Hauptinhalt

Jürg Fleischer, Simon Kasper, Alexandra N. Lenz: Die Erhebung syntaktischer Phänomene durch die indirekte Methode: Ergebnisse und Erfahrungen aus dem Forschungsprojekt „Syntax hessischer Dialekte“ (SyHD)

This article demonstrates how syntactic phenomena can be successfully surveyed using the indirect method. The empirical basis for this discussion is supplied by data from the DFG-funded SyHD (Syntax of Hessian Dialects) project, in which, at a total of over 160 locations across, and a further twelve locations distributed elliptically around, the German state of Hesse, syntactic phenomena are being investigated using an indirect questionnaire. The article describes in detail the various types of task being employed in the SyHD project survey (descriptions of pictures or sequences of images; evaluation, translation and completion tasks; puzzles) and considers their relative advantages and disadvantages. Using illustrative maps, preliminary results from the project are presented; these demonstrate the potential of the phenomena to reveal clearcut spatial distributions depending on the type of task through which they are investigated. Further, it is shown that methodological adequacy and substantial additional findings can be attained through both the targeted application of a single task type to an entire cluster of phenomena and the application of several types of task to a single phenomenon.