Unit plural
As a unit plural designating German a Flexionsmodus in which in contrast to the standard German at a verb all plural a form Tense equal. An isogloss (dialect boundary) of an area with a unit plural is called a unit plural line.
definition
As in most of the Indo-European languages of Europe (but no longer in most of today's Germanic languages ), the plural forms are differentiated according to the subject in the conjugation of most German dialects and the High German written language. In German and its dialects, however, the distinction between 1st and 3rd person plural has generally been lost. In Old High German there was still the suffix "-emes" for the first person , analogous to the Latin "-mus" and Slavic "-me". In some German dialects, however, the second person plural has the same personal ending as the other two. This phenomenon is called the unit plural.
distribution
In the north there are several regions with a unit plural : In an area from Westphalia , large parts of Lower Saxony and Holstein , which roughly coincides with the old Saxon tribal area, all three plural forms have the suffix "-et" or "-t". Of these, west ( Holland and the old Frisian area), north (old Danish Schleswig with North Friesland ) and east (formerly Slavic Brandenburg , Mecklenburg and (West) Pomerania ) all three plural forms have the suffix “-en” or “-n”.
In the south there is the unit plural in the Swabian - Alemannic language area, with the exception of its south-west, which historically belonged to Burgundy . Here the plural forms either all have the personal ending "- (e) t" or all "- (e) nt". The latter is derived from the Old High German third person plural.
North of the Alemannic borders the unit plural "-en" in the Rhine Franconian and southern Moselle Franconian . The entire Moselle-Franconian and Rhine-Franconian areas together roughly correspond to the non-Alemannic part of the former Roman province of Germania superior .
Individual areas and borders
Low Franconian and Low German
The border between the Lower Franconian and Low German language areas is also known as the Rhine-IJssel-Line , or the mähet / mäh (n) -Linie. It owes this name to the fact that the present plural forms of regular verbs (such as "mähen") are formed differently on both sides of the line (see below). At this line u. a. in the area of North Rhine-Westphalia the Lower Rhine and Westphalian overlap. This is why this isogloss is also known as the “ Westphalian Line ” and continues in a weakening manner into the Dutch- speaking area.
Rhine-Westphalian border
In the 9th century the affected area in what is now the Netherlands belonged to the dominion of the Franks and the Frisians . After the Franks emigrated , the Saxons followed and took possession of the area abandoned by the Franks.
Around 1378 the Isoglosse ran along the IJssel and almost completely coincided with the political border between the Duchy of Geldern and the Diocese of Utrecht . But in the course of time the Isogloss shifted more and more to the south, so that today it begins south of Harderwijk and from there runs fairly straight towards Zutphen . South of this city, the Isoglosse crosses the IJssel and now, following the Alte Issel ( Dutch Oude IJssel ), runs towards the Dutch - German border. At Anholt this is exceeded and now the Isoglosse follows the route Isselburg - Rees - Dorsten - Essen - Langenberg - Barmen - Radevormwald - Hückeswagen - Meinerzhagen .
Linguistic characteristics
The Rhenish and Lower Rhine, like standard German , have two different plural forms of the verbs in the present tense:
- in the Lower Rhine dialect and historically also in Dutch : wij maken, gij maakt, zij maken . (German: we do, you do, they do , in modern Dutch, however, jullie maken is used instead of gij maakt , which means that Dutch also has a unit plural )
Westphalian is characterized by its unified plural in the present tense of the verb forms, which means that the first, second and third person are in the plural with the same verb form, which ends in -t in the indicative and -en in the subjunctive .
- in Westphalian: wi maket, gi maket, se maket
Low German to High German dialects
At Hilchenbach , the unified plural line meets the Benrath line , which it now largely follows for a while.
Old Saxon and high medieval colonization
At Sachsa the Isoglosse separates again from the Benrath line and now follows the line Wernigerode - Derenburg - Halberstadt - Gröningen - Seehausen - Calvörde - Oebisfelde - Dannenberg - Lüneburg - Ratzeburg . This unified plural line ends at Lübeck on the Baltic Sea. To the west of it, in Westphalia , Westmünsterland and Holstein as well as in the Hanseatic cities of Bremen , Hamburg and Lübeck, the "Lower Saxony" unit plural prevails in - (e) t , while in the so-called "Elbostfälischen" (near Magdeburg ), Märkisch and Mecklenburgisch -Vorpommerschen as well as in the former colonial dialects Middle Pomeranian , Low Prussian ( Danzig , West and East Prussia ) and Baltic German (in the Baltic states ) the unit plural was formed on -en .
Old German-Danish border
Except in the example described, there are several areas in the West Germanic dialect continuum that have the same characteristics. For example, there is the so-called " Eiderlinie ", which separates the dialects of Schleswig ( Schleswigsch ) from those in Holstein ( Holsteinisch ). This means that the northern dialects of Schleswig-Holstein have a unit plural on -en , while the southern dialects have a -t .
Border to present and former Frisian language area
The North Lower Saxony is also separated from the East Frisian Platt by a unit plural line, as the latter has the unit plural on -en .
Swabian-Alemannic unit plural
The dialect border between Swabian and South Rhine-Franconian or Main Franconian is also formed by a unitary plural line. In the Franconian dialects prevails mow and the Swabian word mähet ago.
A single plural line runs through Switzerland in a north-south direction towards Germany. This unit plural line exceeds on Swiss territory, the "trinkche / Triche" line and the dialect boundary between Walser German and the maximum Alemannic . Furthermore, the “Kind / Chind” line is crossed and between the Danube and Neckar sources this line meets the “Hus / Haus” line , which separates the Swabian from the Lower Alemannic. This line is followed by the unit plural line by and large along the eastern and northern fringes of the Black Forest to the city of Wissembourg , where it meets the Speyer line and follows it to its end in the Vosges . In the areas east of this line is in the dialects mähet and of them in the areas west mow used.
See also
swell
- Elard Hugo Meyer: Folklore. History of the German way of life and culture , Verlag Karl I. Trübner, Strasbourg 1898
- Werner König : dtv-Atlas on the German language , 14th edition, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1978, ISBN 978-3-423-03025-0
- Hallwag AG, Bern: Atlas , Lingen Verlag 1975, without ISBN
- Digital word atlas: map "mäh" (Wenker's sentence 38)