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Part of
Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change: Historical sociolinguistic perspectives
Edited by Israel Sanz-Sánchez
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 14] 2024
► pp. 234–263

Chapter 10
Language dominance across the lifespan in Wisconsin German and English varieties

Voice onset time and final obstruent neutralization, 1863–2013

| Europa-Universität Flensburg
Large-scale German immigration to Wisconsin began in the first half of the 19th century and continued until about World War I. These immigrants built German-speaking institutions alongside English and other immigrant language institutions, allowing for the presence of German in many Wisconsin communities over several generations, along with a desire to preserve local history and heritage in the region. These practices are reflected in an archival record that allows for the study of features of local German and English over a period of 150 years. This chapter focuses on two such features, namely variation of voice onset time and final obstruent neutralization. A combination of historical written sources (spanning between the 1860s and the 1940s) and audio recordings from the 1940s and 2013 shows the existence of these features, as well as different periods along their development over time. This study looks at how language acquisition in heritage language communities and shifts in language dominance may have played a role in the emergence and development of these features in Wisconsin German and Wisconsin English varieties.
Keywords: heritage language, adult L2 acquisition, language dominance, voice onset time, final obstruent neutralization, bilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sociohistorical background
  • 3.Data sources
  • 4.Voice onset time
    • 4.1VOT in audio data
    • 4.2VOT in written sources
  • 5.Final obstruent neutralization
    • 5.1FON in audio data
    • 5.2FON in written sources
  • 6.Language dominance
    • 6.1Language dominance and non-standard VOT and FON forms in spoken and written data
    • 6.2A closer look at the written data
  • 7.Language acquisition and the historical sociolinguistics of VOT and FON in Wisconsin German and English
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.14.10lit
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