Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland

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Rudolf Hotzenköcherle with a person in charge in Bissegg, Canton Thurgau (1936)

The Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland (SDS) uses the dialect geographic method to record and document the Alemannic dialects of Switzerland ( German-speaking Switzerland ), including the Walser dialects of northern Italy, but exclusively the Tyrolean dialect of the Graubünden community of Samnaun.

The SDS was published in eight volumes between 1962 and 1997 and, with over 1500 maps, is the richest German regional atlas. This unique inventory of the Swiss German dialects was financed mainly by the Swiss National Science Foundation .

The Small Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland was published in 2010 for use by linguistic laypeople . It comprises 121 SDS maps, which have been redrawn in colored area maps and each provided with a comment.

meaning

Together with the (not yet completed) Swiss Idioticon , the SDS forms the basis of German- Swiss dialectology .

In an international comparison, its strengths are the high density of the recording locations, the precision of the recordings and thus the differentiation of their results.

The SDS is the first regional linguistic atlas in the German-speaking area, the data of which was collected by explorers using the method developed by French dialectology of direct interviews with speakers.

content

The SDS shows the spatial distribution of dialectal phenomena in terms of sound , form formation and vocabulary , takes into account issues of material culture and deals with certain phenomena of word order . This also makes the diversity of Swiss-German dialects visible, and the interpretation of the maps allows conclusions to be drawn about the linguistic dynamics and language change , but also the major changes in rural culture in the 20th century. The linguistic findings are presented using the most suitable characters (symbols) at each recording location. The entirety of these symbols make up the map image (so-called symbol map); the SDS contains only a few area maps.

Emergence

Rudolf Trüb (left) on the occasion of a recording for the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland in Meggen, Canton Lucerne (1955)

In June 1935, the two linguists Rudolf Hotzenköcherle ( University of Zurich ) and Heinrich Baumgartner ( University of Bern ) met at the Olten train station halfway between Zurich and Bern , “to discuss mutually cherished but independently developed plans for a linguistic atlas of German-speaking Switzerland to merge and in now joint planning to draft the basic lines of the work, which is based on a common Swiss basis ». Between 1935 and 1939, recording method were (oral interview) and area (nearly 600 locations in German-speaking Switzerland - or one third of the former municipalities - and all Walser villages of Ticino and northern Italy ) defined and designed a question book. From the first 4,000 questions, around 2,500 questions, sorted according to subject groups such as haymaking, weather, relatives, etc., were then taken over into the definitive questionnaire.

Recordings began on August 1, 1939, for a total of six years, but which actually took 19 years. The recordings were made in the direct procedure at the place of residence of the source; the answers were handwritten in a further development of the phonetic transcription of Böhmer and Ascoli (cf. Teuthonista ), comments were noted in shorthand with pencil. The Romanist Konrad Lobeck was employed as an explorer , who was replaced in 1947 by the Germanists Rudolf Trüb and Robert Schläpfer . The recordings on the Walser places in northern Italy and Ticino were of Rudolf Hotzenköcherle and Fritz Gysling performed in Bosco / Gurin was also William G. Moulton present, who made there sound recordings.

Between 1945 and 1962 the recordings were cleaned up and the publication of the language cards was prepared. This was followed by publication in a total of eight volumes by 1997. An introductory volume on the methodology and the questionnaire appeared in 1962, a final volume on the history of the work and with a general index in 2003.

publication

Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. Complete works (introductory volume, volumes I – VIII, closing volume). Francke Verlag, Bern and Basel.

  • Rudolf Hotzenköcherle: Linguistic Atlas of German Switzerland. Introductory volume A: On the methodology of the small room atlases. B: Question book. Transcription key. Admission protocols. 1962. ISBN 978-3-7720-0736-1
  • Volume I, Lautgeographie I: Vowel Quality. Edit v. Rudolf Hotzenköcherle , Rudolf Trüb . 1962. ISBN 978-3-7720-0737-8
  • Volume II, Lautgeographie II: Vocality - Consonantism. Edit v. Rudolf Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf Trüb. 1965. ISBN 978-3-7720-0738-5
  • Volume III, Geography of Forms. Edit v. Rudolf Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf Trüb. 1975. ISBN 978-3-7720-1194-8
  • Volume IV, word geography I: The human being - small words. Edit v. Rudolf Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf Trüb. 1969. ISBN 978-3-7720-0739-2
  • Volume V, Word Geography II: Human Community - Clothing - Food. Edit v. Doris Handschuh, Rudolf Hotzenköcherle, Robert Schläpfer , Rudolf Trüb, Stefan Sonderegger . Vorw. V. Robert Schläpfer, Rudolf Trüb. Ill. V. Erwin Zimmerli, Urs Zimmerli. 1983. ISBN 978-3-7720-1528-1
  • Volume VI, Word Geography III: Environment. Edit v. Walter Haas , Doris Handschuh, Rudolf Trüb, Rolf Börlin, Hansueli Müller, Christian Schmid-Cadalbert . 1988. ISBN 978-3-7720-1652-3
  • Vol. VII, word geography IV: house and yard. Edit v. Doris Handschuh, Elvira Jäger, Christian Schmid-Cadalbert under the direction of Rudolf Trüb. 1994. ISBN 978-3-7720-1996-8
  • Vol. VIII, word geography V: Domestic animals - forest and agriculture. Edit v. Hans Bickel, Doris Handschuh, Elvira Jäger, Christian Schmid-Cadalbert under the direction of Rudolf Trüb. 1997. ISBN 978-3-7720-1997-5
  • Rudolf Trüb: Linguistic Atlas of German Switzerland. Graduation tape. History of the work, method of publication, general index. With the collaboration of Lily Trüb. 2003. ISBN 978-3-7720-1999-9
  • Helen Christen, Elvira Glaser , Matthias Friedli (eds.): Small linguistic atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. Verlag Huber, Frauenfeld 2010. ISBN 978-3-7193-1524-5

Data archiving

The entire holdings of the language atlas, in particular the hand-written original recordings as well as numerous photographs, were willed to the Swiss Idiotikon office in Zurich after the work was completed . They will be successively digitized and made available to the public.

Supplementary and new surveys

The SDS only marginally takes the syntax of Swiss German into account. This research gap has been closed since the beginning of 2000 with the Syntactic Atlas of German Switzerland (SADS) , a project of the University of Zurich under the direction of Elvira Glaser .

In order to gain insights into the language change, new surveys on 18 questions were carried out in 2008 as part of a joint project by the University of Zurich and the Swiss Idiotikon.

In order to be able to quantify the language change that has occurred over the past seventy years, the Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space (SDATS) project, headed by Adrian Leemann , was launched at the University of Bern in 2019 . Around a hundred SDS questions (66 phonetic, 66 morphosyntactic and 66 lexical) are asked again from around a thousand people in 125 locations; around 100 additional asked variables are intended to supplement these. In contrast to the one for the SDS, this new survey focuses on sociolinguistic issues.

literature

  • Rudolf Hotzenköcherle: Introduction to the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. Volume A: On the methodology of the small room atlases. Volume B: Question book, transcription key, admission protocols. Francke, Bern 1962.
  • Rudolf Trüb: Linguistic Atlas of German Switzerland. Graduation tape. History of the work, method of publication, general index. With the collaboration of Lily Trüb. Francke, Tübingen / Basel 2003, ISBN 978-3-7720-1999-9 .
  • Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Joachim Herrgen: Speech Dynamics. An introduction to modern regional language research. Schmidt, Berlin 2011 (Basics of German Studies 49), ISBN 978-3-503-12268-4 , pp. 128-135.
  • Pascale Schaller, Alexandra Schiesser: The measurement of language. On the history and significance of the linguistic atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. Swiss Academies Reports 12 (4), 2017, ISSN  2297-1564 .

Web links

  • Sprachatlas.ch - original material digital, plus information about the history and the employees
  • dialektkarten.ch - a selection of digitized dialect maps from the language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland, with further interactive processing
  • regionalssprache.de - with access to a selection of digitized dialect maps from the language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Hotzenköcherle: Introduction to the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. A: On the methodology of the small room atlases. Francke, Bern 1962, p. VIII.
  2. ↑ Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland (SDS)
  3. ↑ Dialect syntax of Swiss German
  4. ↑ Small Linguistic Atlas - New Maps
  5. ↑ Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space (SDATS)