Südschleswigdänisch : Eine strukturelle Bestandsaufnahme aus dialektologischer Perspektive

Abstract

This book closes a research gap that has existed for decades regarding South Schleswig Danish, the Danish variety spoken by members of the Danish minority in South Schleswig. Based on data from 157 speakers of all age groups across the entire region of South Schleswig, it provides the first comprehensive, empirically grounded description and analysis of the characteristic morphosyntactic structures of South Schleswig Danish. The study examines the influence of the sociolinguistic factors ›age‹, ›Danish-language input‹, ›gender‹, and ›place of residence‹ on language use, the application of dialectological standard methods for collecting data on stigmatized language use, and the modeling of multilingual linguistic knowledge within the framework of Diasystematic Construction Grammar. The results show that South Schleswig Danish is by no means a deficient variety; rather, its grammar can be explained in cognitively plausible terms through the linguistic input of a multilingual speech community and its preference for common constructions. While gender and place of residence show no effects, age and everyday Danish-language input have significant impacts on the results.