William G. Moulton

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William G. Moulton (1914–2000), on the occasion of recordings for the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland
in March 1954 in Bosco / Gurin.
William G. Moulton's Signature.jpg

William G. Moulton ( [ˈwɪɫjəm ˈdʒiː ˈmoʊɫtən] , the G. stands for Gamwell, the mother's single name; born February 5, 1914 in Providence , Rhode Island , † June 2, 2000 in Exeter , New Hampshire ) was an American German linguist . His research in the field of Swiss-German phonology and foreign language teaching was particularly important .

Life

Moulton showed great interest in Latin, French and German as a teenager. In 1935 he began studying French, German and international relations at Princeton University and graduated with top grades. He subsequently received a scholarship at the Humboldt University in Berlin , where he met his future wife Jenni Karding; they married in 1938. In 1936 Moulton enrolled for a master's degree at Yale University , then a center for philological linguistics, and studied with Eduard Prokosch , Edward Sapir , Edgar H. Sturtevant , Hans Kurath and Leonard Bloomfield , among others . His dissertation, completed in 1941, on Old High German vowelism, which is also preserved in unstressed syllables in certain Southwest Swiss German dialects , he began under Prokosch, but completed it after his accidental death under Bloomfield.

Moulton worked in the following years at Yale as an assistant professor of German. During these years of World War II he taught German to native English speakers; The result of this activity was the book Spoken German, which he published in 1944 with his wife Jenni Karding Moulton. In the same year, the couple moved to Washington, DC, where Moulton worked as a language supervisor for military Japanese classes on behalf of the American federal government . He later oversaw English classes for German prisoners of war in America. After the war, he left military service with the rank of captain and returned to Yale for a short time.

1947 changed Moulton at the invitation of J. Milton Cowan , founder of the local Department of Modern Languages ( Division of Modern Languages, DML) on the Cornell University . The DML was a result of the war-related foreign language teaching: unlike the conventional, single-language departments, it outsourced literary studies, concentrated the teaching and learning of modern languages ​​in a single administrative unit and promoted contrastive linguistics in addition to language teaching. Moulton worked here first as an associate professor and from 1949 as a full professor.

In 1960 Moulton was recalled to Princeton University to develop an interdepartmental doctoral program in linguistics. From 1962, when the program started, until 1979, when Moulton retired, he was the director of the program.

Moulton was considered a typical representative of the elegant, but at the same time modest and charismatic New Englander. He spiced up his lessons with numerous anecdotes and was highly valued by his many students. In addition to his native English, he spoke German without an accent and had good to very good language skills in French, Italian, Dutch and - what he was most proud of - Swiss German.

Research and work

Moulton was active in two different fields of research: phonology and foreign language teaching.

Phonology

Title page of the dissertation by William G. Moulton (Supplement to Language 17.4, 1941)

At the center of Moulton's research was the phonology of spoken languages ​​and thus dialects ; methodically, he was a staunch structuralist Bloomfieldian throughout his life . He was particularly impressed by the Alemannic of Switzerland , for which, among other things, he formulated the basics of the Eastern Swiss vowel splitting . In March 1954, together with Rudolf Hotzenköcherle, he made the recordings for the Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland in Bosco / Gurin .

Moulton's dissertation established his good reputation among Swiss linguists, which continues to this day. Later essays such as Juncture in modern standard German (1947), Dialect geography and the concept of phonological space (1962) or Structural dialectology (1968, triggered by Uriel Weinreich's 1954 essay Is a structural dialectology possible? ) As well as several from the 1960s Essays on Swiss-German phonology written in the 18th and seventies provide eloquent testimony to his system-oriented understanding of language. For Moulton, structuralism meant the optimization of "traditional" historical linguistics. But Moulton, as a progressive dialectologist, also showed sympathy for the sociolinguistics that emerged in the 1960s ; so he expressed his approval of the work of William Labov .

Moulton himself justified his focus on Swiss German, firstly with its considerable diversity and liveliness, secondly with its extensive synchronic and diachronic documentation, thirdly with his own dissertation on Valaisan German and fourthly with its complexity in the field of vocalism. As the fifth, "unscientific" point, he named the fantastic topography of Switzerland, which he particularly liked.

Valais German end vocalism

Moulton's dissertation Swiss German dialect and Romance patois was one of the first papers ever to deal with a dialectological topic using the methods of structuralism. Numerous (but not all) representatives of young grammatical linguistics have so far explained the fact that in the modern Valais German endings not only - according to law - the Old High German long vowels, but also the Old High German short vowels in an unstressed position as / a /, / e /, / i /, / o / and / u / have been preserved, so that the latter must have existed at least in the Alemannic area with a long quantity. Moulton, on the other hand, showed that the phonetic and formal system of the highest Alemannic and Franco-Provencal dialects of Valais show numerous parallels, and interpreted the quality of the final vowels preserved in Walliser German beyond the dichotomy of phonetic versus non-phonetic law as a Franco-Provencal substrate - or adstrate effect and thus as a result early language contact .

Eastern Swiss vowel splitting

He showed a concrete application of phonological structuralism in his essays published in 1960 and 1961 on the so-called "Eastern Swiss vowel splitting". Moulton explained the splitting of Middle High German / o / and / ø / into the two phonemes / o / and / ɔ / or / ø / and / œ / as a correction of the asymmetrical vowel system of Middle High German , which occurs in all dialects of Northeastern Switzerland in the front rows the four steps / i /, / e /, / ɛ / and / æ /, in the back row only the three steps / u /, / o / and / a / or in the middle row only / y / and / ø / knew. In the vast majority of Swiss German dialects, symmetry was established by lowering Middle High German / ɛ / to / æ /, which resulted in a uniform three-tier system. In north-eastern Switzerland, however, / ɛ / was retained, and the symmetry became on the path of the split from / o / into / o / (parallel to / e /) and / ɔ / (parallel to / ɛ /) or from / ø / (parallel to / e /) to / ø / and / œ / (parallel to / ɛ /). Regardless of whether / æ / was also retained (Oberthurgau, western Fürstenland, Toggenburg, Appenzell, upper St. Gallen Rhine Valley) or increased to / ɛ / (Schaffhausen, northern Zurich, mostly Thurgau, eastern Fürstenland, city of St. Gallen, Lower St. Gallen Rhine Valley, Chur Rhine Valley), a harmonious vocal system was created. The split of the high tongue vowels / i /, / y / and / u / in / i / and / e /, / y / and / ø / as well as / u / and / is also related to the splitting of the two back rows. O/.

Phonological (phonemic) and phonetic dialect maps

Moulton stayed in Switzerland for a long time in 1958/1959 on a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies , where Rudolf Hotzenköcherle gave him free access to the material of the then unprinted language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland . Building on this data, Moulton subsequently published several essays in which he was able to explain sound developments such as the Eastern Swiss vowel splitting mentioned above and how to make dialect spaces visible by using phonetic data phonologically (or phonemically, i.e. in the overall system viewed) on maps. He saw the great advantage of phonological maps in that they "made a clear dialect classification possible on the basis of objective, language-specific factors" and hoped that Swiss dialectology would in future "use such phonological maps as a valuable addition to conventional phonetic maps". In any case, this wish was not fulfilled in connection with the language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland , which appeared in eight volumes from 1962 to 1997 - structuralism had a long time finding it difficult to gain a foothold in German-speaking dialectology. How profitably it can be used for the synchronous and diachronic explanation of the German-speaking Swiss dialect landscape was shown by Walter Haas in his habilitation thesis published in 1978. Even Peter Wiesinger relevant for today Dialektologie division of German dialects from 1983 founded the structuralist access.

Foreign language teaching

A second research field of Moulton was the theoretical basis of foreign language teaching . Based on his work in World War II and the subsequent thirteen years at the DML, the later three monographs all dealt with learning languages ​​on a contrastive basis: Spoken German (1944, together with his wife Jenni Karding-Moulton), The sounds of English and German (1962) and A linguistic guide to language learning (1966, 2 1970, German 1972). Since Moulton's interests lay primarily in linguistics, he understood these three works as an attempt to show how linguistic principles can be applied in foreign language teaching. For the author, the language student was an individual who, like himself, thought analytically and was interested in the structure of the language. He stayed true to his Bloomfieldian convictions, but included generative concepts early on in the syntax chapter of the Guide .

Awards

Moulton has received three prestigious scholarships: a Fulbright scholarship , thanks to which he spent 1953/1954 in the Netherlands, one from the American Council of Learned Societies , which enabled him to stay in Switzerland in 1958/1959, and a Guggenheim scholarship , which he used in 1964/1965 for a renewed stay in Switzerland.

In 1970 he was awarded the Goethe Institute with the Golden Goethe Medal , in 1976 with the Wilber Lucius Cross Medal from Yale University and in 1982 with the Max Geilinger Prize from the Max Geilinger Foundation . Moulton was President of the Linguistic Society of America and received honorary doctorates from Middlebury College (1974) and from the University of Munich (1984). In 1974 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Selected publications

Autobiography
  • On becoming and being a linguist. In: First person singular: Papers from the Conference on an Oral Archive for the History of American Linguistics. Edited by Boyd H. Davis and Raymond K. O'Cain. Amsterdam 1980, pp. 55-65.
Monographs
  • Swiss German dialect and Roman patois. Baltimore 1941 (Supplement to Language 17.4, Language dissertation 34).
  • [together with Jenni Karding Moulton:] Spoken German. Ithaca NY 1944.
  • The sounds of English and German. Chicago 1962.
  • A linguistic guide to language learning. New York 1966, 2nd, revised edition there 1970. Revised again in German, together with Reinhold Freudenstein: How do you learn foreign languages? A linguistic guide. Dortmund 1972.
Essays
  • Juncture in modern standard German. In: Language 23 (1947) 212-226.
  • The short vowel system in Northern Switzerland. In: Word 16 (1960) 155-182.
  • Sound change through internal causality: the Eastern Swiss vowel splitting. In: Journal for Dialect Research 28 (1961) 227-251.
  • On the history of the German vocal system. In: Contributions to the history of the German language and literature 83 (1961 and 1962) 1–35.
  • Dialect geography and the concept of phonological space. In: Word 18 (1962) 23-32.
  • The vowels of Dutch: Phonetic and distributional classes. In: Lingua 11 (1962) 294-312.
  • Phonology and dialect classification. In: Sprachleben der Schweiz [= Festschrift for Rudolf Hotzenköcherle]. Edited by Paul Zinsli and others. Bern 1963, pp. 75-86.
  • Phonetic and phonological dialect maps. Examples from Swiss German. In: Communications et rapports du Premier Congrès International de Dialectologie générale, 1960 . Edited by the Center international de Dialectologie générale. Louvain 1964, pp. 117-128.
  • The Swiss-German hiatus diphthongization from a phonological point of view. In: Philologia Deutsch. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Walter Henzen . Edited by Werner Kohlschmidt and Paul Zinsli. Bern 1965, pp. 115–129.
  • Structural dialectology. In: Language 44 (1968) 451-466.
  • The mapping of phonemic systems. In: Journal for Dialect Research. Supplements New Series No. 4: Negotiations of the Second International Dialectologists Congress II. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 574–591.
  • The morphological umlaut in Swiss German. In: Festgabe for Paul Zinsli. Edited by Maria Bindschedler, Rudolf Hotzenköcherle and Werner Kohlschmidt. Bern 1971, pp. 15-25.
  • Notker's 'initial law'. In: Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr (Ed.): Linguistic method. Essays in honor of Herbert Penzl. The Hague 1979, pp. 241-251.
  • Sandhi in Swiss German dialects. In: Henning Andersen (Ed.): Sandhi phenomena in the languages ​​of Europe. Berlin / New York 1986, pp. 385-392.

literature

  • Marc L. Louden: William G. Moulton. In: Language 84.1 (2008) 161-169.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial. Edited by William Richard Cutter. 3rd series, Volume II. Clearfield, Baltimore 1915 (Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing, Baltimore 1996), p. 2307.
  2. ↑ Chapter after Marc L. Louden: William G. Moulton. In: Language 84.1 (2008) 161-169.
  3. ^ William G. Moulton: Structural dialectology. In: Language 44 (1968) 451-466, here p. 452; also Marc L. Louden: William G. Moulton. In: Language 84.1 (2008), 161-169, here p. 163.
  4. ^ William G. Moulton: Swiss German dialect and Roman patois. Baltimore 1941 (Supplement to Language 17.4, Language dissertation 34).
  5. ^ For the first time in William G. Moulton: The short vowel system in Northern Switzerland. In: Word 16 (1960) 155–182, here pp. 165–174, and in detail in William G. Moulton: Sound change through inner causality: the Eastern Swiss vowel splitting. In: Journal for Dialect Research 28 (1961) 227-251. In later publications he also mentions the splitting of vowels on various occasions.
  6. ↑ Articles devoted to the division of space are in particular William G. Moulton: Phonologie und Dialekteinteilung. In: Sprachleben der Schweiz [= Festschrift for Rudolf Hotzenköcherle]. Edited by Paul Zinsli and others. Bern 1963, pp. 75-86; Phonetic and phonological dialect maps. Examples from Swiss German. In: Communications et rapports du Premier Congrès International de Dialectologie générale, 1960 . Edited by the Center international de Dialectologie générale. Louvain 1964, pp. 117-128, and The mapping of phonemic systems. In: Journal for Dialect Research. Supplements New Series No. 4: Negotiations of the Second International Dialectologists Congress II. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 574–591. But also in the essays on Eastern Swiss vowel splitting (see above) and on hiatus diphthongation ( Die Schweizerdeutsche Hiatusdiphthongierung in phonological perspective. In: Philologia Deutsch. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Walter Henzen. Ed. By Werner Kohlschmidt and Paul Zinsli. Bern 1965, p 115–129), Moulton shows that sound systems also make linguistic spaces visible.
  7. ^ William G. Moulton: Phonetic and phonological dialect maps. Examples from Swiss German. In: Communications et rapports du Premier Congrès International de Dialectologie générale, 1960 . Edited by the Center international de Dialectologie générale. Louvain 1964, pp. 117–128, here pp. 125 and 128.
  8. ↑ Language change and language geography. Investigations into the structure of the dialect difference using the example of the Swiss-German vowel systems. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1978 (Journal for Dialectology and Linguistics, Supplements NF 30).
  9. ^ Peter Wiesinger: The division of the German dialects and phonological vowel systems of German dialects. In: Werner Besch u. a .: dialectology. A manual for German and general dialect research. Berlin / New York 1983 (Handbooks for Linguistics and Communication Science 1.2), pp. 807–900 and 1042–1076
  10. ^ Marc L. Louden: William G. Moulton. In: Language 84.1 (2008), 161–169, here p. 165.
personal data
SURNAME Moulton, William G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moulton, William Gamwell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American linguist
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Providence
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 2000
Place of death Exeter, New Hampshire