scholarly journals Der onymische Artikel im Schweizerdeutschen in seiner Funktion als Genusmarker

2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Melanie Bösiger

In Swiss German dialects first names are commonly used with a preceding article. Historically, the function of these so-called onymic articles was to show the name’s case. They first arose when inflection of first names had been omitted and case was thus no longer expressed in suffixes. The data gathered in 2016 in an online survey for the research project “Das Anna und ihr Hund” indicate that today the function of reflecting the case is hardly relevant. However, it is important to the speakers to emphasize the nameʼs grammatical gender. The three grammatical genders in (Swiss) German are feminine, masculine, and neuter. Typically, the ono­nymic articles’ grammatical gender corresponds to their referents’ biological gender, i. e. feminine articles for women’s names, masculine articles for men’s names. But sometimes neuter articles are used with female or, less often, with male names. Therefore, the same first name can have different grammatical genders that are indicated with an onymic article, e. g. d Anna (f.) or s Anna (n.). The choice of the article depends on the speaker, the situation, the referent, and other factors. Based on these observations, it is argued that marking grammatical gender is the onymic article’s main function and marking case is secondary.

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (5) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Andreas Klein ◽  
Kristin Kopf

It is commonly agreed that the plural -s has become a part of Standard German inflection, yet in dialects such as Alemannic it is often seen as an intruder. We challenge this view based on data from a written survey amongst speakers of Swiss German dialects. Our analysis of pluralised loanwords (e. g. Mango) and abbreviations (e. g. WG ‘flat share’) shows a strong effect of both speakers’ age and grammatical gender that points towards a progressive integration of the plural -s into the dialectal system. While masculine and neuter nouns can express number syntagmatically (using articles that differ in singular and plural), feminine nouns rely heavily on suffixes (as the definite article is d’ in both cases). A comparison of the -s plural with traditional dialectal plurals shows clear advantages for -s plurals in both cue strength (output) and scope (input) of the plural schema. We argue that it is due to this that feminine nouns show a significantly higher percentage of -s plurals compared with masculine and neuter nouns in speakers aged 25 and above. The difference disappears for younger speakers while the overall number of -s plurals increases drastically. Combined, we have an apparent time scenario that shows how the -s plural is first borrowed with nouns that rely on overt plural markers, and later spreads to most loans and other words with non-native structure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-208
Author(s):  
Helen Christen ◽  
Gerda Baumgartner

Data of the dialect research project “Das Anna und ihr Hund. Weibliche Rufnamen im Neutrum” indicate the important role of diminutive names in terms of the historical develop-ment and consolidation of the onymic neuter gender assignment. The focus in the present arti-cle lies therefore on the forms and the use of diminutive names (e. g. Anneli, Ruedi) in Swiss-German dialects. Based on diachronic evidence from literary works and regional dictionaries, differences in the diminution of male and female names are historically traced and substantiated. It is for prag-matic reasons that female kinship names (e. g. Mami) are crystallized to be the last bastion for the neutral gender assignment which opens up new perspectives on the diachronic emergence of this phenomenon. The consideration of further onymic suffixes in the outlook brings up a debate on the disagreement of gender and sex which is considered to be a possible objective of the suf-fixation itself.


2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Simone Busley ◽  
Julia Fritzinger

In numerous German dialects and in Luxembourgish, female first names can take on both feminine and neuter gender agreement, thus leading to gender variation on a paradigmatical level and gender mismatches on a syntactical level. This is contradictory to canonical conceptions of gender systems and can be interpreted as a case of degrammaticalization. Here, grammatical gender has been refunctionalized as a socio-pragmatic marker which indicates the age and status of the woman referred to as well as the speaker’s relationship to her. In some varieties, regrammaticalization of gender assignment resulted in female first names always taking neuter agreements. The present article focusses on the reconstruction of the stages of degrammaticalization and regrammaticalization of gender assignment based on data of the research project “Das Anna und ihr Hund – Weibliche Rufnamen im Neutrum”. Analyses of the data indicate that personal pronouns as the targets most prone to differing agreement played a key role in this process.


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Chapman

In the light of current morphological theory, this paper examines the analogical levelling of long/short vowel oppositions in certain inflectional and derivational alternations in a number of modern Swiss German dialects. The regular occurrence of levelling is shown to depend on the extent to which the alternation in question is ‘perceptually salient’ (Chapman 1994). That is, if the semantic relation between base and derivative is transparent and the derivative is uniformly marked, analogical levelling occurs regularly. On the basis of this evidence it is argued that all morphological alternations, both inflectional and derivational, are listed in the lexicon and that each one is assigned a different status according to its degree of perceptual salience.


2019 ◽  
Vol 145 (3) ◽  
pp. 1929-1929
Author(s):  
Elisa Pellegrino ◽  
Volker Dellwo
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 512
Author(s):  
Lili Luo ◽  
Marie Kennedy ◽  
Kristine Brancolini ◽  
Michael Stephens

This study examines the role of online communities in connecting and supporting librarian researchers, through the analysis of member activities in the online community for academic librarians that attended the 2014 Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). The 2014 IRDL cohort members participated in the online community via Twitter and a Facebook group page. A content analysis of their posts and an online survey among them identified different patterns of engagement and four primary types of content—posts related to completing the IRDL research project required for each cohort member, announcements about research-related resources and opportunities, posts reminiscing about the IRDL experience, and arrangements of conference attendance and meetups. Implications for successfully designing online communities for librarian researchers are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 881 (1) ◽  
pp. 012014
Author(s):  
F Septiandiani ◽  
A Nurzukhrufa ◽  
H Munirwan ◽  
A Setiawan

Abstract The integration of theory and practice in the learning process has become the foundation of architectural education. In learning a sustainable environment, direct involvement of students in the environment to increase awareness of sustainable development is fundamental. Internship is a learning process where students can develop themselves outside of lecture hours. The impact of the COVID-19 storm demanded new education methods in the learning process. The architecture study program of the Sumatra Institute of Technology (ITERA) has started an internship on a research project for the past 1 year. This paper aims to investigate the extent of students’ awareness in terms of environment sustainability while they undertake the research-based internship. While the research objectives are: to examine the attitude of students in delivering sustainable thinking; to investigate the sustainability knowledge that obtained by the students during the internship, and to acknowledge the student skills regarding environment sustainability thinking This exploratory research uses content analysis method and conduct an online survey from students involved in the internship. It is concluded that the internship through research project improve social skills, context analysis and environmental awareness, but there is a need for improvement in the delivery of lectures related to real strategies and implementation in realizing environmental sustainability.


2017 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Oberholzer

The relation between Swiss German dialects and Standard German has been subject to public and scholarly debates for over 100 years. Among the most frequently discussed points are the appropriateness of spoken Standard German in different contexts and the attitudes of Swiss people towards the two varieties. This paper summarises the results of a completed research project (Oberholzer in Vorb.), which surveyed language use and language attitudes in Swit-zerland for a specific group of speakers: pastors and priests working in German-speaking Switzerland. The paper shows how pastors and priests make use of the diglossic situation and the possibility to code-switch in Sunday services. The use of Standard German emerges as an important communicative resource in German-speaking Switzerland. In addition, real language use and intended language use match to a high degree; this shows the degree of language awareness of this particular group in a diglossic situation. Furthermore, a relatively new approach – the assumption that several mental models of High German coexist – helps to show differentiated language attitudes and to contradict some of the most common stereotypes regarding Standard German in German-speaking Switzerland. The attitudes towards Standard German in this study are significantly more positive than those observed in previous studies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (5) ◽  
pp. 99-136
Author(s):  
Karin Madlener ◽  
Mirjam Weder ◽  
Sophie Dettwiler

How can we measure dialectal constructional productivity? Which factors determine degrees of productivity and the acceptability of creative ad hoc coinages in the domain of derivational processes? Based on data from a pilot survey (n=80), we discuss a range of factors influencing degrees of productivity/creativity for the denominal -(e)le-verb pattern (e. g., käffele, apéröle, ipödle, kungfule) in Swiss German dialects. This morphological pattern is currently highly productive, as indicated by substantial numbers of creative ad hoc coinages (oral and written evidence) as well as our participants’ acceptability judgements (for both isolated verbs and verbs in sentences) and their elicited productions (meaning paraphrases and sentence contexts for ad hoc coinages). We discuss different types of evidence for constructional productivity, based on quantitative and qualitative data. Our data indicates that schema-based frequency/familiarity effects and analogy-based pattern extension contribute to the pattern’s productivity. The fact that the verbs’ constructional contexts partly influence their acceptability indicates that the derivational pattern stretches beyond the traditional domain of morphology such that morphological, semantic, and syntactic patterns jointly determine degrees of constructional productivity.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document