Dialectology

The dialectology is a branch of linguistics that deals with the study of dialects. Often the dialectology to sociolinguistics is expected.

History

The Dialect Research in the German language area began in the 18th century. This early study of the dialects resulted mainly in a variety of Idiotika. As the first Dialektologe in the modern sense applies Johann Andreas Schmeller. The Brothers Grimm, German philologist significant, the value of German dialects appreciate a high and went on a dialect words and dialectal variants of words in the German dictionary.

Georg Wenker collected from 1875 first systematically by means of questionnaires all dialects in the German language area. From 1926 to 1956 it was the German Linguistic Atlas (DSA ) on the basis of more than 52,000 questionnaires; the German word atlas ( DWA) is the result of research of the scientist Walther Mitzka.

The dialects preserve the one hand, older forms of language to a greater extent than the high-level language, which is subject to greater national standardization, but on the other hand also show improvements, which the written language closes for the same reason of normativity. Therefore, the earlier and the associated analysis Dialektologie dialects aimed at the reconstruction of the previous forms of speech and has been the subject of Volkstumsforschung.

Since the mid-20th century, after the war, the dialectology turned - under the influence of American and British orientation of the discipline - reinforced with modern linguistic methods to the study of the dialects in their social and pragmatic context, as well as the description of linguistically complex conditions in urban centers and agglomerations.

To dialectology include the dialect dictionaries and local grammars (in most cases the volume and morphology ) perform the dialectal vocabulary and grammar of the dialect of each research area.

Methods

The foundation of any dialectological operation is the collection of material and its publication in dictionaries, grammars and monographs of regions and localities and sound recordings as well as the appearance and illustrate the findings in linguistic atlases.

Importance

The dialectology enjoys particularly in the regions status as a popular science, where dialects and dialects are reasonably high in social standing. Especially in the German-speaking Switzerland is making a considerable contribution to the Dialectology Language and intra-national dialogue with the other language groups. In these areas, is the interest in and contribution to this scientific discipline, as is done by lay people, high. In contrast, the role of dialectology in areas where the dialects are extinct or are in low social prestige, limited to documentation and description. The dialectology may also spoke sustaining or even normative function as in the case of the investigation of the Romansh idioms from which the default language RG emerged.

Criticism

The dialectology has arisen precisely at the time when a uniform High German written language began to enforce, but in no case, however, as opposition. This time at the beginning of the 19th century was of a romantic national thinking, triggered by the ideas of the French Revolution, embossed, who had a public association of the German language area or an association of many German states into a German nation-state to the goal. This should also be underpinned by linguistic philological research. The aim of German studies and language researchers this time, as the brothers Grimm, is to explore the historical origin of the German language and thus the ancestors to this that it can gain a larger state -wide legitimacy was. The dialects were regarded as historical howlers that you wanted to gather in front of their presumed imminent extinction, at least for the archive.

In the 20th century many prominent dialectologists dialectology came into ideological waters of the Hitlerite Nazism and operated mainly as Volkstumsforschung to give irredentist demands. In this sense, especially the dialects of ethnic Germans were studied, so that the German population groups living outside the state borders of the German Reich, especially the dialects in Silesia, the Sudetenland, Alsace, in Transylvania or the south Bavaria language islands in northern Italy and the Slovenia, but also the dialects of descendants of German immigrant groups such as the Amish in the United States. The dialects within the German Empire and Austria were, however, neglected, if not negated.

After the Second World War changed by the people shifts the German dialect landscape. Although the dialectology tried in the new democracy to break away from their ideological stranglehold, but only in the second half of the 20th century dialectology was revived by younger generations of linguists, while many of the older dialectologists the on their chairs and in respective institutions behaved rather cautious. Most publications on the topic of dialects in the German language emerged during this period rather by interested laymen and less of academic linguists; the German Swiss were the exception here.