Die Enquête von Willems: ein verborgener Schatz der Dialektologie des Deutschen. Erschließung und Neuauswertungen

Pheiff, Jeffrey (12 July 2021). Die Enquête von Willems: ein verborgener Schatz der Dialektologie des Deutschen. Erschließung und Neuauswertungen (Unpublished). In: Forschungskolloquium. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. 12.07.2021.

Starting in 1885, Pieter Willems conducted a large, transnational dialect survey using a comprehensive questionnaire consisting of over 15,000 items (Goossens 1989). This survey documented over 300 local dialects in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxemburg, and Germany. The 59 questionnaires from the current Federal Republic of Germany have been ignored in the Germanic tradition (Pheiff in prep.). These questionnaires are of interest since they systematically document large parts of morphological paradigms in addition to containing some sentences for translation and judgement, offering a wealth of information on morphological/syntactic patterns in West Central German. Further, they provide a basis for short-term diachronic comparison. This second aspect is especially interesting since we have comparable data from both older and younger speakers from linguistic atlases such as the Dialektatlas Mittleres Westdeutschland (DMW), allowing for a comparison over 135 years. The questionnaires are not without their drawbacks, however, since they are often incomplete. This talk will discuss this source and its potential drawbacks in addition to pursuing three case studies on short-term diachronic change.
Study I: To investigate plural allomorphs in the dialects, it is necessary to compare the plural form to the singular form. Given the systematic collection of these forms for several hundred nouns in the Willems questionnaires, we have an ideal source of data to pursue this matter. An analysis of over 50 singular-plural noun pairs, representing seven of the eight Germanic declension classes was carried out. Preliminary results reveal not only 26 different strategies to code the plural, but also a preference for additive marking in Low Franconian dialects. For select nouns, we hope to compare the results from the Willems questionnaires to data recently collected in the project DMW. We expect to find both a reduction in type variation as well as convergence toward the standard language in the coding of plural.
Study II: Feminine motion involves the derivation of a feminine noun from a masculine or neuter base noun. Twelve nouns form the foundation for this study, which shows clear spatial patterns for the derivational suffixes. For one noun, Näherin 'seamstress', we could compare the motion suffix over three generations of speakers. Preliminary results show stability over 135, to vertical convergence toward Standard German, as well as a decline in former dialect variants due to loss of knowledge of the dialect.
Study III: It is known that bipartite negation (en V nicht) was common well into the Early New High German period in West Central German (Fleischer & Schallert 2011). An analysis of the questionnaires shows that it was common throughout the Low Franconian and Ripuarian dialect areas well into the end of the 19th century. An analysis of metalinguistic comments shows that this variant was seldom, grammatically restricted to subordinate clauses, and used by older speakers. These factors – in addition to evidence from related studies in the German dialects of the middle of the 20th century (Moser 2019) and related studies on Dutch dialects (Jongen 1972) – allow for the conclusion that the variant disappeared around 1950.

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