“ich bit eich in got willen sich mir doch gelt das ich kann leben” german letters in the prize...

“ich bit eich in got willen sich mir doch gelt das ich kann leben”

German letters in the prize papers corpus ─ preliminary linguistic analyses

Doris Stolberg, IDS Mannheim,Stephan Elspaß, Universität Salzburg,

Kew, 7 Oct 2014

Outline of the presentation

1. The value of (private) letter corpora for language histories and language historiographies

2. The historiographic context: German in 17th/18th c.

3. German letters in the prize paper corpus – what we have seen so far

4. A case study – the ‘Elisabeth letters’


• “Most histories of English in use at undergraduate and graduate levels in universities tell the same story. Many of these books are sociolinguistically inadequate, anglocentric and focus on standard English. This leads to a tunnel vision version of the history of the standard dialect after the Middle English period.”

(Watts/Trudgill 2002. Alternative Histories of English, blurb)


Some facts I: (Thanks to Tony Fairman’s talk Helsinki 2014, Fairman i.pr. etc.!)

• Most language histories and most grammars of modern Western languages are based on printed language, representing ‘corrected‘ texts from highly formal registers.

• Only a small minority of the people in the respective countries ever wrote texts that were to be printed.

• Until 1867 (‘Remington No 1’) all texts were hand-written first.

• Thus: Most language histories and most grammars of modern Western languages are based on highly formal and ‘purified’ texts from a small minority of the population.

due to ‘standard language ideology’ (Milroy 2001)


Some facts II:

• Spoken language is primary in every society. (There is no society without spoken language.)

Language histories, however, rarely consider spoken language.

• There are no records of spoken language from history.

There are, however, text types which represent informal (‘oral’) registers of language.

• Everybody who could write was able to write a private letter.

‘oral’ / informal registers graphic/written j

c e g i k ‚literate‘ /

a b d f h formal registers

a: intimate conversation, b: telephone conversation, c: private letter, d: private interview, e: newspaper interview, f: sermon, g: business letter, h: academic lecture, i: lead article, j: literary language, k: law text or government document,

phonic/spoken

Approaching informal registers in language history

(Koch & Oesterreicher 1985)





phonic/spoken


‘oral’ / informal registers j





Focus of traditional language histories

‘oral’ / informal registers j





Focus of alternative language histories(particularly ‘language history from below’)


The ‘Language History from Below’ approach

radical change of perspective in language historiography – two aspects:

• focus on the language use of the sections of the population that have been neglected in historical linguistics so far, i.e. the lower and lower middle classes (e.g. ca. 95% of the population in 19th c. Germany)

• pleads for a different starting point for the description and explanation of language in history: historical ‘orality’ (most informal registers), which is primary in all societies

(Elspaß 2005, Elspaß et al. 2007, the ‘letters as loot’ project)

Excursus: Lidenbrock’s paradox and the Language History from Below approach

• „In Jules Verne’s novel Voyage au centre de la terre, Professor Lidenbrock and his intrepid companions descend an Icelandic volcano [Snæfellsjökull] and journey deep under the earth’s crust, eventually reaching the centre of the planet and discovering a new world.”

(Lyons 2012: 20)

Excursus: Lidenbrock’s paradox and the Language History from Below approach

• “The lesson of this tale for historians is that by burrowing ever further ‘below’, we can establish a new ‘centre’. This is what Johan Svedjedal calls the ‘Lidenbrock Paradox’, and perhaps it illuminates history from below: if we pursue what at first appears marginal with enough determination, we may establish a new core which re-centres the historian’s angle of vision.” (Lyons 2012: 20)





phonic/spoken

“from below”!


2. The historiographic context: German in the 17th/18th century

• How is the German language history of the 17th and 18th century presented in textbooks? What is presented?

- ‘lack of a language norm’ as a ‘main characteristic’ of this period (Ernst 2006)

- role of ‘language societies’ for the standardisation of German frequently mentioned (and overestimated)

- ‘After 1650, New Low German is not a written language anymore.’(Stedje 1996)

• In what way could prize letters shed new light onto this history?

- hand-written sources from writers formerly ‘invisible’ in language history- different text types, particularly private, but also business letters

enables comparison informal vs. formal texts (from same writers?)- hypothesis of language attrition in the case of Low German be tested- ‘micro-history’ of particular linguistic features (gramm. phenomena etc.)

enables comparison norm and usage in 17th and 18th century

3. German letters in the prize paper corpus – what we have seen so far

• Boxes looked at:- HCA 30/641 (17th c.)

- HCA 30/355 (18th c.)

- HCA 30/374 (18th c.)

- HCA 32/1047 (18th/19th c.)

• Text types:- private letters (by/to private persons, family members, missionaries)- official and business papers (e.g., passage forms for ships)- diaries (Herrnhuter missionaries)

private & official texts

(= different degrees of formality / immediacy)

Texts sometimes served different functions, with different textual functions (and different styles

accordingly)

functions:

texttypes/genre

CONTACT INFORMA-TION

APPEAL OBLIGATION & DECLARATION

private letter () --

private diary -- -- --

petition letter -- () ()

business letter -- ()

Texts sometimes served different functions, with different textual functions (and different styles

accordingly)

functions:

texttypes/genre

CONTACT INFORMA-TION

APPEAL OBLIGATION & DECLARATION

private letter --

private diary -- -- --

petition letter -- () ()

business letter -- ()


• The corpus

– from Box HCA 30/641: ->17th century [1649-1666/70]

– 10 letters (24 pages) in the same handwriting

– most of them are signed "Elisabet Adergamse"

– 5 of them include an address (different handwriting)

– 2 of them include sections written by someone else

– 1 letter is dated: 1664


• What kind of letters are these?

"den 8 November Empfangen

den 11 Dito beantwordt"


Variable spelling of names: Who is the addressee?

• lukas adergamsen (letters by Elisabet [7094]/[2], [7121]/[15])

• Lucas Adrian (letter, different handwriting [7177]/[11])

• lui(c)kas adryaenß (dated1664) (letter, different handwriting [6760])

• Luickes aadrijaensen bock (to Hooren [7097]/[2])

• Lüickas a(d)drijanß (to Hooren [6])

• Luÿcas adriaenß Bock (to Hoore [7120]/[14]) address

• Lucaß Adrianßen (to Berlin [7108]/[10])

• Lucas Adriansen Bo(r)k (to London [7130]/[15])


Graphemic characteristicsGerman script with idiosyncratic features, e.g.:

• interchangeable use of m and n

mainly governed by position in word (n at the word‘s beginning, m at the end)

• word truncationmut – mutter; zu hau – zu hause; srei – s(ch)reibe; wintt – winter; ferblei – verbleibe

• overuse of –t- and –tt- , also in place of other lettersespecially in names of months, e.g. ot(t) ttober, ttesttember; cf. also lietes < liebes 'dear'

• Some letters difficult to distinguish (a from o; e from n/m)ein = nie = min

• idiosyncratic /unsystematic word division; capital letters are rare

• vnt, vntt, vn = und 'and' (17th c.)


Formulaic language• different functions of formulaic language, e.g

– constitution of texts and text types– supporting argument structure of specific passages of

such letters– constructing and performing identitiesCf. e.g. Dossena (2007), Elspaß (2012), Laitinen & Nordlund

(2012), Rutten & van der Wal (2013)

Structuring a letter:wir sein got lop noch gesuntdas wir uns mit freiden vnt gesunt heit spregen megenseit von mir zu tausent mal gegriset


Language switching- in several (at least two) letters- High & Low German- same addressee, same handwriting, comparable topics

and text function (contact, appeal, information)- e.g., mein liebes hertzgem / min leste har(tt)ken

Elisabet: from a Low German speaking region (= northern region of the German speaking area)

Addressee: (probably) also competent in both varietiesWhy does she switch?

4. A case study – the ‘Elisabeth letters’: bilingual


Indications of the writer's geographic origin• Unrounded vowels:

– /ai/: eich, freinlich; cf. euch, freundlich– /i/: grisen, fir; cf. grüßen, für– /e/: megen, cf. mögen; kennichberg, cf. Königsberg

• Ambiguous sound quality of ‚g‘:– hertzgen [at that time, a common spelling variant of the

diminutive suffix; in modern Std German: -chen] – Herzchen;– Adergam(sen) – Adrian(sen); seren – Segen; spregen –

sprechen > (voiced) velar fricative [γ]


Linguistic indications of the writer's geographic origin• Low German features:

– /s/: gesrib, sreibet, siket (schicket), sich (schick), sat (Schatz) (High German: /∫/ (sch))

– /o/: och, ferkofen (High German: /au/)– grammar: acc and dat marking are used interchangeably (preference

for acc. or unmarked forms)

• t-deletion (oral feature):– nich[t]

• regional lexical items: Low Prussian– sipel <Zibbel, Zippel, Zwifel (LP) – Zwiebel 'onion'– kerdel – Kerl 'guy'


Further indications of the writer's geographic origin• Place names (in a few letters):

– hir in kem nich berg is nich hallam– kem berg– brum berg– pregel

Elisabet is a bilingual / bidialectal speaker of Low German (Low Prussian) and High German.

She lives in Königsberg.Her letters are a rare and excellent source of

informal written High and Low German in the 2nd half of the 17th century.

References• Elspaß, Stephan. 2005. Sprachgeschichte von unten. Untersuchungen zum

geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer.• Elspaß, Stephan / Nils Langer / Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche

(eds.). 2007. Germanic language histories ‘from below’ (1700–2000). Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

• Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher. 1985. Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36, 15–43.

• Lyons, Martyn. 2012. The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c. 1860–1920. CUP.

• Milroy, James. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5.4: 530─555.

• van der Wal Marijke J., Gijsbert J. Rutten (eds.). 2013. Touching the Past. Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

• Watts, Richard & Peter Trudgill (eds.). 2002. Alternative Histories of English. London / New York: Routledge.