Regularity and irregularity of case morphology in German language island varieties (Russia, Brazil): intralingual, interlingual, typological convergence

• Applicant: Dr. Peter Rosenberg
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2008 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 94574134

The research project is about language change in German language islands in Brazil and Russia. The subject of this project is the development of regular and irregular morphology in German language islands in Russia and Brazil: its frequency, distribution, and functionality (depending on language varieties, age-group and situational context). The objectives are to describe the reduction or resistance of case morphology and to explain these phenomena in terms of convergence, language change and language shift. Its goal is the study of language usage of 120 speakers (about 60 in Russia, 60 in Brazil, each investigation with 30 speakers during the 1990s and 30 now). Language use is elicited in three settings: a set of 60 standardized sentences to be translated into the dialect; an interview narration; and a home conversation self-recorded by the speakers. This is done by three age groups of speakers of two dialects in contact: the East Low German Plautdietsch and a West Upper German variety called Catholic in Russia, and the East Low German Pomerano and the West Middle German variety Hunsrück in Brazil.The core idea of the project is the assumption that we can learn as well from language obsolescence as from language emergence (standardization, koineization, dialect merger) which has been the subject of linguistic research in the past.Language decay is apparently not just disorder, not amorphous, but somehow structured. Certain lexical classes are more subject to reduction than others, and some residual features retain morphological core functions (in terms of case semantics).The communities mentioned above are part of the biggest German language islands worldwide. But they are language islands in inundation, i.e. they display an accelerated language shift which makes research attractive as well as demanding in terms of methodology, data processing and interpretation of results.The first funding period of the project will successfully complete the data collection and processing on schedule (more than 60 speakers in Russia and Brazil).The second period will include the data of an earlier data collection during the 1990s considering the overall development (with 125 speakers in total) and come to conclusions concerning this language change in vivo. Additionally, the project is able to arrange a real-time panel study: tape-recordings of 16 speakers a second time after 15 years.This research project wants to promote research on morphological change in German language island varieties. Through its comparative perspective it will be possible to account for internally or externally induced linguistic change. Additionally, by developing tools of automatic data processing, the project will make a contribution to corpus linguistics aiming at data sustainability and connectivity for research cooperation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants