The role of eighteenth-century newspapers in the disappearance of Upper German variants in Austria

Bibliographic Data

ID21227133
AuthorsAnna D Havinga (0000-0002-6470-423X, University of Bristol, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume5
Issue1
Publication date2019-04-24
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2199-2894 • E-ISSN: 2199-2908
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/jhsl-2017-0015
OpenAlexW2939511043
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

This paper investigates what role eighteenth-century newspapers played in the disappearance of e -apocope in Austria. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of this Upper German feature in two contexts (the e -apocope in plural nouns and singular dative forms) trace diachronic variation in the Wienerisches Diarium/Wiener Zeitung in order to evaluate the role that newspapers played in the selection and dissemination of language norms. The results show that this newspaper disseminated the final - e in plural forms before it was prescribed by contemporary eighteenth-century grammarians active in Austria, indicating that newspapers – among other texts written by the educated classes – contributed to the selection as well as dissemination of particular variants. The use of dative - e was, however, less consistent, with a qualitative analysis revealing preferences by individual correspondents. This challenges current scholarly assumptions on the homogeneity of language practice within the text type newspaper . Instead, this article argues that historical newspapers have to be seen as a compilation of texts rather than as homogeneous texts

Art · Dative case · German · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Newspaper · Noun · Plural · Sociology · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistic research and analysis · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Artificial Intelligence

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