The present study examines the problem of fortis and lenis in approximately 150 dialects of southern Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Alsace, and the German-speaking minorities in Italy, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Upper German dialects are of particular interest from this point of view, because voice and aspiration, the features traditionally associated with strength, are generally absent. Changes related to strength such as lenition, vowel lengthening, simplification of geminates, and sandhi phenomena receive special attention. The findings are put into their appropriate context by comparison to the results of research on the status of strength in standard German and the modern Germanic languages. Although the realization of strength is language-specific and varies according to word-position, it can be equated with consonant length in standard German and Upper German dialects.

The present study examines the problem of fortis and lenis in approximately 150 dialects of southern Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Alsace, and the German-speaking minorities in Italy, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The Upper German dialects are of particular interest from this point of view, because voice and aspiration, the features traditionally associated with strength, are generally absent. Changes related to strength such as lenition, vowel lengthening, simplification of geminates, and sandhi phenomena receive special attention. The findings are put into their appropriate context by comparison to the results of research on the status of strength in standard German and the modern Germanic languages. Although the realization of strength is language-specific and varies according to word-position, it can be equated with consonant length in standard German and Upper German dialects.

The interrelationship between three major quantity changes in the history of the Germanic languages: gemination, lenition, and open syllable lengthening.

Knowing that the so-called voiced and voiceless stops in languages like English and German do not always literally differ in voicing, several linguists — among them Roman Jakobson — have proposed that dichotomies such as fortis/lenis or tense/lax might be more suitable to capture the invariant phonetic core of this distinction. Later it became the dominant view that voice onset time or laryngeal features are more reasonable alternatives. However, based on a number of facts and arguments from current phonetics and phonology this book claims that the Jakobsonian feature tense was rejected prematurely. Among the theoretical aspects addressed, it is argued that an acoustic definition of distinctive features best captures the functional aspects of speech communication, while it is also discussed how the conclusions are relevant for formal accounts, such as feature geometry. The invariant of tense is proposed to be durational, and its ‘basic correlate’ is proposed to be aspiration duration. It is shown that tense and voice differ in their invariant properties and basic correlates, but that they share a number of other correlates, including F0 onset and closure duration. In their stop systems languages constitute a typology between the selection of voice and tense, but in their fricative systems languages universally tend towards a syncretism involving voicing and tenseness together. Though the proposals made here are intended to have general validity, the emphasis is on German. As part of this focus, an acoustic study and a transillumination study of the realization of /p,t,k,f,s/ vs. /b,d,g,v,z/ in German are presented.

The syllable has always been a key concept in generative linguistics: the rules, representations, parameters, or constraints posited in diverse frameworks of theoretical phonology and morphology all make reference to this fundamental unit of prosodic structure. No less central to the field is Optimality Theory, an approach developed within (morpho-)phonology in the early 1990s. This 2003 book combines two themes of central importance to linguists and their mutual relevance in recent research. It provides an overview of the role of the syllable in OT and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. The contributions to the book not only show that the syllable sheds light on certain properties of OT itself, they also demonstrate that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.

Dynamic phonology is the natural consequence of the combination of the latest developments in physiological and acoustic phonetics and the traditional structural/functional theories of linguistics. In phonetics, the segmental approach has long since given way to dynamic phonetics, leaving linguists in the position of either ignoring the dynamic evidence and continuing with segmental and semi-segmental phonology or of adopting the dynamic evidence within their overall theories of language structure and function. The author of this book has chosen the latter and here present a model for such a dynamic phonology.

This book provides the first extensive description of Texas Alsatian, a critically-endangered Texas German dialect, as spoken in Medina County in the 21st century. The dialect was brought to Texas in the 1840s by colonists recruited by French entrepreneur Henri Castro and has been preserved with minimal change for six generations. Texas Alsatian has maintained lexical, phonological, and morphosyntactic features which differentiate it from the prevalent standard-near varieties of Texas German. This study both describes its grammatical features and discusses extra-linguistic factors contributing to the dialect s preservation or accelerating its decline, e.g., social, historical, political, and economic factors, and speaker attitudes and ideologies linked to cultural identity. The work s multi-faceted approach makes its relevant to a broad range of scholars such as dialectologists, historical linguists, sociolinguists, ethnographers, and anthropologists interested in language variation and change, language and identity, immigrant dialects, and language maintenance and death."

With more than 1,100 entries written by an international group of over 150 contributors, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture brings together myriad strands of social, political and cultural life in the post-1945 German-speaking world. With a unique structure and format, an inclusive treatment of the concept of culture, and coverage of East, West and post-unification Germany, as well as Austria and Switzerland, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture is the first reference work of its kind. Containing longer overviews of up to 2,000 words, as well as shorter factual entries, cross-referencing to other relevant articles, useful further reading suggestions and extensive indexing, this highly useable volume provides the scholar, teacher, student or non-specialist with an astonishing breadth and depth of information.

Die Reihe publiziert Originalarbeiten zur Beschreibung und theoretischen Analyse der Struktur nat rlicher Sprachen. Schwerpunkt sind die Prinzipien und Regeln der grammatischen und lexikalischen Kenntnis sowohl unter einzelsprachlichen wie unter sprachvergleichenden Gesichtspunkten. Abgedeckt werden alle systematischen Bereiche der Sprachwissenschaft, insbesondere Phonologie, Morphologie, Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik, unter Einbeziehung von Aspekten des Spracherwerbs, des Sprachwandels, der Sprachverwendung und der phonetischen und neuronalen Realisierung.