Linguistic geography

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The linguistic geography (including dialect geography , Geolinguistics or areal linguistics , from Latin areal connecting a distribution area on) as a branch of dialectology the linguistics with the geography and examines linguistic manifestations in terms of their geographical distribution. The research focuses on phonetic , phonological , morphological and lexical questions. Collections of oral and written surveys and freely spoken texts serve as the basis ; The research results are presented in language atlases in the form of maps, in which the dialectal profile of a number of survey locations is shown. Historical, cultural, social as well as factors contained in the language itself are taken into account .

history

The German research direction established itself after Ferdinand Wrede (1863–1934) worked on the German Language Atlas (DSA) and specialized in the preparation of dialect maps to illustrate the extent and limitation of dialects. In 1908 Wrede published the series "German Dialect Geography".

In France the work of the young Christian Garnier (geographer) was groundbreaking for the development of linguistic geography , especially his map series Charte de la distribution des langues dans les Alpes occidentales (1897).

Linguistic geography examined the local distribution of individual linguistic features systematically and based on maps . This includes the use of certain words, sounds and word endings. In the run-up to the field studies , the linguists developed special questionnaires that they submitted to the dialect speakers for answering. For all European evaluations, the “ideal dialect speakers” were elderly people who were born and raised in the respective village, who lived as withdrawn as possible and thus had little contact with the world outside the village.

designation

With the term area linguistics , an attempt was made to combine the linguistic results of research into diatopic features of language, i.e. linguistic differences between individual regions. The terminological approach failed, however, because the historical ways of speaking and writing of the individual dialects have other characteristics that were not taken into account. These are diastracy (characteristics that depend on the social environment, e.g. slang ) and diaphasia (characteristics that depend on the specific conversation situation, e.g. register ). Research into these phenomena was therefore also called dialect geography .

Recent research

In recent years in particular, this sub-discipline of dialectology, which is sometimes equated with it, has gained in importance. The language typology needs new methods to answer new as well as old questions. Linguistic geography is intended to provide help, for example, to distinguish random distributions from structural distributions and to research the similarity and affiliation factors of languages.

A newly raised question that preoccupies linguists is whether there is such a thing as a linguistic “area of ​​Europe” at all. It is investigated which parameters can determine this and whether Europe can be divided into a linguistic center and a periphery.

Dialect cartography

The dialect cartography originally served to illustrate the research results. The results obtained were mapped and the maps combined into language atlases. The lines in the linguistic atlas mark the boundary between two forms of a linguistic feature ( isogloss ). On the other hand, there were considerable differences in the published structures that were based on the differing data collection: The German Language Atlas contains data that were collected from 1876 to 1939. The data published only in excerpts between 1926 and 1956 on 129 maps contain around 50,000 measuring points. The Atlas linguistique de la France (ALF) published between 1902 and 1910 by Jules Gilliéron refers to the period between 1897 and 1901 and shows the extension of the dialects based on 638 measuring points on 1421 maps.

The French atlas had relatively few measuring points (villages), but an extensive catalog of questions, and appeared in thick volumes, each of which offered a single map on which the questions were depicted in phonetic notation. The German atlas, on the other hand, was based on a very large density of measuring points and a relatively short questionnaire. Therefore, the works appeared as symbolically coded individual cards that could be unfolded. The core of Wrede's work was, on the one hand, the illustration of contemporary dialect relationships and, on the other hand, the representation of the historical and synchronous changes in the dialects. The German language atlas, which was designated as phonetic geographic, was soon supplemented by a German word atlas specified as word geographic in order to determine dialect-related spatial structures in more detail. Hans Kurath published the first linguistic atlas of an English-speaking area (for New England).

Both ALF and DSA were milestones, as both works enabled groundbreaking insights into the history and structures of the language areas concerned . Of course, the atlases were only able to illustrate a small section of the extensive data material that had been collected, as they were integrated into a two-dimensional matrix (number of measuring points × individual maps). To make matters worse, the cards could not be evaluated as a unit, but always isolated from one another. Since dialect geography only researched the spatial distribution of the dialects, it did not take into account dialect-related events such as diastracy, diaphasia or diatopy (comparison of individual regions with one another). With regard to the evaluation and visualization of diatopic features, dialectometry has been providing protection since the 1970s : New computer-aided methods made it possible to build up the necessary matrix (atlases × measuring points) and, for example , to evaluate it as a unit using numerical taxonomy , taxometry, automatic classification and using modern imaging methods as a to illustrate cumulative function graphs.

The heuristic processing and presentation of the results calculated by means of dialectometry, corresponding to the special cognitive needs of linguists, continues to pose particular challenges for computer-aided cartography . Linguistics is still not finished with the evaluation of the insights gained in this way and still to be expected, both in dialect geography and in the theory of designations ( onomasiology ), which in turn analyzes the data. In addition, dialectometry has an interdisciplinary joint function and provides population genetics , human geography , ethnography , transport geography , historical geography and anthropology with extensive data material.

swell

  • Helmut Glück (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon Language . 4th edition; Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar, 2010, ISBN 3-476-02335-4
  • Jan Goossens: Area Linguistics. In: Lexicon of German Linguistics. 2nd Edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1980, pp. 445-453. ISBN 3-484-10391-4

literature

  • Jan Goossens: Structural Linguistic Geography. An introduction to methodology and results . C. Winter, Heidelberg 1969. (Linguistics study books, Dept. 2). http://d-nb.info/456784438 .
  • Harald Haarmann : Aspects of the area typology . The problem of the European language federations. Narr, Tübingen 1976. ISBN 3-87808-072-7 . (In it chapter: General language typology, area typology and area linguistics ).
  • Ulrich Knoop: The Marburg School : Origin and early development of dialect geography. In: Werner Besch: Dialektologie. A manual for German and general dialect research. 1. 1982, pp. 38-92.
  • Rudolf Trüb : The Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland as an example of an overall linguistic and geographical representation . In: Handbooks for Linguistics and Communication Studies. Part 1: Dialectology , half volume 1. De Gruyter, Berlin 1982. Ed. By Wilhelm Besch. Pp. 151–168. ISBN 3-11-005977-0 .
  • Joachim Herrgen, Alexandra Lenz: Digital Dialectology. Online publication of the Wenker Atlas on the Internet. In: Marburger Uni-Journal. No. 14 January 2003, pp. 43-48.
  • Yves Le Berre, Jean Le Dû, Guylaine Brun-Trigaud: Lectures de l'Atlas linguistique de la France de Giliéron et Edmont: Du temps dans l'espace. 2005.
  • Peter Auer: Language and space: an international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 1: Theories and Methods. Edited by Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin / New York 2010. ISBN 3-11-018002-2 .
  • Alfred Lameli, Roland Kehrein, Stefan Rabanus: Language and Space. Vol. 2: Language Mapping. An international Handbook of Linguistic Variation. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York ISBN 978-3-11-019609-2 .
  • Fabio Tosques: 20 years of digital language geography . Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin 2014. ISBN 978-3-00-046278-8 .
  • Peter Auer: language, borders, space. An abstract.

Web links

Wiktionary: Linguistic geography  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Area linguistics  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Dialect geography  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Hildebrandt: The contribution of linguistic geography to the research of linguistic history In: Sprachgeschichte: a manual for the history of the German language and its research, Volume 1 , Verlag Walter de Gruyter , 1998, ISBN 9783110112573 , p. 495 [1]
  2. ↑ Carsten Sinner : Variety Linguistics , Narr Verlag, 2014, ISBN 9783823367901 , p. 114 [2]
  3. ↑ a b c Hadumod Bußmann (ed.) With the assistance of Hartmut Lauffer: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 4th, revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-520-45204-7 (see sources): "Linguistic geography [also: area linguistics, dialect geography]. Sub-discipline of dialectology (sometimes equated with dialectology), [...]"