Grammatical Areality in Northern Europe and Northern Germany (GrammArNord)
Final Report Abstract
There are close historical ties between Northern Germany and the Nordic Countries, especially the Scandinavian mainland. This is primarily due to factors such as the language contact across the German-Danish (language) border, the economic contacts via the North Sea and Baltic Sea trade routes since the Hanseatic era, large-scale immigration from Northern Germany to Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, Germany’s cultural role model function for northern Europe for centuries, and Schleswig-Holstein’s long political affiliation with Denmark. Due to their common history, Low German and other Northern German varieties on the one hand and Nordic varieties on the other hand have many linguistic features in common, ranging from German loan words in the Nordic languages to phonetic and grammatical similarities. As is well known, this affects in particular the Continental Scandinavian standard varieties, although not all to the same extent. Less known is the extent to which such common features are also found in non-standard varieties, including varieties of German. The project investigated grammatical similarities between Nordic and Northern German varieties from an areal perspective, including patterns of linguistic areality across language boundaries. Particular focus was placed on morphological and syntactic features in nonstandard varieties such as dialects, as documented in dialect grammars and other linguistic resources. The aim was to document, describe and map such areal features in a small crosslinguistic digital language atlas. This required both a conceptual model of linguistic areality and its digital implementation in a digital knowledge base. Moreover, the results were prepared for publication as an interactive language atlas that will be freely available on the project website.
Publications
-
Tracing language contact in the Duchy of Schleswig: A (re-)constructionist approach to grammatical areality. Constructions in the Nordics 2 (CxGN 2), Göteborgs universitet, 16.−17. 11. 2020
Höder, Steffen
-
Grammatical arealisms across the Danish-German border from a constructional perspective. In Christian Zimmer (Hg.), German(ic) in language contact: Grammatical and sociolinguistic dynamics (Language Variation 5) Berlin: Language Science Press, 11–42
Höder, Steffen
-
Shared constructions across the Danish-German border: a diasystematic view on areal convergence. 12th International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics (NGL 12), Universitetet i Oslo, 14.−18. 6. 2021.
Höder, Steffen
-
Ut ur skymundan! Nya perspektiv på gamla data: det danska Wenkermaterialet. Keynote, SONE 2021, Høgskulen på Vestlandet/Universitetet i Bergen, 22.−23. 4. 2021.
Höder, Steffen
-
Areala expansionsmönster i den nordisk-nordtyska kontaktregionen. Tolvte nordiske dialektologkonferansen, Alta/Áltá/ Alattio: Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges arktiske universitet, 15.−17. 8. 2022.
Goll, Sabrina, Steffen Höder & Nina Sternitzke
-
Cross-linguistic areal patterns in nonstandard grammar: Northern Germany and the Nordics. 11th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 11), Universität Wien, 12.−14. 4. 2022.
Goll, Sabrina, Steffen Höder & Nina Sternitzke
-
Alter Kontakt, wechselnde Szenarien: Die deutsch-dänische Kontaktzone früher und heute. Minderheitensprachen im Fokus: Forschungsberichte zum Niederdeutschen und Texasdeutschen, The University of Texas, Austin, 21.−23. 8. 2023
Höder, Steffen
-
Nordisk-nordtysk kontakt i backspegeln. Nordlyd, 47(2), 91-107.
Goll, Sabrina; Höder, Steffen; Paetzke, Sarah & Sternitzke, Nina
-
Nyt lys på gamle data. Målbryting(13).
Höder, Steffen
