In this contribution, two consecutive sound changes, the Viennese monophthongisation and the E-merger, are investigated. Both sound changes originated in the city dialect of Vienna and spread to other Austrian dialects, including the city dialect of Salzburg. Whereas in the city dialect of Vienna the monophthongisation was completed around 1940 leading to two new vowels in the vowel inventory, this process is still in progress in Salzburg. Consequently, the vowel inventories of the two dialects differ with respect to the number of vowels. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Viennese monophthongisation caused the confusion and subsequent merger of the E-vowels. However, a comparison of the two city dialects reveals that the two changes must have occurred independently of each other.
Budin, Gerhard, Stephan Elspaß, Alexandra N. Lenz, Stefan M. Newerkla & Arne Ziegler
2018. Der Spezialforschungsbereich „Deutsch in Österreich (DiÖ). Variation – Kontakt – Perzeption“. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 46:2 ► pp. 300 ff.
Hinskens, Frans
2017. Dialectology and Formal Linguistic Theory. In The Handbook of Dialectology, ► pp. 88 ff.
Hinskens, Frans
2020. The Expanding Universe of the Study of Sound Change. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ► pp. 5 ff.
Moosmüller, Sylvia, Carolin Schmid & Julia Brandstätter
2015. Standard Austrian German. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45:3 ► pp. 339 ff.
Vergeiner, Philip C., Jan Luttenberger, Lars Bülow, Dominik Wallner & David Britain
2023. Revisiting areal and lexical diffusion: the case of Viennese Monophthongization in Austria’s traditional dialects. Linguistics 61:4 ► pp. 915 ff.
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