Changing argument structure in (heritage) Pennsylvania German

By way of migration, large numbers of German-speaking settlers arrived in Pennsylvania between roughly 1700 and 1750. Pennsylvania German, as a distinct variety, developed through levelling processes from L1 varieties of these migrants who came mainly from the southwestern regions of the German speaking area. Pennsylvania German is still spoken today by specific religious groups (primarily Amish and Menonnite groups) for many of whom it is an identity marker. My paper focuses on those Pennsylvania Germans who are not part of these religious groups but have the same migration history. Due to their being closer to the cultural values of American mainstream society, they were integrated into it, and during the 20th century their use of Pennsylvania German was continually diminishing. A revival of this heritage language has occurred over the past c. three decades, including language courses offered at community colleges, public libraries, etc., where ethnic Pennsylvania Germans wish to (re-)learn the language of their grandparents. Written Pennsylvania German data from four points in time between the 1860s and the 1990s were analysed in this study. Based on these linguistic analyses, differences between the data sets are shown that point towards a diachronic change in the language contact situation of Pennsylvania German speakers. Sociolinguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered that influence the role of PG and make their speakers heritage speakers much in the sense of recent immigrant heritage speakers, although delayed by 200 years

Interaktionszentren des Sprachkontakts in Deutsch-Neuguinea

Colonial language contact is shaped by many extralinguistic factors that, in turn, lead to different linguistic outcomes. The project outlined here aims at documenting contact contexts that existed during the German colonial rule in the Pacific, with special emphasis on German New Guinea. Trading places, institutions (e.g. schools), plantations and other settings that involved (language) interaction between the colonizers and the colonized are charted on a historical map of the area to determine where contact intensity is likely to have been high, and what languages were involved and can be expected to show traces of such interaction (e.g. loanwords). It is intended to digitize this information in form of an interactive map, allowing to show and hide different types of information and thus being able to draw conclusions on historical language contact settings and their long-term linguistic results

Deutschunterricht in Mikronesien (1884-1914)

Zwischen 1884 und 1914 standen verschiedene Regionen Afrikas und des Pazifiks unter der Kolonialherrschaft des deutschen Kaiserreichs. Teil dieses kolonialen Herrschaftsanspruches war es, Deutsch als Sprache der allgemeinen Kommunikation einzuführen. Um Deutschkenntnisse zu vermitteln, gab es gesetzliche Vorgaben, die den Umfang des Deutschunterrichts in den Schulen näher bestimmten

German in Samoa: Historical traces of a colonial variety

During the brief era of German colonialism in the Pacific (1884-1914), German was in contact with a large number of languages, autochthonous as well as colonial ones. This setting led to language contact in which German influenced and was influenced by various languages. In 1900, Western Samoa came under German colonial rule. The German language held a certain prestige there which is mirrored by the numbers of voluntary Samoan learners of German. On the other hand, the preferred use of English, rather than German, by native speakers of German was frequently noted. This paper examines linguistic and metalinguistic data that suggest the historical existence of (the precursor of) a colonial variety of German as spoken in Samoa. This variety seems to have been marked mainly by lexical borrowing from English and Samoan and was, because of these borrowings, not fully comprehensible to Germans who had never encountered the variety or the colonial setting in Samoa. It is discussed whether this variety can be considered a separate variety of German on linguistic grounds

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as a Promoting Factor in Language Change

In long-standing language contact situations, SLA mechanisms can account for changes in LI. While it is obvious that LI influence on L2 can be accounted for as a transfer effect, I postulate that SLA effects are responsible for certain aspects of L2 influence on LI as well. This is transparent if early stages of SLA are compared to early stages of language contact: what is affected most in both cases is the lexicon. Examples are drawn from Pennsylvania German, a German-based language spoken in the USA and in contact with American English (AE) for c. 300 years. The data imply that the conceptual matrix of the Speakers’ minds has shifted from German to AE, resulting in constructions that can be traced to AE, while the conscious language choice is still German. This conceptual shift relates to a stage in SLA, when the learner begins to get a grasp of the internal systematicity of the L2 and reduces the transfer of structural LI material to L2, i.e. the beginning of a structuralization process in the learner’s interlanguage. The quality and sequence of the “invading” material in language contact is strikingly similar to the sequence of the material composed in the process of SLA, implying a close relationship between the two processes

Sprachkontakt in der Schule: Deutschunterricht in Mikronesien (1884-1914)

During German colonialism in the Pacific, language contact between German and the local languages took place in different areas and in varying intensity. The numbers of native speakers of German were low, and in many cases German was not the means of communication, so that comparatively little language contact occurred naturally. Despite this situation, several native languages in the German colonial area integrated loanwords from German and preserved them up until today. Quantitative differences in borrowing between the affected languages are arguably due to extralinguistic factors influencing contact duration and intensity as well as local language attitudes. There is one area where the use of German was explicitly supported by the government: These are schools. The present paper investigates the numbers of students who came into contact with instruction of or in German. Many schools were mission-run, and in particular non-German missions had problems finding qualified teachers for their German instruction. Following an overview of population proportions regarding speakers of German and school attendance, this paper compares quantitative loanword data to contact opportunities with German in schools, drawing a tentative conclusion on whether instruction in German, as one extralinguistic factor influencing language contact, had a measurable effect on lexical borrowing from German

Sprachkontakt und Konfession. Lexikalische Sprachkontaktphänomene Deutsch-Nauruisch bei den Missionaren Delaporte und Kayser

In den zwei Jahrzehnten vor dem ersten Weltkrieg standen weite Teile des Südpazifik unter deutscher Verwaltung. Das Deutsche stand hier in einem eng umrissenen geographischen Areal über 700 anderen Sprachen gegenüber, was zu einer besonderen Situation in Bezug auf Sprachenpolitik, Sprachenverhältnisse und Sprachkontakt führte. Ein konkretes Beispiel für kontaktbedingten lexikalischen Einfluss in diesem Kontext bietet die sprachliche Situation auf der pazifischen Insel Nauru. Hier hielten sich zu Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts etwa zeitgleich zwei deutschsprachige Missionare auf, der Protestant Philip A. Delaporte und der Katholik Alois Kayser; beide trugen aktiv zur Dokumentation und schriftlichen Verwendung des Nauruischen bei. Ein Vergleich der Wörterbücher zeigt jedoch deutliche Unterschiede, v.a. in Bezug auf die Herkunft von Lehnwörtern, Während bei Delaporte in allen auf Nauruisch verfassten schriftlichen Dokumenten eine größere Zahl an deutschen Lehnwörtern auftritt, finden sich bei Kayser an deren Stelle häufig die entsprechenden englisch-basierten Lexeme, sofern die betreffenden Lemmata überhaupt erfasst sind. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung geht es um einen Vergleich der Wörterbücher von Delaporte und Kayser, wobei ergänzend eine Wortliste von Paul Hambruch (1914—15) sowie neuere nauruische Wortlisten (Nauruan Swadesh List 1954, Petit-Skinner 1981) herangezogen werden. Eine zentrale Fragestellung ist, wie sich die Unterschiede zwischen Delaporte und Kayser erklären lassen und welche Schlussfolgerungen aus solchen Unterschieden in der Sprachdokumentation für die weitere Erforschung dieser und vergleichbarer Kontaktsitutationen zu ziehen sind (Zuverlässigkeit bzw. Bewertung linguistischer Dokumente). Dabei kommen auch methodologische Gesichtspunkte zur Sprache, u.a. die Schwierigkeit, eine aussagekräftige und quantitativ ausreichende Datenbasis zusammenzustellen, die eine möglichst zuverlässige Grundlage für die Evaluierung einer solchen historischen Sprachkontaktsituation bieten kann