Adaptations of German varieties in New High German plays (16th–19th century)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Lea Schäfer
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463335012

The purpose of this project is to analyze how German varieties are represented in dramatic speech. The project focuses on sources in which dialectal speech is framed by a written standard. Dialect literature and the general usage of oral structures are not considered. However, the literary use of dialects vis à vis a standardized language can uncover the relation between written and spoken language. In the center of the project stands an analysis of dramatic sources from the 16th to early 20th century. The timeframe is chosen as to cover the period of the complex process of the standardization of German, in the course of which the German dialects came to stand in opposition to the evolving standard language. Preliminary a corpus of 172 plays that show 196 dialectal adaptations has been accumualted. Within the first months of the project this text corpus will be expanded to form a representative sample for linguistic approaches.The aim of the project is to analyze the phonological, morphological and syntactic structures of dialectal adaptations in dramatic speech and compare the results with data from Modern German dialects (19th and 20th century). With this comparison it is possible to draw conclusions about the adaptation‘s authenticity. It is not only the accuracy of the adaptations that matters, but also how (literary) language is shapeable on its grammatical surface. The project will examine whether the dialectal structures are widespread and common in the sample despite of which dialect they want to charaterize or if they differ dependent on which dialect they want to characterize. Thus, a closer look is taken at structures that declined over the course of German standardization (e.g. double negation, periphrasis with tun “do“, possessive dative or genitive, diminutive suffixes; cf. Davies / Langer 2006; Weiß 2008; Langer 2001; Elspaß 2005: 73–74). Overall, this study can shed light on the question whether the literary use of dialectal elements only plays with the contrast between written vs. spoken language respectively substandard vs. standard or whether it reflects (native or non-native) knowledge of specific dialects. The results of this project will fill a gap in our knowledge on the history of German dialects and their (socio-)linguistic situation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Russia
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Frank Fischer; Dr. Christina Katsikadeli; Professor Dr. Oswald Panagl