Bavarian Dialect Research Articles

The velarized lateral [ɫ] in East Austrian base dialects

Abstract This paper is concerned with the velarized lateral [ɫ] as a possible realization of the lateral phoneme /l/ in the rural Central Bavarian base dialects of German in Austria. So far, velarized laterals in Austrian German have mainly been described as a socially marked realization of /l/ in Vienna. However, descriptions of Austrian dialects mostly lack detailed acoustic analyses. Therefore, we analyzed the first two formants of alveolar laterals from dialect speakers in seventeen locations around Vienna that fall into the Central and South Central Bavarian dialect areas. Recordings were taken from the ‘German in Austria’ Corpus, from four speakers per location (two old, two young, each one male, one female), with thirty-two items per speaker with laterals in word-initial and twenty-two in word-final position. We asked whether the degree of velarization as measured by the difference between F2 and F1 (the smaller the more velarized) depends on this linguistic factor of position in the word – as has been shown for other Germanic languages – or social factors including the recording location’s distance from Vienna, age and gender of the speakers. Results showed that velarization was most frequently but not exclusively found in the Eastern region closest to Vienna (Central Bavarian dialects). Non-velarized and velarized laterals tended towards a complementary distribution in initial versus final word position and male speakers showed more velarization overall. Specifically, old speakers in locations close to Vienna tended towards more velarization in word-initial position compared to other regions, matching descriptions of Viennese dialect.

Open syllable lengthening and diphthongisation in Upper Middle High German: evidence from verse

Despite a long history of scholarly interest, the relative chronologies (and even origins) of open syllable lengthening (OSL) and the diphthongisation of the Middle High German (MHG) high vowels remain unclear. This paper, drawing on orthographic evidence from a thirteenth-century Parzival MS, St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 857, provides new insights into these two key changes. The changes either maintained or increased the quantity of stressed vowels, leading to a net increase in the quantity of stressed syllables in MHG. Diphthongisation simply altered the segmental quality of already long monophthongs; only OSL increased the quantity of the vowels it affected. This paper argues that OSL was not a feature of the South Bavarian dialect of Cod. 857’s Hand III, although his dialect had certainly undergone diphthongisation. It is difficult to reconcile this picture with claims by Penzl, Kranzmayer and Wiesinger that OSL was present throughout the Bavarian dialect area by 1200. This paper challenges claims that diphthongisation was triggered by OSL via a phonological push-chain, maintaining that the two changes were independent. It is furthermore suggested that the scribe is uninterested in marking vocalic quantity, which—in the absence of OSL—was still consistent across inflexional paradigms. Instead, he uses the circumflex “length marker” to indicate diphthongal quality. The scribes’ dialect thus represents a key turning point: diphthongisation was well progressed, but OSL had yet to occur.

(IM)POLITENESS IN BAVARIAN DIALECTS (based on South German political discourse material)

Dialect is used not only as a means of spoken interpersonal communication, now-adays it can be found in advertising, media and political discourse. Dialects, not being the main language of political communication, can be used in contrast to the standard language for explicit and implicit transmission of emotions and evaluation as well as (im)politeness strategy in regional political discourse. The article examines the dialect as means of reflecting (im)politeness in political communication. It analyzes exam-ples with Bavarian dialect inclusions selected on the basis of the its morphosyntactic features and Bavarian dictionaries data from articles on political issues published in South German media, plenary session transcripts in the Bavarian State Parliament, Salvator festival speech transcripts and speeches of the Bavarian politicians at the Po-litical Ash Wednesday and the Gillamoos Festival published between 2003 and 2023. Thus, the linguopragmatic analysis of dialect in political communication showed that dialect inclusions can be used to represent both polite and impolite attitudes towards the interlocutor. Politeness is performed by the speech etiquette formulae (greetings, farewells and other polite expressions), because dialect defines belonging to the Bavar-ian culture and is associated with homeland, contributing to the creation of a trusting environment. In other cases, impoliteness, especially in relation to political opponents and / or non-dialect speakers, is expressed through emotional-evaluative vocabulary with pejorative meaning, appeal to non-Bavarian origin and disrespect for regional traditions.

Fast-Speech-Induced Hypoarticulation Does Not Considerably Affect the Diachronic Reversal of Complementary Length in Central Bavarian.

This study investigated a sound change in progress by which the Central Bavarian dialect feature of complementary length between consonant and the preceding vowel is giving way to the unrestricted combination possibility of long (Vː) and short (V) vowels with following longer fortis (Cː) and shorter lenis (C) stops, respectively. This 2 × 2 system is also found in the standard variety of German. While previous studies have regarded any such findings of convergence toward Standard German as being a result of language contact, the present study specifically tested the possibility of fast-speech-induced hypoarticulation being a system-internal driver of this change. The focus of this study was on acoustic cues to the postvocalic stop. Following the apparent-time paradigm, acoustic analyses of 10 younger and 10 older dialect speakers revealed that (1) younger dialect speakers produced both VC and VːCː (both formerly illegal in the dialect), but (2) older dialect speakers produced only VːCː sequences with duration patterns similar to those of the control group of 10 Standard German speakers. Analyses of various dependent variables further showed (3) the (apparently) delayed emergence of aspiration as an additional cue to the fortis-lenis contrast in Western Central Bavarian particularly in younger dialect speakers, (4) no considerable effect of speech rate on the dispersion of and overlap between any of the four vowel-plus-stop combinations, and (5) the irregular spread of this change that appears to be gradual. As such, the findings support a model of linguistic change that also accounts for gradual changes in dialect borrowing.

Philosophical Significance of the Mirror Metaphor in the Anonymous Treatise on Mass (Manuscript BSB München Cgm 89)

The article is devoted to a detailed analysis of mirror metaphor in an anonymous late-14th-century vernacular theological and philosophical treatise, written in Bavarian dialect and known as “The Mystical Treatise on Mass and Its Influences on a Loving Soul’’. It is preserved as manuscript Cgm 89 in the Bavarian State Library (BSB) in Munich. This text has never been edited critically and still remains unpublished. As a result of its historical and philosophical analysis, the author of this study offers a hypothesis, that “mirror” is used in the treatise not only as a typical metaphor, but also as a term that reflects the teaching presented in this text.

Zur Sprachdynamik des Konjunktivs im Bairischen in Österreich

The paper deals with the morpho-syntactic variation of subjunctive II in Bavarian dialect regions of (former) Austria and focuses on language dynamics.
 The broad empirical basis comes from two different corpora: The first corpus consists of data from the “Dictionary of Bavarian dialects in Austria” (WBÖ), reflecting the base dialects of the first half of the 20th century. These data are supplemented by recent oral data that were elicited in project part 03 “Speech repertoires and varietal spectra” of the Special Research Programme “German in Austria. Variation – Contact – Perception” (DiÖ).
 Combining WBÖ and DiÖ, PP03 data, a real time comparison is carried out. For additional apparent time evidence, the internal variation within the two datasets is taken into account: While in the WBÖ data different registers are compared, variation in the DiÖ, PP03 data is analyzed with respect to different registers and different speaker groups (old vs. young).
 The WBÖ and the DiÖ, PP03 data provide empirical evidence that the -ad-marker that was initially restricted to weak verbs has exceeded its domain and is universally compatible with all verb classes. In connection with this, there is a decrease of strong synthetic subjunctive II forms.
 The real time as well as the apparent time findings indicate an increase of analytic subjunctive II constructions at the cost of synthetic forms. Furthermore, we find an expansion of the werden-periphrasis, while the number of tun-subjunctives declines.

Persistent features – Corpus-based evidence for reallocation processes in German

Abstract This study aims at tracing a reallocation process of a grammatical feature alongside the dialect-standard axis with the aid of corpus linguistics methods; more precisely with an integrative application of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The phenomenon under investigation is articles without the definiteness marker d- in German, usually ascribed to the Bavarian dialect area. Analyses show, however, that this apparently dialectal feature diffuses to other communication settings closer to the intended standard language use. This process is accompanied by a refunctionalisation of reduced article forms, indicating the relevance of language-internal relations for reallocation of grammatical features. The methodical approach should be easily applicable to other variants and – as many European languages show a diaglossic repertoire – relevant to other languages as well.

In Any Case No Upper Palatinate Dialect

This article investigates important factors concerning the urban identity of the inhabitants of Regensburg and their linguistic manifestation. In interviews with citizens of Regensburg five characteristic factors emerged, which lead to the core factor, the popular idea of Regensburg as a linguistic enclave of the Middle Bavarian dialect surrounded by North Bavarian. The article shows how this idea became part of the cultural memory in Regensburg.

Linguistic features of Middle German business prose

This article discusses business papers XII-XIII century from the city of Augsburg, which is located in the south of Germany. The norm of the modern German language went through several stages of formation before acquiring a unified standard and becoming the so-called Standardsprache. The city of Augsburg belongs to the East Bavarian dialect region and is located on the border of Bavaria and Swabia. Analysis of the written language of documents of the XII-XIII century provided information on the interaction of the features of both dialects (Bavarian and Swabian). In this study, 5 documents related to various taxes were considered, which indicate that they were written in Augsburg, as well as 3 documents in the Augsburg monastery. It is important that for the documents considered there is no characteristic sequence in writing, that is, we are talking about the absence of a spelling norm. Confirmation of this fact is also given in the article with examples from the materials studied. The study showed the presence of similar characteristics in all studied, which indicates their undoubted linguistic kinship. Despite this, there are also features that are characteristic exclusively for the southwestern part of Germany and separately for the southeast. An analysis of the German southern dialects makes it possible to trace the development trend of the German language in its holy language in a period that is closely connected with the history of the German people. The processes of synergy between dialects within the framework of one language are considered, which draws attention to the beginning of the formation of the first national language, and subsequently the national one. The study revealed that Augsburg became a kind of conductor of the Bavarian dialect in the eastern part of the Swabian dialect. The isoglosses studied (phonetic, morphological, lexical) showed that these dialects can be combined linguistically as southern and considered a feature of the Germanic (Yerminon) range. Despite some linguistic differences, a relative unity of linguistic traditions is noted, indicating a sufficient proximity of the dialects of the southwestern and southeastern parts of Germany in the XII-XIII centuries.

Diminutive Forming Suffixes in Instructional German Books

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How regular is sound change?

On the basis of an apparent-time-study this article discusses the recent developments in the reflexes of MHG o in the Bavarian dialect regions of Salzburg and Tyrol. The analysis draws on the data of 185 informants from two age cohorts which were collected with the help of dialect questionnaires at 89 locations between 2012 and 2017. The survey supports the general observation that dialect-to-standard advergence in sound change is accompanied by lexical diffusion. In this context, irregular developments between and within the different dialect regions are documented and discussed.

It can not be healthy not to be ill

This article is written in remembrance of Karl Valentin's 70thanniversary of his death. He was a comedian and song writer suffering from vegetative dystonia and depression lifelong. This hypochondriac developed extreme self observation and had anxiety to get ill permanently. As one year old, his brother died of diphteria and he was close to death himself. After jumping in an ice cold river in Munich as a young man he caught a pneumonia. From that day he had a undefined long lasting lung disease. His performances and pieces of literature in Bavarian dialect are characterized by critical thoughts about the world in general and human vulnerability including his own in a philosophical way. His sarcastic view of the world, which was rarely pleasant for the counterpart still induced admiration of many audiences and was satisfying for Karl Valentin's egocentrism. He has been the most famous Bavarian comedian during world war II and during the early days of the Republic of Germany.

Terms for the feeling of itching in the Bavarian dialect

Pruritus can have many different causes and is a very subjective sensation. As dialects show a greater diversity of linguistic expressions than standard languages, the description of the sensation of pruritus in a dialect might carry additional information about the quality of pruritus. This cross-sectional study was carried out in Q1/2016 in the rural Bavarian Forest region in Bavaria, Germany. Participants were recruited in the waiting rooms of local doctors. They were asked to complete four sentences composed in the Bavarian dialect in which one word per sentence that signified the sensation of pruritus had been replaced by a blank space. In total, the 1,007 participants (mean age 49.97 years, SD = 15.76; 58.2% female) named 2,870 expressions, 144 excluding duplicates. 98.7% of the expressions could be matched to 13 underlying terms. The most frequent ones were "jucken" ('to itch'', 59.5%), "brennen" ('to burn', 26.5%), "kribbeln" (no English equivalent, 1.1%), "kratzen" ('to scratch', 0.7%) and "beißen" ('to bite', 0.6%). The use of the different expressions was strongly situational: In 75% of the cases "brennen" ('to burn') was used in the context of contact to a stinging nettle (in German 'Brennnessel'). Two of the 13 expressions ("kribbeln" and "bitzeln", no English equivalents) were even used only in this scenario. In the Bavarian dialect several different expressions for the sensation of pruritus exist. Although "jucken" ('to itch') is the most common expression for the sensation of pruritus, the German medical terms "Pruritus" ('pruritus') and "Juckreiz" ('itch') don't do justice to the situational use of expressions in the dialect.

„Ham wir a Gaudi k’habt“ – Dialektübersetzung am Beispiel der kroatischen Übersetzung der bairischen Textpassagen in Thomas Manns Buddenbrooks

Abstract The following paper looks at the Croatian translation of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann aiming at analyzing the way the Bavarian dialect spoken by the character Permaneder has been translated into Croatian: for this purpose the translator used Kajkavian, a dialect spoken in the northwest of Croatia. Although generally not recommended as a translation strategy by many translation scholars, the use of a dialect in the target language brings several positive aspects to the translation: it gives the character a social background and preserves the humorous effect of the clash between the dialect of Permaneder and the standard language of the Buddenbrook family. The strategy remains problematic due to the differences in the geographic and cultural context of the story.

Emphatic Topicalization and the Structure of the Left Periphery: Evidence from German and Bangla

AbstractThe goal of this article is to explore the structure of the clausal “left periphery” with respect to a phenomenon that has so far only rarely been identified as a root‐clause phenomenon: emphatic topicalization (ET). It is a form of movement by which a phrase (not necessarily a wh‐phrase) targets the specifier of a complementizer. This movement prevents the CP complement from remaining in its embedded position. For convergence, the entire CP in which ET has applied must move to the left periphery of the clause that immediately dominates it. It is argued that this latter move is necessary because ET induces a feature that is only interpretable in the domain of illocutionary force, illocutionary force being a property of the utterance (i.e., typically of the root clause). The data come from the Bavarian dialect of German (Germanic) and from Bangla (Indo‐Aryan). In spite of the differences between these languages, the similarity of the constraints that are revealed by this study cannot be accidental. For Bangla, a typical wh‐in‐situ language, it is shown that the syntax of ET scope is to a large extent parallel to the syntax of wh‐scope. Thus, the syntax of wh‐scope can be argued to follow from general properties of the parametric choices made in Bangla (and perhaps in closely related languages).

Dialect Variation Influences the Phonological and Lexical-Semantic Word Processing in Sentences. Electrophysiological Evidence from a Cross-Dialectal Comprehension Study.

This event-related potential (ERP) study examines the influence of dialectal competence differences (merged vs. unmerged dialect group) on cross-dialectal comprehension between Southern German dialects. It focuses on the question as to whether certain dialect phonemes (//, //), which are attributed to different lexemes in two dialect areas (Central Bavarian, Bavarian-Alemannic transition zone) evoke increased neural costs during sentence processing. In this context, the phonological and semantic processing of lexemes is compared in three types of potentially problematic communication settings (misunderstanding, incomprehension, allophonic variation = potential comprehension). For this purpose, an oddball design including whole sentences was combined with a semantic rating task. Listeners from the unmerged Central Bavarian dialect area heard sentences including either native or non-native lexemes from the merged neighboring dialect. These had to be evaluated with regard to their context acceptability. The main difference between the lexemes can be attributed to the fact that they have different meanings in the respective dialect areas or are non-existent in the linguistic competence of the Central Bavarians. The results provide evidence for the fact that non-native lexemes containing the //-diphthong lead to enhanced neural costs during sentence processing. The ERP results show a biphasic pattern (N2b/N400, LPC) for non-existent lexemes (incomprehension) as well as for semantically incongruous lexemes (misunderstanding), reflecting an early error detection mechanism and enhanced costs for semantic integration and evaluation. In contrast, allophonic // deviations show reduced negativities and no LPC, indexing an unproblematic categorization and evaluation process. In the light of these results, an observed change of // to // in the Bavarian-Alemannic transition zone can be interpreted as a facilitation strategy of cross-dialectal comprehension to reduce both misunderstandings as well as neural costs in processing, which might be interpreted as the initial trigger for this particular phoneme change.

Dialektübersetzungen in Abhängigkeit von schriftlichen und mündlichen Stimuli

When collecting linguistic data using translation tasks, stimuli can be presented in written or in oral form. In doing so, there is a possibility that a systematic source of error can occur that can be traced back to the selected survey method and which can influence the results of the translation tasks. This contribution investigates whether and to what extent both of the aforementioned survey methods result in divergent results when using translation tasks. For this investigation, 128 informants provided linguistic data; each informant had to translate 25 Wenker sentences from Standard German into either East Swabian, Lechrain or West Central Bavarian dialect, as the case may be. The results show two tendencies. First, written stimuli lead to a slightly higher number of dialectal translation in segmental variables. Second, when oral stimuli are used, syntactic and lexical variables are translated significantly more often in such a manner that they diverge from the template. The results can be explained in terms of varying cognitive processing operations and the constraints of human working memory. When collecting data in the future, these tendencies should be taken into account.

Number marking in German measure phrases and the structure of pseudo-partitives

This paper investigates the variation in the morphology and interpretation of pseudo-partitive constructions (‘NUM-N1-(of)-N2’) in the Central Bavarian dialect of Vienna, which shows a morphological distinction between ambiguous measure phrases such as two glasses of water: in the referential reading, which refers to two glasses, N1 takes plural morphology, whereas it is morphologically inert in the quantity reading, which refers to an amount of water. While these two readings of measure phrases in pseudo-partitives are cross-linguistically well represented, they are not always morphologically differentiated. The distribution of number marking in Viennese has syntactic (possibility of fronting out of the pseudo-partitive), semantic (availability of the referential vs. the quantity reading, predicate selection), and prosodic consequences (presence vs. absence of word stress on N1). I argue that this is because in the quantity reading, N1 is a morphologically inert functional head μ which takes a numeral and a substance noun (N2) as its arguments and counts the instances of N2 for a given unit of measure, while in the referential reading, the pseudo-partitive consists of two NPs. The variation in number morphology seen in these constructions can be used as a diagnostic for the microvariation and the cartography of complex NPs in Germanic pseudo-partitives, as well as for languages which do not morphologically distinguish between the two readings, like English.

Evolution of the Bavarian dialect lexical system

Evolution of the Bavarian dialect lexical system

Фонетические и лексические Отклонения от нормы современного Литературного немецкого языка Германии (инновации системы Баварского диалекта)

Фонетические и лексические Отклонения от нормы современного Литературного немецкого языка Германии (инновации системы Баварского диалекта)