While previous dialectometric analyses of colloquial German have explored the spatial distribution of variants in order to sketch a picture of how German-speaking areas are linguistically structured, there have been no investigations into the extent to which reported everyday language use converges to or diverges from the standard language. What is more, dialectological perspectives have largely neglected the role of social factors such as age, gender, and mobility on patterns of language variation in colloquial German in lieu of strictly examining geography as a predictor for differences in the spatial distribution of variation in everyday language use. In this paper, we attempt to reconcile dialectometric and sociolinguistic perspectives by examining, in an integrative manner, the influence of social and spatial variables in predicting differences in patterns of variation in colloquial German. Specifically, we analyze ten phonetic-phonological variables from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (‘Atlas of Colloquial German’) and address the question of where informant reports of colloquial German resemble (non-)standard language. To do so, we employ generalized additive mixed-effects models (GAMMs), which can simultaneously detect underlying (non-)linear aggregate geographical patterns and identify the relative importance of social predictors. Our results indicate that geography is the strongest predictor of differences in colloquial German, and that the interaction between age and gender most notably affects the number of (non-)standard variants informants report for their respective locality. Methodological implications for applying GAMMs to the investigation of social and spatial variation are discussed.

In this article, we aim to reconcile the interrelated role of social and spatial influences on colloquial German by conducting an apparent-time analysis of 15 lexical, morphological, and phonetic variables from the Atlas of Colloquial German (AdA). Specifically, we introduce a “change in variation intensity” (CVI) measure meant to gauge the degree of change in colloquial speech between younger and older cohorts. Using this measure, we investigate (a) whether the CVI within and across variables is prone to spatial patterns and (b) the extent to which the CVI differs systematically between variable types. Results from visual–spatial analyses indicate clear spatial patterns, though the geographical distributions are largely item-specific, and a linear mixed-effects model revealed no effect of variable type. More broadly, the CVI measure represents an important advancement in how we address language variation and change from a methodological-statistical perspective, specifically when dealing with heterogeneous, crowdsourced data.

While previous dialectometric analyses of colloquial German have explored the spatial distribution of variants in order to sketch a picture of how German-speaking areas are linguistically structured, there have been no investigations into the extent to which reported everyday language use converges to or diverges from the standard language. What is more, dialectological perspectives have largely neglected the role of social factors such as age, gender, and mobility on patterns of language variation in colloquial German in lieu of strictly examining geography as a predictor for differences in the spatial distribution of variation in everyday language use. In this paper, we attempt to reconcile dialectometric and sociolinguistic perspectives by examining, in an integrative manner, the influence of social and spatial variables in predicting differences in patterns of variation in colloquial German. Specifically, we analyze ten phonetic-phonological variables from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache ('Atlas of Colloquial German') and address the question of where informant reports of colloquial German resemble (non-)standard language. To do so, we employ generalized additive mixed-effects models (GAMMs), which can simultaneously detect underlying (non-)linear aggregate geographical patterns and identify the relative importance of social predictors. Our results indicate that geography is the strongest predictor of differences in colloquial German, and that the interaction between age and gender most notably affects the number of (non-)standard variants informants report for their respective locality. Methodological implications for applying GAMMs to the investigation of social and spatial variation are discussed.

The aim of this study is to investigate both quantitatively and qualitatively the impact of career-related major life events (MLEs) on patterns of reported linguistic change across the lifespan, with an emphasis on how individual differences relate to differential patterns of MLE-related change. The occupational significant life events scrutinized here include entry into the workforce, job/career change, unemployment, and retirement. We analyzed survey data from 154 German-speaking adults in Austria who experienced (at least) one of these career-related MLEs. Results from Bayesian modeling showed that individual differences in event experiences (e.g., how stressful an MLE is perceived, how damaging an MLE is for one’s social status) alongside social factors such as varietal proficiency affect the degree of perceived MLE-related change in the sociolinguistic repertoire. Qualitatively, the thematic analysis revealed that facets of the linguistic marketplace seemed responsible for occupational MLE-related linguistic change, but also socio-affective drivers such as dialect pride and career-resultant shifts in one’s social networks and contact with other dialects.

While dialectal variation is often investigated from a geographical angle, there exists substantial variation both within the community and individual. The aim of the present article is to investigate the extent to which spatial, occupational, and age-related factors are associated with the diversity of linguistic variants reported per informant at a given locality. Drawing on colloquial language data from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache ‘Atlas of Colloquial German,’ we found that informants from southeastern Germany and Austria reported familiarity with more variants. Moreover, we multifactorially operationalize occupational complexity , a variable that can capture the effects of different communicative, technical, and physical skills required in a job (via the Dictionary of Occupational Titles). Bayesian multilevel modeling revealed that informants in occupations involving physical precision work and communicative complexity reported less familiarity with variants, and that younger informants were familiar with a wider range of variants.

Article Luise Czajkowski: Schreibsprachen im Übergang. Untersuchungen zum Sprachwandel im niederdeutsch-ostmitteldeutschen Übergangsraum im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, Hildesheim, Zürich u. New York: Olms 2021, XIV, 331 S., 23 Abb., 52 Tab., 43 Karten (Deutsche Dialektgeographie 127) was published on March 1, 2023 in the journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (volume 145, issue 1).

Abstract (High) German is both a group of closely related West Germanic varieties and a standardized language derived from this group that comprises a wide range of dialects and colloquial varieties in addition to its standardized form. The two terms have related, and to an extent overlapping, but distinct meanings: German refers to a Standard Average European language spoken predominantly in Central Europe by some 96 million speakers and by minority speech communities around the globe. High German has a double meaning: On the one hand, it is another term for Standard German. On the other hand, it refers to the High German linguistic group within West Germanic, the linguistic basis for the German language. As such, it is defined by the High German consonant shift, a sound change that affected Germanic obstruents and set it apart from its immediate neighbors within (West) Germanic, that is, Low German and Low Franconian. The High German consonant shift around the 7th century, together with the onset of written transmission in the 8th century, marks the beginning of the history of (High) German. Traditional dialects perpetuate patterns of areal variation that arose in the wake of this sound change. Standard German developed out of High German written varieties, especially based on East Central German, through processes of leveling, koineization, metalinguistic reasoning, and codification. During that process, the emergent supra-regional norm superseded Low German in northern Germany and Upper German regional norms in the south, as well as influencing spoken registers, but (Standard) German remains a pluricentric and pluriareal language. Today, colloquial, regional varieties that combine features of Standard German and traditional dialects dominate oral language use, and in social media the written language, too, is developing new colloquial forms that build on standard orthography as well as on regional, informal forms of spoken language usage.

This article presents a diachronic survey of forms and functions of the subjunctive II grammatical category in historical German. The subjunctive II is historically based on the subjunctive preterit form but has lost its temporal function and become a purely modal category. It has developed a variety of synthetic and analytical forms since Old High German, especially in vernacular varieties, but also in Standard German, and fulfils a range of functions, chiefly that of non-affirmativity. The present study aims to shed light on the historical development of the subjunctive II’s form and function. Its focus is on East Upper German, and its temporal scope spans over a millennium from the 9th to the 19th century. In order to study the usage and development of the subjunctive II in historical East Upper German sermons, the south-eastern part of SermonC, a diachronic corpus of historical German sermons, is analysed. While this (sub‑)corpus is restricted in terms of region and genre, it provides a unique window to written language usage, variation and change in a clearly defined domain over a very long time. The results show that the refunctionalization of the subjunctive preterit as a purely modal category does not date to prehistoric times, as is generally assumed; instead, they point to the 11th century as the likely time for this change, with limited temporal uses persisting into the 15th century. The 15th century is also the time when the synthetic subjunctive II form with -et/-at, a typical feature of Bavarian dialects, seems to have emerged in the spoken register. Analytical forms started to appear from the 13th century, and the periphrasis with würde, today accepted in Standard German, prevailed among several written German analytical variants in the 18th century. While Standard German has preserved the distinction between two subjunctive categories, East Upper German spoken language has in effect reduced a two-way morphological system (tense and mood) to a pure mood system, with tense expressed syntactically, in effect refunctionalizing morphological tense as a mood marker.

Dieser Beitrag setzt sich anhand des diachronen Predigtenkorpus SermonC (800–1900) mit Wandel und Variation der Relativa in der Sprachgeschichte des Deutschen auseinander. Im Zentrum stehen dabei drei Varianten der Relativsatzeinleitung, der/die/das, welcher/welche/welches und so. Dabei wird insbesondere die Frage untersucht, inwiefern sich die Entwicklungen mit linearen Konzeptionalisierungen von Sprachwandel und Standardisierung vereinbaren lassen. Dazu werden zunächst einige gängige Vorstellungen in diesen Bereichen diskutiert und in Bezug auf ihnen innenwohnende perspektivische Verengungen problematisiert. Dabei wird deutlich, dass übliche Theorien und Methoden der Sprachwandel- und Standardisierungsforschung nichtlineare Prozesse nicht systematisch berücksichtigen. Die Untersuchung des diachronen Korpus zeigt hingegen, dass nichtlineare Prozesse nicht nur vorkommen können, sondern vielfach in verschiedenen Formen auftreten, die durch die linguistische Theoriebildung nicht oder nur peripher erfasst werden. Die Entwicklung der Relativa in historischen Predigten führt vor Augen, dass unvollständige und retrograde Ausbreitungsvorgänge im Sprachwandel sowie Aufbau von Variation in der Standardisierung entgegen gängigen Theorien immer wieder auftreten, was sich in sowohl in regionalen wie konfessionellen Unterschieden im Sprachgebrauch äußert.

Abstract This article discusses the origin and historical development of the German n-indefinite kein, which is an unusual negator because it does not share the initial n that marks virtually all other negatives in German. Despite the discussion about its origins going back to the nineteenth century, it is still unclear how kein first emerged and out of which other forms it developed. In this paper, new light is shed on an old controversy using new data and modern corpus-linguistic tools, in this case the Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch (ReM). The article first summarises the current state of research before presenting and analysing the data. In combination with additional evidence, the results show that certain hypotheses that have to this day been treated as accurate are in fact not viable. Subsequently, a solution that combines some of the existing theses and is compatible with the data is presented: Morphological reanalysis and the ensuing back-formation of kein’s predecessor nehein – in combination with a phonologically conditioned sound substitution triggered by a shift of the syllable boundary – in the context of negative concord seems the most likely candidate for an accurate explanation of the emergence and early usage patterns of kein in Middle High German. Incongruent evidence from Swiss German, however, suggests that partially convergent developments ensuing from different indefinite forms have taken place in that variety.

This article discusses the origin and historical development of the German n-indefinite kein, which is an unusual negator because it does not share the initial n that marks virtually all other negatives in German. Despite the discussion about its origins going back to the nineteenth century, it is still unclear how kein first emerged and out of which other forms it developed. In this paper, new light is shed on an old controversy using new data and modern corpus-linguistic tools, in this case the Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch (ReM). The article first summarises the current state of research before presenting and analysing the data. In combination with additional evidence, the results show that certain hypotheses that have to this day been treated as accurate are in fact not viable. Subsequently, a solution that combines some of the existing theses and is compatible with the data is presented: Morphological reanalysis and the ensuing back-formation of kein's predecessor nehein - in combination with a phonologically conditioned sound substitution triggered by a shift of the syllable boundary - in the context of negative concord seems the most likely candidate for an accurate explanation of the emergence and early usage patterns of kein in Middle High German. Incongruent evidence from Swiss German, however, suggests that partially convergent developments ensuing from different indefinite forms have taken place in that variety.

In this paper, we explore the geolinguistic relationship between urban and rural areas through the conceptualisation and modeling of spatial topologies. Geolinguistic topologies concern the structure of the mutual linguistic relationship between localities. They can be defined either deductively or on the basis of empirical data and represent the linguistic similarities or distances between localities. We operationalise and apply several such topological models to Austrian data from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA), a linguistic atlas documenting colloquial German using crowd-sourcing methods. The results are evaluated on the basis of statistical examination and of visualisations of the topological relationships predicted by the models. It is confirmed that linguistic similarity is determined both by geographical distance and by the distribution of population, but the exact relationship is complex: Not only do smaller geographic distances on the one hand and higher population numbers on the other hand bring about increased linguistic similarity; the relevance of these two factors for linguistic similarity varies with population size, too, such that linguistic relationships between cities are determined more by their size and less by their distance, while for smaller locations the opposite is true. Hence, no single topological model can be identified as superior; instead, the individual models emphasise different aspects of the linguistic relationship between urban and regional language usage.

This chapter focuses on spatial and social variation in the colloquial everyday speech of three German-speaking urban areas. The basic question is whether geographical variation (the kind that is commonly observed in studies on dialect variation in large areas) is detectable in the reported everyday speech of the spatially much smaller, yet denser urban areas as well. To this end, we use methods of quantitative dialectology to examine the patterns of variation in the Ruhr Area, Berlin, and Vienna. The respective analyses of the spatial patterns of 245 linguistic variables from a total number of 4,251 informants yield clear – but remarkably distinct – patterns of areal variation for each of these three urban areas. To account for those differences, social variables are factored in.

Zusammenfassung Die Entstehung der sogenannten ‚uneigentlichen‘ bzw. verfugten Komposita im Frühneuhochdeutschen aus pränominalen Genitivkonstruktionen wird gemeinhin als natürliche Entwicklung verstanden, die sich prinzipiell mithilfe üblicher Wandelmechanismen wie Reanalyse oder Grammatikalisierung aus dem mündlichen Sprachgebrauch erklären lässt. Dabei ergeben sich jedoch bestimmte Probleme, die die phonologischen Voraussetzungen für einen solchen Prozess sowie seine Chronologie betreffen. In diesem Beitrag wird durch eine quantitative Korpusanalyse die Diachronie der verfugten Komposita, ihrer mutmaßlichen Ursprungskonstruktion, der pränominalen Genitive, sowie zwischen diesen Strukturen vermittelnder Brückenkonstruktionen untersucht. Dafür dient das diachrone Predigten-Korpus SermonC, das Texte aus dem Zeitraum vom frühen 9. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert umfasst und eine ausgeglichene Basis für die Untersuchung von Sprachwandel mit Langzeitperspektive bietet. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass die verfugten Komposita zu einer Zeit grammatikalisiert wurden, als der pränominale Genitiv längst aus der gesprochenen Sprache verschwunden war und somit die Voraussetzung für natürlichen Sprachwandel auf dieser Grundlage nicht mehr gegeben war. Stattdessen scheint es so, dass diese Grammatikalisierung auf der Basis der rein schriftlichen Genitivkompetenz und somit im geschriebenen Deutsch erfolgte. Daher wird in diesem Beitrag argumentiert, dass sich der Prozess der Entstehung der verfugten Komposita im Schriftlichen abspielte, d. h. in einer geschriebenen Varietät des historischen Deutsch, und erst in der Folge auf die Mündlichkeit zurückwirkte. Erst sekundär fand die neue Struktur, die gewissermaßen eine Kontamination aus pränominalem Genitiv und dem klassischen, unverfugten Kompositum darstellt, Eingang in die gesprochene Sprache. Dieser Hergang ist nicht nur aufgrund der Datenlage plausibel und wahrscheinlich, sondern vor dem Hintergrund des Verlusts des adnominalen Genitivs in den Mundarten zwingend und stellt eine Lösung für die genannten Probleme im phonologischen und historischen Bereich dar.

The city as a complex socio-cultural structure plays a central role, economically, administratively as well as culturally. Factors such as higher population density, a more expansive infrastructure, and larger social and cultural diversity compared to rural areas have a substantial impact on urban society and urban communication.Focusing on the latter, the contributions to this volume discuss the characteristics and dynamics of urban language use, considering aspects such as contact, variation and change, as well as identity, indexicality, and attitudes, but also spatial factors including mobility, urbanisation/counterurbanisation, and diffusion processes.The collected articles provide an update of ‘first wave’ approaches of variationist sociolinguistics, but also establish a connection to ‘third wave’ research for readers from a broad range of fields, especially sociolinguistics, variationist linguistics, and dialectology. The book presents modern methodological and conceptual ideas and a wealth of new findings but also serves as a reference work, combining theoretical discussions with results from recent empirical studies.This ebook is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

This contribution explores the concept of selection as an integral part of Haugen's standardisation model from a theoretical as well as an empirical angle. It focuses on different types of factors of selection and how they are relevant to the study of selection processes both on the level of individual variants and whole varieties. The question of why standard languages appear to differ systematically from vernaculars and at the same time exhibit remarkable resemblances among each other is addressed, and characteristic features of standard languages are traced to general conditions of standardisation processes. A case study on the standardisation of German relativisers illustrates how different factors of selection combine in the dynamics of linguistic structure, variation, attitudes, and codification. It also shows how general tendencies of selection can lead to similar structures across standard languages, while it becomes clear that register variation and the historical development and changing evaluation of stylistic varieties can be crucial in order to explain the selection or de-selection of linguistic forms.

This article investigates the diachrony of the adnominal genitive in written German by analyzing its usage in a diachronic corpus of sermons from the Upper German dialect area spanning the time from the 9th to the 19th century. The wide temporal scope allows for a better assessment of the events relating to the genitive’s disappearance from spoken German in Early New High German and the successive rise of its adnominal form in written German. Sermons make it possible to study the phenomenon over a long time because they provide a relatively consistent data basis in terms of genre and region. At the same time, as a genre that has characteristics of both spoken and written language, sermons show signs of changing stylistic trends, which makes them valuable for gaining insights in the divergent development of genitive use in spoken and written German. In order to characterize this divergence better, I use the concept of polarization, which describes the differentiation of linguistic usage between disparate contexts such as speech and writing. It becomes clear that the changes in genitive use found in the corpus cannot be viewed independently of sociopragmatic factors and their impact on the stylistic shape of the texts.*