Standardization in Diversity: The case of German in Luxembourg (1795-1920)
Final Report Abstract
Point of departure is the general assumption that language contact and multilingualism figure prominently in language change. However, their specific impact on language standardization understood as special type of language change has scarcely been studied. This is also particularly valid for the history of text genres which have been described as the virtual 'switching points' between the history of language and the history of the language community. With a long history of multilingualism, Luxembourg constitutes a prime case for studying the impact of all these elements, i.e. language contact between Germanic varieties (i.e. Moselle-Franconian/emerging Luxembourgish, colloquial German) and between German and French. To investigate the process of standardization in the long 19th century, the project focuses on administrative language, i.e. top-down communication, of official institutions in Luxembourg. Aspects of corpus standardization and status standardization have been studied by utilizing various data sources: a corpus of approximately 2500 predominantly bilingual German/French public notices issued by the municipality of Luxembourg. Further data sources are the official gazette of the government, a newspaper corpus and archival documents (decrees, laws, administrative letters and regulations, internal communication etc.), parts of which unknown/unpublished so far. The analysis of linguistic variables from various structural levels shows the gradual reduction of variants, especially in the first half of the century. As for status standardization, a remarkable variety of linguistic regimes can be identified during the 19th century, in which the sociolinguistic status of German is changing several times.
Publications
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(2017) Sprachenpolitik, Sprachideologie und Sprachgebrauch in Luxemburg. Sociolinguistica 31 (1) 125-146
Moliner, Olivier; Ziegler, Evelyn
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(2019) Linguistic Landscape-Forschung in sprachhistorischer Perspektive: Zur Entwicklung visueller Kommunikate im öffentlichen Raum der Stadt Luxemburg im langen 19. Jahrhundert. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 47 (2) 385–407
Gilles, Peter; Ziegler, Evelyn
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Deutsch in Luxemburg. Untersuchungen zur seiner Standardisierung im langen 19. Jahrhundert. Luxembourg Studies Online (Open Access series, University of Luxembourg, IPSE Research Unit)
Gilles, Peter/Ziegler, Evelyn/Beyer, Rahel/Moliner, Olivier
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(2013): "The bilingual historical Luxembourgish public notices Database". In: Bennett, Paul/Durrell, Martin/Scheible, Silke & Richard J. Whitt (eds.): New Methods in Historical Corpus Linguistics. Tübingen: Narr (= Corpus Linguistics and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language - CLIP, Vol. 2). ISBN: 978-3-8233-6760-4
Gilles, Peter/Ziegler, Evelyn
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(2014) „Sprachstandardisierung unter Mehrsprachigkeitsbedingungen: Das Deutsche in Luxemburg im 19. Jahrhundert". In: Ägel, Vilmos/Gardt, Andreas (eds.): Paradigmen der aktuellen Sprachgeschichtsforschung. (= Jahrbuch für germanistische Sprachgeschichte). 283-298
Rahel Beyer, Peter Gilles, Olivier Moliner, Evelyn Ziegler
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(2015) „IDaSTo - Ein Tool zum Taggen und Suchen in historischen Paralleltexten". In: Fisseni, Bernhard et al. (eds.): GSCL 2015 International Conference of the German Society For Computational Linguistics and Language Technology. Proceedings of the Conference. Gesellschaft für Sprachtechnologie und Computerlinguistik e.V. 162-169
Rahel Beyer
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(2016) „Historische Aspekte des Sprachgebrauchs sowie der Sprachstruktur des Deutschen im Luxemburg des 19. Jh." Sprachwissenschaft 41 (3 / 4): 421-450
Rahel Beyer/Olivier Moliner
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(2016) „Sprachkontaktinduzierte Variation in den öffentlichen Bekanntmachungen der Stadt Luxemburg im 19. Jahrhundert". In: Wich-Reif, Claudia (eds.) Historische Sprachkontaktforschung (= Jahrbuch für germanistische Sprachgeschichte). Berlin: de Gruyter. 284-307
Rahel Beyer
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(2016) „Vom Ausruf zum Aushang. Die Genese des Kommunikationsmittels Öffentliche Bekanntmachung in Luxemburg (1795-1920): Eine text-und systemlinguistische Analyse." Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 65: 67-106
Olivier Moliner/Rahel Beyer
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(2017) „Variation in the structure of conjunctions in Luxembourgish German in the 19th century - An interplay of language-internal and contact-induced variation". In: Buchstaller, Isabelle/Siebenhaar, Beat (eds.) Language Variation - European Perspectives VI. Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 8), Leipzig, May 2015. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 185-198
Rahel Beyer
