Robert Schläpfer

Robert Schläpfer (1923-2001)

Robert Schläpfer (born December 26, 1923 in Zurich ; † October 14, 2001 in Liestal ) was a Swiss dialectologist and linguist .

Life

Robert Schläpfer, a citizen of Zurich and Trogen , grew up as the son of a butcher and a former seamstress in Zurich. After attending the primary and secondary school there, he attended the cantonal upper secondary school (today a mathematical and natural science high school). He then studied German linguistics and literature, history and folklore at the University of Zurich, with the linguist Rudolf Hotzenköcherle and the folklorist Richard Weiss , among others . In the last semesters of his studies and after graduation for a total of seven winter semesters, he was an explorer for the language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland , which was founded by Heinrich Baumgartner and Rudolf Hotzenköcherle. He did his doctorate under Rudolf Hotzenköcherle on the dialect of the canton of Basel-Landschaft .

After marrying Elisabeth Frick in 1951, the family moved from Zurich to Liestal in 1955 , where Robert Schläpfer took a position as a teacher at the Realschule (now a secondary school). In 1961 he became vice-principal of the first Basel-Landschaft grammar school, and from 1965 to 1975 director of the newly founded cantonal teachers' college in Liestal. From 1976 Schläpfer worked on the linguistic atlas of German-speaking Switzerland and at the same time as a lecturer at the teaching material publisher sabe . At the same time he began teaching at the University of Basel , first as a lecturer and, after his habilitation, initially as a private lecturer . After Ernst Erhard Müller's retirement, he succeeded him as a full-time professor of German philology , especially dialectology .

research

Schläpfer was primarily a dialectologist . His dissertation, which is based on the recordings he made for the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland , is a comprehensive presentation of the Basel dialect with references to the Alsatian and Basel-Stadt dialect . In 1984 he published the volume Die Sprachlandschaften der deutschen Schweiz Rudolf Hotzenköcherle's - unfinished - interpretation of the data in the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland , which he was unable to publish himself due to his untimely death. Another focus was the relationship between Standard German and Swiss German .

The encounter with a - according to his own statements - Yeniche aroused his interest in the special languages . Together with Hansjörg Roth, Schläpfer published his life story, recorded from 1961 ( Alone on this damned world, 1996) and created a systematic collection of Yenish vocabulary . From 1975 to 1980 he was a member of the board of the Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse . The Yenish dictionary developed and published on the basis of Schläpfer's collection by Roth was rejected by the Yenish organizations Gypsy Mission, Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse and Schäft Quant.

Schläpfer was the editor of the two linguistic series series Sprachlandschaft (25 volumes, 1984–2000) and study books Sprachlandschaft (4 volumes, 1988–1993).

Works

Basel bidder German yesterday, today, tomorrow . In: Baselbieter Heimatbuch 22 (1999), pp. 41–44.
(with Beat Rüegger and Fritz Stolz :) Dialect and standard language in Reformed worship. A Zurich investigation. Sauerländer, Aarau 1996 (Sprachlandschaft series, Volume 18).
(with Jürg Gutzwiller and Beat Schmid :) The tension between dialect and standard language in German-speaking Switzerland. Language attitudes of young German and French-speaking Swiss. An evaluation of the pedagogical recruit tests 1985. Sauerländer, Aarau 1991 (pedagogical recruit tests. Scientific series, volume 12).
Swiss High German in a High German dictionary for German-speaking Switzerland. In: Walter Haas, Anton Näf (ed.): Vocabulary problems of Alemannic. Universitätsverlag, Freiburg / Switzerland 1983 (Germanistica Friburgensia, Volume 7), pp. 45–57.
Jenisch. On the special language of the traveling people in German-speaking Switzerland. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore, Basel, Vol. 67 (1981), pp. 13–38.
Swiss High German and German. In: Heinrich Löffler, Karl Pestalozzi, Martin Stern (eds.): Standard und Dialekt. Studies in spoken and written contemporary language. Francke, Bern / Munich 1979, pp. 151–157.
The dialect of the canton of Baselland. Attempt to interpret the linguistic landscape of north-western Switzerland . Huber, Frauenfeld 1956 (Contributions to Swiss German Dialect Research, Volume 5).
The initiation of marriage in a village in Graubünden. The stallion custom and its current change in St. Peter . In: Swiss Archives for Folklore, Basel, Vol. 48 (1952), pp. 1–30.

Editing

(with Hans Bickel :) The quadrilingual Switzerland. 2nd, revised edition. Sauerländer, Aarau 2000 (Sprachlandschaft series, Volume 25), ISBN 3-7941-3696-9 .
(with Hansjörg Roth :) Alone in this damn world. The other life of Josef Knöpflin . Helbing and Lichtenhahn, Basel 1996.
(with Hans Bickel :) Multilingualism - a challenge. Sauerländer, Aarau 1994 (Sprachlandschaft series, Volume 13) and Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1994.
(with Rudolf Trüb :) Rudolf Hotzenköcherle: Dialect structures in transition. Collected essays on the dialectology of German-speaking Switzerland and the Walser regions of Northern Italy. Sauerländer, Aarau 1986 (Sprachlandschaft series, Volume 2).
(with Niklaus Bigler :) Rudolf Hotzenköcherle: The language landscapes of German-speaking Switzerland. Sauerländer, Aarau 1984 (Sprachlandschaft series, Volume 1).
Quadrilingual Switzerland. Benziger, Zurich 1982.
(with Rudolf Hotzenköcherle and Konrad Lobeck, Rudolf Trüb and Paul Zinsli ): Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland. Francke, Bern and Basel 1962–1997.

Remarks

↑ Scharotl 21 (1996), No. 1, pp. 12, 14.
↑ As part of the consultation process by the federal government regarding ILO Agreement No. 169 (partial report 1), the Gypsy Mission and the Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse wrote to the federal government on October 31, 2005 that “this dictionary [was] drawn up without the consent of the Yenish organizations” ( Statement by the bicycle cooperative and the Gypsy mission ; accessed on June 11, 2017). The Yenish writer Venanz Nobel and the Schäft Qwant association also took a position against this dictionary in 2006 in the context of the consultation on the preliminary draft report of the Federal Council on the situation of travelers in Switzerland, in which they wrote “the genesis of the book and the role of the From their point of view, the federal government is “absolutely unacceptable” ( statement from schäft qwant ; accessed on June 11, 2017).

Web links

Literature by and about Robert Schläpfer in the catalog of the German National Library

personal data
SURNAME	Schläpfer, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swiss linguist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 26, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH	Zurich
DATE OF DEATH	October 14, 2001
Place of death	Liestal

[1] Scharotl 21 (1996), No. 1, pp. 12, 14.

[2] As part of the consultation process by the federal government regarding ILO Agreement No. 169 (partial report 1), the Gypsy Mission and the Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse wrote to the federal government on October 31, 2005 that “this dictionary [was] drawn up without the consent of the Yenish organizations” ( Statement by the bicycle cooperative and the Gypsy mission ; accessed on June 11, 2017). The Yenish writer Venanz Nobel and the Schäft Qwant association also took a position against this dictionary in 2006 in the context of the consultation on the preliminary draft report of the Federal Council on the situation of travelers in Switzerland, in which they wrote “the genesis of the book and the role of the From their point of view, the federal government is “absolutely unacceptable” ( statement from schäft qwant ; accessed on June 11, 2017).