation between vowel and closure durations. Stimuli consisted of words containing different vowel-consonant (VC) combinations. The main differences found are longer segment durations in Alemannic compared to SSG, three phonetic vowel categories in Alemannic that differ between LU and ZH, three stable V/(V+C) ratio categories, and three phonetic consonant categories lenis, fortis, and extrafortis in both Alemannic and SSG. Most importantly, younger ZH speakers produced overall shorter closure durations, calling into question a possible reduction of consonant categories due to a contact to German Standard German (GSG).

A diachronic approach to the indexicalization of stereotypes using the example of Alemannic dialects in Switzerland

A diachronic approach to the indexicalization of stereotypes using the example of Alemannic dialects in Switzerland

Canonical and non-canonical (co)predicate agreement in Highest Alemannic dialects

This paper deals with the distribution of agreement patterns for target adjectives or past participles in Swiss German dialects focussing on non-attributive domains. While agreement outside the nominal phrase has been lost in the development towards Standard German and in most dialects, in some Swiss German dialects certain syntactic domains still show formal agreement. Against this backdrop, two topics will be addressed in this paper. It gives an overview of the extent, function and distribution of formal agreement within the clausal domain on the basis of survey data, as far as possible. Another focus is default neuter inflection, which no longer shows canonical gender agreement with a neuter controller, but has developed a new function in the field of aspectuality.

Johann Marschalk von Frohburg - pierwszy wysoki dygnitarz z dzisiejszej Szwajcarii w pruskiej galezi Zakonu Krzyzackiego oraz bracia z Alzacji-Burgundii

Johann Marschalk von Frohburg (1320/1330-1391) came from Liestal in the far south-western fringes of the Reich, from an insignificant family who was looking after the stable of the Counts of Frohburg. The Teutonic Knights from his region hadn't played any role in Prussia so far. Very few written sources, the supposed dates of birth and the later carriercourses suggest that brother Johann gathered around him brethren of similar Alemannic dialect, in particular Werner von Tettingen and Konrad and Rudolf von Kyburg. At the same time, he began to forge an alliance with another crew from the south-west of the Reich, the Frankish. This cooperation paid off, because in 1387 brother Johann became the Great Trappearius. In May 1390 he was removed from his dignity. His countrymen from Alsace-Burgundy soon regained this office and gave it to the younger Werner. Johann Marschalk von Frohburg, who died in the following year, smoothed the way for other Aleman-speaking brethren in the Teutonic Order.

Remote Testing of the Familiar Word Effect With Non-dialectal and Dialectal German-Learning 1-2-Year-Olds.

Variability is pervasive in spoken language, in particular if one is exposed to two varieties of the same language (e.g., the standard variety and a dialect). Unlike in bilingual settings, standard and dialectal forms are often phonologically related, increasing the variability in word forms (e.g., German Fuß “foot” is produced as [fus] in Standard German and as [fs] in the Alemannic dialect). We investigate whether dialectal variability in children’s input affects their ability to recognize words in Standard German, testing non-dialectal vs. dialectal children. Non-dialectal children, who typically grow up in urban areas, mostly hear Standard German forms, and hence encounter little segmental variability in their input. Dialectal children in turn, who typically grow up in rural areas, hear both Standard German and dialectal forms, and are hence exposed to a large amount of variability in their input. We employ the familiar word paradigm for German children aged 12–18 months. Since dialectal children from rural areas are hard to recruit for laboratory studies, we programmed an App that allows all parents to test their children at home. Looking times to familiar vs. non-familiar words were analyzed using a semi-automatic procedure based on neural networks. Our results replicate the familiarity preference for non-dialectal German 12–18-month-old children (longer looking times to familiar words than vs. non-familiar words). Non-dialectal children in the same age range, on the other hand, showed a novelty preference. One explanation for the novelty preference in dialectal children may be more mature linguistic processing, caused by more variability of word forms in the input. This linguistic maturation hypothesis is addressed in Experiment 2, in which we tested older children (18–24-month-olds). These children, who are not exposed to dialectal forms, also showed a novelty preference. Taken together, our findings show that both dialectal and non-dialectal German children recognized the familiar Standard German word forms, but their looking pattern differed as a function of the variability in the input. Frequent exposure to both dialectal and Standard German word forms may hence have affected the nature of (prelexical and/or) lexical representations, leading to more mature processing capacities.

Genus-Zuweisung bei der Pronominalisierung von Personen in den Südwalser Dialekten

The Alemannic dialects in linguistic islands in Northern Italy have been undergoing strong changes since the second half of the 20th century. One of these changes concerns the assignment of gender with persons. Generalized neuter abolishes the coupling of gender with male/female and transfers both female and male persons into neuter. This in turn has its effect on verbal inflection. The post-verbal subject clitics mutate in the 3rd person singular to verb endings void of male/female connotations. This change, as it is now spreading, is not in itself a recent phenomenon. In early written dialectal records it already occurs in single documents even at the beginning of the 19th century.

Vowel quality in four Alemannic dialects and its influence on the respective varieties of Swiss Standard German

Despite being one of the official languages in Switzerland, the phonetic properties of Swiss Standard German (SSG) have been studied insufficiently. Regarding Alemannic (ALM) dialects, most of the available phonetic studies have dealt with consonants rather than vowels. To counteract this general lack of research, this study investigates the long-vowel inventories of four ALM dialects as well as their respective SSG varieties regarding vowel quality. The aim of the study is twofold: on the one hand, it provides the first comparative acoustic analysis of ALM and SSG vowels; on the other hand, it investigates to which extent interference from ALM dialects determines the vowel qualities of SSG varieties. To this end, four male and four female speakers from Bern, Chur, Brig, and Zurich were recorded producing each vowel three times, which resulted in a corpus of 1632 tokens. The results show that ALM vowel quality is basically transferred to the SSG varieties in two dialect regions: Chur and Brig. Instead, in the SSG varieties spoken in Bern and Zurich certain vowel qualities did not match the ALM ones, mostly for <a> that was fronted in the SSG variety of either dialect. Additionally, the Bern SSG <ä> was produced as both [┋ː] and [ӕː], while <o> was realised more in the back.

Case Syncretism, Animacy, and Word Order in Continental West Germanic: Neurolinguistic Evidence from a Comparative Study on Standard German, Zurich German, and Fering (North Frisian)

To understand a sentence, it is crucial to understand who is doing what. The interplay of morphological case marking, argument serialization, and animacy provides linguistic cues for the processing system to rapidly identify the thematic roles of the arguments. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates on-line brain responses during argument identification in Zurich German, a High Alemannic dialect, and in Fering, a North Frisian variety, which both exhibit reduced case systems as compared to Standard German. Like Standard German, Zurich German and Fering are Continental West Germanic varieties, and indeed argument processing in sentences with an object-before-subject order engenders a qualitatively similar ERP pattern of a scrambling negativity followed by a P600 in all tested varieties. However, the P600 component—a late positive ERP response, which has been linked to the categorization of task-relevant stimuli—is selectively affected by the most prominent cue for argument identification in each variety, which is case marking in Standard German, but animacy in Zurich German and Fering. Thus, even closely related varieties may employ different processing strategies based on the language-specific availability of syntactic and semantic cues for argument identification.*

Investigating speaker individuality in the Swiss Standard German of four Alemannic dialect regions: Consonant quantity, vowel quality, and temporal variables

While German-speaking Switzerland manifests a considerable amount of dialectal diversity, until the present day the phonetic interrelation of Alemannic (ALM) dialects and spoken Swiss Standard German (SSG) has not been studied with an acoustic phonetic approach on the speaker level.
 In this study, out of a pool of 32 speakers (controlled for sex, age, and education level) from 4 dialectologically distinct ALM areas, 16 speakers with 2 dialects were analysed regarding SSG consonant duration (in words whose ALM equivalents may or may not have a geminate), 8 speakers from the city of Bern (BE) were analysed for vowel quality, and 32 speakers were analysed for temporal variables, i.e., articulation rate (AR) and vocalic-speech percentage (%V).
 Results reveal that there is much intradialectal inter- and intraspeaker variation in all three aspects scrutinised, but especially regarding vowel quality of BE SSG mid vowels and temporal variables. As for consonant quantity, while intradialectal interspeaker variation was observed, speakers showed a tendency towards normalised SSG consonant durations that resemble the normalised consonant durations in their ALM dialect. In general, these results suggest that a speaker’s dialect background is only one factor amongst many that influence the way in which Swiss Standard German is spoken.

A “borderline case” of syntactic variation

Dialectal maps of morpho-syntactic phenomena sometimes display patterns that either differ quite drastically from the traditional dialectal boundaries (which are mostly based on phonology or the lexicon) or show otherwise unexpected patterns. This paper argues to take these deviations seriously, namely as a potential tool to detect the different types and qualities of syntactic micro-variation. As a case study, differing patterns concerning the distribution of the infinitival marker zu across various infinitival constructions within the Alemannic dialect group will be examined and it will be argued that an analysis of the infinitival marker as the lexical realization of the [±coin] value within a theory of temporal anchoring, as proposed in Ritter & Wiltschko (2014), provides the necessary flexibility in order to capture these differing variational patterns.

Grenzüberschreitende Identitäten im badischen Oberrheingebiet: Unterschiede in der Konstruktion sprachlicher und regionaler Verbundenheit mit dem Elsass

Based on a qualitative analysis of 127 sociolinguistic interviews with speakers of Alemannic from 22 villages and towns along the Franco-German border at the Upper Rhine in Baden (Germany), this contribution investigates the construction of trans-border identities. The paper explores how Badeners perceive the relationship with Alsace (France) with regard to three thematic fields: 1) regional ties with Alsace, 2) language choice in communication across the border, and 3) comprehension of the Alsatian dialect.
 Two factors are shown to play a major role for the construction of trans-border identities. First, identities vary between regions, which can be explained by historical differences, especially with respect to political circumstances. The closer the historical relationship between the respective region and Alsace, the stronger the trans-border identity. Second, there is an influence of the geographical distance to the border. The closer a village is located to the border (the Rhine), the stronger the (self- and other-)ascription of linguistic and regional ties to Alsace.
 Furthermore, analysis reveals a correlation between the perception of regional ties to Alsace and language choice in trans-border communication: Persons who construct a shared regional cohesiveness across the border tend to use the Alemannic dialect when interacting with Alsatians, whereas persons who do not perceive such a cohesiveness mainly use Standard German or French.

Alemannisch und der Deutschunterricht.

In this contribution, I describe the evolution of the role that Alemannic dialects and Standard High German play in the Swiss German educational context. Drawing on a content analysis of a collection of school-related documents from 1950 to 2014, I describe the change in the roles attributed to dialects and the standard language, respectively. The task of German-language education shifts from the two-fold goal of teaching standard-language literacy and cultivating the “pure” dialect in the 1950s to a clear prioritization of standard language skills both in orality and in literacy towards the end of the twentieth century. I discuss these changes in relation to the backdrop of the media discourse on identity, language, multilingual education, language norms, and other social issues such as migration.

Wortsprachliche Merkmale im Alemannischen

This paper examines the strategies for profiling the phonological word in Alemannic, applying the typology of syllable and word languages. The diagnostic criteria selected for assessing the relevance of the phonological word include syllable structure, phonotactic restrictions, and word-profiling processes. Following on from previous synchronic and diachronic analyses (Nübling/Schrambke 2004; Szczepaniak 2007), I will provide a detailed account of the phonological word in Old Alemannic and in modern Alemannic dialects, which include Upper-Rhine Alemannic, Swabian, and South Alemannic. It will be shown that the relevance of the phonological word gradually increased in Alemannic, as can be gleaned from processes such as unstressed vowel reduction, unstressed vowel deletion, and consonant epenthesis. While vowel reduction created strong asymmetries between stressed and unstressed syllables, unstressed vowel deletion and consonant epenthesis increased syllable complexity at word and morpheme boundaries. In addition, Swabian was found to contain more word-related features than Upper-Rhine Alemannic and South Alemannic. Thus, the typology of syllable and word languages contributes to a better understanding of language variation and change in Alemannic.

Areale Variation von /r/-Realisierungen in schweizerdeutschen Dialekten.

The present study deals with the areal variation of /r/-realisations in the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland. In particular, we provide a quantitative survey of recordings collected through crowdsourcing, i. e. by means of the smartphone application Dialäkt Äpp (Leemann/Kolly 2013). Each of the 2851 recordings of the word trinke (‘to drink’) was auditorily coded by at least two of the four authors. The resulting maps show a neat areal distribution of the realisations of /r/, with alveolar variants in most of the central Midlands and in the Alpine regions. Uvular variants, on the other hand, seem to prevail in the northeastern and northwestern parts of German-speaking Switzerland. Comparing our data with traditional dialectological sources, we find evidence for the hypothesis that the alveolar realisation of /r/ has been extensively replaced by uvular variants in large parts of the northeast; apparently, a similar sound change is now in progress in the rural areas around Basel.

Diglossia and Local Identity: Swiss German in the Linguistic Landscape of Kleinbasel (Asian Perspectives)

The city of Basel is situated in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in the geographic triangle of three countries: France, Germany and Switzerland. Everyday urban life is characterised by the presence of Standard German and Swiss German as well as diverse migrant languages. Swiss German is ‘an umbrella term for several Alemannic dialects’ (Stepkowska 2012, 202) which differ from Standard German in terms of phonetics, semantics, lexis, and grammar and has no standard written form. Swiss German is predominantly used in oral forms, and Standard German in written communication. Furthermore, an amalgamation of bilingualism and diglossia (Stepkowska 2012, 208) distinguishes the specific linguistic situation, which indicates amongst other things the high prestige of Swiss German in everyday life. To explore the visibility and vitality of Swiss German in the public display of written language, we examined the linguistic landscape of a superdiverse neighbourhood of Basel, and investigated language power and the story beyond the sign – ‘stories about the cultural, historical, political and social backgrounds of a certain space’ (Blommaert 2013, 41). Our exploration was guided by the question: How do linguistic artefacts – such as official, commercial, and private signs – represent the diglossic situation and the relation between language and identity in Kleinbasel? Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study, a corpus was compiled comprising 300 digital images of written artefacts in Kleinbasel. Participant observation and focus group discussions about particular images were conducted and analysed using grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) and visual ethnography (Pink 2006). In our paper, we focus on signs in Swiss German and focus group discussions on these images. Initial analyses have produced two surprising findings; firstly, the visibility and the perception of Swiss German as a marker of local identity; secondly, the specific context of their display.

The syntax and semantics of past participle agreement in Alemannic

This paper investigates agreement on past participles in Highest Alemannic dialects of German. We will first show that participle agreement only occurs in contexts where the participle is adjectival, viz., in stative passives and in resultative perfects, but not in eventive perfects. The participles thus pattern with predicative adjectives, which also display agreement in these varieties. In the main part of the paper, we address double compound perfects and eventive passives, which also display agreement on the lexical participle. Even though it is initially not obvious that the participle is adjectival in these cases, we will provide syntactic evidence for their adjectival status. Furthermore, we will pursue the hypothesis that the adjectival head of all agreeing participles is a stativizer, even in the double compound perfect and the eventive passive. At the same time, both the double compound perfect and the eventive passive also clearly have an eventive component. We will model their behavior by treating the participles as mixed categories, viz., as adjectival heads that take a large amount of verbal structure as their complement (VoiceP/AspP). While recent work on German stative passives has argued that even those should be analyzed as containing a substantial amount of verbal structure, the behavior of participles in the double perfect and the eventive passive in the varieties under consideration is clearly different. They thus contribute to the typology of adjectival passives in German and beyond and show that the familiar distinction between ‘adjectival’ and ‘verbal’ participles needs to be further refined.

Humanness in the 3rd Person Singular Personal Pronoun in Alemannic Dialects

This paper surveys the emergence of the categoryhumannessin the 3rd person singular personal pronoun in Alemannic (southwest German) dialects. The first part shows that some Alemannic dialects have developed a human/nonhuman distinction in the 3rd person singular neuter personal pronoun: a marked form encoding the human direct object has emerged. The emergence of this form can be explained by the differential object marking hypothesis. The second part reports on a pilot study of the 3rd person singular personal pronoun in Sense Alemannic on the basis of new data. In this dialect, humanness is distinguished not only in the neuter but also in the masculine and feminine. Additionally, some instances are observed that violate the differential object marking principle. Thus, both principles (humanness marking and the differential object marking) form part of the grammar, but the latter one may be violated.*

Understanding fairy tales spoken in dialect: an fMRI study

ABSTRACTDialect comprehension has rarely been studied on the text level. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the neuronal processing of auditory story comprehension was compared in 17 bilectal listeners who spoke Standard German and High Alemannic dialect, and in 19 monolectal listeners who did not speak dialect but only Standard German. 24 fairy tales were translated and recorded by speakers of both varieties. A text-related Extended Language Network (ELN) was more active for intelligible conditions compared to an unintelligible baseline. When High Alemannic fairy tales were presented, bilectal listeners activated the left aTL significantly more than monolectals. This activation was stronger for listeners who rated the dialect more pleasant. It increased over the duration of the stories, but more so for the familiar varieties. These results confirm the importance of the left aTL for text comprehension and add to our understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of dialect comprehension.

Sprach- und Sprechformen zwischen Dialekt und Standardsprache. Empirische Untersuchungen auf einem wenig erforschten Terrain: Vorarlberg

From a dialect-typological point of view, the classification of the dialect situation in Vorarlberg is rather unproblematic. It is well-known that it is an Alemannic dialect. Somewhat more difficult is its classification from a linguistic-pragmatic and dialect-communicative perspective. The research literature is full of contradictory statements. Some assume a (medial) diglossia in Vorarlberg like in neighboring Switzerland, others assume a dialect-standard continuum comparable to the situation in the Bavarian part of Austria. There have not yet been sufficient empirical investigations to resolve this problem. In this contribution, data will be presented from informal conversations between students as well as from a local council meeting. The data suggest that a dialect-standard continuum does indeed exist in Vorarlberg. The intermediate levels enable addressee-specific variations as a means of ensuring comprehension on the one hand and functional relations on the other. In Alberschwende, a mixture between dialect and standard language can be observed that one can interprete as an element of a functional style. What is more, code-switching occurs. Co-occurring with additional systems of expression such as prosody and gestures as elements of a speech style, it serves to contextualize certain modality types and speech acts.