Das Korpus Deutsch in Namibia (DNam): Eine Ressource für die Kontakt-, Variations- und Soziolinguistik

Zimmer, Christian; Wiese, Heike; Simon, H.; Zappen-Thomson, Marianne; Bracke, Yannic; Stuhl, Britta; Schmidt, Thomas

doi:10.37307/j.1868-775x.2020.03.03

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Therefore, a direct comparison without referring to the differences in methodological design is not advisable. Still, the results complement each other nicely as Bracke's study gives insights into transferred lexical items in free conversation while this study sheds more light on a subset of these items, i.e., transferred vocatives, in a different mode, i.e., CMC (see Zimmer et al 2020). Bracke hints to an interesting pattern: in his data, young girls behave like adult men while boys behave like women when applying (Bracke 2021: 113, 120).…”

Section: Notessupporting

confidence: 67%

Multilingualism from Manuscript to 3D

Włodarczyk¹,

Tyrkkö²,

Adamczyk³

2023

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One of the most striking principles quantitative linguistic research has unveiled, is the Gender Effect. The term indicates that "in stable sociolinguistic stratification, men tend to use more non-standard forms than women do," although, they are "the innovators in linguistic change" (Peersman et al. 2016; cf. also Labov 1990). Scientific discussion about the effect has been long and extensive starting, in the 1960s with the rise of variationist sociolinguistics (Tagliamonte 2012, 32; cf. also Peersman et al. 2016: 2) and more recently with a focus on gender as an identity marker (Smakman and Heinrich 2017: 1 ff). However, little research has been done on the Gender Effect within multimodal and multilingual (multimulti) environments. How do men and women deploy their multilingual repertoires among different modes? Does the type of communicative mode have an effect on the gender-related use of borrowings in multilingual settings? And if so, what are the underlying pragmatic and sociolinguistic functions that drive such differences? This chapter tackles these questions by investigating multilingual practices among the German-Namibian diaspora in Germany. 1 Their main linguistic repertoire includes German, Afrikaans, English and Namdeutsch, a non-standard variety of German that has evolved through language contact in Namibia and draws on borrowings and structures from Afrikaans and English as donor languages (Kellermeier-Rehbein 2016: 228; cf. also for the linguistic characteristics of

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Section: Notessupporting

confidence: 67%

Multilingualism from Manuscript to 3D

Włodarczyk¹,

Tyrkkö²,

Adamczyk³

2023

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“…For the investigation of non-canonical bare NPs in German, we used additional data from the DNam corpus of German in Namibia ( Wiese et al, 2017 ; Zimmer et al, 2020 ) 8 , in order to compare two groups of h-German speakers. Namibian German represents a rare case of h-German that is still grounded in a vital speech community that systematically uses German not only in informal, but also in formal settings.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum

et al. 2022

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We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.

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“…Production of formal and informal registers is analyzed in project C07, too. We use data from Namibian German elicited by the “Language Situations” method (LangSit; Wiese, 2020 ), which is collected in the DNam corpus of German in Namibia (Zimmer et al, 2020 ). The LangSit method elicits naturalistic, ecologically valid, and controlled register-differentiated data, and it can be applied across different communicative situations, languages, speaker groups, and settings.…”

Section: Experimental Approaches: Isolating Intra-individual Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods

et al. 2023

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In the present review paper by members of the collaborative research center “Register: Language Users' Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation” (CRC 1412), we assess the pervasiveness of register phenomena across different time periods, languages, modalities, and cultures. We define “register” as recurring variation in language use depending on the function of language and on the social situation. Informed by rich data, we aim to better understand and model the knowledge involved in situation- and function-based use of language register. In order to achieve this goal, we are using complementary methods and measures. In the review, we start by clarifying the concept of “register”, by reviewing the state of the art, and by setting out our methods and modeling goals. Against this background, we discuss three key challenges, two at the methodological level and one at the theoretical level: (1) To better uncover registers in text and spoken corpora, we propose changes to established analytical approaches. (2) To tease apart between-subject variability from the linguistic variability at issue (intra-individual situation-based register variability), we use within-subject designs and the modeling of individuals' social, language, and educational background. (3) We highlight a gap in cognitive modeling, viz. modeling the mental representations of register (processing), and present our first attempts at filling this gap. We argue that the targeted use of multiple complementary methods and measures supports investigating the pervasiveness of register phenomena and yields comprehensive insights into the cross-methodological robustness of register-related language variability. These comprehensive insights in turn provide a solid foundation for associated cognitive modeling.

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Das Korpus Deutsch in Namibia (DNam): Eine Ressource für die Kontakt-, Variations- und Soziolinguistik

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Multilingualism from Manuscript to 3D

Multilingualism from Manuscript to 3D

Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum

Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods

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