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Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change
Edited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 117–132

The History of Front Rounded Vowels in New Braunfels German

| The University of Texas at Austin
| The University of Texas at Austin
| Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

While earlier studies of New Braunfels German (NBG), a dialect of Texas German (TxG), e.g., Eikel (1954, 1966b) and Gilbert (1972), report the existence of front rounded vowels to various degrees, they are almost completely absent from present-day NBG (Boas 2009). This paper describes the history of such vowels in NBG and assesses possible causes of their loss. We first sketch the history of German in Texas, in order to set the stage for the following discussion. We then review the status of front rounded vowels in NBG, as reported by three landmark studies of TxG, namely Eikel (1954), Gilbert (1972), and Boas (2009), and then discuss motivations for their loss. We argue that five major factors drove this loss: (1) the original donor dialects of NBG, (2) the markedness of front rounded vowels, (3) contact with English, (4) limited exposure to Standard German, and (5) the changing linguistic and social contexts of NBG.

Keywords: front rounded vowels, language contact, markedness, phonology, sound change, Texas German
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 20 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.18.05pie
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Boas, Hans C. & Heike Wiese
2023. „Ein Land – eine Sprache?“. In Deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart, ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
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Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph Salmons
2021. Germanic Heritage Varieties in the Americas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 252 ff. DOI logo
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2022. Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German. Linguistics Vanguard 8:s5 ► pp. 745 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
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[no author supplied]
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo

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