Rusyn as a minority language across state borders: a quantitative perspective

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Achim Rabus
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2014 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 263457843

The project is concerned with the Slavic minority language (Carpatho-)Rusyn, spoken in areas with Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Romanian umbrella languages. Due to the diverse character of the language contact constellations, dynamic processes with respect to linguistic variation and (contact-induced) language change as well as with respect to the perception of the individual varieties occur. In our project, these processes are investigated for the first time using a corpus comprising of several varieties of Rusyn, which makes our investigation empirically and statistically sound and methodologically diverse.The aims and methods of the second funding phase we currently apply for logically and organically ensue from the results achieved in the first funding phase: Among others, we verified the existence of so-called border effects, i.e. divergent tendencies within the Rusyn dialect continuum due to the respective umbrella languages. These border effects are present both for individual linguistic variables and for the perception of the Rusyn speech by speakers of different Rusyn varieties. Moreover, we detected complex variation within the individual Rusyn varieties. This variation is tackled in the second funding phase. More precisely, we intend to develop and apply elaborated statistical procedures with special focus on spacial components. Furthermore, we empirically investigate the relation of linguistic security/prestige and linguistic change; moreover, the complex and inconsistent relationship between linguistic knowledge, language use, salience, and linguistic change is analyzed. In doing so, new, advanced methods of data visualization are applied. Finally, we collect and analyze new data from the Romanian area where varieties of Rusyn are spoken. The analysis of these data will allow for empirically clarifying the difference between intra-Slavic and Slavic–non-Slavic language contact.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants