German loan words in Polish dialects as a mirror of language contact: A multiple access dictionary on an online platform of German loans in other languages.

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gerd Hentschel; Dr. Peter Meyer
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415560513

The project aims to compile an electronic Dictionary of German loan words in Polish dialects (DicGlPd). The DicGlPd will be an lexicographic database integrated into the online Lehnwortportal Deutsch (LWPD) at the IDS Mannheim. This portal already comprises a historical dictionary of loans in Standard (Written) Polish (WDLP). The planned dictionary will be linked with this and other dictionaries of German loans in Slavic and other languages that have already been integrated into the LWPD. The material in the DicGlPd (as the whole LWPD) will be accessible via multiple search instruments, some of which are shared by all dictionaries in the LWPD, and some of which are specific to individual dictionaries. Apart from simple expression-based or word-based search options, the LWPD will allow advanced users to incrementally construct, in an intuitive visual query builder, complex queries possibly spanning multiple words, their various lexicographic attributes and relationships, optionally using Boolean operators, regular expressions etc. There is currently no lexicographic compendium of German loans in Polish dialects, although, firstly, German loans in Polish have been a topic in research for more than a century and, secondly, Polish is (roughly on a level with Czech and Slovene) probably the language with the highest number of German loans. Moreover, due to centuries of considerable levels of migration of speakers of German into Polish speaking areas there has been extensive language contact not only within elites or urban populations, but within rural populations / dialect speakers as well. An encompassing lexicographic description of German loans in Polish dialects has only now become possible due to the progress of work on the Słownik gwar polskich (SGP), a multi-volume dictionary of Polish dialects. The published volumes and the SGP’s huge card index will provide the central material basis for the planned dictionary. The SGP itself does not provide any information on the provenience of the words it contains.The planned dictionary will describe (a) loans on the expression and content plane, explicating formal variation and corresponding derived words as well as the formal and semantic correspondence or distance to the German etymon; (b) the distribution of the loans (all expression variants, all meanings) in the Polish dialectal space with cartographic representation according to a scheme that mirrors (i) the traditional dialectal division of Polish dialects and (ii) the time span during which Polish areas found themselves under German (speaking) rule. Furthermore, the degree of overlap between German loans in Written / Standard Polish and Polish dialects will be presented. The loans will be described in terms of their status as “insertions” (roughly new words for new things), “replacements” (of older words) or “coexistence” (with older words: synonymy or repartition of a “semantic space” between new loan and old word.)

• DFG Programme: Research Grants