Jessica Anderson and Dr. Laura Catharine Smith, German and Slavic
My research is to examine the actual structure that dictates the shape of plural formation in German, and why in some dialects we see a failure to consistently form the plural using the method present in the standard language. Using previous research along with new data gathered from the Pfeffer Corpus, our goal was to examine the varying plural forms attested and gather a clearer picture of dialectal differences.
One of the problems we had found in studying plural forms was that much of the research available focuses on the standard language, with little evidence from the various dialects. Our desire is to gather the spoken dialect samples from the recordings made (recorded in West German, East German, Austria and Switzerland during the 1960s and 1970s). Due to the amount of information contained on the tapes received by my mentor Dr. Smith, this research is an ongoing project. We first had to approach the digitization of the tapes, and then they had to be transcribed so that their content could be analyzed. This part of the process is more time consuming than originally thought, but all progress made helps us to see more of the picture.
Through the research we have gathered thus far, we have seen patters of linguistic isoglosses that do not necessarily conform to accepted dialect boundaries. This is an exciting discovery, suggesting that there may be a need to reanalyze some of these dialect areas and what sound changes take place there, causing the differences in plural formations.
Using the research we had gathered, Dr. Smith and I presented an abstract to the sixteenth Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC), which was accepted. We presented our research at the conference held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last spring. Through participation in this conference we were able to collaborate with others whose research touches the same areas, and receive valuable feedback and questions which help to guide continued research.
Being an ORCA recipient has enabled me to focus on a very specific academic interest and invest time into researching an area of linguistics which has not yet received wide attention and publication. As we continue our research, we hope to find further support for the linguistic isoglosses we have outlined, and further understanding into the associated phonetic and phonological changes.