Karen A. Roesch | 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.
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Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
Boas, Hans C. & Heike Wiese
2023. „Ein Land – eine Sprache?“. In Deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart, ► pp. 71 ff.
Bousquette, Joshua
2020. From Bidialectal to Bilingual. American Speech 95:4 ► pp. 485 ff.
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff.
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