Middle Rhine Language Atlas

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The Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA) is a language atlas that records the linguistic geography of the Rhine and Moselle Franconian dialects in the left bank of the Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate and in Saarland . The MRhSA is an atlas of sounds and forms and represents the spatial and social dimension of language variation. The project was developed at the Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz , financed by the German Research Foundation .

method

The MRhSA uses the temporally separated survey in two series of data as a data basis: data series 1 includes the dialect of the 70-year-olds, local and local informants, data series 2 the dialect of the 30- to 40-year-olds, also local commuters.

For data series 1, 549 survey points were selected from a total of 2630 locations in the working area (as of 1946). The MRhSA thus achieved a survey location density of around 21% or an average of 3.2 survey locations per graticule field for this data series. For data series 2, the number of locations was reduced to 292 for reasons of economy of the survey.

Between 1978 and 1988, 2510 informants were interviewed. First of all, in a first series of surveys, the survey followed the traditional language atlases: In the survey locations, teams of informants were interviewed who were the second generation of permanent residents, who were older than 70 years and who had had a manual job. In the second series of photographs, a younger group of informants was interviewed at the same locations and using the same method. The informants for the second survey were also the second generation to be stationary and also manually employed. In contrast to the first series, however, they were between 30 and 40 years old and mobile as day commuters. Against the background of such an admittedly expensive survey, the effects that an age difference and, in particular, a change in area mobility can cause in the spatial structures of the dialects can be read very precisely.

The result of the survey is recorded in a bi-media archive. This consists on the one hand of 841 questionnaires in which the responses of the sources are noted in phonetic transcription (IPA), on the other hand of a tape archive of around 2500 hours of recording time. The MRhSA was the first linguistic atlas to document the entire survey both on tape and in original phonetic writing. The questionnaire for data series 1 contains 1,100 key words taken from the lexicon of the elementary human world. They are embedded in query contexts and are highlighted with an underline. Only the keywords were noted by the explorer in the questionnaire. For economic reasons, the size of the questionnaire for data series 2 had to be limited to 440 keywords.

The cards of the MRhSA follow the point-symbol method. The result of the double survey is double language cards for each linguistic phenomenon: one for the older, non-mobile generation, one for the younger generation of commuters. On the right-hand sheet, those linguistic features that contrast with the older dialect are set in red so that the series comparison is made easier for the user.

publication

  • Bellmann, Günter: Introduction to the Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1994
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt: Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Volume 1: Advance Tickets. Vocalism I (diphthongs of the Middle High German reference system). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1994
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt: Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Volume 2: Vocalism II (long vowels of the Middle High German reference system). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt: Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Volume 3: Vokalismus III (short vowels of the Middle High German reference system. Vowels in adjacent syllables. Scion vowels). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt: Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Volume 4: Consonantism (dialectality. Consonants of the West Germanic reference system. Scion consonants.). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1999
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt: Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). Volume 5: Morphology (state of research. Structure boundaries. Morphological maps. Register). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002

literature

  • Bellmann, Günter (1982): Descriptive Linguistic Geography in the Present. On the concept and practice of the Middle Rhine Language Atlas. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 46, 271–287.
  • Bellmann, Günter (1986): Two-dimensional dialectology. In: Günter Bellmann (ed.): Contributions to dialectology on the Middle Rhine. Stuttgart: Steiner (Mainz Studies on Language and Folk Research 10) 1–55.
  • Bellmann, Günter (1987): The Middle Rhine Language Atlas and the Palatinate (with one map). In: Wolfgang Kleiber (ed.): Symposium Ernst Christmann. Organized by the Palatinate Society for the Advancement of Science, Speyer. (Kaiserslautern November 8/9, 1985) Lectures on dialect lexicography, linguistic geography and folk research on West Central German. With 26 maps and illustrations. Stuttgart: Steiner (Mainzer Studies on Language and Folk Research 11) 75–87.
  • Bellmann, Günter (1994): Multidimensional Dialect Geography? In: Klaus Mattheier, Peter Wiesinger (eds.): Dialektologie des Deutschen. Research status and development trends. Tubingen: Niemeyer (RGL 147) 165-169.
  • Bellmann, Günter (1997): On the technology and meaningfulness of two-dimensional dialect surveys and dialect cartography using the example of the Middle Rhine Language Atlas. In: Gerhard Stickel (ed.): Varieties of German. Regional and colloquial languages. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 271–290.
  • Bellmann, Günter; Joachim Herrgen; Jürgen Erich Schmidt (1989): The Middle Rhine Language Atlas (MRhSA). In: Werner Veith, Wolfgang Putschke (eds.): Sprachatlanten des Deutschen. Current projects. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Studies on the Small German Language Atlas 2) 285–313.
  • Herrgen, Joachim (1994): Contrastive Dialect Cartography. In: Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Wiesinger (eds.): Dialektologie des Deutschen. Research status and development trends. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Series German Linguistics 147) 131–163.