Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

The study of Germanic heritage languages in the Americas

1. Introduction

2. Immigrant languages and heritage languages

3. Acquisition, attrition and change

4. Background on Germanic immigrant languages in North America

4.1 Dutch

4.2 German

4.3 Icelandic

4.4 Norwegian

4.5 Pennsylvania Dutch

4.6 Swedish

4.7 West Frisian

4.8 Yiddish

5. Concluding remarks

References

I. Acquisition and attrition

Word order variation in Norwegian possessive constructions: Bilingual acquisition and attrition

1. Introduction

2. Pre- and postnominal possessives: Syntactic structure, interpretation and frequency

2.1 Syntactic structure

2.2 The interpretation of pre- and postnominal possessives

2.3 The distribution of pre- and postnominal possessives

3. Possessive structures and monolingual acquisition

4. Hypotheses

5. Bilingual acquisition

5.1 Informants and data collection

5.2 Results - overview

5.3 Similarities between mono- and bilinguals: The overuse of prenominal possessives

5.4 Differences between mono- and bilinguals: Definiteness marking and postnominal possessives

5.5 Intermediate summary

6. Heritage speakers

6.1 Informants

6.2 Results - overview

6.3 Possessive constructions with a postnominal possessive

6.4 Possessive constructions with prenominal possessives

6.5 Some questions

7. Discussion

8. Conclusion

References

Attrition in an American Norwegian heritage language speaker

1. Introduction

2. Data and methodology

2.1 Informant and linguistic evidence

2.2 Methodology and background material

3. Norwegian language and the order of acquisition

3.1 The noun phrase and its categories

3.2 Clauses and sentences

4. Results of the investigation of Daisy’s American Norwegian

4.1 Results regarding the noun phrase

4.2 Clauses and sentences

5. Daisy’s results relative to the acquisition data

5.1 Noun-phrase related categories

5.2 Clause-related categories

6. Conclusion

References

Reexamining Icelandic as a heritage language in North America

1. Introduction

2. Background: Icelandic emigration to North America

3. Previous linguistic research and available resources

3.1 Early studies

3.2 Available NA Icelandic corpora

4. Another glance at North American Icelandic as a heritage language

4.1 Morphology

4.2 Impersonal verbs

4.3 Anaphoric binding

4.4 Subjunctive

4.5 Syntax

4.6 Phonetics and Phonology

5. Conclusions

References

II. Phonetic and phonological change

Heritage language obstruent phonetics and phonology American Norwegian, Norwegian-American English

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Language contact

2.2 English and Norwegian laryngeal phonetics and phonology

3. Speakers and community

4. The problem of description: Sonorant devoicing

5. Medial voicing: An under-investigated area

6. Final laryngeal distinctions

7. Summary and conclusions

References

The history of front rounded vowels in New Braunfels German

1. Introduction

2. Previous research

3. The current analysis

4. Conclusion

References

Functional convergence and extension in contact

1. Introduction

2. Progressive aspect - an overview

2.1 Achievements in the progressive

2.2 States in the progressive

3. Semantics and syntax of progressive aspect constructions

4. Progressive aspect in German, dialectal continental German, and Pennsylvania Dutch

4.1 (Standard) German

4.2 Dialectal (continental) German

4.3 Pennsylvania Dutch

4.4 Progressive aspect in Big Valley, PA, and Holmes County, OH, Pennsylvania Dutch

5. Theoretical analysis

6. Hyperextension

7. Conclusions and directions for future research

Appendix

References

Hybrid verb forms in American Norwegian and the analysis of the syntactic relation between the verb

1. Introduction

2. Why the hybrid verb forms are really hybrid

3. Data

4. Theoretical assumptions

5. The syntactic relation between T and V: Some (im)possible analyses

6. The syntactic relation between T and V: My analysis

7. Conclusion

References

Discourse markers in the narratives of New York Hasidim: More V2 attrition

1. Introduction

2. Dialects of Yiddish

3. V2 on three levels

4. The contact situation: English and Yiddish

5. Research questions

6. Method

7. Discussion of the data

7.1 English DMs

7.2 The North-east DM iz

7.3 Central Yiddish DMs: Yiddish compared to English

7.4 The innovative DM: Shoyn

8. Conclusions and explanations

8.1 V2 attrition on all three fronts

References

IV. Lexical change

Maintaining a multilingual repertoire: Lexical change in American Norwegian

1. Introduction

2. Background

2.1 Theoretical background

2.2 Social influence on language contact phenomena

3. Three types of transfer

4. Methods

5. Results and discussion

5.1 Lexical transfer

5.2 Semantic transfer

5.3 Phonemic transfer

5.4 Ambiguous cases

5.5 Exceptional cases

6. Conclusions

References

How synagogues became shuls: The boomerang effect in Yiddish-influenced English, 1895-2010

1. Introduction

1.1 Yiddish

1.2 The boomerang effect

2. Findings

2.1 Survey

2.2 Corpus study

2.3 Media geared toward young Jewish adults

3. Discussion and conclusion

References

Phonological non-integration of lexical borrowings in Wisconsin West Frisian

1. Introduction

2. Consultants, methods

2.1 Data set and speaker profile

2.2 Method

3. Community profile of language use

4. Modeling bilingual processing in a heritage community

5. Data

5.1 Number, type and frequency of English tokens

6. Analysis and discussion

7. Conclusion

References

Borrowing modal elements into American Norwegian: The case of suppose(d)

1. Introduction

2. Degree of integration

3. Linguistic integration

4. Borrowing of functional words and grammatical features

5. On matter replication and pattern replication

6. Modality in Norwegian and English

7. The use of suppose(d)/[spoʊs], [spʊːst] in American Norwegian

8. Summing up

References

V. Variation and real-time change

Changes in a Norwegian dialect in America

1. Background

2. Coon Valley and Westby

3. The material

4. An America-Norwegian koiné?

5. The language varieties

5.1 West Norwegian dialects

5.2 Normalized speech

5.3 East Norwegian dialects

6. Conclusion

References

On two myths of the Norwegian language in America: Is it old-fashioned?

1. Introduction

2. Is the Norwegian language in America archaic?

2.1 Data material: Informants

2.2 Investigation of pronouns

2.3 Morphology

2.4 Function words

2.5 Lexical words

2.6 Conclusion on whether American Norwegian is archaic

3. Has the Norwegian language in America approached Bokmål?

3.1 Einar Haugen on the development of American Norwegian

3.2 Pronouns

3.3 Verb inflection

3.4 Function words

3.5 Lexical words

3.6 Syntax

3.7 Conclusion on whether American Norwegian has moved toward Bokmål

4. Conclusion

References

Coon Valley Norwegians meet Norwegians from Norway: Language, culture and identity

1. Introduction

2. Background: The Norwegian language in the U.S.

3. Data collection

4. Theoretical perspectives: Why narratives?

5. Identity as a social construction

6. Interactions in Coon Valley

6.1 Language choice

6.2 Sylvia: “I don’t know how to say all that in Norwegian”

6.3 Other semiotic resources in identity construction

6.4 John and Eric: Hard-working Norwegians

6.5 The old school and community in Coon Valley

6.6 Identities as elderly people

7. Identity as Norwegians and Americans

8. Multilayered positioning work

9. Discussion and conclusion

Appendix: Transcription conventions

References

Variation and change in American Swedish

1. Introduction

2. Data collection

2.1 Interviews, questionnaires and elicitation

2.2 Consultants

3. Dialects in American Swedish

3.1 Linguistic variation in Sweden in the 19th century

3.2 Dialects in earlier American Swedish

3.3 Dialect features in present-day American Swedish

3.4 Dialect leveling and language contact

4. Contact features in American Swedish

4.1 The lexicon

4.2 Function words

4.3 Syntactic constructions

4.4 Intermediate summary

5. Bilingualism at an individual level

5.1 Sources of impact on American Swedish

5.2 Edward and Shirley: Acquisition or attrition?

6. Conclusion

References

On the decrease of language norms in a disintegrating language

1. Introduction

2. The data

3. Norms in AD

3.1 Question (I): Are the grammatical norms which hold for SD still recognized in AD?

3.2 Question (II): Are there any differences between the acceptability test

3.3 Question (III): Are there any differences between speakers

3.4 Question (IV): Is the existence of norms equally strong/weak in all parts of the system?

4. General discussion

4.1 Question (V): Are there indications for the rise of a new norm in AD

References

Index of languages and dialects

Index of names

Index of subjects