Dialectology and Linguistic Diffusion.

Dialect variation brings together language synchrony and diachrony in a unique
way. Language change is typically initiated by a group of speakers in a particular
locale at a given point in time, spreading from that locus outward in
successive stages that reflect an apparent time depth in the spatial dispersion
of forms. Thus, there is a time dimension that is implied in the layered boundaries,
or isoglosses, that represent linguistic diffusion from a known point of
origin. Insofar as the synchronic dispersion patterns are reflexes of diachronic
change, the examination of synchronic points in a spatial continuum also may
open an important observational window into language change in progress.
In its ideal form, the spatial-temporal interaction may be displayed through
an appeal to a version of the wave model, in which a change originating at a
given locale at a particular point in time spreads from that point in successive
layers in a way likened to the waves in water that radiate from a central point
of contact.1 As a hypothetical example of the spatial-temporal reflex, let us
assume that there are three linguistic innovations, or rule changes, within a
language: R1, R2, and R3. We assume further that all three changes originate
at the same geographical location, the focal area for the language change. Each
one starts later temporally than the other, so R1 is the earliest innovation, R2
the next, and R3 the third (figure 24.1).
At time i, R1 is present at the location where the change originated but not
in outlying areas.2 At time ii, R1 may have spread to an outlying area while
another innovation, R2, may have been initiated in the focal area. At this
point, both R1 and R2 are present at the focal site, R1 alone is present in the
immediate outlying area, and neither R1 nor R2 may have spread to an area
further removed from the focal area. At time iii, the first change, R1, may
have spread to the more distant area, but not the later changes, R2 and R3.
In this hypothetical pattern of diffusion, we see that the successive dialect
areas marked by isoglosses – that is, lines delimiting the boundaries of each of
these rules – in geographical space reflect successive stages of language change
over time.

IMAGEN
Figure 24.1 The wave model of linguistic diffusion

The model represented in figure 24.1 is conceptually appealing, but it is also
simplistic and it often ends up begging essential descriptive and explanatory
questions about the empirically documented facts of dialect diffusion. What
are the social and linguistic mechanisms whereby forms spread, and what is
the transitional phase like? What kinds of diffusional configurations result
from the process? And, given that it has been maintained that the dialect
boundaries represented by isoglosses are “a convenient fiction existing in an
abstract moment in time” (Carver 1987: 13; and see our discussion of this point
below), what might an empirically motivated, dynamic model of diffusion
look like? To a large extent, our discussion will concern itself with establishing
the kinds of conditions and qualifications that need to be set on an ideal, abstract
model of diffusion in order to connect it with the empirical facts of dialect
distribution and to delimit the documentable patterns of diffusion. Our focus
is thus on the transition and embedding questions with respect to language change
rather than the actuation question, which addresses why language changes take
place to begin with (Weinreich et al. 1968).3
Although dialect diffusion is usually associated with linguistic innovations
among populations in geographical space, a horizontal dimension, it is essential
to recognize that diffusion may take place on the vertical axis of social space as
well. In fact, in most cases of diffusion, the vertical and horizontal dimensions
operate in tandem. Within a stratified population a change will typically be
initiated in a particular social class and spread to other classes in the population
from that point, even as the change spreads in geographical space. For
example, Labov’s research (Labov 1966, 1972a; Labov et al. 1972) indicates that
much change in American English is initiated in the working class and lower
middle class and spreads from that point to other classes.
We focus on the diffusion of dialect forms per se, but there is a fundamental
sense in which the transmission of linguistic innovation is framed by the broader
question of the diffusion of innovations. For example, Rogers (1983) argues that
there are at least five factors that influence the diffusion of customs, ideas, and
practices: (i) the phenomenon itself; (ii) communications networks; (iii) distance;
(iv) time; and (v) social structure. While linguistic structures present a
unique type of “phenomenon” for the examination of diffusion, the other factors
influencing diffusion, such as communications networks, distance, and social structure, are hardly unique to the dispersion of linguistic innovations. In fact,
our ensuing discussion should confirm the essential role of all of these factors in
linguistic diffusion, just as they figure prominently in other types of diffusion.
The framing of linguistic diffusion within a more general model of diffusion
however, should not be taken to mean that the social or “external” factors that
affect linguistic structure do so in ways that simply parallel their influence
with respect to other cultural phenomena. We maintain that there is a sense in
which the role of social factors in language change is fashioned to accommodate
the structure of language vis-à-vis other cultural phenomena. For example,
the current sociolinguistic position on the origin of change “universally points
to the working class and lower middle class as the originators of sound change
in contemporary American English” (Kroch 1978). This locus for the initiation
of change is quite different from that observed for other cultural phenomena.
With respect to technical advances, we know that middle-class groups, not
working-class groups, are the primary innovators of change so that primary
social diffusion comes from the top (Rogers 1983). For linguistic phenomena,
innovations initiated by the elite tend to be limited to borrowings from external
prestige groups (Guy 1988); members of higher social classes do not introduce
changes from within the language. The current sociolinguistic position on
the locus of change also differs from the traditional position within linguistics
(cf. Bloomfield 1933: 476; Joos 1952; Fisher 1958) that the lower classes strive to
emulate changes initiated by the upper classes in language as they do in other
cultural phenomena.
Furthermore, given the “natural” linguistic basis of many changes originating
in the vernacular speech of the working classes, it is convenient for a dominant
group to mark itself as linguistically distinct from the underclass by resisting
or inhibiting the changes toward “more natural” processes proffered by vernacular
dialect speakers. In such a model, natural linguistic changes spread
from the lower classes to the higher social classes when they are ratified
and evaluated as socially acceptable. The examination of linguistic dispersion
through a population may thus inform a more general model of diffusion
about the interaction of the innovative “phenomenon” and the social and
demographic factors that enable the process of diffusion.
1 Orderly Variation and Diffusion
All change necessarily involves variation.4 Speakers do not suddenly adopt
a new form as a categorical replacement for an older form, whether the form
involves a gradual, imperceptible change in the phonetic value of a vowel
within a continuum of phonetic space or an abrupt, readily perceptible change
involving the metathesis of consonants or the linear realignment of constituents
within a syntactic phrase. Instead, there is a period of variation and coexistence
between new and old forms in the process of change. This transitional period of fluctuation has often been ignored in historical linguistics under
the assumption that language change cannot be directly observed. Further,
variation in language has traditionally been dismissed as unsystematic and
irrelevant, a reflection of linguistic performance rather than competence and,
hence, of no bearing on models of language change or diffusion. However,
as Weinreich et al. put it: “The key to a rational conception of language change
– indeed, of language itself – is the possibility of describing orderly differentiation
in a language serving a community . . . in a language serving a community,
it is the absence of structured heterogeneity that would be dysfunctional”
(1968: 101).

TABLE
Table 24.1 Variation model of change.

An empirically based model of the dynamic process of diffusion must
recognize a variable transition period in the spread of dialect forms. However,
this transitional period is not one of chaotic, random fluctuation; instead, it
is a stage of systematic variability, or “ordered heterogeneity” that guides
language change meaningfully toward completion. Following Bailey (1973),
we hypothesize that there are a number of stages that change goes through in
the transition from the categorical use of one variant to its categorical replacement
by another. In between these two points are variable stages that show
systematic constraints sensitive to internal linguistic and external social factors.
Furthermore, the systematic variability of fluctuating forms will correlate
synchronic relations of “more” and “less” to diachronic relations of “earlier” or
“later” stages of the change. This is perhaps best shown by setting up a simple,
ideal model of the stages of change, as we do in table 24.1. Table 24.1 shows
the change from the categorical use of one form, X, to another, Y, in two
different linguistic environments, E1 and E2. Fluctuation between the forms is
indicated by X/Y.
Although the variable stages of change do not always follow the ideal
model for a number of reasons (cf. Bailey 1973; Fasold 1990; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1996), there is ample documentation in the quantitative sociolinguistic
literature (Labov 1980a, 1994) to affirm the general applicability of
this model of change to a broadly based set of language situations.
The notion of linguistic “environment” in such a model may be defined in
terms of a structural context, such as a syllable position in the case of phonological
change or a phrasal configuration in a syntactic one, or it may be
defined in terms of lexical sets. In other words, the model itself is impartial
to the Neogrammarian–lexical diffusion controversy that has underscored the
ongoing development of theories of phonological change over the last couple
of decades (see Labov 1981, 1994; Kiparsky 1988, 1995b (reprinted in this
volume); Hale, this volume). Furthermore, it should also be understood that
the notion of variability in this model applies to both intra-speaker and interspeaker
variation. In other words, an individual speaker will go through a
period of fluctuation between the old and new variant, and speakers within a
given speech community will show variation from speaker to speaker with
respect to the use of the new and old variant.
To illustrate, consider the case of h in English words such as hit [hIt] for it
[It] and hain’t [hent] for ain’t [ent].5 There is ample documentation (Pyles and
Algeo 1982; Jones 1989) that h was present in these words in earlier forms of
English and that it is still found to some extent in isolated regions of the
United States such as Appalachia, the Ozarks, and some Eastern coastal islands
(Wolfram and Christian 1976; Wolfram et al. 1997). At one point, h was found
invariantly in these items in both phrasally stressed syllables (e.g., Hít’s the one
I like) and unstressed syllables (e.g., I líke hit).6 The occurrence of the h in these
items then began to fluctuate (sometimes h occurred and sometimes not in
the production of a given speaker) in unstressed syllables while it was still
maintained invariantly in stressed syllables. Next, the h was variably deleted
in both unstressed and stressed syllables, but it was more frequently deleted
in unstressed syllables, where the change first started. Through time, the h was
completely lost in unstressed syllables while it was variably deleted in stressed
syllables. And finally, h was lost in both stressed and unstressed syllables
categorically. The stages of this change are summarized in table 24.2, using h
to indicate the categorical presence of h, h/Ø to indicate its variable presence,
and Ø to indicate categorical absence.
Among American English dialects today, stages 3 and 4 are still represented
in various isolated rural vernacular varieties and stage 5 is current mainstream
standard English usage, where the loss of h in it is complete.7 As found in this
example, the dialect differences in the use of initial h indicated among different
sets of speakers represent an ongoing change at different stages in its progression.
Although table 24.2 presents a simplified picture, given other social and
linguistic complexities involved in the distribution of this trait, it serves as a
model of the progressive steps that typically characterize the orderly dispersion
of a dialect form, as well as a model of a language change still in progress in
some dialect areas.
The lectal–temporal relation of tables 24.1 and 24.2 is necessarily based upon
the apparent time assumption, which has become a basic analytical construct within sociolinguistics over the past three decades (Labov 1963, 1994; Chambers
1995; Bailey et al. 1991). The fundamental assumption of the apparent
time construct is that, other things being equal (e.g., social class, dialect contact,
etc.), differences among generations of adults will mirror actual diachronic
developments in language (Bailey et al. 1991). From this perspective, the speech
of each generation is assumed to reflect the language as it existed at the time
when that generation learned the language. While the apparent time construct
has been applied almost exclusively to inter-generational differences within
the same speech-community, it seems appropriate to extend this construct to
the analysis of the geographical dispersion of language change as well (Bailey
et al. 1993). For example, we assume that h-dropping in hit and hain’t represented
in table 24.2 spread from the urban, focal areas of change in the United
States into outlying rural areas in successive stages. The change is complete in
these urban areas and therefore can no longer be observed “in progress.” At
the same time, the change can still be observed in progress in some more rural
areas, as successive generations of speakers exhibit stages 3, 4, and 5. 8.

TABLE 24.2
Table 24.2 Stages of change in the loss of h in (h)it and (h)ain’t in American English.

It is typically assumed in quantitative sociolinguistics that an increase or
decrease in the incidence of a particular linguistic variant in apparent time
indicates an expansion or recession of a change, respectively. Thus, we assume
in table 24.2 that the decreased use of the initial h in it and ain’t by younger
speakers in a given community is indicative of a change toward the loss of the
initial h. While this assumption matches the empirical facts in this instance,
it is not always the case that inter-generational differences reflect unilateral diachronic change. The most obvious exception to the apparent time assumption
is the phenomenon of age-grading, where the use of a form is associated
with a particular stage in the life cycle of a speaker. For example, teenagers
may use a particularized set of lexical items that are associated with this stage
of life; however, these items will be abandoned later in adult life because they
are no longer age-appropriate. Meanwhile, the next generation will proceed
through a similar cycle.
There are more subtle exceptions to the apparent time assumption, namely
reversals and pseudo-reversals of change in progress. These cases require more
elaborate cross-sectional analysis to determine and explain the pattern of change.
One of the best-known instances of a seeming reversal of a change in progress
is that presented by Labov (1963) in his analysis of the raising of the nuclei of
/ay/ and /aw/ in Martha’s Vineyard, an island located off the coast of Massachusetts
that has been a noted vacation spot for generations. Labov demonstrated
that on this island, while older residents showed a movement toward
the lowering of the traditionally raised nuclei of /ay/ and /aw/, middle-aged
speakers reversed this trend. This reversal is maintained to a somewhat lesser
extent by younger speakers, most likely as a way of asserting their islander
identity against mainlanders who flock to the island in ever-increasing numbers.
We have found a pattern of raising and backing for the nucleus of the /ay/
vowel on the Outer Banks island of Ocracoke, located off the coast of North
Carolina, which suggests, at first glance, that the recession of raised /ay/ is
being reversed in a way parallel to that reported by Labov (1963) for raised
/ay/ and /aw/ in Martha’s Vineyard (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1996).
Ocracoke Island, settled in the early 1700s, is located about 20 miles from
mainland North Carolina and, to this day, is not accessible by road. Thus,
Ocracokers were isolated not only geographically but socially for about two
and a half centuries. Shortly after World War II, the longstanding isolation of
Ocracoke Island came to an end, and a vibrant tourist industry transformed
the island. Historically, the Outer Banks region was characterized by a distinct
production of /ay/ which was close to the phonetic value [Oy] – a production
which has led to their characterization as “hoi toiders,” for high tiders. In
Ocracoke, as in Martha’s Vineyard, there are select groups of middle-aged
speakers with more /ay/-raising than older speakers. This patterning suggests
a reversal of a change in progress that parallels the Martha’s Vineyard case,
especially when coupled with the fact that the lowering of the nucleus of /ay/
to a low central vowel is a process which affected most varieties of English
at some point in history. However, when we compare the youngest group
of speakers with both the middle-aged and oldest generations of speakers
we find a dramatic decrease of [Oy] for the young speakers compared with
the two older age groups. Thus, the overall pattern of change across the three
generations does not show a reversal of a change in progress but a temporary
revitalization of the traditional variant before the complete erosion of [Oy].
The “pseudo-reversal” we observe in Ocracoke is, then, quite different from
the reversal of change reported for Martha’s Vineyard.
The orderly transition of linguistic forms not only shows systematic relationships
between the relative use of variants in terms of earlier and later stages of
spreading forms. Change also tends to show a characteristic trajectory slope in
the relative rate of progression through its transitional stage. Most variationists
(Weinreich et al. 1968; Bailey 1973; Labov 1994) maintain that there is a prototypical
rate of change which applies to the dispersion of new forms. This
pattern appears to apply both to the adoption of new forms on an individual
level (Bailey 1973) and to the spread of forms within a new community
(Weinreich et al. 1968). Change tends to start out at a slow rate, progressing
rapidly in mid-course, and then slowing down again in the last stages, modeling
the trajectory of an S-shaped curve. The change slope applies to change on an
intra-speaker and inter-speaker level; it also applies to change taking place
along a vertical or horizontal plane. As Bailey et al. note:
Like diffusion through the social spectrum, spatial diffusion takes place in a
three-part temporal process that simulates an S curve, with a period of infancy,
of slow expansion, during which the trait is relatively uncommon; a middle
period of rapid expansion after a critical threshold has been reached; and a later
period of saturation and filling in as potential adopters become scarce. (1993: 366).

Such a model has implications for several different dimensions of the diffusion
process, including the observation of diffusion in progress. For example,
the relatively rapid rate of progression through the mid-course of change makes
this period of change less accessible to direct observation than change at its
endpoints. The window for observing change in progress will be open longer
at the endpoints of the change trajectory – when the older or newer form is
clearly predominant – than at a midpoint of change when the fluctuation
between forms is likely to be most balanced between the use of the new and
old variant.
There are also implications about the orderly progression of change and the
role of the lexicon in change that seem related to the progression slope. For
example, the role of the lexicon in phonological change is more prominent at
the incipient and cessation stages of a change than at its midpoint. Furthermore,
we expect relationships of “more” and “less” in the relative use of variants to
be more directly correlated with “earlier” and “later” stages of the change during
the more rapid and maximally generalizable expansion period for new forms
than at the endpoints of the change. In fact, we submit that part of the resolution
of the ongoing controversy over regularity in phonological change may
be related to the trajectory slope of the change.9 From this perspective, irregularity
and lexical diffusion are maximized at the beginning and the end of the
slope and phonological regularity is maximized during the rapid expansion in
the application of the rule change during the mid-course of change. Our study
of the recession of the traditional production of /ay/ as [Oy] in Ocracoke and
the incipient diffusion of unglided [a:] from the Southern mainland bears this
out (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes forthcoming). The adoption of the Southern mainland unglided variant in Ocracoke is, at this point, still quite provisional,
being used in less than 10 percent of the cases where it might be used for /ay/.
And at this stage, it appears to be lexically constrained in its use and still
somewhat resistant to use in the most productive phonological environment
for ungliding indicated in the mainland South, namely, preceding a voiced
segment (Bernstein and Gregory 1994). We thus see that the progression slope
of change may be related to fundamental questions pertaining to the dynamic
process of change and diffusion.

2 Traditional Models of Linguistic Diffusion.

In our quest for a model of linguistic diffusion that fits the empirical reality
of change uncovered by sociolinguists and variationists, it is instructive to
review some traditional models for the spread of language change which
have been proposed within the course of dialectological and sociolinguistic
study. The traditional tree model used to illustrate the evolution of languages
has long been recognized by historical linguists and other language scholars
as inadequate for the description of diffusion (e.g., Hock 1991). This model
presupposes that closely related language varieties may suddenly sever all
contact with one another, diverging from that point into separate languages.
Linguistic innovations occurring in one of these language varieties after such
a split thus will be confined to that variety alone; the other varieties will be
left unaffected, even if they are found in the same geographic vicinity as the
innovating language. Of course, such a tree model is a highly idealized representation
of a far messier linguistic reality, since language varieties in close
proximity, even those genetically dissimilar, often influence one another in
profound ways.
To provide a conceptual picture for the area/rather than strictly genetic
spread of linguistic innovations, Schmidt (1872) developed the wave model
discussed above. To recapitulate briefly, the wave model holds that a given
linguistic innovation radiates outward from a central or focal area, in which
the change is usually carried through to completion. From there, the change
proceeds to a transitional area, in which the change occurs in varying degrees
of completion, depending on the distance from the focal point of change.
That is, a change which reaches an area adjacent to the focal area may occur in
almost all environments for the change, while one which is some distance
removed from this focal area may be effected in only one or two highly favored
environments. We have already seen how the loss of word-initial h in the pronoun
hit in American English spread in this manner from urban focal points.
At an early stage in the process of this change, the focal points for the change
would have been the locus for total or near-total loss of h in hit; surrounding
these urbanized focal areas would have been transitional zones in which the loss of h was incomplete in varying degrees. For example, in an area near the focal area, we may have found complete loss of h in unstressed position
and variable loss in stressed contexts; while in a transitional area farther
removed from the focal point, we might have found that h loss occurred only
variably, and then only in the most highly favored environment – unstressed
position. position.
It seems, then, that we could characterize the transitional area of traditional
wave-model-based approaches to linguistic diffusion, not as one dialect area,
but as a number of subtly different dialect areas. Trudgill (1983) refers to these
varieties as mixed lects – that is, dialectal varieties in which an innovative
variant alternates with a conservative variant. Trudgill (1983) also maintains
that there are so-called fudged lects – dialectal varieties in which the competition
between a new and an older form is resolved in favor of a compromise
form, perhaps a phonetic compromise, in the case of a sound change. For
example, Chambers and Trudgill (1980) note that in the transitional area
between the pronunciation of /u/ as [U] in the North of England and the
innovative [y] pronunciation that occurs in Southern England, we find both
types of intermediate language variety – mixed lects in which /u/ is pronounced
as [U] in some words and as [y] in others, and fudged lects, in which
/u/ takes on the phonetically intermediate value [ƒ]. From the perspective of
systematic variation we discussed earlier, however, a fudged lect seems to be
something of an anomaly, since speakers in an area on which an innovation is
encroaching typically show alternation between two variants – an older form
and the new form – rather than the sudden innovation of a third, compromise
variant. A “compromise” vowel is perhaps best viewed not as a resolution
between two competing vowels, but as a vowel which is currently located, as
it proceeds through a natural rotational pattern (e.g., Labov 1994), at an intermediate
point in phonetic space between a traditional vowel value and an
innovative pronunciation. For example, Trudgill’s “compromise” form [ƒ] is
most likely a synchronic reflex of the diachronic progression of [u] to [y], as
part of a vowel subsystem movement involving the lowering and unrounding
of high back vowels.10
Of course, as we have observed above, the very isoglosses we draw to
divide lectal areas from one another are, at least to some extent, “a convenient
fiction.” That is, dialect areas, particularly the subtly different areas which
comprise the transitional area for a linguistic change, cannot necessarily be
said to have clear-cut boundaries. The isogloss of one particular innovation
almost certainly will not correspond to that of another innovation, even if
each innovation radiates from the same focal point at the same point in time.
And even if we consider only one particular change when drawing our lectal
boundaries, the fact that innovative forms exist side by side with relic forms
throughout the transition area, in higher or lower proportion to the relic forms,
greatly hinders our efforts. For example, if in a given transitional area, a new
variant is used 80 percent of the time in one locale, 75 percent of the time in
another locale, and 70 percent of the time in a third region, are we to classify
each small area as its own lectal area, or should we perhaps draw a dividing line at, say, 75 percent usage of the new form? Girard and Larmouth (1993)
suggest that a transitional lect is perhaps best modeled not as a set of features
which either belong or do not belong to the lect in question but as a version of
a fuzzy set. In Girard and Larmouth’s interpretation, membership in the set is
characterized as a percentage figure rather than by a simple binary distinction
– that is, +/− Lect A. For example, suppose we wanted to describe a particular
lect, Lect A, as a fuzzy set composed of certain dialect features, including
loss of h in hit. If h loss in hit is variable in this dialect, we would not simply
say that initial h in hit is not a member of Lect A – that is, that the value of
h’s membership in Lect A = 0. Rather, we would express h’s membership in
the set of features comprising Lect A as a number between 0 and 1, say 0.75,
for example. Of course, exactly how such a figure might be determined is
a complex issue indeed and is beyond the scope of the present discussion.
The reader is referred to Girard and Larmouth (1993) for more discussion of
this point.11
Beyond the transitional area of a linguistic change we find what are traditionally
labeled relic areas – that is, areas which the innovation fails to reach.
Most often such areas are geographically distant from focal areas. Sometimes,
however, physical barriers to communication, such as mountainous terrain or
a body of water, may block the spread of a change from a relatively nearby
focal point. Social and demographic factors such as social and racial isolation
among neighboring groups may similarly play a significant role in delegating
areas to relic status. Thus, African American working-class groups in Northern
metropolitan areas within the United States may maintain some older
Southern rural dialect forms (e.g., the production of ask as aks or the use of
completive done, as in Kim done took out the trash) despite the fact that they are
one or two generations removed from their Southern roots. Patterns of racial
and social segregation have, in fact, greatly inhibited significant changes such
as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (Labov 1991, 1994) from affecting inner-city
black communities, who remain immune to such changes while maintaining a
Southern-based vernacular dialect.
Areas which have been designated as relic areas with respect to one linguistic
innovation may very well be innovative, focal areas when another language
change is brought into focus (e.g., Hock 1991); thus, the designation of certain
areas as focal, transitional, or relic is largely relative, though demographic and
social factors such as population density may be favorable to the heavy concentration
of linguistic innovations in one particular area, such as a large,
centralized metropolitan area.

3 The Gravity Model.
A number of studies conducted by dialectologists and sociolinguists over the
past several decades indicate that the wave model is not empirically justified, even if it is expanded to incorporate systematic variability per our earlier
discussion. Trudgill (1974) demonstrated that a slightly different model, termed
the gravity model or the hierarchical model, provides a much better fit for the
observed data on dialect diffusion. According to this model, which is borrowed
from the physical sciences, the diffusion of innovations is a function not
only of the distance from one point to another, as with the wave model, but of
the population density of areas which stand to be affected by a nearby change.
Changes are most likely to begin in large, heavily populated cites which have
historically been cultural centers. From there, they radiate outward, but not in
a simple wave pattern. Rather, innovations first reach moderately sized cities,
which fall under the area of influence of some large, focal city, leaving nearby
sparsely populated areas unaffected. Gradually, innovations filter down from
more populous areas to those of lesser population, affecting rural areas last,
even if such areas are quite close to the original focal area of the change. The
spread of change thus can be likened not so much to the effects of dropping a
stone into a pond, as with the wave model, but, as Chambers (1993: 150) puts
it, to skipping a stone across a pond. Figure 24.2 illustrates such a model. Note
that larger circle sizes indicate increased population density.

IMAGEN
Figure 24.2 The gravity model of linguistic diffusion

The reason linguistic and other innovations often spread in a hierarchical
pattern is attributed to the fact that greater interpersonal contact is maintained
among places with larger populations, and heavy contact strongly promotes
the diffusion of innovations. This latter point was formulated by Bloomfield in
1933 as the principle of local density. However, even as the amount of interaction
between two areas is directly proportional to the population density of these
areas, so it varies inversely with the distance between the two locales – that is, interaction diminishes as the distance between two population centers increases.
This interplay between the population density of two areas and the distance
which separates them thus parallels the effects of density and distance on
gravitational pull (that is, the amount of influence two physical bodies exert
upon one another), according to the physical scientific gravity model.12
As early as the 1950s, geographers, most notably Hägerstrand (1952), used
the gravity model to describe and predict the diffusion of cultural innovations
such as technical advances. Trudgill (1974) adapted Hägerstrand’s model to
his sociolinguistic study of the Brunlanes peninsula of Norway to show that
the spread of a certain phonetic change – that is, the change in the phonetic
value of the /æ/ phoneme from [E] to [a] – was diffusing throughout the
peninsula according to the pattern predicted by the gravity model rather than
the wave model. The change to [a] began in a central area of relatively dense
population and proceeded from there to lesser centers of population and from
there to more rural, less populous areas. Further, Trudgill (1974) showed similar
patterns in the diffusion of linguistic innovations in the East Anglia area of
England. For example, he demonstrated that a generalized phonological process
of initial h-dropping currently underway in England (not the lexically restricted,
almost completed version we discussed earlier) spread from London directly
to Norwich, the population center of East Anglia, without affecting the thinly
populated area between the two cities. If the wave model accurately represented
the diffusion of linguistic innovation, the intervening area should have
been more h-less than Norwich, rather than almost completely h-ful, as it is in
reality.
A number of other studies reveal similar patterning whereby linguistic innovations
“skip” from one population center to another, leaving rural areas
unaffected until the final stages of the change. For example, Callary (1975)
showed that [æ] diphthongization in words like tag and bad and [a] fronting in
words like lock and pop spread from Chicago to downstate Illinois in a hierarchical
pattern; and Bailey et al. (1993) demonstrated a hierarchical pattern as
well for the diffusion of the /O/–/a/ merger in word pairs like hawk/hock
throughout Oklahoma. Even before the gravity model was applied to the study
of linguistic diffusion, the hierarchical spread of change was documented;
for example, Kloeke’s (1927) study of the change from [e] to [q] in medieval
Dutch and Flemish reveals a hierarchical rather than wavelike spread for this
change, while Kurath (1949) noted the importance of cities in the diffusion of
linguistic innovations along the east coast of the United States.
In most cases of hierarchical diffusion, the spread of innovation is from
relatively large regional centers to smaller, more localized towns and other
gathering-places. Occasionally, a change may reach a smaller city before a
slightly larger area, perhaps for geographic reasons, such as difficult terrain, or
for social and demographic reasons, such as a high concentration of a certain
social class in a given city. When changes actually do proceed strictly from
larger cities to smaller, we have so-called cascade diffusion. Such patterning has
been observed, for example, in the spread of musical influence from London in the 1960s throughout the world, first via other of the world’s major cities
and then gradually downward to small towns and rural areas (Haggett 1979).
Another type of diffusion that is recognized within the gravity model is
contagious diffusion. This refers to changes which actually do spread in wavelike
patterns – that is, changes whose spread is a primary function of distance only,
rather than population as well. Bailey et al. (1993) demonstrate such diffusion
in their investigation of the spread of a lax vowel [I] rather than tense vowel
nucleus [i] in the word field in Oklahoma speech. Interestingly, this contagious
diffusion co-occurs with the hierarchical diffusion observed for other innovations
in Oklahoma speech, as well as with yet a third pattern of diffusion,
contra-hierarchical diffusion, discussed below.

4 Limitations of the Gravity Model.

Although the gravity model accounts reasonably well for the diffusion of many
linguistic innovations, it falls short in a number of respects. As Trudgill (1983)
and Chambers (1993) point out, empirical evidence indicates the need for the
inclusion of factors other than distance and population into this model. For
example, the gravity model cannot account for the effects of terrestrial barriers
on the diffusion of innovation. And because the model was originally applied
to non-linguistic innovation, it cannot account for the unique effects of a linguistic
system itself on the spread of changes to that system. For example, the
gravity model cannot account for the effect of structural similarity in regional
language varieties with respect to the accommodation of new forms into
a region. Trudgill (1983) maintains that a dialect will more easily adopt an
innovation from a dialect to which it is highly similar than from a less similar
dialect. That is, “it appears to be psychologically and linguistically easiest
to adopt linguistic features from those dialects or accents that most closely
resemble one’s own, largely, we can assume, because the adjustments that
have to be made are smaller” (ibid.: 74). Trudgill attempts to correct for this
inadequacy in the gravity model by factoring into it a structural similarity
effect. That is, he describes the level of interaction between two centers not
only as directly proportional to the population density of each center and
inversely proportional to the distance intervening between them, but also as
directly proportional to how similar the two dialects are to one another.13
While Trudgill’s modification represents an important attempt to improve
the sometimes simplistic gravity model, it too has its limitations. As we have
discussed above, studies of variation within language and how this variation
leads to change indicate that the acceptance of a change depends on a number
of linguistic and social factors – not just mere similarity between dialects. For
example, in our study of the diffusion of external innovations into Ocracoke
English (e.g., Wolfram et al. 1997; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1996), we have
found that mere “similarity” does little to explain why certain innovations are adopted and others seemingly rejected. As Ocracokers lose their distinctive [Oy]
vowel, they may adopt one of two main innovating pronunciations: unglided
[a:], which is typical of mainland Southern speech, or the non-Southern variant
[aI], with a low central nucleus. We mentioned above that Ocracokers
are somewhat resistant to adopting Southern [a:], particularly before voiced
obstruents, the very environment where /ay/ is most likely to unglide in
mainland Southern speech. Yet in many respects, the Ocracoke dialect can be
said to be more “similar” to mainland Southern varieties than to non-Southern
dialects, particularly in its vowel system which, like the Southern vowel system
(e.g., Labov 1994), is characterized by the raising and tensing of the [I] and
[E] vowels (as in the pronunciation of fish as [fis]) as well as by the general
fronting of back vowels. Despite this similarity, there is quite a bit of resistance
in Ocracoke to the encroachment of the Southern [a:] variant vis-à-vis non-
Southern [aI]. Part of this resistance appears to be phonetic in nature: because
/ay/ most readily unglides to [a:] when its nucleus is a low central vowel [a],
Ocracoke [Oy] displays a degree of phonetic immunity to ungliding (Labov
1994). Further resistance to adopting the [a:] innovation stems from a complex
array of social factors, most notably the social meaning islanders attach to
the various /ay/ pronunciations they now come into contact with on a daily
basis. We return to this point below, in our discussion of contra-hierarchical
diffusion.

5 Amplifiers and Barriers to Diffusion.

As noted earlier, broad-based models of diffusion (Rogers 1983) encompass
at least five overarching factors that affect the spread of linguistic innovations:
the phenomenon itself, communication networks, distance, time, and social
structure. The gravity model takes into account the factors of distance and
communication networks (at least on a macro-level, as a function of population
density), while Trudgill’s model attempts to factor in a dimension related to
the diffusing phenomenon itself. Sociolinguistically grounded approaches to
language change tend to rely heavily on the role of social structures in the
diffusion of innovations.
Bailey et al. (1993) point out that just as topographical features may act as
barriers to the spread of innovation (or as amplifiers which encourage diffusion,
as in the case of a well-placed, easily navigable river), the social and
demographic characteristics of a region serve as even stronger barriers to and
amplifiers of change. Changes do not spread evenly across all segments of a
population, since some demographic groups are simply more resistant to or
accepting of change in general, or to certain specific changes, than others.
We have already mentioned that Labov’s research (e.g., Labov 1966; Labov
et al. 1972) indicates that members of “upwardly mobile” social classes, such
as the upper working class and lower middle class, as defined in traditional socioeconomic terms, are more quick to adopt innovations than members
of other classes. A number of other studies replicate these results (these are
summarized succinctly in Chambers 1995: ch. 2); and further studies show
that females are also among the leaders in linguistic change (see Chambers
1995: ch. 3 for a summary of a number of these studies). Further, younger
speakers are generally quicker to adopt new speech forms than older members
of a given speech-community.14 Thus it is instructive, in tracking the spread of
a change, to investigate the usage of a form not only across different regions,
but across different age groups and socioeconomic classes, as well as both
genders. For example, in their study of the spread of a number of linguistic
innovations across the state of Oklahoma, Bailey et al. (1993) demonstrate that
one can obtain a clear picture of the temporal spread of language changes by
examining the use of innovative forms in different age groups as well as in
communities of differing population densities.
Social factors other than age, gender, and social class also act as amplifiers
for and barriers to the diffusion of linguistic change, although their role is
not always as clear cut as is that of the above three factors. For example, the
presence of an ethnic minority population in an area may serve as an amplifier
for one particular change but yet act as a barrier in another area or with respect
to another change. Bailey et al. (1993) note that African American ethnicity
serves as an amplifier to r-lessness in Texas speech, while it acts as a barrier to
the spread of unglided /ay/ preceding voiceless consonants (e.g., right, like).
Barriers may further be classed as more or less permeable depending on how
strongly they block the spread of a change.
In addition, any thorough investigation of the effect of social factors on the
diffusion of linguistic innovations needs to include a closer look at communication
networks than that provided by the gravity model, which simply holds
that, in general, denser populations communicate more with one another than
do residents of sparsely populated areas. We find such a focus on micro-level
communication networks in the work of Lesley Milroy (e.g., Milroy 1980, 1987)
and James Milroy (e.g., Milroy 1992), who have done a number of studies on
the effects of the social networks of individual informants and small groups
of speakers on the diffusion of linguistic innovations (Milroy and Milroy 1985;
J. Milroy 1992; also see McMahon 1994a: 248–52 for an excellent summary of
the Milroys’ work on diffusion-related issues). The results of the Milroys’ social
network studies show that, in general, a population whose social networks
are dense and multiplex – that is, whose social networks involve frequent,
prolonged contact with only a small peer group, in a number of social contexts
– are more resistant to linguistic innovations than are populations whose
social ties are looser – that is, whose communications are spread out among
many people of different social groups and are, hence, briefer and less frequent
with each individual communicant.
Under the social network model for the spread of linguistic innovations, the
first people to adopt changes are those with loose ties to many social groups
but strong ties to none, since strong ties inhibit the spread of change. In order for the changes adopted by these people, called innovators, to make their way
into more close-knit groups, they need to be picked up by so-called early
adaptors – people who are central figures in tightly knit groups but who are
risky enough to adopt change anyway, perhaps for reasons of prestige (whether
overt or covert). Because these early adaptors are well regarded in their social
groups, the changes they adopt are likely to be picked up by other members of
these groups, thereby diffusing through a large segment of a population.
Given that urban populations are generally considered to be bound by looser
ties than rural societies, one can easily see how the Milroys’ model for linguistic
diffusion parallels the gravity model; both models maintain that innovations
begin in urban populations. The chief difference in the two models is that,
under the gravity model, increased interaction of any type leads to increased
diffusion of innovations; the Milroys maintain, however, that the interaction
must be of a certain type in order for innovation to spread. Further, the Milroys’
model affirms Labov’s conclusions that “upwardly mobile” social classes are
the quickest to spread innovations, for it is the individuals who make up these
classes who are most likely to maintain loose social ties with a number of people
from outside their immediate peer groups, as they strive to move out of their
current social class. Similarly, it is not surprising under this model that women
often lead linguistic change, since, in close-knit communities, it is usually
women who hold jobs that bring them into contact with members of social
groups other than their own (e.g., Chambers 1995: ch. 3).
Thus, the social network model may be seen not so much as a further description
of how linguistic innovations diffuse through a given population, but
rather as a potential explanation for the diffusional patterns that dialectologists
and sociolinguists have already observed.

6 Contra-Hierarchical Diffusion.

The final type of linguistic diffusion we examine points out just how strongly
social factors may affect the spread of language change. In their study of
the social and demographic factors that influence the diffusion of change in
Oklahoma speech, Bailey et al. (1993) discovered that, while one important
change, the spread of the /O/–/a/ merger, appeared to be diffusing according
to the hierarchical model, the spread of the quasi-modal fixin’ to (as in They’re
fixin’ to go now) displayed exactly the opposite diffusional pattern. That is, fixin’
to initially was most heavily concentrated in the rural areas of the state and
spread from there through increasingly large population centers until it reached
the state’s most urban areas. The different patterns of diffusion for these two
linguistic changes are given in figures 24.3 and 24.4, taken from Bailey et al.
(1993). In each illustration, figure (a) gives the spatial distribution of the form for
respondents born in or before 1945 and figure (b) gives the spatial distribution
for respondents born after 1945 in order to show the spread of the change in apparent time. Note that the circles on the maps represent cities, with larger cities
being represented as larger circles. Figure 24.3 illustrates how the /O/–/a/
merger, spread, in general, from more populous areas in Oklahoma to more
rural areas from the pre-World War II years to the present day. Figure 24.4
shows that fixin’ to spread in the opposite way, proceeding from rural areas to
larger cities over the course of the past several decades..

IMAGE
a Respondents born in or before 1945

IMAGE
b Respondents born in or after 1946

IMAGE
Figure 24.3 Spatial distribution of /a/ in hawk
Source: Bailey et al. (1993: 369)

IMAGE
a Respondents born in or before 1945

IMAGE
b Respondents born in or after 1946

IMAGE
Figure 24.4 Spatial distribution of fixin’ to
Source: Bailey et al. (1993: 372–3)

Given that communication, and hence the spread of innovations, is generally
held to increase with increased population density, how can we explain
the contra-hierarchical diffusion displayed by fixin’ to? Bailey et al. (1993) note
that there is an important difference in the social setting that contextualizes
the /O/–/a/ merger and that which contextualizes fixin’ to. While the identical
pronunciation of word pairs such as hawk/hock or Dawn/Don is generally held
by Oklahoma residents to be a mark of increasing urbanization or sophistication
and reaches its highest concentration in the speech of recent transplants to
Southern states such as Oklahoma, fixin’ to is regarded as a traditional, rural form
and is most prominent in the speech of Oklahoma residents whose Southern
heritage is well established. While many older Southern forms have indeed
faded in the face of newer Northern forms as more and more non-Southerners
migrate to the South, a number of rural forms have flourished, spreading from
outlying areas to population centers as long-time Southerners seek to assert their
identity against newcomers from the North. Bailey et al. maintain that fixin’ to
is one such form, as evidenced not only by the diffusional patterns observed
for this item but also by the strong correlation they found between informants
who use the form and nativity within Oklahoma, as well as positive valuation
of the state as a good place to live. Brown (1991) has also reported a contrahierarchical
spread for the merger of /I/ and /E/ before nasals (that is, the
pin–pen merger) in Tennessee.
In our study of Ocracoke English (e.g., Wolfram et al. 1997; Wolfram and
Schilling-Estes 1996), we have observed that the traditional pronunciation of
the /ay/ diphthong as [Oy] in Ocracoke serves as a marker of island identity,
much as does raised /ay/ in Martha’s Vineyard (Labov 1963). While [Oy] is
not diffusing beyond the confines of the island (or beyond the Outer Banks
island chain), its value as a marker of in-group identity does allow it to serve
as a barrier which blocks the incursion of non-Southern [aI] and especially
mainland Southern [a:] into Ocracoke speech. In other words, [Oy] is not spreading
contra-hierarchically as are some other traditional, rural forms of speech in
the American South, but it is not simply being supplanted by forms which are
moving down from major population centers, thanks in large part to its social
meaning in the Ocracoke community.
We have seen, then, that the social valuation accorded to linguistic forms
can drastically affect the process of linguistic diffusion. Linguistic markers of
local identity may serve as barriers to urban forms diffusing down into rural
areas; or these markers may be of such importance over a widespread region
that they actually take root and spread, effectively reversing the usual direction
of linguistic diffusion.

Explaining the empirical facts of dialect diffusion obviously calls for a
multidimensional approach that considers an array of geographical, social,
and linguistic factors which may interact in different ways. Furthermore, a
dynamic model of diffusion must encompass the systematic variability that
characterizes language change. While such a perspective exposes the inadequacies
of many of the traditional models for describing and explaining dialect
diffusion and some of the proposed alternatives, in the long run, a model
which remains continually sensitive to the emerging empirical facts about
dialect diffusion is the only one that will ultimately serve dialectologists and
linguists, whether their concentration is variation study or another area of
specialization. In the final analysis, our goal is to understand why and how
language changes over time and space.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

NOTES:
1 Although the wave model of
language change goes back to the
nineteenth century (Schmidt 1872),
a revised model which incorporates
structured intra-language variability
into the model is used here. For the
most part, this model follows Bailey
(1973).
2 Weinreich et al. (1968) and Labov
(1994: 311) maintain that there is
no precise distinction to be made
between the origin of language change
and diffusion, since it is not the act of
innovation that changes language, but
the act of influence that instantiates
it. Thus, “the change and the first
diffusion of the change occur at the
same time” (Labov 1994: 311).
3 This is not meant to minimize
the significance of the actuation
question, which must ultimately be
considered in an authentic account
geared toward explanation.
4 Whereas all change necessarily
implies a period of variation, the
converse is not necessarily true.
That is, not all variation implies
change. Some variation may be
very stable and a product of the
natural performance of language
rather than an indication of
dynamic directionality with
respect to the replacement of
forms.
5 We are much more certain about
the earlier, widespread presence
of initial h in hit (Jones 1989: 245ff)
than we are about the h in ain’t. The
different sources which apparently
merged in the development of ain’t,
including haven’t, aren’t, and amn’t
(Cheshire 1982), and the socially
charged status of this item over
time have clouded the picture of
change somewhat. It is possible that
the h in ain’t was originally found only in those items derived from
haven’t and that this h-initial form
was subsequently generalized to
encompass tokens of ain’t derived
from amn’t and aren’t.
6 The differential distribution of
h loss in stressed and unstressed
syllables is still manifested in
h-initial pronouns in present
English. Note, for example the
difference between Him, I like
versus I like ’im.
7 Other varieties of English
(Trudgill 1990: 42), as well as
other Indo-European languages,
have a much more extensive
version of h-dropping that is
strictly phonologically conditioned.
In a sense, the lexically restricted
version illustrated here vis-à-vis the
generally applicable phonological
deletion process found in other
varieties of English (Jones 1989:
245ff) realistically illustrates a
case of the “regularity controversy”
with respect to dialect patterning
(Labov 1994).
8 We appeal to the uniformitarian
principle in assuming that the
patterning of current changes in
progress reflects the way in which
completed changes were effected.
This principle, as stated by Christy
(1983: ix), is that “knowledge of
processes that operated in the
past can be inferred by observing
ongoing processes in the present.”
See now the discussion in Janda
(2001: section 8) and in the
introduction to this volume.
9 The behavior of forms through the
course of the change slope is not
unlike the behavior of forms as they
proceed through the stages of early
and second language acquisition.
In language acquisition, a period
of rote learning of forms paves
the way for the application of an
exceptionless rule, which is then
realigned to accommodate the
empirical reality of regularity and
irregularity within language.
10 Our perspective here assumes
that vowel changes follow orderly
rotational schemes as set forth
in Labov (1994). The three main
principles guiding vowel rotation
are as follows:
Principle I: In chain shifts, tense
nuclei rise along a peripheral track.
Principle II: In chain shifts, lax
nuclei fall along a non-peripheral
track.
Principle III: Tense vowels move to
the front along peripheral paths, and
lax vowels move to the back along
non-peripheral paths.
In this schema, Trudgill’s fudged
lects would simply be a stage of
principle II (Labov 1994: 176).
11 Bailey’s (1973) framework is also
reminiscent of the fuzzy set model
for defining dialects, particularly in
transitional areas. Bailey maintains
that speakers of a language are
inherently polylectal – that is,
each of them possesses internal
grammars for a number of different
lects, which Bailey sets up on a
scalar, implicational array. In this
schema, the existence of certain
features will imply others, and
different lects are simply subsets
of the overall set of implicational
relations.
12 Even the mathematical formula
initially used to express the cultural
influence of two population centers
on one another is reminiscent of
physical scientific models for
gravitational effects. This formula is
as follows: Mij = PiPj/(dij)2, where
M = interaction, P = population, and
D = distance (e.g., Trudgill 1983: 74).
Trudgill (1974) first applied this
formula to the spread of linguistic innovations specifically, as opposed
to cultural innovations in general;
but, as we shall see, he expressed
serious reservations about its
adequacy as an accurate model
of linguistic influence.
13 In formulaic notation, the
revised model looks like this:
Mij = s · (PiPj/(dij)2), where s is a
variable expressing linguistic
similarity.
14 In fact, it is this sharp contrast in
younger versus older speakers’
adaptability to linguistic innovation
that allows sociolinguists to make
the apparent time assumption,
discussed at length above, on which
so much of their work is based.

6. Language and space: Traditional dialect geography.

1. Introduction.

2. Adelbert von Keller (181221885): The initiator of traditional linguistic geography.

3. The Marburg School.

4. The Württemberg School.

5. References.

1. Introduction.

This article examines the earliest “historical” approaches as they developed within traditional

German dialectology: the Marburg and Württemberg Schools. The emergence of

scholarly dialectology is usually associated with the beginnings of neogrammarian dialectology

(cf. Murray in this volume) and with Georg Wenker’s founding of linguistic geography.

Both of these approaches received important impetuses at the same time. In

1876, Jost Winteler’s neogrammarian monograph, Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons

Glarus, which drew inspiration from Eduard Sievers’ Grundzüge der Lautphysiologie

(likewise published in 1876), appeared; in the same year Georg Wenker distributed his

questionnaire among the public school teachers of the Rhineland (see section 3.1). However,

the roots of academic linguistic geography reach back much further than this.

Johann Schmeller is generally acknowledged as the first scholarly dialectologist, but his

studies were not followed up until much later. In contrast, the pioneering work of Adelbert

von Keller (section 2) who, through his students Georg Wenker and Hermann Fischer,

became the initiator of the rapidly developing field of linguistic geography (sections

3.1, 4.1) 2 is generally underrated. The earliest schools of linguistic geography

concentrated exclusively on indirect data collection methods. The criticism of these methods

raised by neogrammarians who oriented to the hard sciences’ ideal of exactitude,

together with direct data collection on the Romance dialects (section 3.2), led to a systematic

supplementing of indirect data with direct data in confined areas (section 4.2).

Wrede, in decided opposition to the neogrammarian account of language change, went on to develop his “social-linguistic” method, which attempted to discover correlations

between highly localized linguistic differences and historical boundaries and to interpret

linguistic boundaries as a result of old barriers to intercourse (Verkehrsgrenzen). In contrast,

the representatives of the Württemberg School adopted a more intermediary position

and remained more closely linked to the neogrammarian tradition.

2. Adelbert von Keller (18121885): The initiator o˜ traditional dialect geography. 

In 1833 Adelbert von Keller was appointed Chair of ‘Newer Philology’ at the University

of Tübingen. Keller’s interest in spoken language, above all the empirical investigation

of dialects, reset the focus in language history. He actively advocated the broad-range

collection of dialectal materials, and in 1861 he sent out a Bitte um Mitwirkung zur

Sammlung des schwäbischen Sprachschatzes ‘Request for cooperation in the collection of

the treasures of the Swabian language’, together with extensive instructions, to school

teachers in every village in Württemberg (Keller 1855). “All of the words used in Swabia

that are not found in the written language or only with another meaning, as well as all

[…] words differing in inflection, gender or derivation, […] expressions which occur in

documents, in the proper names of people, places, rivers, in singular idioms” (Keller

1855: 10; translation R. S.) were to be collected. On the basis of these linguistic data,

Keller planned to draft a language map, which portrayed “not just the outward boundaries

of the region”, but also “the internal dividing lines. […] The separation into larger

groups, like Upper Swabian, Lower Swabian, Highlands, Lowlands, Black Forest and

so forth remain[ed] a task for later determination” (Keller 1855: 21, translation R. S.).

An essay based on Keller’s suggestion was printed and served as a prototype for 400

essays received from 320 Württemberg village schools (Ruoff 1964: 175, 1982: 128; see

Baur 1978, map 5 on the locations). For the German language area, these papers represent

the first collection of primary material from a closed dialect region for the analysis

of phonological, morphological and lexical issues; they were the precursors of the later

regional grammars (section 3.2). Keller’s contribution, Die Mundarten (1884), which resulted

from these essays, is the first in a series of geographical dialect descriptions which

appeared in Württemberg’s (later Baden-Württemberg’s) district descriptions from 1876 on.

3. The Marburg School.

3.1. Georg Wenker (18521911): The indirect method.

Georg Wenker submitted his doctoral thesis in 1876 under the supervision of Adelbert

von Keller on the language-historical topic Verschiebung des Stammsilben-Auslauts im

Germanischen ‘The Shift of the Root Syllable Coda in Germanic’. Wenker was strongly

influenced by Keller’s method of conducting empirical dialectological investigations. After

an unsuccessful attempt to classify the dialects of the Rhineland on the basis of

printed dialect samples, he turned to the teachers of the Prussian Rhine Province in 1876 with the request that they use the normal alphabet to fill out a questionnaire with 42

sentences which were to be translated into the local dialect. The teachers were provided

with diacritica for only a few vowels which could not be represented by the letters of

the alphabet. Based on the 1,500 responses (out of 2,200 questionnaires distributed)

Georg Wenker wrote a brief paper for the teachers, called Sprachkarte der Rheinprovinz

nördlich der Mosel ‘Language Map of the Rhine Province North of the Moselle’ (Wenker

1877), which featured a division into the dialect formations ofWestphalian, Low Franconian,

Ripuarian and Moselle-Franconian that remains valid to this day (this was labeled

by Wenker as Westphalian, Low Rhenish, Low Franconian/Northern Central Franconian

and Central Franconian; cf. Schmidt and Herrgen, to appear).

In 1877 Wenker sent out a new version of his questionnaire, now with 38 sentences,

to the schools of Westphalia. The same year he was employed by the university library

in Marburg. In 1878 ministries in Berlin approved funding for a questionnaire survey of

all of Prussia. A few months later, a second analysis of the questionnaire was completed;

this took the form of the first linguistic atlas in the world, the Sprach-Atlas der Rheinprovinz

nördlich der Mosel sowie des Kreises Siegen, of which only a single hand-drawn

exemplar with isoglosses in color on preprinted base maps (cf. Schmidt and Herrgen, to

appear) was created. The original is kept at the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas

in Marburg and has been published via the Internet (<http://www.diwa.info>). Over the

next two years, Wenker distributed the final, forty-sentence questionnaire. By 1881 he

had already published two phonological and four morphological maps as the Sprachatlas

von Nord- und Mitteldeutschland. Auf Grund von systematisch mit Hülfe der Volksschullehrer

gesammeltem Material aus circa 30000 Orten. (For more on Wenker’s early work,

see also Knoop, Putschke and Wiegand 1982: 6268; Herrgen 2001: 152021525 offers a

comprehensive overview of the creation of the Deutscher Sprachatlas).

Work on these six maps made it clear to Wenker that he could not cope with the

mapping of data from approx. 30,000 surveyed locations alongside his occupation as a

librarian. He therefore sought financial support from the Office of the Imperial Chancellor,

which he was granted on the condition that the survey be extended to cover the

entire German Empire of that time. Thus, in 1887 and 1888, the 40 sentences were also

sent out across the southern territory (Alsace, Lorraine, Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria).

Also included in the survey were the German dialects of Luxemburg, Bohemia

and Moravia, the Baltic governorates, Transylvania and the colonies along the Volga.

Switzerland and Austria were later added between 1926 and 1933 under Wenker’s colleague

and eventual successor, FerdinandWrede; in 1939Wrede’s own successor,Walther

Mitzka, added South Tyrol. With that, the entire German-speaking territory of Central

Europe had contributed more than 44,000 sentences translated into dialect (König and

Schrambke 1999: 15). The Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs that this survey resulted in

exists as two full-color manuscripts in which 339 linguistic phenomena are displayed on

1,646 hand-drawn maps. The German-speaking territory is spread across three sheets

(the northwest, the northeast and the southeast) at a scale of 1 : 1,000,000. Unfortunately,

this detailed version of the Deutscher Sprachatlas was never conventionally published; it

is, however, now viewable on the Internet as the Digital Wenker Atlas (DiWA). Wenker’s

successor, Ferdinand Wrede, managed a partial publication, with greatly simplified

maps, under the title of Deutscher Sprachatlas (DSA) which offered an overview of the

distribution of 79 linguistic phenomena. A total of 23 installments were printed between

1927 and 1956. A reduced form of the DSA appeared from 1984 onward as the Kleiner Deutscher Sprachatlas (KDSA) with maps of the entire DSA phonological geographical

material, but with a significantly reduced number of mapped locations compared to the

original (Veith and Putschke 198421999). Morphology was not covered by the KDSA.

The first complete publication of the language atlas material was thus the digital version,

DiWA (see above).

3.1.1. The 40 Wenker sentences.

The 40 sentences were designed to cover all of phonology and some morphology. Lexical

issues played only a subordinate role; for instance, in sentence 1 (Im Winter fliegen die

trocknen Blätter in der Luft herum ‘In winter the dry leaves fly around in the air’), the

lexeme Winter serves to capture geographical variation in the root vowel in quantitative

and qualitative terms; the lexeme Blätter is phonologically and morphologically interesting.

But for some lexemes, Wenker found heteronyms, which cut across his phonological

and morphological questions. This gave rise to lexical maps, e.g., for Pferd ‘horse’ (Map

8), Dienstag ‘Tuesday’ (Map 26) and Wiese ‘meadow’ (Map 41) as an unplanned byproduct.

3.1.2. Criticism o˜ Wenkeršs data collection method.

In lectures and papers, Wenker repeatedly alluded to the “decline” of the dialects (e.g.,

Wenker 1886: 192). Nevertheless, in collecting his data he concentrated not on the older

generation, but instead on the schoolchildren themselves. In his instructions to the teachers,

he wrote: “Let a student or some suitable students make the translation; they know

their dialect well enough and will find the work enjoyable. Only where the teacher was

born where his school is located and has complete mastery of the dialect is it advisable

to perform the translation oneself” (quoted in Stroh 1952: 423, translation R. S.). So

Wenker did not rely exclusively on a homogeneous group, neither the schoolchildren

nor the teachers, and thus neglected to control the parameters of age, occupation and

origin by the selection of informants. This was one of the main points of criticism raised

by Wenker’s neogrammarian opponents, especially his chief critic, Otto Bremer, a student

of Eduard Sievers. In his Kritik von Wenkers Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs

‘Critique of Wenker’s Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs’, Bremer writes:

If a certain region is hovering between two forms of a word, then naturally one teacher will

list one form and another the other form; this is a matter of chance. If the teacher is an

older man or if he has turned to older people as his source, then of course the older linguistic

form will be listed in Wenker’s questionnaire; if he is perhaps younger or has let his pupils

prepare the translation, then the younger linguistic form will certainly be filled out and

Wenker will have to draw a line between the two villages. If, perchance, the two teachers

had swapped roles, the map would have a completely different appearance. The Sprachatlas

offers enough examples of such uncertain lines.

(Bremer 1895: 8, translation R. S., cf. also 7, 11)

Wenker, however, was very aware of the problem of vertical variation. Indeed, he himself

wrote that the “dialects, through blending with one another and with Standard German,

are losing more and more of their purity and naturalness” (quoted from Martin 1934: 9, translation R. S.). Hence, it is also conceivable that Wenker deliberately took advantage

of the teachers’ cooperation, assuming that they were familiar with the local base

dialect and would intervene to correct uncertain or incorrect responses by the schoolchildren. 

Wenker’s immense research project could only be realized via written data collection.

His full-coverage, phonetically inexact, pupil/teacher competence-based survey thus offers

a counterpoint to the single-location, phonetically precise, investigator’s competence-

based village grammars of neogrammarian researchers such as Jost Winteler. Criticism

from the ranks of the neogrammarians therefore could not be avoided. Wenker met

these attacks with the counterargument that the potential source of error of “linguistic

variation” (due to the social heterogeneity of the informants) could be corrected by the

sheer number of responses.

3.1.3. Results

The widespread opinion that it was Wenker’s goal to use the maps of the Linguistic

Atlas “to demonstrate the axiom of the exceptionlessness of the sound laws through

living dialects” (Bach 1950: 40; translation R. S.) is no longer valid (cf. Wiegand and

Harras 1971: 11216; Herrgen 2001). The maps have at any rate disproved the neogrammarian

postulate, since they show that “essentially, every single word and every single

word form possesses its own zone of validity, its own boundaries in linguistic space; this

cannot be captured solely through an acceptance of the effect of analogy and the occasional

influence of neighboring dialects or written language admitted by the neogrammarians,

if one insists on their understanding of the ‘sound laws’” (Bach 1950: 56257;

emphasis removed, translation R. S.).

The diversity of isoglosses on the very first maps also disproved Wenker’s earlier

hypothesis that “clear dialect boundaries” (Wenker 1886: 189) would emerge from his

materials. This also falsified the theory that the boundaries of dialect and tribe coincide,

as scholars prior to Wenker had postulated and Wenker too had hoped to prove. Wenker

now sought for a new interpretation of dialect boundaries; he no longer saw the atlas as

a research product but rather as a research instrument for the interpretation of linguistic

geographic findings, for which he increasingly drew upon extralinguistic factors: “[The

Sprachatlas] covers our present-day German dialects. Their gradual development into

the current multiplicity is inseparably linked to history, the divisions, displacements,

migrations, settlements and intermingling of the German tribes” (Wenker 1895a: 36237;

translation R. S.).

3.2. Ferdinand Wrede (18631934): Regional (landscha˜tsbasierte) grammars.

From 1887 on, Wenker’s colleague Ferdinand Wrede continued his cartographic work

on the linguistic atlas; as Map 56 of the Deutscher Sprachatlas he included the dialect

classification map he had been continuously developing since 1903, originally for his

lectures on the German dialects.

In 1911 he became Wenker’s successor (for an overview of Wrede’s work on the

atlas project, see Mitzka 1952: 12). The third mapper was Emil Maurmann. Once the

cartographic work was completed, Wrede took over the publication of the Sprachatlas.

Under his leadership and together with his students, the Marburg dialectological school

was formed, the great success of which was due in part to Wrede’s regular publications,

including the reports in the Anzeiger für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur (in

issues 18, 1892 and 28: 1902), in which the results of the mapping process were made

public for fellow scholars. Another significant factor for the school’s influence was the

book series Wrede founded, Deutsche Dialektgeographie, which has been appearing since

1908 (see below).

Wrede adopted the method used by Wenker in his later phase of interpreting the data

on the basis of extralinguistic factors. He distinguished this method, which he labeled

“social-linguistic”, from the individual-centered linguistic methods of sound physiology

(Lautphysiologie) practiced in the nineteenth century. For Wrede, the term “social” implied

“collective”; for him, “social linguistics” was based on “mass materials” from a

“mass recording of German dialect resources”. Wrede used “mass” to evoke the “more

than 44,000 dialect translations” of Wenker’s sentences (cf. Bellmann 1986: 32). The

“social-linguistic factor”, according to Wrede, “includes all of the linguistic phenomena

and changes that cannot be explained by reference to the individual, where only the

interaction of many individuals comes into question, where manifold cultural influences

and all manner of [social] intercourse and, above all, population mixtures are at work”

(Wrede 1963: 3102311; translation R. S.). Thus, in applying the social-linguistic method

to dialectology, the observation and interpretation of the individual dialect within the

broadest possible dialect-geographical context and against the historical background of

the region under study formed the focus of Wrede’s research interest.

Of course, Wenker and Wrede were aware of the weaknesses of the Sprachatlas as

described by Bremer. Wenker positioned himself by stressing that his goal was “[to obtain]

a little from as many as possible rather than much from an inadequate number of

locations” (Wenker 1881: VIII; translation R. S.). In his reply to Bremer’s criticism of

the Sprachatlas’ indirect data collection method, he indicated that he was planning “individual

studies as a follow-up to the atlas” (Wenker 1895b: 27; translation R. S.). Wrede

viewed the Sprachatlas “as a first rough outline”, not a phonetic atlas, “but rather as

the precursor to one” (Wrede 1908: IX; translation R. S.).

These weaknesses were also manifest for the creators of the Sprachatlas thanks to the

Atlas linguistique de la France (ALF); its founder Jules Gillie´ron had his student, Edmond

Edmont, use direct methods to collect linguistic materials in order to extract as

many phonetically precise data as possible from few locations. Gillie´ron selected 639

boroughs from the French-speaking territory in which Edmont then elicited almost 2,000

words, with great attention to the dialectal vocabulary. By 1903 the first 50 maps of the

French atlas were already printed. In total the atlas included 1,920 maps with more than

a million tokens (Gauger, Oesterreicher and Windisch 1981: 1202132).

The advantages and disadvantages of the two very different linguistic atlases are

obvious: the linguistic diversity documented by the French method, which included only

two percent of all French settlements, lay far behind that of the German method, in

which nearly one hundred percent of all localities were surveyed. On the other hand, the

indirect data collection of the Germans necessitated subsequent interpretation whenever

phonetic details were of interest.

The need to supplement the Sprachatlas data with phonetic material was obvious.

The neogrammarian monographs which emerged at the same time as the Deutscher

Sprachatlas contained exact descriptions of the phonetic systems of their authors’ dialects.

In the following years, the contents of the monographs were extended and systematized;

in some volumes the phonetic part was followed by a short summary of the

most important prosodic features, an overview of the dialect’s basic vocabulary sorted

according to the phonemes of the Middle High German reference system and a selection

of morphological special features of the dialect (for details see Schmidt and Herrgen, to

appear). These local grammars provided an ideal basis on which to selectively verify the

Sprachatlas material and check the variations in spelling in the questionnaires. Nonetheless,

the theoretically and methodologically contradictory approaches of Wrede and the

neogrammarians led Wrede, like Wenker before him, to ignore the neogrammarian

monographs. Instead, Wrede encouraged investigations in smaller linguistic regions so

as to create an accurate phonetic basis for the interpretation of the Sprachatlas maps.

Wrede himself trained his students in phonetic transcription. In order to publish the

results, Wrede founded the Deutsche Dialektgeographie (DDG) series, originally with the

subtitle “Reports and Studies on G. Wenker’s Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs”, the

first volume of which appeared in 1908. 1002200 locations were examined in each

volume.

For the series’ authors, the theoretical foundations and methods remained essentially

the same for decades. They were described as follows by Gerhard W. Baur in his introduction

to DDG volume 55a, Die Mundarten im nördlichen Schwarzwald: “The goal of

dialect-geographical observation is to phonetically record the phonological, morphological

and lexical inventory of the base dialect as precisely as possible, to make clear the

spatial distribution of the linguistic phenomena and to explain their varying forms as

far as possible” (Baur 1967: 4; translation R. S.). As a rule, the monographs also share

the same structure. At the beginning one finds a comprehensive grammar of a survey

location, described (in true neogrammarian tradition) against the backdrop of the Middle

High German reference system. Then there is an overview of the geographic, political

and religious history of the area under study. A third dialect-geographical section follows,

the core of the regional grammar. At this point, Baur departs from the usual

descriptive path with its listings of examples and the corresponding locations, instead

concentrating on a cartographic depiction, dividing the grammar into a main, cartographic

section with phonological, morphological and lexical maps and an explanatory

subsection which complements the individual mapped phenomena. Finally, once again

following DDG convention, Baur locates the phenomena within the context of the surrounding

dialects, presents a linguistic classification of the entire region, compares the

course of its internal and external boundaries with prevailing natural and historical conditions

and notes linguistic movement. The fourth and last part concerns language

change in the area over the past hundred years (Baur 1967: 5210).

An important element of the later prestructuralist DDG volumes was thus a historical

investigation of dialectal change; for this purpose, Sprachatlas data was compared with

more recent materials collected by the author; the questionnaires were also supplemented

by phonological, morphological and lexical questions relevant to the region. Baur’s investigation

is based on Keller’s 1855 survey, the 40Wenker sentences and the 200 lemmas

of the Deutscher Wortatlas (195121980; cf. Mitzka 1939). More recent DDG volumes

also took into account the results of regional dialect atlases. For Baur this was a questionnaire developed by Fischer (1908), the linguistic atlas maps from the Geographie der

schwäbischen Mundart (Fischer 1895) and the recordings of the German Sound Archive

in Tübingen (cf. Reiffenstein 1982: 32233; Ruoff 2004: 19220; Frahm, Sauer and

Schmid 2004: 55). The “linguistic dynamic” analysis in the DDG volumes increasingly

expanded to encompass, as in Baur’s book, variables such as occupation, age and other

sociolinguistic parameters. In this context, the “regional language” variety (for Baur:

Verkehrs- oder Umgangssprache) increasingly came to be included in the investigation.

Nearly all of the books in the DDG series included a combination map in which

isoglosses and isogloss clusters were shown as boundaries of ranked significance. This

mapping strategy can be traced back to Karl Haag (1898), who distinguished up to five

levels of boundaries in his work on the Baar dialects (for more detail, see section 4.2.1);

this method was adopted by Karl Bischoff (DDG 36), Hans Friebertshäuser (DDG 46),

Erika Bauer (DDG 43), Peter Frebel (DDG 45) and Günter Bellmann (DDG 62). The

method consisted of adding up all linguistic boundaries that separated two locations

from one another. The disadvantage of the resulting “honeycomb maps” (polygonal

maps) was that the number of records on which the classification was based varied from

author to author (for the books named above, for instance, the threshold for a thirdlevel

boundary lay between 29 and 70 records, starting from a base value that ranged

between 0 and 18 records). Furthermore, the tokens were not weighted in qualitative

terms, i. e. with reference to parameters such as frequency of use and degree of deviance

from the standard (primary vs. secondary features); see below for more detail. Baur,

however, did not create his combination map solely on the quantitative basis of the

dialectal oppositions, but instead evaluated these in line with Haag’s guidelines, in general

on phonological grounds. This method, in contrast to the purely additive maps, was

rarely copied. Baur aside, only Rudolf Große (1955), Alfred Schirmer (1932) and Heinz

Rosenkranz (1938) published evaluative combination maps.

Wrede’s aim of being able to combine the dialect-geographical investigations of the

DDG series into a contiguous network was attained for a large portion of the Germanspeaking

territory. Maps 1 and 3 of the Bibliographie zur Grammatik der deutschen Dialekte

(Wiesinger and Raffin 1982) offer an overview of the entire territory; for the southwest

of Germany, see Maps 1 and 2 in Baur (2002).

3.3. The in˜luence o˜ the Marburg School in central and northern

Europe

3.3.1. The in˜luence o˜ the Deutscher Sprachatlas (DSA)

Aside from the neogrammarian ideas which were widespread in Europe, German dialectology,

especially Wenker’s dialect geography, also exerted much influence, particularly

in the north European countries.

3.3.1.1. Norway

In Norway, the phonetician Johan Storm conducted numerous direct data collections

from 1880 on. Influenced by Wenker, he then switched to indirect collection methods

and drafted two questionnaires, initially a short one with 300 lemmas and later a more comprehensive one with 4,000 words, which he distributed to clergymen and teachers

across the country (Storm 1882). This collection was to serve as the basis for a historical

phonology of the Norwegian dialects. Two years later, Storm trimmed the word list back

to 2,000 lemmas, including morpho-geographical questions (Storm 1884). That same

year, under the title Norsk Lydskrift med Omrids af Fonetiken ‘Norwegian phonetic alphabet

and sketch of Phonetics’, Storm also published suggestions for a phonetic transcription

system based on the dialect material he had collected; he derived this from the

Swedish transcription system published in the journal Svenska landsma°l ‘Swedish dialect’

in 1879 by Johan A. Lundell.

Storm’s treatise on Norwegian phonetics was published in the first issue of the journal

Norvegia and was intended to assist the study of Norwegian dialects and folklore. In the

introduction, Storm designs a grand program for dialect research. He argues for a systematic

investigation of the dialects as a primary goal, so as to provide the basis for a

classification of the Norwegian dialects. Both urban colloquial speech and the higher

class Danish-Norwegian colloquial speech were also to be included in the study.

Between 1905 and 1909, Hans Ross published a five-part account of the phonology

and morphology of the Norwegian dialects with short monographs on the principal

dialects of Norway and a dialect classification (Ross 190521909). He drew his material

from a collection of more than 40,000 words that he published as Norsk Ordbog ‘Norwegian

Dictionary’ (Ross [189521913] 1971).

Amund B. Larsen is acknowledged as the founder of modern Norwegian dialect studies.

Like his teacher, Storm, Larsen was a gifted phonetician indebted to both the neogrammarian

tradition and linguistic geography. Like Storm, he also gained his thorough

grounding in the Norwegian dialects through his own fieldwork, accompanied by his

teacher in 1882. In 1892 he published the first linguistic-geographical map of the dialects

of southern Norway with accompanying commentary; a second map followed in 1896

(Larsen 1892: 1896). By the end of the nineteenth century, he had completed his direct

data collection for all of Norway and was able to publish a comprehensive overview of

the Norwegian dialects in 1897 (Hoff 1968: 4222429; Bandle 1962: 2992301).

3.3.1.2. Sweden

Around the turn of the century, both Johan A. Lundell (1880) and Adolf Nore´en (1903)

published distribution maps of the Swedish dialects; both concentrated on the peculiarities

of the Swedish marginal dialects. The Central Swedish dialects were given more

attention in the classification published in 1905 by Bengt Hesselmann (Hesselmann 1905;

also see Benson 1968: 359). Linguistic geography gained greater importance only in the

1930s with the linguists Natan Lindqvist and Delmar Olof Zetterholm at the University

of Uppsala. They initiated a written survey, the results of which were published in the

1940s (Lindqvist 1947; Zetterholm 1940: 1953; see also Benson 1968: 364). Additionally,

a number of studies which included linguistic-geographical maps emerged around Natan

Lindqvist.

3.3.1.3. The Netherlands and Belgium (Flanders)

In the Netherlands, the hypothesis 2 disproved by German dialectology 2 that dialectal

and tribal boundaries (Stammesgrenzen) coincide also led to a search for fresh explanations

for the emergence of dialect boundaries. Influenced by Wenker’s research methods,

H. Kern, based in Leiden, collected written material in the northern Netherlands in 1876; edited and supplemented by a survey by Jan te Winkel, this was published in two parts

in 1895, after Kern’s death (te Winkel 1898). In the same year, P. Willems from Leuven

distributed a questionnaire with 2,000 words across Belgium and the southern Netherlands;

in 1914 J. J. Verbeeten, Jos Schrijnen and Jaques van Ginneken conducted indirect

data collections in 170 boroughs in Limburg and East Brabant (Bach 1950: 45; Weijnen

1982: 192).

In 1935, Dutch translations of the 40 Wenker sentences were sent out by the Dialect

Committee of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in Amsterdam as a third questionnaire

(Vragenlijsten 193121958). The cooperation between Marburg and Amsterdam

was the work of F.Wrede and P. J.Meertens, the secretary of the Dutch Dialect Committee.

This survey was intended to enable the expansion of the boundaries of the Deutscher

Sprachatlas into Dutch-speaking territory (Meertens 1936: 1232124).

3.3.2. The in˜luence o˜ the Deutsche Dialektgeographie (DDG) series

The book series Deutsche Dialektgeographie also attracted attention in neighboring

countries. In Norway, Ingeborg Hoff (1946) published a study that included an extensive

description of a village dialect as well as a linguistic-geographical overview of the dialects

of the entire province; the latter was supplemented by 15 maps (Bandle 1962: 3032304).

In the Netherlands and Flanders, over 50 village studies were published between 1884

and 1962 (for a list see Goossens 1968: 1832183, 186; Meertens and Wander 1958). In

1920 De Isoglossen van Ramisch in Nederland by Joseph Schrijnen appeared. In Flanders,

the local monographs were supplemented by approx. 130 unpublished doctoral and

graduate theses written primarily at the universities of Leuven and Ghent. Following the

example of the DDG volumes from 1922 on, these included linguistic-geographical maps

as well as a historical grammar. In Denmark in 1933, Karl Bock published a study about

Niederdeutsch auf dänischem Substrat as DDG number 34. His investigation was based

on responses to the 40 Wenker sentences from the Deutscher Sprachatlas augmented

by his own survey and went on to present his results in a number of maps (Andersen

1968: 338).

4. The Württemberg School

The power of the Marburg School extended to the regional research conducted in

Württemberg, where dialectology was already firmly established. As shown above, a first

connection between Tübingen and Marburg was furnished by Georg Wenker. But there

were also dialectologists in Tübingen who remained loyal to the neogrammarian methodology.

Outstanding researchers from the Württemberg School were Hermann Fischer,

Karl Haag and Karl Bohnenberger.

4.1. Hermann Fischer (18511920): The indirect method

Hermann Fischer was a student of Adelbert von Keller from 187021871. In 1888 he

took over from Keller’s successor, Eduard Sievers, as a professor at Tübingen University.

He assumed office with an inaugural lecture on the methods and goals of dialectology

(Über Wege und Ziele der Dialektforschung). Keller gave Fischer access to the “conference

papers” and 400,000 response slips that Keller had sorted as basis for a

Schwäbisches Wörterbuch (Swabian Dictionary; Fischer 190421936), thus also providing

a foundation for Fischer’s atlas, Geographie der schwäbischen Mundart (Fischer 1895).

Fischer extended this collection by a written survey based on Wenker’s methods: in 1886

and 1887 he distributed a 200-question survey of dialectal phonology to all of the more

than 3,000 parishes in Württemberg and surrounding areas. The questionnaire was returned

by about half of the parishes, which Fischer used as a basis for his 28-map

linguistic atlas. Fischer wanted the atlas to unburden his Schwäbisches Wörterbuch, the

first installment of which appeared in 1901, of details about the geographical distribution

of regular linguistic phenomena: “It seemed desirable to me to precede the Swabian

Dictionary with a geographical-grammatical study so as to provide orientation about

regular variation in the phonological form of individual words in advance” (Fischer

1895: III, translation R. S.).

Fischer began his work on the atlas at almost exactly the same time as Wenker. His

work was based on Wenker’s ideas, especially his Rheinischer Sprachatlas (1878) and the

beginnings of the Deutscher Sprachatlas as described by Ferdinand Wrede in the Anzeiger

für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur. Although Fischer’s atlas is among the

most significant dialect geographical contributions in the German-speaking world, it

produced little reaction in comparison to the Deutscher Sprachatlas.

Fischer, like Wenker and Wrede before him, was concerned with the most hotly discussed

topics of his time 2 the regularity of phonological change and the correspondence

of dialectal and other boundaries. Fischer had always been skeptical of the neogrammarian

ideas; in the end he made his opposition public. Like Wrede and later Haag, he was

convinced that the boundaries for individual words with the same vowel do not coincide

regularly and concluded that “[a] sound law cannot apply with the necessity of a law of

nature; otherwise it would always have had effect everywhere” (Fischer 1895: 83; translation

R. S.). His main concern was the relationship between the old Germanic tribes and

the current dialect boundaries, which had been discussed before and after Wenker up

until the mid-twentieth century (cf. Nübling 1938; Moser 195121952, 1961). For Fischer,

there is no Swabian dialect as such; instead, “every particular characteristic linguistic

phenomenon has a closed territory and definite borders” (Fischer 1895: 82; translation

R. S.). Every linguistic innovation, according to Fischer, arises in a certain location (or

possibly several locations), from where it spreads out over a greater or smaller area. He

thus aligns himself with Johann Schmidt’s wave theory, which he saw as “the only

[theory] with which one succeeds at all in explaining the history of language” (Fischer

1895: 83; translation R. S.). These linguistic innovations stop at natural or political

boundaries.

From his maps, Fischer 2 again in agreement with Wenker and Wrede 2 was able

to detect neither a coincidence of tribal and dialect boundaries nor telltale features which

could characterize Swabian as an old tribal dialect. Although there were clusters of

boundary lines on Fischer’s combination map (for instance in the northeast, where Swabian

Alemannish borders on East Frankish, and in the east, where it adjoins Bavarian),

Fischer drew no further conclusions from this. In the foreword to his atlas he wrote:

“Combining the boundary lines from my first 25 maps on a single map reveals a picture of extreme lawlessness. The lines run in every conceivable direction and there are only a

few localities on the map with no boundary of some kind running through them” (Fischer

1895: 82; translation R. S.).

4.2. Small-scale linguistic geography in the Württemberg School:

Karl Haag and Karl Bohnenberger

4.2.1. Karl Haag (1860-1946)

Keller’s method of conducting small-scale dialect geographical research on an empirical

basis was taken up by Karl Haag. He abandoned the “murky atmosphere of armchair

hypotheses” (Haag 1900: 139, translation R. S.) to undertake a “collection of recordings

from over 200 locations, which form a closed area of almost 60 square miles” using

direct methods which he supplemented by an indirect collection of data with the help of

teachers in order to fill “the unfortunately constantly recurring gaping omissions” (Haag

1898: 324; translation R. S.). He thus achieved the ideal combination of the research

methods applied by the Deutscher Sprachatlas and the Atlas linguistique de la France.

Just how much he followed Marburg research in doing so is indicated by the fact that

he intervened in the dispute between Bremer, Wenker and Wrede.

Haag’s combined material forms the basis for his monograph, Die Mundarten des

oberen Neckar- und Donaulandes, a seminal work for the entire field of dialect geography

2 not in the least thanks to Haag’s new cartographic procedures, which also occupied

an essential place in all of his subsequent dialect-geographical papers. In his foreword

to this first large dialect-geographical study he writes:

The accumulated phonological geographical material could only be made clear with a map;

this became increasingly central to the work, especially when, in searching for an explanation

for the lines that emerged, I made the happy discovery that there was a surprisingly extensive

agreement with old political boundaries. This led to a division of the work at hand into four:

a monograph on [Schwenningen], a comparative account of the entire area, an investigation

of the nature of the boundaries revealed by the map, and a modest collection of samples.

(Haag 1898: 4; translation R. S.)

Haag was the first dialectologist to insist that the features used to delimit a dialect region

must be weighted: “The significance with which we credit individual boundaries is to be

judged in three ways: the number of forms affected by the sound change, the frequency

of use of these forms, and the degree to which they have changed” (Haag 1898: 93,

translation R. S.). These three criteria are narrowed down by Haag. On point 1, “The

question of the number can only be answered by the most comprehensive collection of

material. This effort would facilitate a statistical analysis of sounds and allow the sorting

of the MHG word and form inventory into phonetically meaningful units: initial sounds,

final sounds with short vowels, [and final sounds] with long vowels would need to be

posited” (Haag 1898: 93, translation R. S.). On point 2:

Phonological change affecting the core vocabulary of a language 2 pronouns, particles,

modal verbs 2 is of especially great consequence for the interpretation of the boundaries; thus the group of aˆn: haˆn, staˆn, gaˆn, laˆn is of more weight than that of ht, although it has

five times as many forms. Statistics on the rate of occurrence of frequently used words would

also be a precondition for an accurate assessment here. (Haag 1898: 93, translation R. S.)

On point 3, “The auditive salience [Ohrfälligkeit] of the phonological change, that which

beyond the boundary is felt to be particularly odd, is an important, subjective dimension

of the change. This reflection is, however, precisely due to its subjective character, only

permitted little room on the map” (Haag 1898: 93, translation R. S.). Haag concludes:

“Considerations of this kind […] lead to a numerical ranking of the boundaries, as

drawn on the map. Five border strengths are distinguished: the border lines are 4, 3, 2,

1, ½ mm in breadth; the number and frequency of the forms they circumscribe increase

almost in an exponential relationship: (more than) 200, 100, 51, 21, 10” (Haag 1898:

93294; translation R. S.).

Haag’s polygon map of the Baar dialects reveals 78 boundaries for individual dialectal

features (Haag 1898: Appendix). Haag calculated the relative strength of every

boundary by counting and weighting the common features of each enclosed segment.

This method of display produced a central “core area” in every “linguistic landscape”

surrounded by a transition zone, a “fringe area” or, as Haag later termed it, “a vibration

area”. Haag was convinced that the boundaries of the linguistic landscape were connected

with the political traffic (intercourse) controls of the late medieval territories.

Since, according to Haag, former political boundaries do not persist in language for

longer than 300 years (Haag 1900: 139), there is no connection between old tribal borders

and dialect boundaries unless an old tribal boundary coincides with a later political

border (Haag 1946: 324). Geographical barriers are less relevant for the establishment

of boundaries than political ones. Whether these boundaries are linguistically reinforced

depends in the final instance on the “intercourse” that effects the spread of a linguistic

innovation; if it halts at an obstacle, the linguistic adjustment is also interrupted. For

Haag, the second important factor for the spread of a linguistic innovation is the higher

prestige of a form. Haag agrees with Fischer that the extent of the spread is in line with

Schmidt’s wave principle.

Between 1925 and 1930, Haag expanded his linguistic geographical research to cover

all of Württemberg. In his Die Grenzen des Schwäbischen in Württemberg (1946) he attempted

a demarcation of the individual linguistic regions:

We determine them according to the strength of the strands of the phonological boundaries

that traverse the state, and in so doing keep an eye out for the boundaries of the erstwhile

political areas to which they are oriented. The Roman Empire of the German Nation, in all

its remarkable variegation with its princes, churches, knightly and civil governances, will

then provide the names for labeling the linguistic regions.

(Haag 1946: 10; translation R. S.)

Haag distinguishes fifteen linguistic regions, but concedes that “only the urgent need to

clamber from the confusion of diversity to a vantage point [is] redressed” (Haag 1946:

10; translation R. S.). Fischer’s account of the “lawlessness” of the boundaries was thus

disproved; in fact, Fischer later agreed with Haag’s linguistic geographic approach.

Haag’s significant findings on the exceptionlessness of the sound laws were a result of

his empirical data collection methods. According to Haag, there are two kinds of sound

change: “current” and “older”. Current change is found where a sound law is still in effect. It includes all words belonging to the affected cohort without exception; this

sound change is triggered by minor articulatory shifts of which the speaker remains

unaware. “Relaxing lip closure makes every b into a w; fronting the stricture makes of

every ix an ic¸; opening makes of every ir an e˛r, every ı¯n becomes an e¯n; closing the nose

denasalizes all vowels” (Haag 192921930: 28; translation R. S.). For Haag, these results

can only be derived from directly collected linguistic data: “The transmission from individual

to individual, from dialect to dialect resembles unconscious infection; neighboring

dialects display only subtle differences of degree, like a slow increase or decrease in a

phenomenon; their geographic spread is therefore only rarely precisely determinable; this

present-day sound change thus has largely fluid boundaries” (Haag 1898: 88; translation

R. S.). Haag sees this sound change as extremely important, because many words are

affected. “Older sound change”, in contrast, is sound replacement in which only single

words belonging to a cohort are borrowed from a neighboring dialect via “conscious

importation” (Haag 1898: 89; translation R. S.).

Haag’s suggestion, never enacted, was to conduct direct recordings across all of Germany.

The Deutscher Sprachatlas was to be divided into sectors, the results coordinated

and depicted on a single map (Haag 1928: 167).

4.2.2. Karl Bohnenberger (18631951)

The phonetic and grammatical lectures of his neogrammarian teacher, Eduard Sievers,

provided decisive impetuses for Karl Bohnenberger. Yet while Sievers had no interest

in the linguistic geographic material of his predecessor, Adelbert von Keller, on which

neogrammarian axioms could have been tested, linguistic geography was a central topic

of research for Bohnenberger. Like Karl Haag, he was an empiricist; the two dialectologists

from Tübingen collected linguistic data in the field at the same time. His reservations

about the Deutscher Sprachatlas, which he never shook off (Bohnenberger 1902:

329), were a result of (among other factors) the differing approaches to data collection.

Steadfast in the neogrammarian tradition, he argued against the collection of written

data, which in his opinion obscured the causes of language change, an issue that concerned

him as much as it did Karl Haag. In his Über die ostgrenze des alemannischen he

emphasized in “Digression 3, On the extent of sound change and the causes of linguistic

boundaries” (1928b: 63, translation R. S.) that statements about the phenomena of language

change are only possible when based on direct data collection: “Here again in

many things a clear distinction arises between researchers who proceed principally from

written sources and those who principally proceed from spoken and heard speech” (translation

R. S.). He also criticized not just Fischer’s questionnaire methods “with all due

respect to the services that this atlas has provided and continues to provide” (Bohnenberger

1928b: 54255; translation R. S.), but also “the Marburg pronouncements”, especially

Kurt Wagner’s results published in 1927 in his work Deutsche Sprachlandschaften

(DDG 23): “Thus it appears to me incomprehensibly daring, when K. Wagner […] indulges

in opinions about Alemannish or Bavarian” (Bohnenberger 1928b: 55, footnote

1; translation R. S.). He praised all the more the direct recordings initiated by Wrede:

“Obviously, the excellent and very useful direct dialect recordings from individual districts

in central and northern Germany, commissioned by the Marburg Center and included in Wrede’s familiar collection, must be considered field-based research.” (Bohnenberger

1928b: 56, footnote 1).

Bohnenberger posits two kinds of linguistic change: on the one hand, indigenous,

inherited (überkommen) phonological change and on the other, constant and sporadic

change. Most linguistic boundaries can be attributed to inherited sound change and the

effects of analogy. Again in agreement with Karl Haag, Bohnenberger sees the triggers

of language change in the higher prestige of a linguistic form; this is dependent on the

political and economic primacy of certain regions and the standing of the speakers,

especially with regard to their occupation (Bohnenberger 1953: 2592260).

Unlike Wenker, Fischer or Haag, Bohnenberger saw reflections of former tribal borders

in contemporary linguistic boundaries; later research did in fact vindicate this view,

at least in some instances (cf. Moser 195121952, 1961; Nübling 1938: 2412242).

Whether or not these tribal boundaries were maintained depended on the communicative

intercourse (Verkehr; cf. Bach 1950: 66; Bohnenberger 1953: 225; Engel 1964: 225); thus

Bohnenberger, like Haag, assigned communication a decisive role in the establishment

and maintenance of dialect boundaries.

Bohnenberger analyzed his material in many papers; they provided the basis for the

internal and external classification in Die Mundarten Württembergs and the comprehensive

account of Die alemannische Mundart (Bohnenberger 1928a, 1928b: 1953) . It was

above all in Über die ostgrenze des alemannischen (1928b) that he intensively considered

a “classificatory scheme” for dialects, especially for the fixing of border lines. Although

he distinguished full Alemannic from a band of contiguous transitional dialects, he maintained

that a sharp delineation was possible here, too: “Pre-boundary lines separate full

dialects from transitional dialects” and “total boundary lines separate complete dialects”

(Bohnenberger 1928b: 30; translation R. S.).

7. Language and Space: The kulturmorphologische Ansatz in dialectology and the German language space ideology, 1920-1960

1. Aim and scope.

2. German dialectology after World War I.

3. Dialect, standard language and their respective cultural impact.

4. The discourse environment of cultural morphology.

5. Metaphors of space (and how they change).

6. Stamm, Raum, Volk 2 competing key terms of the dialectological debates in the 1930s.

7. Conclusion.

8. References.

1. Aim and scope

Among the schools of German dialectology, the kulturmorphologische Schule (lit. ‘cultural

morphology approach’) is special in many ways. Established in the 1920s in the

context of the Institute for Rheinische Landesgeschichte (‘Regional history of the Rhineland’)

in Bonn, it soon became legendary. For several decades, cultural morphology was

considered to be a most promising perspective for dialect geography. Mitzka even refers

to it as “das Hochziel der Dialektgeographie” [‘the highest aim of dialect geography’] (Mitzka 1943: 17). The founding document outlining the principles of this historicalcultural

approach to dialectology (Aubin, Frings and Müller 1926) puts the vast cartographic

material collected by Wenker and Wrede to a completely new use. What was

originally designed to represent synchronic traits of German dialects at the time of data

collection (from 1876 onwards), now was reinterpreted as the frozen result of a long

cultural-historical process during which linguistic traits had spread along routes of trade

and communication (Verkehr) and medieval territorial boundaries, and were structured

and bundled in and around cities. Surely, Wrede had already begun to transform the

aims of his dialect atlas towards a dynamic view of Soziallinguistik ‘social linguistics’,

but what really seemed revolutionary to his contemporaries was the fact that, within the

framework of cultural morphology, the spreading of dialectal traits was shown to be a

prototypical, model case for the spreading of culture in space. Reevaluating the cartographic

material of the Sprachatlas within the framework of historical-cultural theory

solved, as will be shown below, a major problem faced by the field of dialectology at

the time: once a well-respected field of linguistics, dialectology had faded into the background

in terms of relevance and popularity. Upon being seen as a model case of cultural

historiography, the reputation of practical relevance was once again restored to the field

of dialect research.

At the time when the kulturmorphologische Schule was established, the dominant paradigm

was that of the neogrammarians (cf. Murray in this volume). Dialectology was

primarily associated with sound laws, questions of speech physiology and at best folklore

or the boundaries of old tribal territories. Nothing dialectologists used to concern themselves

with attracted much public interest, nor did dialectology have any impact or influence

on historiography and social science.

As pointed out by Auer (2004), dialectology in Germany was, from the very beginning,

part of a nation state ideology. During the nineteenth century, dialects were connected

to the standard variety by ethno-romantic constructions from which the ancient

Stämme were derived (the tribes such as the Swabians or the Bavarians who had given

their names to the German dialects). The Stämme were in a sense “imagined communities”

(Anderson 1983) living and interacting in their dialects, which in turn had laid the

grounds for the German standard language. Although this romantic view had been seriously

challenged by the findings of the dialect atlas from the very beginning, modified

versions of it survived much longer, as will be shown. Cultural morphology provided a

promising perspective for the reentry of dialectology into a modernized interdisciplinary

national project, characterized by key terms such as Volk, Kultur and Verkehr. Thus,

from today’s point of view, cultural morphology can be viewed in two ways. On the one

hand, it is an integral part of the aggressively expansionist ethno-science (Volksforschung)

that evolved in the 1920s and supplied Nazism with expertise for their plans

to push the boundaries of the Reich far into the west (Westforschung, cf. Dietz, Gabel

and Tiedau 2003) and into the east (Ostforschung, cf., e.g., Oberkrome 1993). On the

other hand, cultural morphology is part of the history of a sociolinguistic perspective

on language change, language contact and language expansion in space. Lately, modern

sociolinguists have had a tendency to list cultural morphology among the ‘extralinguistic’

approaches to variation and do not seem willing to trouble themselves further with this

aspect of their tradition (cf. Barbour and Stevenson 1998: 73274). For instance, in Herrgen’s

(2001: 1524) historical account of German dialectology, there is only one single

sentence which reminds the reader of the fact that cultural morphology once existed: the sentence refers to the fact that the atlas maps were interpreted historically and correlated

with extralinguistic data. Prior to that time, however, cultural morphology had been

considered to be a most prominent part of the dialectological enterprise (cf. Grober-

Glück 1982). Historiographers praised cultural morphology for being the leading school

of German dialect geography from the moment it entered the field:

In der zweiten Hälfte der zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre entwickelte sich die

Dialektgeographie zur führenden Forschungsrichtung innerhalb der Dialektologie. Ausschlaggebend

für den nachhaltigen Einfluß, den diese Disziplin auf die Dialektologie und

die Sprachwissenschaft insgesamt ausübte, war die Kulturraumforschung.

‘In the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s dialect geography developed into the leading

approach within dialectology. This lasting impact of the discipline on dialectology and linguistics

in general was due to research on cultural spaces.’ (Wilking 2003: 66)

It is clear that the kulturmorphologische Ansatz cannot be equated with historical-cultural

approaches to dialectology as a whole, but it still is emblematic of the antagonist forces

that influenced German dialectology in the first half of the twentieth century. With cultural

morphology, dialectology became a part of the broader enterprise termed Kulturraumforschung

by historiographers. Emerging in the 1920s, this was (as Ditt 2003: 929

notes) a modern, innovative and interdisciplinary branch of historiography, oriented

toward cartographic representations of social and cultural everyday phenomena, and

serving the political need to reinvestigate the basic traits of the German Volk and its

Raum (which was considered to be the central aim of the Geisteswissenschaften).

2. German dialectology a˜ter World War I

It is symptomatic for the situation of German linguistics (and for the humanities in

general) after World War I that a sense of a deep crisis prevailed (Knobloch 2005: 1932

208). The days of the unquestioned hegemony of German linguistics were thought to

have come to an end. French sociology of language (Antoine Meillet, Jules Gillie´ron,

Charles Bally) rapidly gained popularity and attractiveness throughout Europe. The

leading figures in German Geisteswissenschaft were convinced that only Geist would be

able to get the country back to the top where, in their minds, it definitely belonged.

Geist, Volk, Kultur and Raum were the key terms designed to counter western positivism

and sociology and to regain ground for Germany and its tradition in the sciences and

humanities. Neogrammarian method and theory were dismissed as “positivistic”. Linguistic

nationalism rapidly gained ground in the 1920s, within the linguistic profession

as well as other areas. Leo Weisgerber, who like Theodor Frings and Adolf Bach was

closely associated to the Institut für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande in Bonn

(founded in 1920; now known as IGL), provided a linguistic manifesto in his book

Muttersprache und Geistesbildung ‘Mother Tongue and Education of the Mind’ (Weisgerber

1929), which would become exceptionally influential in the decades to follow. The

political manifesto of linguistic nationalism was first articulated by Georg Schmidt-Rohr

in Muttersprache (1933). Both books converge in the belief that it is the native language

that actively shapes the forces and qualities of the Volk. In the context of ethnic radicalization,

these elements of Herder’s and Humboldt’s thinking competed with race for the status of a new key term. Hutton (1999) has referred to this segment of the evolving

Nazi ideology as “mother-tongue fascism”.

Questioning and de-legitimizing the political borders fixed by the Treaty of Versailles

became an obsession of public discourse, and the humanities tried to prove their newly

acquired relevance by contributing to it in the best way they could. The common denominator

of all branches of culturalist Volksforschung was correcting political history and

political boundaries that assigned regions and territories to states whose language and

culture had not shaped the space in question. Raum (and in particular cultural space)

was semantically opposed to political government, and it was semantically coordinated

with Volk.

At that time, dialectology differed significantly from other fields of linguistics. Research

on dialects was well-organized and centralized (in Marburg), as well as rooted in

the regions and supported by a large body of collaborating school teachers and lay

persons. Dialect had always been seen as the language of the people (Volkssprache), so

aligning themselves with a new ethnic science (Volkswissenschaft) was relatively easy for

dialectologists. Therefore, restructured humanities saw dialectology among the winners

(cf. Ehlers to appear), while the remaining fields of linguistics had a hard time adjusting

to the new standards of ethnic thinking. Dialectology had been Gemeinschaftsforschung

long before the word turned programmatic after 1933.

In the IGL in Bonn, the models and methods of cultural morphology evolved through

close cooperation between dialectologists, historicists and other social scientists in the

context of Westforschung. For some time it had been questioned whether the current

border between Germany and France should mirror the old tribal boundaries between

the settlements of Germanen (by which the speakers of Germanic languages were meant)

and (romanized) Franken. Research within the IGL, inspired by Wrede’s Sprachatlas

methods, focused on patterns of everyday culture that spread together and shaped cultural

space: ways of settlement and house building, naming traditions (toponomastics),

dialect features and customs. The patterning of these features was considered to shape

a cultural space in which the lines of different cultural elements could be shown to

converge. The result of IGL research was that a large portion of northern France, Belgium,

and the Netherlands had originally been germanischer Kulturboden ‘Germanic cultural

space’, while the contemporary linguistic (and political) borders reflected Ausgleichslinien

‘lines of compromise’ fixed by the patterns of cultural contact and conflict between

Germanen and Romanen (cf. Petri 1937; Steinbach and Petri 1939). It has been argued

by Ditt (2003: 931), that the IGL-findings could serve opposing political options: either

to underline common (European) ground in the Western border regions or to support

(German) claims to legitimate possession of these territories. It was the second option

that was favored by the political contexts until 1945, and it was the first option that

ensured the survival of cultural morphology after 1945 (Rusinek 2003). In retrospect it

was, of course, easy to emphasize that it was a “European” program all along.

3. Dialect, standard language and their respective cultural impact

In volk-oriented German linguistics until 1945 there was a deep divide over the respective

cultural impact of dialect and standard language. Was it the (mainly rural) dialects of

the settlers that rooted German culture in space, or was it the cultural force of the educated standard speakers that kept the ethnic Germans abroad in close ties with the

Germans in the Reich? Walther Mitzka, who from 1934 was the head of the most powerful

institutions of German dialectology (namely the Sprachatlas, the Kartell der Mundartwörterbücher

‘The Association of Dialect Dictionaries’, and the section Volkssprache

of the Reichsgemeinschaft für deutsche Volksforschung ‘The Association for German Folk

Research’), advocated the superiority of dialect. Mitzka himself was in fact critical of

cultural morphology and favored a modernized and dynamic version of the Stämmemodel

(see Wilking 2003 for more detail). Contrary to Verkehr ‘trade and communication’,

another key term, which Theodor Frings had borrowed from Hermann Paul and

the Neogrammarians, Mitzka (1941, 1943) maintained/contended that it was prestige

and socio-cultural evaluation that conditioned the expansion of linguistic features in

space. The lasting results of the colonization in eastern regions were interpreted as having

proven that rural dialects (Bauernsprache) indeed attached themselves to occupied

ground and that urban centers of trade and commerce were less important (at least in

the eastern regions) than the IGL-linguists had thought.

The question of the cultural impact of dialect and standard language was far from

academic since it had very practical consequences in key matters of the politics towards

the Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschtum, i. e., the Germans living outside the German territory

(see Knobloch 2005: 1112136 for the role of Auslandsdeutschtum in German linguistics).

While the proponents of dialectal superiority advocated strengthening the ties between

peripheral Germans and the Reich by cultivating their dialects, their opponents

tried to overcome the cultural limitations inherent in the dialect and to establish the

standard variety as a reference in school, administration and media. The conflict is

clearly demonstrated in quotes such as the following:

Die Mundart verbindet uns stärker als die Schriftsprache mit unsern völkischen Ursprüngen.

Volksfremde Denkweise, wie sie die Politik überwunden hat, wird von ihr sowieso übersprungen.

Daher ihr volksbiologischer Wert.

‘Dialect links us more strongly to our origins as a Volk than written language can. Thinking

that is alien to our Volk, which has now been left behind in politics, is fully disregarded in

dialect anyway; thus its innate folk-biological value.’ (Mitzka 1943: 5)

In Mitzka’s ethno-romantic view, dialect is believed to have the strength and vitality to

resist the corrupting forces of modernity. This position was, however, far from uncontroversial.

It was challenged by many of the leading figures in linguistics and language

policy. Georg Schmidt-Rohr writes on the linguistic situation in the Alsace:

Die alemannische, die fränkische Mundart ist schon als Mundart grundsätzlich schwächer,

weniger lockend und werbekräftig als die französische Hochsprache. In Familien, in denen

die deutsche Mundart nur Haussprache ist, während französische Schulen besucht, französische

Zeitungen gelesen werden, muß notwendigerweise die Sprache des größeren Kreises

(die Schriftsprache) allmählich die Sprache des engeren Kreises (die Mundart) verdrängen.

‘The Alemannic and the Franconian dialect are as such weaker, less attractive and less alluring

than the French standard language. In families where the German dialect is only spoken

at home, while French schools are attended and French newspapers are read, the language

of greater linguistic reach and influence (the written language) will gradually and inevitably

encroach upon and marginalize the language of lesser linguistic reach (the dialect).’

(Schmidt-Rohr 1933: 346).

For Schmidt-Rohr, standard and written varieties symbolize ethnic unity, while dialects

stand for diversity, isolation, lack of communicative reach and lack of social recognition

in modern societies. It is significant that the rhetoric on space served both the modernist

and the conservative factions. Raum can be conceived as ground (Boden), as the soil for

growing in the fields (Scholle), but also as dynamic space mediating trade, communication

and exchange. The connotations of Raum spread in opposite directions, and this

fact evidently contributed to the success of spatial metaphors after World War I (Köster

2002: 1012118; see section 5).

In this controversial field, the strategy of cultural morphology involved the use of

Sprachatlas maps as a resource for a new approach to the history of the German written

standard variety (Frings 1956: 1221), by opting for a dynamic interpretation of maps,

and for a diachronic reading of the synchronic distribution of linguistic traits. Like

Hermann Aubin (who left the IGL to teach in Breslau), Theodor Frings took the IGLviews

and the Bonn IGL-network with him to the eastern part of Germany. From 1927

onwards, he taught at Leipzig University and sought to apply the methods developed in

his Rheinische Landesgeschichte to the linguistic data of eastern Germany. The construction

of the emergence of the written German standard language in the fourteenth century

that Frings offers has all elements of a unification myth, and it goes as follows: In

the west, the modern borderline between the French and German speaking areas is an

Ausgleichslinie ‘line of compromise’ between romanized Franks and those Germanic

tribes who had maintained their ethnic and linguistic traditions. A standard language

could not develop here. On the contrary, the river Rhine attracted waves of trade and

traffic between the north and the south which led to maximal diversity and relic areas

on both sides of that main axis of communication. The romanized western Franks took

the lead in developing a central state and a unified written standard:

Die Sprachgrenze ist nicht, wie man geglaubt hat, ein Ergebnis der Völkerwanderungszeit,

sondern eine späte Ausgleichslinie zwischen romanischen und deutschen Franken. Jenseits

der Linie, im Westreich, entstehen Einheitsstaat, Schrift- und Hochsprache, diesseits, im

Ostreich 2 und das ist der tragische Augenblick im germanisch-deutschen Sprachgeschehen

2 erlahmte die Kraft. Die Franken schenkten Frankreich die Grundlage der sprachlichen

Einigung, nicht Deutschland.

‘The language border is not the result of the Great Migration as once believed, but a recent

line of compromise between romanized and German Franks. Beyond that line, in the western

empire, a unified state, written language and a standard language emerge, while in the eastern

empire 2 and this is the tragic moment in the Germanic-German language history 2 the

forces become weak. The Franks gave the foundations of linguistic unification to France,

not to Germany.’ (Frings 1956: 12)

If it is not the west that has brought linguistic unity to the Germans, where should we

look for it then? It cannot come from the east either, because civilization spreads from

west to east and never the other way around. The Marburg-maps according to Frings

show that the main features of the standard language converge along the river Main

between Mainz, Würzburg and Bamberg:

Das ist gewiß eine Herzlage und eine Sammelstelle, auf die wir schon einmal stießen, aber

ohne staatliche Bedeutung, ohne Stoßkraft, in Eigenleben befangen wie die anderen Räume.

[…] Dem deutschen Altland war die Kraft der sprachlichen Einigung entschwunden.

‘This is indeed a core territory and point of convergence, which we have encountered once

before, but without state relevance, without outward energy, preoccupied by a life of its own

as is true of the other spaces […]. The old German land has lost the power of linguistic

unification.’ (Frings 1956: 15)

Yet this region of the Altland is known to be a starting point of the German settlement

in the east, and so the central features of the (now) written standard move east with the

Mainfranken, mix with other varieties and finally settle by forming an Ausgleichssprache

‘koine’ that is backed by the state of Wettin and by Leipzig as an urban centre. It is

through the dynamics of the Ostkolonisation that linguistic unity is brought about. Neither

educated humanists nor the chancelleries are credited with the “invention” of the

standard variety. This proves to be incompatible with the myth of the creativity of the

Volk (yet compatible with the myth of the educated middle-class citizen or the administration

of the state). It is the settlers moving east that build linguistic unity, not great

individuals or a central state (like in France):

Das neue Deutsch war im Munde der Ostsiedler vorgeformt und wurde gesprochen lange

bevor es seit dem 13. Jahrhundert in die Schreibstube einzog. Es ist ein Gewächs des neudeutschen

Volksbodens, eine Schöpfung des Volkes, nicht des Papiers und des Humanismus.

‘The new German had existed in the minds and mouths of the settlers in the east and was

spoken long before it entered the clerks’ offices. It grew on new German soil, and was a

creation of the people, not of paper and humanism.’ (Frings 1956: 16)

Interestingly enough, this mythic conception of linguistic unification was not only supported

by the humanities of the pre-National Socialistic and National Socialistic eras,

but also by communist post-war Germany (where Frings continued to hold his chair at

Leipzig in the German Democratic Republic). All in all, cultural morphology held a

middle course in the conflict on the cultural impact of dialect or standard language, as

did Mitzka, who in his 1941 contribution to the infamous volume Kriegseinsatz der

Geisteswissenschaften ‘War Deployment of the Humanities’ attributed the formation of

German to the impact of Bauernsprache ‘farmers’ language’ and Bürgersprache ‘citizens’

language’ (cf. Mitzka 1941: 87).

When dialectologists at the time (like Martin 1939) described the role of the dialects

in the development of German, they use metaphors of force and vitality: Urkraft, der

breite alte Strom der Mundarten, Quelle deutschen Volkstums, Grundlage unseres Sprachlebens

[‘original power’, ‘the broad, ancient pulsing current of the dialects’, ‘source of

the German folk’, ‘foundation of our language life’] (Martin 1939: 425). Metaphors for

the written standard tended to be taken from culture and order instead:

Die Schriftsprache ist strengen Regeln unterworfen im Wortschatz, Formenbildung, Satzbau

und Ausdruck (sic); sie führt ein Leben in Zurückhaltung, in steter Anpassung an das geistige

Leben der Nation. In ihr erklingen die Werke der Dichter, Gelehrten; sie muß in Zeitung und

Rundfunk angewandt werden, in ihr wünschen wir die großen Reden unserer Volksführer zu

hören. […] Sie ist das Sinnbild der deutschen Einheit.

‘The written language is subject to strict rules of vocabulary, morphology, syntax and expression;

it leads a life of restraint, continually adapting to the mentality of the nation. It echoes

the works of poets and scientists; it must be printed in the newspaper and heard on the

radio, as it is the written language that we wish to hear used in the great speeches of our

people’s leaders. […] It is the symbol of German unity.’ (Martin 1939: 5).

While dialectology attempted to cash in on the spiritual warmth of Heimat ‘homeland’

connotations, standard varieties seemed to lack this feeling. Simple minds like Bernhard

Martin even emphasize that the written variety preserves the best of the various dialectal

achievements, but still has no Heimat:

Während die Schriftsprache das ihr Gemäße auswählt und festhält aus dem sprachlichen

Gute aller Stämme und Landschaften, dadurch nirgends und überall daheim ist, steht die

Mundart mit festen Füßen auf der heimischen Erde, ist ein Ausdruck dieser Heimat selbst.

'‘While the written language selects that which is appropriate, retaining the linguistic good

of all tribes and regions, it is thus nowhere and everywhere at home, whereas the dialect is

firmly grounded on the soil of the homeland; it is an expression of this homeland in itself.’

(Martin 1939: 9)

4. The discourse environment o˜ cultural morphology

In the dialectological writings of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, cultural morphology is

held in high esteem. Frings and his followers (such as Friedrich Maurer, Adolf Bach,

Ernst Schwarz) are said to have overcome the isolated existence of dialect research and

to have promoted the status of this branch of the humanities to a ground-breaking and

integral partner of German cultural history (see Schwarz 1950: 193; Martin 1939: 92). It

is repeated almost ritually that cultural morphology has shaped our perspective on the

large scale dynamics of cultural traits in space.

The term cultural morphology was selected, as it could easily be associated with

Spengler’s popular philosophy of emerging and declining cultures, well-known among

the educated people of the 1920s (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, printed first in 19182

1922). In Spengler’s Kulturkreislehre, the vitality of cultures in history is assessed in terms

of competition with rival cultures. By calling dialect geography kulturmorphologisch, it

was implied that dialectological maps could serve as evidence for the description of these

cultural dynamics in space, elevating Spengler’s philosophy of culture to the level of

sound empirical research.

Dialectological cultural morphology was by far not the only attempt to benefit from

Spengler’s immense popularity. In 1936, the philosopher Eduard Spranger published a

short volume entitled Probleme der Kulturmorphologie, claiming to help “die Aufgaben

verstehen, die die kommenden Kulturbegegnungen uns auferlegen werden” [‘to understand

the tasks which coming cultural encounters will impose on us’] (Spranger 1936:

40). What happens when dynamic and expanding cultures (either by settling outside their

territories, or in colonization, or in the remote contacts of trade and communication)

interact with other cultures in space? The settings in question mirror exactly the factors

assumed to be relevant for dialect dynamics: settlements abroad, colonization, trade and

commerce. Spranger suggests that the results of cultural contact differ widely according

to the circumstances of the contact: settlement and colonization confront cultures in the

same space, so traits have to either mix and mingle, or else the superior one destroys

and replaces the others. Trade, communication, and political exchange do not take place

on the same territory, and they are said to result in a leveling (Ausgleich, Spranger 1936:

728). The examples discussed by Spranger include the spread of Christianity, the exchange

between Romanen and Germanen in the West, and the German colonies lost during World War I. In reading Spranger’s text, we also understand that the new humanities

(among them dialectology) lay claim to political relevance:

Die tiefgehende nationale Selbstbesinnung, zu der das deutsche Volk seit kurzem wieder

erwacht ist, legt die Frage nach dem Eigenen und Ursprünglichen der deutschen kulturformenden

Kräfte nahe.

‘The deep-rooted national self-reflection to which the German people re-awoke a short while

ago brings the question of what is proper and original in the forces which shape German

culture into the foreground.’ (Spranger 1936: 9)

Returning to dialectology proper, we find that towards the end of the National Socialist

era, there were two competing models claiming to account for the spread of dialectal

features in space, and both, in a broad sense, had accepted the innovations brought

about by Theodor Frings and his followers in cultural morphology. The model advocated

by Frings himself was based on the idea of sequences of “waves”, piling up and overlapping

with other waves, pushing features continually forward, surrounding and isolating

obstacles. The populations in this space could either show reluctance or eagerness in

adopting new features. This model gives prominence and strength to urban centers of

trade, communication and political power. It is these factors that send the waves of

change towards the periphery, and the more distant they become, the less impact they

have. The competing model, advocated by Walther Mitzka, included primarily rural,

loosely-knit networks of isolated settlements (Streusiedlungen), that combined into larger

networks and finally dominated the territory in question completely, thereby isolating

the old features and serving as models to adopt the new ones. There was no privilege

for urban centers in this model. The practitioners of the Sprachatlas (such as Martin

1939: 1062107) had no qualms accepting either model. They were convinced that the

two models were compatible with one another and that they both had areas to which

they could be profitably applied. It is remarkable though that adherence to one or the

other of the positions correlates highly with the commitment to the cultural superiority

of either dialect or written standard. The followers of Frings’ model (many of whom

were outside of dialectology proper, like Leo Weisgerber or Hennig Brinkmann) argued

that the unity and strength of the Volk depend primarily on the cultural reach of written

standard, while dialects are seen as a source of fragmentation. The followers of Mitzka,

on the other hand, underlined the stabilizing forces of dialect.

However, the basic tenets of cultural morphology, reshaping the dynamic interrelations

of folklore (Volkstum) and the land (Landschaft), can be considered common

ground in the early 1930s. Adolf Bach, a close follower of Theodor Frings, also makes

reference to cultural spaces, “die auf deutschem Volksboden von den Mächten einer

schicksalhaften Geschichte ausgeformt worden sind” [‘which where formed on the German

space by the powers of a fateful history’] (Bach 1934: 168). At the same time he

recommends that cultural spaces and the dynamics investigated by cultural morphology

be made the fundament of an “organic” restructuring of the provinces of the Reich.

He continues:

Dies Ziel wird dort von besonderer Bedeutung sein, wo wir hinausgehen über die gegenwärtigen

Grenzen des Deutschen Reiches. Den jenseits von ihnen wohnenden Volksgenossen (und

denen, die Gewalt über sie haben) kann hier aufs nachdrücklichste zum Bewußtsein gebracht werden, daß politische Grenzen dort sinnlos gezogen sind, wo sie keine Rücksicht nehmen

auf das Volkstum einer Landschaft.

‘This aim will become particularly relevant once moving beyond the present borders of the

German Reich. It will most emphatically enter the consciousness of the compatriots living

beyond the borders (and the consciousness of those who have power over them) that political

borders there have been thoughtlessly drawn and fail to take the Volkstum of a region into

consideration.’ (Bach 1934: 1682169)

Cultural morphology established itself as the interdisciplinary study of the dynamic relations

between Volkstum and Landschaft (‘region’ is only an approximate translation)

with the help of dialectology. It was widely accepted even by competitors in the same

field.

5. Metaphors o˜ space (and how they change)

It is a linguistic truism that political as well as scientific key terms can only be fixed in

relation to their antonyms. Programmatic expressions should not be understood in terms

of what they stand for, but rather in terms of what they stand against. The changing

semantics of Raum ‘space’ in the German history of ideas have been described in detail

by Köster (2002). The public career of Raum compounds in Germany before 1945 is

evidently related to imperialism, where the semantics of Raum were meant to cover

national territories together with spheres of (colonial) interest outside the state borders.

From the beginning, Raum was opposed to official state borders. This line of opposition

was of course enforced by the territorial losses of Germany after the war in the Treaty

of Versailles. As of this point in time, there were a number of regions which could be

said to be part of the German space, but did not belong to the German state territory.

There is, however, a second line of reasoning, a second semantic opposition which is

less evident. We tend to think of Raum as static, but it can be shown that in the 1920s

popular compounds underline its dynamic meaning. Raum is seen as a scene of potential

action, a place where forces meet and compete, as a dynamic scene for competing actors.

Köster (2002: 12) cites contemporary sources according to which Raum was interpreted

as a metaphor for the chance to use ones own forces. It is essentially by this dynamic

connotation that the Raum-semantics could be used simultaneously to entail territorializing

and de-territorializing ambitions: the forces that shaped any given cultural space

would at the same time be the forces transcending any spatial limits. From this point of

view, languages that resisted territorialization (like Yiddish) were particularly fascinating

(Auer 2004: 150). In the late 1920s, pioneers of sociolinguistics in Germany (such as

Heinz Kloss, Franz Thierfelder; cf. Hutton 1999: 2002205) described Yiddish as a language

that could help to expand the influence of German in Eastern Europe. The contrast

between dialect and standard could easily be paralleled with the contrast between

static, spatially bounded varieties on one side and expanding (space-transcending) varieties

on the other. This is why Yiddish could not be considered a German dialect: it had

no territorial boundaries. It is evident that early sociolinguists (Georg Schmidt-Rohr as

well as those mentioned above) were convinced that the cultural superiority of written

standard languages depended exactly on their forces as “raumüberwindende Mächte”

‘space-transcending powers’ (cf. Schmidt-Rohr 1934), while dialects were considered to be static. German language politics abroad (developed by institutions such as the

Deutsche Akademie in Munich) trusted in the ability of the German standard language

(with its tradition in culture, science, philosophy) to gain new ground abroad and eventually

overcome spatial boundaries.

This interpretation of Raum as a dynamic scene where forces meet and compete was

especially compatible with the psychological twist that Georg Simmel, Kantianist philosopher

and sociologist, gave to spatial semantics (Simmel 1992: 6872687, Köster 2002:

81288). According to Simmel, space is a mental construct; it is the way we perceive the

scenes for all forms of social interaction. Borders are not real in Euclidean space, but

are the results of social constructions, which evolve from interaction between individuals;

we perceive them as features of the territory:

Nicht der Raum, sondern die von der Seele her erfolgende Gliederung und Zusammenfassung

seiner Teile hat gesellschaftliche Bedeutung.

‘Not space, but the mental structuring and unification of its parts have social meaning.’

(Simmel 1992: 688)

It can easily be shown that this ambiguous mix of naturalist and territorializing conceptions

of space on one hand, and psychological and interactive conceptions on the other,

was also relevant in the above-mentioned controversies regarding cultural morphology.

Walther Mitzka’s critical attitude towards cultural morphology is related to his psychological

concept of space which attributes cultural superiority to the individuals’ positive

attitudes towards their dialect, while the model of cultural morphology is much more

dependent on the results of physical barriers, medieval political territories and routes of

trade and communication. But, of course, this type of conflict is quite common for

hegemonic key terms. They can be considered key terms because every person in the

discursive field has to clarify his own position and perspective on its implications, not

because there is consensus on these implications. All word compounds ending in Raum

though 2 such as Lebensraum (life-space), Volksraum (ethnic space), Sprachraum (language

space), Wirtschaftsraum (economic space), Kulturraum (cultural space) 2 which

flooded discourse during the 1930s, related the social activities of the Volk to the realm

of political power and geography. Operating on common (ethno-Darwinist) ground, the

proponents of spatial concepts disagreed widely on the importance of language, economy,

culture, race for space. Linguists, of course, tended to believe that it was language

that created the Volk. In an attempt to sort out the various concepts, Schmidt-Rohr

(1936) writes:

Der Volksraum, der als geopolitische Größe oft übersehen wurde, ist der geographische

Raum, insofern er von einer wesenseinheitlichen Bevölkerung bewohnt wird. Diese Gebiete

sind wesentlich Einheiten infolge eines einheitlichen geistigen Verkehrs. Die Grenzen sind

wesentlich da gezogen, wo Verschiedenheit der Mittel des geistigen Verkehrs die Möglichkeit

dieses Verkehrs aufhebt, wo verschiedene Sprachen aneinander stoßen.

‘The Volksraum, which is often overlooked as a geopolitical factor, is the geographical space

inasmuch as it is inhabited by a population similar in kind. These territories are relevant

units because of a unified, shared mentality. The borders are by and largely drawn where

the differences in the means of communication render discourse impossible, in other words,

where different languages meet.’ (Schmidt-Rohr 1936: 242). And while Schmidt-Rohr, a critic of dialectal fragmentation in Germany, predicted that

in contact situations the winning language will be the one that is structurally superior in

culture, literature, press, dialectologists like Mitzka claimed the superiority of the dialect

by stressing its closer psychological ties to the speakers and their local identities.

Spaces of language contact are determined by the dynamic value differences (“dynamische

Wertverschiedenheit”, Schmidt-Rohr 1936: 243) and by the cultural reach of the

languages involved. Bilingual settings do not last, they are considered to be unnatural.

One of the languages will have to retreat eventually. The power of (written standard)

languages to overcome distances in space is amplified by technical means, as Schmidt-

Rohr states (1934: 203). There are no limits governing the extent to which languages

create and enlarge intellectual spaces for their speakers. Proto-sociologists of language

such as Schmidt-Rohr (1936: 243) or Heinz Kloss (e.g., 1929) tend to identify the cultural

scope and value of a language with its political force.

By this equation, strengthening the cultural and intellectual community of one’s

mother tongue becomes a political program. Emigrants from Germany are thought to

be part of the Volk as long as they still command their mother tongue 2 hence the

political wish to reinforce their loyalty by strengthening their linguistic ties to the Reich.

In border regions and linguistic enclaves (Sprachinseln; see Kuhn 1934), people have to

be protected against the temptations and seductions of attractive contact languages they

are exposed to. And abroad, in the territory of the enemy, minority languages (like the

Celtic languages in France, Ireland, Wales) have to be encouraged in their struggle

against the linguistic centralism of the state. The basic principle of linguistic nationalism

was that political borders should mirror linguistic borders, which tends to render political

power illegitimate for linguistic minorities in any state. These in turn find their protector

(Schutzmacht) in states, where their mother tongue is the official language.

6. Stamm, Raum, Volk  competing key terms o˜

the dialectological debates in the 1930s

From this point of view, it was a severe disadvantage of the traditional key term of

dialectology, the Stamm ‘tribe’, that it had no dynamic connotations; instead, it presupposed

stable territorial grounding and particularism with respect to the standard language.

In the nineteenth century, dialect borders had been explained by the settlement

borders of the old tribal groups going back to the age of the Great Migration. Their

dialects were neither written nor vehicles of social advancement, nor fit to be propagated

by modern means of communication. The tribes were thought to be leftovers of a world

that had been overcome by the rise of nation-state. In the eyes of modernists (like Bach

1934), the rhetoric of the Stamm suggested that dialects (and dialectologists) were living

in the past. While England and France looked back on centuries of political and linguistic

centralism, German Stämme (and their linguistic correlates, the traditional dialects)

served as reminders that behind the short history of the German central state there

lurked the remains of primitive social bodies.

The archaism behind tribal rhetoric, however, does not give the whole story. In the

Weimar Republic, the German Stämme were part of the political agenda and even present

in the text of the constitution, which had “das deutsche Volk einig in seinen Stämmen” [‘the German people united in its tribes”] (cf. Oberkrome 2004: 15). Among

the most popular works of literary history was Josef Nadler’s Literaturgeschichte der

deutschen Stämme und Landschaften. The proceedings of the Siebenter deutscher Soziologentag

in Berlin 1930 provide evidence that the most prominent speakers of German

humanities seriously debated the problem of Stämme. The reasons for this untimely

boom are not easy to grasp. Firstly, the appeal of the Stämme reflects the high priority

that was given to the Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschtum as a field of political relevance in

the new humanities. Linguistic and cultural identities of Germans abroad were thought

to be heavily impregnated by their tribal loyalties. Secondly, it was the Stämme that

marked the semantic opposition towards the waves of western popular culture (Stammeskultur

versus Massenkultur) that proved to be so threatening for the German conservative

middle class identity. Strengthening regional and cultural ties seemed to be an

effective means of protection against the temptations of western popular culture. Thirdly,

being communities of descent placed the tribes closer to racial categories.

Therefore, within German dialectology, there remained influential groups of researchers

who relied on a modernized Stämme terminology, among them Walther Mitzka. In

order to modernize tribal rhetoric in dialectology, it had to be separated from the old,

static concept of space and adjusted to the new, dynamic one propagated by cultural

morphology. Ironically, it was of all people Hermann Aubin, co-founder of cultural

morphology, who set out to modernize this relationship between Stamm and space, the

same person who denied any credit to the archaic and static model of the German tribes

with their invariable nature-like properties, their common descent and stable settlement

places. Aubin redefined Stämme as historical and cultural subjects, shaped by the ever

changing influences of geography, politics, religion, ideology, commerce and contact with

other groups. In short, the formation of tribes was considered to be an ongoing affair,

not an accomplished fact of history (Aubin 1931; Oberkrome 2004: 16217). Max Hildebert

Boehm, a famous spokesman of the conservative branches of the humanities in

1930, subtly dissected the key terms of his time in his programmatic sketch of the humanities

as Volkswissenschaften ‘ethnic sciences’:

Wir brauchen aber dem Abstammungsmoment nur eine kleine Wendung zu geben, um die

Vorstellung vom Stamm als natürlich bedingter Art auf eine bezeichnende Weise zu verändern.

[…] Wir leben als Stammesgenossen von heute in der Vorstellung, nicht bloße Anlagen,

sondern eine bestimmende Art und einen besonderen Geist geerbt zu haben. Damit aber

verschmilzt die naturhafte Artprägung des Stammes mit einem partikularen geistigen Überlieferungszusammenhang

und einem darauf gegründeten Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Der Stamm

fühlt sich älter als das Volk. Er hat sich als gefestigte Volkspersönlichkeit aufgegeben, aber

seine besondere Volksart nicht nur leiblich, sondern auch geistig bewahrt. Und dies sein

verdämmerndes, gestalt- und willenlos gewordenes Sondersein erscheint ihm auch auf der

geistigen Ebene als ein Stück Natur im Vergleich zu der formenden, fordernden, normsetzenden

Kultur des Volkes, in die der Mensch erst durch Erziehung und Lehre völlig hineinwächst.

[…] Aber das Stammestum erhält sich im Gefühl des Menschen gleichsam als ein

umhegter Bereich des Mütterlichsten. […] Und dieser lebendige Stamm ist es, der sich mit

Behelfen aus dem Bestande der naiven Popularwissenschaft seiner Zeit den Glauben an Artgleichheit,

gemeinsame Abstammung, Taten der Väter, umgreifbares Gemeinschaftsgut und

dergleichen mehr auferbaut. Wie trügerisch dieser Glaube sein kann, hat beispielsweise die

jüngste deutsche Mundartforschung gezeigt. ‘But we only need to give a small twist to the notion of descent in order to change the view

of the Stamm as a naturally conditioned kind in a characteristic way. […] Today, we people

of the same Stamm believe to have inherited not only predispositions, but also a certain way

of being and a special Geist. In this way, the natural formation of the Stamm becomes

amalgamated with a particular mental tradition and a feeling of togetherness which is based

on it. The Stamm thinks of itself (sic) as being older than the people. It has given up itself

as a solid Volk personality but has maintained his special ethnic way of being not only

physically, but also spiritually. And this gloomy specialness of being that has lost shape and

will, now appears to it as a piece of nature on the spiritual level, when compared to the

forming, demanding and norm-setting culture of the Volk, into which man only grows completely

by education and teaching. […] But in man’s emotions the Stamm is in a sense preserved

like a cherished area of the most motherly. […] And it is this lively Stamm which

construes the belief in similarity of the kind, in common descent, deeds of the fathers, embraceable

shared values and so on with props from the repertoire of naı¨ve popular science.

Recent German dialectology, for instance, has shown how this belief can be deceiving.’

(Boehm 1932: 1072108)

Boehm was definitely hostile towards the Stämme. From his perspective, the use of tribal

discourse implies that a nation is incapable of doing away with its origins. Such a nation

will dissolve and fall apart and eventually be nothing more than a collection of tribes,

which in his opinion is a dim and miserable fate, exemplified by Luxemburg (Boehm

1932: 110). The allusion to late German dialectology in the end of the citation is aimed

at cultural morphology. Some of the proponents of cultural morphology (in particular

Adolf Bach; see Bach 1934: 46) did not even use the word Stämme without distancing

quotation marks 2 this shows that the discourse of the Stamm in its pure and unrefined

form was incompatible with cultural morphology as well as with the ideology of the

standard language.

It was also Walther Mitzka who re-implemented modernized Stämme in the heart

of German dialectology, the Sprachatlas. Whereas dialectology in the traditions of the

nineteenth century had only known the Stämme, Mitzka introduced a two-way terminology,

consisting of Altstämme and Neustämme (paralleled with Altland and Neuland). Cultural-

historical dynamics, introduced into the debate by Aubin, were seen mainly on the

side of Neustämme which were thought to have been formed in colonization and settlement

movements of German origin in Eastern Europe. It is important to keep in mind

that the role of Stämme was still debated in German dialectology as late as the 1960s

(cf. Moser 1961).

Cultural morphology on the whole, however, pursued Ferdinand Wrede’s position on

the Stämme, which amounted to the statement that they were widely irrelevant (Wrede

1902). As the only evidence available for tribal boundaries was dialectal evidence, they

were suspected to be circular. For Wrede, only if later medieval territories reflected and

continued tribal territories, the latter were considered to be relevant at all. Even Mitzka

(1943: 40) states explicitly that the relevance of old Stamm borderlines cannot be proven,

if later territorial boundaries are drawn along the same lines: the dialectal line in that

case could also be of later origin. It should also be noted that vague, romantic notions

such as Stamm had no place in sober neogrammarian dialectology which was already

fairly sociological in the 1890s (e.g., Wegener 1891). Cultural morphology adds the idea

that many traits of local dialects cannot be explained by local tradition alone. In addition,

the radiations of cultural centers (such as cities, administrative and religious centers)

must be taken into account (Martin 1939: 101).

Interlocking dialectal regions with urban centers were seen as a result of trade and

communication in cultural morphology. It is important to note that Mitzka’s construction,

though different in argument, serves very similar purposes. For him, the compact

dialectal unity of the Altstämme is lost in their expansion towards the East. German

speaking settlements, partly urban and partly rural, are pushed forward into territories

with different dominating languages. These outposts, with their developing ties and networks,

transform primary dialects into Verkehrsmundarten ‘regional dialects’, varieties

with a broader reach (Mitzka 1943: 87).

Mitzka and the proponents of cultural morphology shared a certain type of linguistic

frontier myth: while the majority of the other European countries had well-defined territories

and long standing centralized states, the Germans had been continually battling

at their western and eastern frontiers and formed their cultural and linguistic identities

in these battles. Due to (as Frings 1956: 5 writes) the German expansion of territory for

two millennia, it is not surprising to find that they accomplished their linguistic unity at

a meaningful moment of their colonial history. For Mitzka, the most dynamic regions

of the whole process are the border regions and not the cultural and economic centers.

He claims that in the Prussian Northeast, linguistic space was formed by the rural dialect

alone, without any urban influence (Mitzka 1943: 16). Evidently, Mitzka preferred a

version of the frontier myth that credited the persistence of the German Volk mainly to

the peasants with their attachment to the soil, while Frings and the rest of cultural

morphology tended towards a more modernist version of the same myth.

A final point is of interest. There had been a rather paralyzing tendency towards

increasingly fine grained localism in German dialectology until the 1920s. For the popularity

of cultural morphology it was certainly helpful that Theodor Frings and his followers

promised to refocus on the “global” tendencies and dynamics of dialects in Germany.

In a programmatic sketch of cultural morphology, Frings and Tille (192521926: 1) write:

Aus der Kleinarbeit, die F. Wredes Schüler in ihren Dissertationen zum SA geleistet haben,

ist allmählich ein neuer verheißungsvoller Gesichtspunkt entstanden: das Studium der Großbewegungen,

die das alte deutsche Stammland von den Alpen bis zur Nordsee durch die

Jahrhunderte mit gleichem, immer wiederkehrendem Rhythmus, in immer wieder erneutem

Südnordstrom durchflutet haben.

‘Out of the detailed work completed by the students of Wrede in their dissertations for the

Sprachatlas, a new, promising point of view has finally emerged: the study of the large

movements that have flooded the old German land from the Alps to the North Sea through

the centuries in the same, ever-repeating rhythm and ever-renewing stream from the south

to the north.’

When we compare to this the theories and models of Mitzka and the Sprachatlas of the

1930s, it becomes apparent that they too were trying to reconnect dialectal localism with

the global accomplishments of German cultural history, although it was their belief that

it was the colonization of Eastern Europe that kept the Volk together.

In the end, it is under the unifying roof of Kulturraumforschung ‘research on cultural

space’ that the different schools of German dialectology meet. Again ironically, the political

context after 1945 supported a renaissance of cultural morphology (with its inclination

to the West) as well as a renaissance of Stämme dialectology that had become part

of Ostforschung. While the former recoded their western frontier framework in terms of

the common history of Europe and the occident, the latter turned from eastern colonization to the fate of the German refugees (Vertriebene). Both schools had in fact mixed

and mingled in the 1920s and 30s. Hermann Aubin (Breslau) and Theodor Frings (Leipzig)

had moved to the east. Walther Mitzka (Marburg) had been an early activist for

eastward oriented Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschtum before he became head of the Marburg

Sprachatlas. Adolf Bach spent a few years at the German Reichsuniversität in Strassburg

before he had to return to Bonn and the IGL. Ernst Schwarz, head of the Sudetendeutsche

Mundartforschung in Prague, went to Erlangen after the war.

7. Conclusion

Cultural morphology was shaped in strategic competition with the rising French sociology

of language and dialect. Even the name cultural morphology is reminiscent of Emile

Durkheim’s morphologie sociale (1897), a branch of sociology that was to investigate the

elementary forms of social life, such as housing, distribution of population, communication.

In German Geisteswissenschaften, the empirical fields of French sociology were

usually replaced by compounds with either Kultur or Geist. At the same time, the name

cultural morphology also related to Oswald Spenglers immensely popular and alarmist

Der Untergang des Abendlandes where the great cultures of world history are shown to

follow timeless laws of rise and decline.

Cultural morphology was a promising approach for dialectologists. It lead linguists

out of their bemoaned isolation from the other humanities, and instead secured methodological

leadership for them: nothing was equal to the Sprachatlas and its dynamic

cartography of culture. The Atlas der deutschen Volkskunde ‘Atlas of German Folklore’

(founded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/Notgemeinschaft in 1928 as a national

flagship project of ethnic science) followed the methods that had been tested in dialectology

by the Sprachatlas and that had been refined by cultural morphology. Proponents

of cultural morphology initially had a strong position in this atlas, and dialectologists

tried to establish the Wortatlas within it (which was later successfully established by

Mitzka in Marburg). Ethnography and historiography both felt indebted to the dialectologists.

In 1936, Hermann Aubin, one of the leading proponents of cultural morphology,

wrote:

Modern linguistics has taught us to recognize transformations and assimilations in regional

cultural provinces. Words and forms spread from original localities, the varieties of which,

for some reason or other, are particularly highly valued and therefore imitated as superior.

These forms compete for dominance with the native ones they encounter; they often conquer

wide areas and spaces. The same goes for other cultural traits.

(Aubin 1936: 12; translation C. K.)

Reframed as cultural morphology, dialectology turned modern, dynamic and sociological.

As a model approach within Kulturraumforschung, it managed to gain prominence

and high reputation among the Geisteswissenschaften, as well as generous funding by the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German Research Council (Ehlers to appear).

While neogrammarian dialectologists were ridiculed as unworldly Lautschieber (sound

shifters), cultural morphology became the most prominent branch of applied linguistics

in Germany and remained in a hegemonic position for at least 40 years. With cultural morphology, dialectology turned “operative”, for there was something it had to offer to

(ethno)politics. While the impact of cultural morphology is currently down-played in

textbooks of dialectology, one must acknowledge that many social dialectologists and

sociolinguists who are considered modern today were inspired by cultural morphology.

Reference to Aubin, Frings and Müller (1926) can be found in Uriel Weinreich’s Languages

in Contact (Weinreich 1977), and the first generation of “applied” dialectologists

and sociolinguists devoted to “ethnopolitics” (e.g., Walter Kuhn and Heinz Kloss), is

still present in the text books of our day.