Changes Between the Lines: Diachronic contact phenomena in written Pennsylvania German

Description

The book investigates the diachronic dimension of contact-induced language change based on empirical data from Pennsylvania German (PG), a variety of German in long-term contact with English. Written data published in local print media from Pennsylvania (USA) between 1868 and 1992 are analyzed with respect to semantic changes in the argument structure of verbs, the use of impersonal constructions, word order changes in subordinate clauses and in prepositional phrase constructions. The research objective is to trace language change based on diachronic empirical data, and to assess whether existing models of language contact make provisions to cover the long-term developments found in PG. The focus of the study is thus twofold: first, it provides a detailed analysis of selected semantic and syntactic changes in Pennsylvania German, and second, it links the empirical findings to theoretical approaches to language contact. Previous investigations of PG have drawn a more or less static, rather than dynamic, picture of this contact variety. The present study explores how the dynamics of language contact can bring about language mixing, borrowing, and, eventually, language change, taking into account psycholinguistic processes in (the head of) the bilingual speaker. Contents Acknowledgements List of Tables and Figures Abbreviations Outline Part I: Theoretical and sociohistoric background 1 Theoretical background 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Language change 1.2.1 What is language change? 1.2.2 Theories of language change 1.2.3 The role of empirical and theoretical aspects in the study of language change 1.3 Language contact 1.3.1 Perspectives on language contact 1.3.2 Language maintenance and language shift 1.3.3 The Transmission Phenomenon Model 1.3.4 Thomason/Kaufman and Van Coetsem compared 1.3.5 The (extended) Matrix Language Frame Model 1.3.6 Thomason/Kaufman, Van Coetsem, Myers-Scotton: A synopsis 1.4 Concluding remarks 2 The Pennsylvania Germans and their language(s) 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Historical development of the speech community 2.2.1 The structure of the speech community 2.2.2 The plain and the non-plain language repertoire 2.3 Research review 2.3.1 Research on Pennsylvania German, 19th to 21st century 2.3.2 Discussion 2.4 The three varieties 2.4.1 Pennsylvania German 2.4.2 Amish High German 2.4.3 American English / Pennsylvania German English (PGE) 2.4.4 Summary of the varieties and their functions 2.5 The sociolinguistic aspect 2.5.1 Bilingualism and diglossia 2.5.2 Language as a role attribute in conservative plain PG communities 2.6 Conclusions Part II: Data analyses 3 The PG data corpus 3.1 Presentation of data corpus and data background 3.1.1 Introduction 3.1.2 Written data: Problems and advantages 3.1.3 The relevance of written data for the development of modern-day PG 3.2 Data origin 3.2.1 Region of data origin 3.2.2 Data sources and authors' backgrounds 3.3 Research interest and general findings 4 Semantic-syntactic changes: Form-meaning and form-function relationships 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Contrasts between English and German 4.1.2 Case syncretism in Pennsylvania German 4.2 Theoretical background: Concepts of lexical-semantic structure 4.2.1 Thematic roles 4.2.2 VP shells 4.2.3 Causative alternation 4.3 Changes in argument structure 4.3.1 Preliminaries 4.3.2 Changes in reflexive marking 4.3.3 Transitivity changes 4.3.4 Impersonal constructions 4.4 Conclusions 5 Structural variation and incipient change 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Clause structure in German and English – differences and similarities 5.3 V2 clauses in German and English: A generative analysis 6 Verb position in complement dass-clauses 6.1 Introduction 6.1.1 Syntactic background 6.1.2 The data 6.2 Why "V2"? – Diachronic and synchronic aspects of the word-order pattern dass+V2 6.2.1 The diachronic perspective 6.2.2 The synchronic perspective 6.3 The underlying syntactic structure: V2 or not V2? 6.3.1 Potential syntactic analyses 6.3.2 Underlying V2 structure 6.3.3 Underlying verb-final structure 6.3.4 Interpretation of the findings 6.4 Concluding remarks 7 Extraposition of prepositional phrases 7.1 Preliminaries 7.2 The Data: Prepositional phrases in Pennsylvania German 7.2.1 Overall frequency of PP extraposition 7.2.2 Extraposition of light and heavy PPs 7.2.3 The role of close semantic attachment (in argument structure) between verb and PP 7.2.4 The role of linguistic origin of the verbal lexeme 7.3 Interpretation of results 7.4 Concluding remarks 8 Stranded prepositions in Pennsylvania German 8.1 Preposition stranding: A brief description 8.1.1 Preliminaries 8.1.2 The range of stranding phenomena 8.2 Preposition stranding in Pennsylvania German 8.2.1 Pennsylvania German data 8.2.2 Extraposition preferences 8.3 Preposition stranding and PP-split 8.3.1 Preposition stranding in English 8.3.2 PP-split and the resumptive-pronoun strategy in German 8.4 The place of Pennsylvania German 8.5 One surface -- two parsing strategies 8.6 Conclusions: Structural variation and incipient change in Pennsylvania German 9 General conclusions and implications 9.1 Applying language contact models to PG: Predictions 9.2 Findings 9.2.1 Characterization of text groups 9.2.2 Theoretical implications 9.3 Conclusions Appendix List of analyzed texts Bibliography Index