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Tobias Streck, Peter Auer: Das raumbildende Signal in der Spontansprache: dialektometrische Untersuchungen zum Alemannischen in Deutschland

In this contribution we compare and contrast three well-known and influential proposals for the internal subdivision of Alemannic in Germany, and show how disparate the fundamental criteria for determining language areas which underlie these three classificatory models are. We then discuss a recent dialectometrical study based on a large corpus of spontaneous linguistic data – unlike the structural models of traditional dialect geography, which rest on the linguistic knowledge of informants elicited via survey. We demonstrate that by applying dialectometrical methods to spontaneous linguistic data, dialect-geographical areas can be distinguished without needing to presuppose the “importance” of particular features. Following a comparison of our dialectometrical maps with traditional dialect classifications, we revisit the discussion surrounding the internal subdivision of Alemannic, paying particular attention to the status of what is known as Bodensee or Middle Alemannic.

The results presented in this article illustrate how dialect geography stands to profit from recent developments in corpus studies and geographic techniques and analytic instruments. Further, we demonstrate that a realistic snapshot of dialect structures can be obtained through the use of spontaneous linguistic data, which naturally capture far more variation than classical survey material.