Research
Research
This page provides information on research projects in the fields of literature and linguistics in Low German and Sater Frisian and lists current and completed dissertations.
Research projects from the...
Ongoing dissertations
Marina Frank, M.A.
Phoneme collapse in spoken Standard German? Experimental phonetic studies on /eː/ and /εː/ in German (working title)
The coincidence of the phonemes /εː/ (as in bear, salle) and /eː/ (as in berry, soul) in Standard German and especially in North German is one of the most controversial issues in the phonology of German and is frequently discussed in the research literature. However, the question arises as to whether the postulated merger of /eː/ and /ɛː/ is actually a completemerger or a perceptual merger with retained distinction in sound production(near-merger). The planned dissertation aims to investigate the production and auditory and neural perception of the two phonemes on an empirical basis in order to help clarify this question. To this end, three studies will be carried out: Study I is an acoustic analysis of an existing corpus that covers the entire German language area and is thus suitable for variationist linguistic questions. In Study II, the production and perception of the two sounds are linked in an experiment. Finally, in Study III, a neurophonetic study is carried out. The dissertation will thus provide a comprehensive investigation on a broad data basis, incorporating various methods and taking various influencing factors into account.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Jörg Peters
Fallon bag
Sociocultural Influence on Sound Change among Mennonite Plautdietsch-speakers in the Central Chaco (working title)
Historically, Plautdietsch speaking Mennonite communities are insular and maintain their language and traditional way of life. Although the Mennonites of Paraguay's Central Chaco are geographically insular, many of them embrace modern technology and are open to change. Their close contact with external communities and changing cultural ideologies enable contact-induced sound changes to occur. This research aims to shed light on how communities with the same mother tongue and exposure to the same foreign languages undergo distinct linguistic changes owing to their individual histories, sociocultural ideologies and linguistic practices. The focus of the research is on phonetic and phonological aspects of linguistic change as influenced by the languages with which the Plautdietsch-speakers in the Central Chaco have had extensive contact. Audio recordings in the form of interviews were collected from over 70 participants among three communities in Paraguay. The interviews were designed to elicit sociocultural information and specific phonemes in Plautdietsch. The phonologies of the languages involved, esp. High German and Spanish, as well as the sociocultural contexts of the speakers and communities are consulted in conjunction with the phonetic and phonological analyses of the collected data. To this end, the study is conducted and analysed from a sociocultural linguistics perspective, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Jörg Peters
Nikos Saul, M. A.
Nationalism in Low German literature of the 19th century. On the relationship between Low German poetry and nation-building between 1840 and 1890 (working title)
New Low German literature entered the German-language literary discourse in the 1850s, at the time of the nation-building of the German Empire. Low German texts had already made reference to nation-building events before then. At the same time, there was controversy in contemporary language discourse as to whether efforts to promote Low German had a separatist effect or supported nation-building. In this field of tension, the literary contributions in Low German soon reveal a specifically Low German nationalism that attempted to integrate Low German into High German linguistic nationalism. This dissertation project is the first academic overview to examine firstly the development of this Low German nationalism in the first phase of the Low German language and literature movement between 1840 and 1890 on the basis of spatial semantisation in Low German lyrical texts relating to the nation and nation-building, secondly the representation of nation-building in the German Empire in these texts and thirdly the functions attributed to Low German literature for nation-building. Based on the observation of the temporal correlation between the decreasing importance of Low German literature in the literary field and the increase of explicit nationalism in Low German texts, the thesis attempts to find the connection between these phenomena not only in events in the political field, but also in the specifics of the position of Low German literature in the literary field. Moreover, by including otherwise unrecognised Low German texts, the work closes a gap in the historiography of Low German literature.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Doreen Brandt
Completed dissertations
Dr Kristian Berg
Systematic recording of the syntax of spoken Low German
Systematic recording of the syntax of spoken Low German is still a desideratum. For this reason, data will be collected in three different regions of north-western Lower Saxony in order to gain generalisations about the syntax of spoken Low German dialects. The focus will be on nominal phrase syntax - especially the case system and word order. The effects of the collapse of the dative and accusative case in modern Low German on the coding of grammatical relations such as direct and indirect objects will be analysed, and whether the case system as a whole may be in a process of dissolution. With regard to word order, it is to be examined whether case syncretism possibly leads to a stricter word order, as linguistic typological data would suggest.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Jörg Peters
Dr Heike Schoormann
Acoustic characteristics of the vowels of Sater Frisian and its contact languages
The dissertation is part of the DFG project (PE 793/2-1) Lautliche und prosodische Variation im Saterland: Saterfriesisch, Niederdeutsch und Hochdeutsch. The aim of the project is an acoustic-phonetic investigation of the vowel systems of the three West Germanic languages spoken in the Saterland region, focussing on Sater Frisian and its variation. For this purpose, the vowels in the three towns of Strücklingen, Scharrel and Ramsloh are recorded in controlled phonetic sound environments in production experiments. In addition to determining the phonological vowel inventories of the three languages currently assumed in the literature, the aim is to shed light on inter- and intralingual variation phenomena in Sater Frisian vocalism. The vowel systems of the three languages differ in the scope of their phonological inventories. Particular attention will therefore be paid to the distribution of the individual phonemes in the vowel space within the three languages and the effect of the presence of additional monophthong positions on the acoustic-phonetic characterisation of the individual sounds and the overall system will be investigated. Thus, the relationship between inventory size and utilised vowel space as well as the phonetic parameters for the maintenance of distinctive vowel categories in complex systems will be investigated.