German Dialects Research Articles

Direct and Indirect Communication Styles in Turkish and German Idioms: A Cultural Linguistic Analysis

Her toplumun kendine özgü kültürel özellikleri vardır ve her insan bu kültürel birikimin içine doğar. Sahip olunan bu kültürel özellikler insanların davranışlarını etkilediği gibi iletişim şeklini de etkiler. Bu konu hakkında yapılan kültürlerarası araştırmalar Türk kültüründe olduğu gibi akraba, arkadaş ve aile bağlarını korumanın ve çatışmalardan kaçınmanın önemli olduğu yüksek bağlamlı kültürlerde, grup ahengini korumak için iletişim esnasında geniş kapsamlı mesajların kullanıldığı, daha karmaşık, dolaylı bir iletişim şeklinin tercih edildiğini göstermiştir. Alman kültürü gibi iletişim esnasında beklenmeyen durumlarla karşılaşma endişesinin çok az olduğu düşük bağlamlı kültürlerde ise bireyler, duygu, düşünce ya da isteklerini doğrudan, açıkça ve anlaşılır kelimelerle bildirirler. Bu tür bir kültüre mensup toplumlarda iletişim esnasında yalnızca gerekli bilgiler verilir, gereğinden fazla bilgi verilmekten kaçınılır. Bu durumdan yola çıkarak bu çalışmada, kültürlerin özlü anlamlar içeren ürünleri olan ve anlatılması zor durumları kısa ve etkili bir şekilde ifade etmek için sıkça kullandığımız Türkçe ve Almanca deyimlerdeki dolayı ve doğrudan iletişim biçemleri, kültürdilbilimsel açıdan incelenip kültürlerarası iletişim kuramları çerçevesinde analiz edilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonunda yukarıda bahsedilen iletişim şekli olgularının Türkçe ve Almanca deyimlere yansıdığı tespit edilmiş ve Almancada doğrudan iletişim şeklini içeren deyim sayısının, aynı konuyu içeren Türkçe deyim sayısından fazla olduğu, dolaylı iletişim olgusunu içeren Türkçe deyimlerde ise tam tersi bir durumun söz konusu olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır.

Deconstructing the myth of Standard German: Navigating language ideologies in the L2 German university classroom

AbstractPrevious research has established a connection between Standard Language Ideology (SLI) and prestige and power and has highlighted the existence of a dominant cultural narrative that idealizes Standard High German as a provider of cultural elevation and unity, viewing nonstandard Germanic varieties as exotic. Nevertheless, scholars have likewise emphasized the importance of familiarizing L2 German students with the standard and nonstandard regional and dialectal varieties that are widely used within and across Germanic‐speaking countries. Through a grounded ethnographic approach involving classroom observations and interviews, the study suggests that the L2 German university students observed seemed to believe in the superiority of Standard German despite efforts by their instructors to counter this belief. The study extends previous research by illustrating L2 German instructors' negotiation strategies, used to highlight the communicative legitimacy of German and Austrian dialects to their students.

The impact of mixed-cultural speech on the stereotypical perception of a virtual robot.

Despite the fact that mixed-cultural backgrounds become of increasing importance in our daily life, the representation of multiple cultural backgrounds in one entity is still rare in socially interactive agents (SIAs). This paper's contribution is twofold. First, it provides a survey of research on mixed-cultured SIAs. Second, it presents a study investigating how mixed-cultural speech (in this case, non-native accent) influences how a virtual robot is perceived in terms of personality, warmth, competence and credibility. Participants with English or German respectively as their first language watched a video of a virtual robot speaking in either standard English or German-accented English. It was expected that the German-accented speech would be rated more positively by native German participants as well as elicit the German stereotypes credibility and conscientiousness for both German and English participants. Contrary to the expectations, German participants rated the virtual robot lower in terms of competence and credibility when it spoke with a German accent, whereas English participants perceived the virtual robot with a German accent as more credible compared to the version without an accent. Both the native English and native German listeners classified the virtual robot with a German accent as significantly more neurotic than the virtual robot speaking standard English. This work shows that by solely implementing a non-native accent in a virtual robot, stereotypes are partly transferred. It also shows that the implementation of a non-native accent leads to differences in the perception of the virtual robot.

Variation and change in Swiss German agreement morphology: Spatial, social, and attitudinal effects

AbstractThis paper investigates the occurrence of inflected predicative adjectives, an optional yet distinguishing feature of German dialects spoken in southern Switzerland. We provide an in-depth analysis of the patterns of change of this morphosyntactic marker with a particular focus on extralinguistic factors. Historical records from 1950 were compared to contemporary data collected from 192 speakers across 49 localities in 2020–21. Our results corroborate previous reports indicating a substantial, real-time decline in inflected forms. Logistic mixed-effects modeling suggests that the inflection of predicative adjectives occurs more frequently among speakers who report tight social networks, have a strong local dialect identity, and regularly use one or more Romance languages. These findings support the claim that tight social networks and local dialect identity construction may lead to the preservation of conservative grammatical forms. Additionally, the effect of Romance languages highlights the role of transfer phenomena induced by language contact.

Vowel convergence does not affect auditory speaker discriminability in humans and machine in a case study on Swiss German dialects

In this study, we examined whether the convergence in interlocutors’ vowel acoustics leads to decreasing discriminability between interlocutors’ voices. Ten pairs of Grison and Zürich German speakers produced lexical items before and after dialogue interactions with evidence of vowel convergence in post-dialogue productions. In Experiment 1, native and non-native Swiss German listeners discriminated pairs of speakers whose speech was obtained pre- and post-dialogue. Results showed that listeners’ sensitivity (A’) was higher for native than non-native listeners, but comparable for pre- and post-dialogue recordings. The observed negative correlation between voice discrimination and the acoustic distance in formant space was mainly driven by a single speaker pair. In Experiment 2, the speaker recognition performance of an i-vector-based software was compared in pre- and post-dialogue speech. Results revealed no difference in the system performance between the two conditions. The findings suggest that vowel convergence does not compromise voice discriminability under the given experimental conditions.

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.

Gothic leiþu, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages

Gothic <i>leiþu</i>, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages

Upper German Dialects as a Linguo-Cultural Phenomenon

Introduction. The study attempts to reveal the role of the dialect as a linguo-cultural phenomenon through the prism of its semantics. The lack of studies on dialects from the linguo-cultural point of view – modern cultural linguistics is mostly focused on standard languages and national cultural codes – determines the novelty and relevance of this issue. Methodology and sources. The research content consists of more than 100 Bavarian and Swabian dialect words which reflect culture specifics of each region, selected from the 20th- 21st centuries fiction, regional media materials and local advertising by using the systematic sampling method. To identify the regional culture specifics, the study provides a two-level method, based on the analysis of lexicographic sources and results of the interview and questionnaire of 66 respondents. The updated range of denotative and connotative meanings of each lexeme is considered within 10 thematic groups. Results and discussion. It has been found out that the researched dialects clearly reflect the South German regional tradition and history which can be traced in the semantics of the dialect words. Despite the globalization, a partly similar historical development of the two regions, as well as the belonging of the Bavarian and Swabian dialects to the same dialect continuum, the analysis of the dialect semantic structures within thematic groups revealed some similarities and differences which lead to conclusions regarding the specifics of the South German linguo-cultural code. Conclusion. It has been concluded that the further study on linguistic variety from the interdisciplinary point of view, including cultural linguistics and pragmatics, allows to better understand the role of dialect in modern communication.

Syllable Structure Spatially Distributed: Patterns of Monosyllables in German Dialects

This study presents a micro-typological description of German dialects, focusing on the structure of 13,492 tokens of monosyllables, across 182 locations within Germany. Based on data from thePhonetischer Atlas der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, systematic geographical differences in both the segmental and prosodic organization of syllables are explored. The analysis reveals a North–South contrast in the organization of syllable structure. While the North tends toward more simple CVC syllables, the South tends toward the clustering of obstruents. An analysis of sonority dispersion reveals that in southern German, final demisyllables tend to follow more closely the sonority scale. Based on Markov chain models, the study reveals geographical differences in transition probabilities between the segments within monosyllables in German dialects.*

Hope in the Age of Dystopia: The Ghost in the Machine in Øyvind Rimbereid's Solaris korrigert

Hope in the Age of Dystopia: The Ghost in the Machine in Øyvind Rimbereid's <i>Solaris korrigert</i>

Заимствования в составе фразеологических единиц островных российско-немецких говоров

The aim of the study is to determine the features of the formation and functioning of phraseological units containing borrowings from the Russian language in the dialects of the Russian Germans. The article analyses the use of direct borrowings as a part of phraseological units and also reveals the mechanism of calquing, in which the structure and semantics of the corresponding Russian phraseological units are conveyed by means of the German dialect. The scientific novelty lies in describing the features of phraseological units containing borrowings in their composition in insular Russian-German dialects. As a result, it has been proved that the most typical is the use of direct borrowings as separate components of phraseological units; borrowings can act as a basic element of a phraseological unit or a secondary element that clarifies the meaning of an idiom.

Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German

Abstract This paper investigates the status of rhotics, /uː/, and the diphthongization of /eː/ and /oː/ in New Braunfels German, a variety of Texas German, a set of moribund dialects spoken in Texas. Boas, Hans C. (2009a. The life and death of Texas German. Durham: Duke University Press: 158) notes that “retroflex /ɻ/ appears … [mainly] in borrowed words.” He further assumes that New Braunfels German “differs from other German American dialects such as Pennsylvania German and Wisconsin German in that English sounds almost never appear in native German words” (160). The results discussed here indicate that this statement no longer holds true. Today, perceptual analysis and phonological measurements of Texas German Dialect Project data reveal that both American English retroflex approximants and diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] appear frequently. Moreover, /uː/ is sometimes centralized/fronted with short/mid-long quality. Language attrition and language death, two mutually reinforcing variables, appear as the driving forces for these phenomena.

Linguistic traits as heritable units? Spatial Bayesian clustering reveals Swiss German dialect regions

AbstractIn the early 2000s, the SADS, an extensive linguistic atlas project, surveyed more than three thousand individuals across German-speaking Switzerland on over two hundred linguistic variants, capturing the morphosyntactic variation in Swiss German. In this paper, we applied TESS, a Bayesian clustering method from evolutionary biology to the SADS to infer population structure, building on parallels between biology and linguistics that have recently been illustrated theoretically and explored experimentally. We tested three clustering models with different spatial assumptions: a nonspatial model, a spatial trend model with a spatial gradient, and a spatial full-trend model with both a spatial gradient and spatial-autocorrelation. Results reveal five distinct morphosyntactic populations, four of which correspond to traditional Swiss German dialect regions and one of which corresponds to a base population. Moreover, the spatial trend model outperforms the nonspatial model, suggesting a gradual transition of morphosyntax and supporting the idea of a Swiss Germandialect continuum.

The role of perceived ethnicity in speech processing: Insights from diverse populations and methods

In this talk, I will discuss behavioral and electrophysiological studies that examine the extent to which perceived talker identity influences speech comprehension and evaluation. Two frequently discussed theoretical accounts lead to different predictions. Bias-based accounts assume conscious misunderstanding of a standard variety in the case of a speaker classification as nonnative, resulting in negative ratings and poorer comprehension. Exemplar-based models suggest that such effects arise only when a contextual cue to the social identity is misleading, i.e., when ethnicity and speech clash with listeners’ expectations. To address these accounts, and to assess ethnicity effects across different groups and methods, diverse non-university populations (172 monolinguals, 58 bilinguals, age range 12–92) were primed with photographs of Asian and white European women and asked to repeat and rate utterances spoken in three accents (Korean-accented German, a regional German accent, standard German), all embedded in background noise. In three electrophysiological studies, students (106 monolinguals, age range 18–30) passively listed to utterances in two accents (Turkish-accented and standard Dutch) and were either primed or not with photographs of a Turkic or a Dutch woman. The findings suggest that theoretical contradictions are a consequence of methodological choices, which reflect distinct aspects of social information processing.

A contact-induced strategy of femininisation

Abstract Middle Dutch and Middle High German possess a femininizing suffix ‑erse, of which reflexes survive in some modern dialects. Its Old Germanic preform arose from the grafting of Latin ‑issa onto the masculine suffix *‑ārja‑ in Dutch and German dialects closest to the Gallo-Romance area in the Early Middle Ages. The main aim of the present contribution is to provide hitherto underexposed details on the Dutch linguistic area, to show that the mainstream historical explanation for ‑erse in Dutch historical linguistics must be given up, and to provide a unified and more detailed account for the rise of this suffix formation in the medieval contact zone between Gallo-Romance and Germanic.

Somatism "Heart" in German and Thai Idioms: A cognitive-semantic Analysis

This article examines the cognitive-semantic comparison to semantic structuring of heart in German and Thai idioms based on the metaphor. In order to achieve this goal, the idioms are investigated with the aid of the cognitive metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson. The result shows that the heart in German and Thai idioms conveys the meaning of feeling, thought, character, desire, etc., by itself. While structuring the specific meanings, e.g. sadness, love, etc., the metaphor plays an important role.

Reichenbach meets underspecification

AbstractThis paper investigates the long-term diachronic development of the perfect and preterite tenses in German and provides a novel analysis by supplementingReichenbach’s (1947)classical theory of tense by the notion of underspecification. Based on a newly compiled parallel corpus spanning the entire documented history of German, we show that the development in question is cyclic: It starts out with only one tense form (preterite) compatible with both current relevance and narrative past readings in (early) Old High German and, via three intermediate stages, arrives at only one tense form again (perfect) compatible with the same readings in modern Upper German dialects. We propose that in order to capture all attested stages we must allow tenses to be unspecified for R (reference time), with R merely being inferred pragmatically. We then propose that the transitions between the different stages can be explained by the interplay between semantics and pragmatics.

Немецкие диалекты Алтая: к данным последней экспедиции

The paper presents the results of a linguistic expedition to the settlements of the German National Region in Altai. The German language dialectal forms identified can be attributed to the Low German and High German language areas. High German forms are of a mixed nature, including the dialects of both the Middle and South German types. Despite sharing common phonetic features, each of the Upper German dialects in Altai has its own set of features, with some features identified for the first time, for example, nasalization in the Kamyshi village dialect. All Middle German dialects are characterized by incomplete consonant movement and grammatical features. South German dialects also have some peculiarities: full movement of consonants, “hissing” consonant combinations, pronoun mer (we). The High German dialects of the Altai show the features of the original mother dialects and new features acquired due to mixing and leveling processes. A conclusion is made about the impossibility of identifying the dialectal forms precisely. The Low German language substratum is found to be represented by the dialects of the Mennonite Germans. The analysis of the linguistic features has found the speech of the Mennonite Plautdietsch speakers in Altai to be significantly similar to the speech of the Low German Mennonite dialect speakers of the Novosibirsk region. Also, some sociolinguistic components identified during a survey of speakers of different German language dialects were analyzed: self-identification, linguistic competence, attitude towards native dialect.

Phonetic Features of Colloquial Speech of the German Language and German Dialects (on the Example of Bavarian, Berlin and East Frisian Dialects)

Phonetic Features of Colloquial Speech of the German Language and German Dialects (on the Example of Bavarian, Berlin and East Frisian Dialects)

Реконструкция метаязыковой биографии субэтноса как аспект изучения эволюционных процессов в этноконтактных зонах: на материале немецких диалектов российских немцев

The research focuses on the linguistic biography of the Russian Germans – a subethnos living in the contact zone of German and Russian cultures. By now, Russian Germans are engulfed in rapid assimilation, with traditional linguistic and cultural dominants being displaced under the influence of the Russian-speaking environment. “Language biography” in a broad sense is understood as the history of interaction with language and its varieties experienced by a person, individual facts of which a person cognitively reconstructs and explicates in speech. The reconstruction of the linguistic biography of the Russian Germans is carried out by analyzing German dialect statements of a narrative and autobiographical nature, which, along with biographical information, explicate the knowledge of ethnic Germans about the history of their own subethnos and ideas about the languages they speak or which they have been in contact during their lives with during their lives. The empirical research material was collected through field practices in Western Siberia – in the region that currently demonstrates the highest number of Russian Germans. The study found that one of the stages of the linguistic biography of the Russian Germans “The War and the post-war years”, covering the period from 1941 to 1955, includes its own specific set of phenomena caused by the autobiographical and historical context. This set is formed by the historical and biographical events, as well as by the components of the linguistic situation and certain linguistic realities relevant for perception. There is also a change in the axiological interpretation of the same linguistic phenomena identified at different stages of linguistic biography.