UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS OF GERMAN by HENRY LAM A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC, SLAVIC AND EAST ASIAN STUDIES CALGARY, ALBERTA MARCH, 2012 © HENRY LAM 2012 Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-88246-7 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-88246-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled “PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS OF GERMAN” submitted by HENRY LAM in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS. Supervisor, Mary Grantham O’Brien, GSEA Olga Mladenova, GSEA Yan Guo, Faculty of Education Date ii Abstract The goal of this thesis is to investigate how second language learners of German perceive language variation. A three-part linguistic experiment was carried out on twenty university students to determine their ability to discriminate dialects from the standard language, their understanding of dialects, and their attitudes towards dialects. I found that the discrimination ability of students is generally high, and that language proficiency predicted discrimination ability. Intelligibility was generally poor and was unaffected by language proficiency. Students generally found Low German dialects to be more pleasant than Central and Upper German dialects. iii Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible. I owe my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Mary O’Brien, for her incredible knowledge, patience, and guidance throughout this whole process. I would also like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Dr. Olga Mladenova and Dr. Yan Guo, for their insight and suggestions, Gisela Engels for her assistance with data analysis, SSHRC for generously funding this project, and all the students who participated in this project. I am grateful for the audio recordings from the Institut für Deutsche Sprache and from the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas, with special thanks to Dr. Alexander Werth and Hanni Schnell. Finally, this thesis would not have been possible without the unwavering love and support of my family. iv Table of Contents APPROVAL PAGE II ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ V LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... VIII LIST OF FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................ IX LIST OF SYMBOLS, ABBREVIATIONS AND NOMENCLATURE ...................... X INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................ 6 2.1 DIALECTOLOGY IN GERMAN ...................................................................................... 6 2.2 PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY .................................................................................. 11 2.2.1 Perceptual Dialectology in L1 Speakers .......................................................... 12 2.2.2 Perceptual Dialectology in German L1 Speakers ........................................... 17 2.2.3 L2 Speakers ...................................................................................................... 25 2.3 DIGLOSSIA ............................................................................................................... 29 2.4 GERMAN DIALECT VARIATION ................................................................................ 30 2.5 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 35 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................... 37 v 3.1 PARTICIPANTS .......................................................................................................... 37 3.2 PROCEDURE ............................................................................................................. 40 3.2.1 Task 1: Dialect Discrimination ........................................................................ 40 3.2.2 Task 2: Dialect Intelligibility ........................................................................... 55 3.2.3 Task 3: Dialect Attitudes .................................................................................. 57 3.3 DATA ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................... 60 3.3.1 Task 1: Dialect Discrimination ........................................................................ 60 3.3.2 Task 2: Dialect Intelligibility ........................................................................... 62 3.3.3 Task 3: Dialect Attitudes .................................................................................. 62 RESULTS ........................................................................................................................ 63 4.1 TASK 1: DIALECT DISCRIMINATION ......................................................................... 64 4.2 TASK 2: DIALECT INTELLIGIBILITY .......................................................................... 67 4.3 TASK 3: DIALECT ATTITUDES .................................................................................. 69 4.4 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 73 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 74 5.1 TASK 1: DIALECT DISCRIMINATION ......................................................................... 74 5.2 TASK 2: DIALECT INTELLIGIBILITY .......................................................................... 76 5.3 TASK 3: DIALECT ATTITUDES .................................................................................. 79 5.4 IMPLICATIONS .......................................................................................................... 83 5.5 LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT STUDY ........................................................................... 85 5.5 OTHER AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ................................................................... 86 5.6 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 87 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................. 88 vi APPENDIX A: LANGUAGE QUESTIONNAIRE .................................................................... 88 APPENDIX B: TRANSCRIPTIONS OF WENKERSÄTZE FROM DIALECT DISCRIMINATION TASK ....................................................................................................................................... 89 APPENDIX C: DIALECT INTELLIGIBILITY AUDIO RECORDINGS ....................................... 98 APPENDIX D: DIALECT INTELLIGIBILITY MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS .................... 104 APPENDIX E: DIALECT ATTITUDES AUDIO RECORDINGS ............................................. 107 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................