Barossa German as Relic Variety

Project Lead:
Prof. Dr. Claudia Maria Riehl

Research Assistant:
Jens Schieck

Cooperation partner:
Dr. Peter Mickan (University of Adelaide)

In this project an endangered German linguistic enclave in Southern Australia (Barossa German) will be analyzed. There are approximately 25 people left of the oldest generation who speak this variety. The project aims to document the linguistic variety of the Barossa German. For this purpose, voice recordings from the years 2010 to 2012, written documents from archives and older recordings from the Monash Corpus of Australian German are being consulted.

A second goal of the project is a theoretical discussion of the concept of Reliktvarietät. This expression is meant to describe a specific linguistic variety that is no longer used by its speakers in everyday communication situations. In this context, parallels with language erosion processes and learner varieties are taken into consideration.

Publications:

Riehl, Claudia M. (2011): Deutsch als Reliktvarietät: Der Fall des Barossa-Deutschen (Australien). In: Knipf-Komlósi, E./Riehl, C.M. (Hgg.), Kontaktvarietäten des Deutschen in historischer und gegenwärtiger Perspektive. Wien: editio Praesens, 37-49.

Schmitz, Beate (2011): Formen der Spracherosion im Barossa-Deutschen. Schriftliche Hausarbeit im Rahmen der Ersten Staatsprüfung. Universität Köln [unveröff. Manuskript].