27.2007, Review: General Ling; Historical Ling; Psycholing; Socioling: Stolberg (2015)

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Subject: 27.2007, Review: General Ling; Historical Ling; Psycholing; Socioling: Stolberg (2015)

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Date: Mon, 02 May 2016 12:15:53
From: Katrin Fuchs [k.fuchs at utexas.edu]
Subject: Changes Between the Lines

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3491.html

AUTHOR: Doris  Stolberg
TITLE: Changes Between the Lines
SUBTITLE: Diachronic contact phenomena in written Pennsylvania German
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter Studia Linguistica Germanica 118
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Katrin Fuchs, University of Texas at Austin

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

In this updated version of her 2008 dissertation, Doris Stolberg takes a
diachronic approach to various syntactic and semantic-syntactic changes in
written Pennsylvania German over 130 years. She is not primarily interested in
the outcome of the changes, but rather in “the processes triggered by the
specific type of contact situation of PG [Pennsylvania German],… [and] the
psycholinguistic processes underlying the language-contact phenomena present
in PG” (XV). Thus, she uses sociolinguistic models that are usually applied to
spoken data, as well as conceptual ideas from psycholinguistics and second
language acquisition, to focus on the language user and draw a dynamic picture
of language change (XV).

The first chapter gives a detailed account of the theoretical framework on
language change and language contact. Stolberg criticizes earlier diachronic
perspectives that focus solely on the language system of a speech community
and that do not include the language competence of the individual speaker (4).
Here she points to Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) and emphasizes the
importance of a combination of empirical and theoretical perspectives to
investigate diachronic language change, especially in language contact
settings (8). Stolberg then describes and compares the central theories on
which she bases her investigation: the theories on language maintenance and
language shift of Thomason and Kaufman (1988), the Transmission Phenomenon
Model (Van Coetsem 2002), and the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton
2002). She concludes that all three theories share a basic notion of asymmetry
between the languages in contact, as well as the “assumption of a basic split
between lexicon and grammar” (31). In her study, she uses the approaches by
Thomason/ Kaufman and Van Coetsem as the framework, and adds the
psycholinguistic approach of Myers-Scotton “to fill in the details” (32). 

The second chapter describes the speech community of Pennsylvania German and
its history, and gives an overview of previous research. Stolberg especially
points to the diversity within the speech community that is crucial for a
sociolinguistic investigation and has been often neglected by earlier research
(56). The most important distinction is the religious and cultural difference
between Anabaptist, or Plain people and non-sectarian, Non-Plain people, which
greatly influences the status of PG and its standing in the language contact
situation (38f). While both varieties of PG (Plain and Non-Plain) exhibit
interference from English (39), the relative isolation of the Plain PG
speakers preserved the dialect for a longer time.  Furthermore, PG is
influenced by varying language repertoires and language uses (58). The Plain
PG community, in which PG is the first acquired language, uses PG only in
spoken discourse within the family and the same confessional in-group, while
American English (AE) is spoken with everybody else. Stolberg describes the
situation as a “stable diglossia” (41). In addition, the most conservative
groups of the Plain people (Old Order Amish, Old Order Mennonites) use a
special form of High German (Amish High German) as a sacral and written
language.  In the Non-Plain community, AE and PG are either acquired at the
same time, or, especially for the younger generations, AE is the first
language. This situation endangers the continuing existence of PG within this
group (43). As the Plain PG speakers do not produce written data in PG,
Stolberg focuses in her study on the Non-Plain community (94).

  Chapter 3 gives an overview of the corpus, which is comprised of texts from
newspapers and magazines between 1868 and 1992 (97). Stolberg uses the time of
production as the crucial variable to show the diachronic development.
Additional data was used as a supplement, such as another set of written PG
data as a control set for possible outcomes, and spoken data and internet
resources to determine language attitudes and language choice (97f). The data
originated in the South-East of Pennsylvania (101). 

Chapters 4 through 8 focus on the analysis of the data as well as on the
interpretation of the results. Chapter 4 is concerned with lexical
semantic-syntactic changes in the PG data, specifically the relationship
between form-meaning and form-function. Stolberg states that there are several
changes found in PG that exhibit a reduction of the form inventory which
“leads to less transparent form-function correlations” (112), e.g. case
syncretism. It remains debatable, however, if these changes are due to
language contact. By comparing her data with Palatinate German data (the
source dialect of PG) from the time of the departure of PG, Stolberg
determines that the contact is not the main reason for case syncretism, since
Palatinate German also shows tendencies towards a reduction in the case system
(116). However, the data shows several changes in lexical-semantic patterns
with structural consequences that might be triggered by the contact situation:
loss of surface reflexive marking of verbs, additional options for a
transitive/causative use of intransitive verbs, additional options for
intransitive use of transitive verbs, and the avoidance of impersonal
constructions (130). The affected verbs follow the argument structures of
their AE counterparts, for example the non-reflexive use of “wunnere” (to
wonder) – the Standard German counterpart is reflexive (sich wundern) (135).
Stolberg observes three determining factors that promote the non-reflexive
usage: the similarity in form between German and English, “the availability of
a non-reflexive variant within German” (135), and a high frequency in usage.
The first factor, convergence with individual AE cognates and AE semantic
counterparts, can be seen in all four changes of verb patterns, in addition to
a general tendency towards a simplification of form-function relationships in
PG (176). 

Stolberg identifies similar tendencies in the four following chapters, which
focus on syntactic changes. Chapter 5 introduces clause structures in Standard
German and AE and provides a brief generative analysis of these clause
structures. Chapter 6 presents the PG data for word order in subordinate
complement clauses with “dass” (that), while Chapters 7 and 8 describe
patterns of extraposition of prepositional phrases and prepositional
stranding, respectively. All of these patterns show partial overlap between PG
and English, especially in “gray areas” (178). Stolberg refers here to Clyne
(1987) who defines “gray areas” as parallels between two languages, e.g.
cognates or surface word order, that make it difficult “to determine which
language an item or a structure belongs to in the view of the speaker” (178).
This could be the case for the position of the verb in subordinate compliment
clauses with “dass” as presented in Chapter 6. While the majority of these
clauses in the PG data (82.5%) follow the Standard German verb-final word
order (188), some sentences do not exhibit the same surface structure as is
assumed for the underlying structure, which might indicate that the verb has
been moved (205). Most of the sentences with V2 word order were found in the
most recent texts. Stolberg concludes that “this distribution means that there
is a qualitative change taking place in dass+V2 structures” (206).

The difference between surface and underlying structure in PG word order also
plays a major role in Chapter 7, which presents the extraposition of
prepositional phrases to the postverbal field. According to Stolberg, the
listener can interpret these phrases either as SVO word order as in English,
or as an “underlying SOV word order with an extraposed PP in the postverbal
field” (208) as it is grammatical in German. While Palatinate German also
tends  to extrapose prepositional phrases, the PG data exhibits more relevant
V2 clauses with the PP in the postverbal field (213). 81,4% of all PPs occur
in postverbal position (214). Stolberg concludes that the contact with English
influences the PP-extraposition with the result of an “increased use of the
gray area between German and English” (225).

Chapter 8 describes the last syntactic pattern, preposition stranding, which
is well- established in English, e.g. “This man you can rely on” (230), but
more restricted in German. According to Stolberg, the patterns found in the PG
data differ from the stranding patterns in both languages (236). Most of the
split-off prepositions are found in the postverbal field which shows the
difference from the German middle-field stranding (241). However, most
stranded prepositions are, similar to German, so called R-pronoun PPs, “a
preposition preceded by dr-/da-/de-“ (240), and not bare prepositions as would
be expected in AE. Thus, these findings support the vulnerability of gray
areas between German and English. Stolberg concludes for all syntactic
patterns of change that “the PG word order has been adjusted to parallel the
respective English word order, while changes in the underlying (deep)
structure do not have to be assumed” (271). 

Chapter 9 summarizes the findings and draws a general conclusion based on the
theories by Thomason/Kaufman and Van Coetsem. Since World War 2, AE has been
established as the dominant language among the Non-Plain PG speakers. However,
there is no substantial structural change evident in the PG data presented by
Stolberg, as “most instances of surface convergence with English are well
covered by structures attested in related varieties of German” (282).
Furthermore, the diachronic overview of the data does not show a linear
development due to the language contact as Thomason and Kaufman (1988)
suggest. While the early data shows lexical borrowing and code-switching, the
data from the late 20th century exhibits significantly less lexical borrowing
and more general patterns of convergence in syntactic structures (283).
Stolberg explains this development with extralinguistic factors, namely the
attitude towards German and the prestige of PG within the group, and states
that “contact-induced language change cannot be predicted” (284).

EVALUATION

The monograph gives an excellent overview of the general state and history of
Pennsylvania German, as well as of a variety of semantic-syntactic and
syntactic tendencies. Stolberg’s diachronic approach to written data provides
a new perspective on the current state of the dialect. She carefully discusses
the limitations to her study, such as the specific genre that she used
(newspaper articles), and addresses ambivalent data. Furthermore, Stolberg
also mentions the problems that might arise due to her additional data used
for comparison, specifically Standard German. Standard German is not one of
the source dialects of PG. While this poses difficulties when considering
lexical items, a comparison between Standard German and PG is still possible
in syntactic investigations, “taking into account that the basic syntactic
structures of PG and StG […] are the same” (57). 

It is unfortunate for historical linguistics that it sometimes must rely on
patchy data (see Hernández-Campoy and Schilling 2014 on this problem in
historical sociolinguistics). A comparison to the standard language is often
inevitable, since this variety provides the most data and is diachronically
well-documented. Stolberg implements these comparisons carefully and
acknowledges problems that might arise (244).   The state of Pennsylvania
German and diachronic overviews of language varieties is currently
widely-discussed (see most recently Louden 2016). Within this discussion,
Stolberg makes a great case for the historically and socially developed state
of PG and draws a dynamic picture of a language variety in a contact
situation.  As such, this book can be recommended to those interested in PG,
German dialectology, and historical sociolinguistics.

REFERENCES

Clyne, M. 1987. Constraints on code-switching: How universal are they? In:
Linguistics 25. 739-764. 

Hernández-Campoy, J. and Schilling, N. 2014. “The application of the
quantitive paradigm to Historical Sociolinguistics: Problems with the
generalizability problem.” In: The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics.
Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre (Eds.). Oxford: Blackwell. 63-79.

Louden, M.L. 2016. Pennsylvania Dutch: The story of an American language.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.  

Myers-Scotton, C. 2002. Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and
grammatical outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Thomason, S.G. and Kaufman, T. 1988. Language contact, creolization and
genetic linguistics. Berkeley/ Los Angeles: University of California Press. 

Van Coetsem, F. 2002. A general and unified theory of the transmission process
in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.

Weinreich, U./ Labov, W./ Herzog, M.I. 1968. Empirical foundations for a
theory of language change. In: W.P. Lehmann/ Y. Malkiels (Eds.). Directions
for Historical Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. 95-195.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Katrin Fuchs is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Germanic Studies at the
University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation investigates orthographic
changes in 16th and 17th century German court documents under a historical
sociolinguistic viewpoint. Other academic interests include language contact,
language islands, language ideology, and language policies.





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