For the Heritage WS University of Utrecht 10th October, 2020 Kashubian – heritage Low German as su- perstrate, dominant Polish as substrate Werner Abraham (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, University of Vienna) & Piotr Bartelik (University of Zielona Góra) & Andrzej Kątny (University of Gdańsk) Abstract: Kashubian is a West Slavic lect belonging to the Lechitic subgroup along with Polish and Silesian. It is spoken as a minority language in Poland (in the Region of Pomerania with the cities Gdańsk and Gdynia). Although often classified as a lan- guage in its own right, it is sometimes viewed as a dialect of Pomeranian or as a dialect of Polish.1 The following article characterizes Kashubian in terms of its German herit- age quality. Ac cording to the census of 2011, it has 108,000 native speakers. Typo- logically, it is West Slavic with a strong (Middle)Low German heritage. The latter is lexical with syntactic derivational morphology. As expected, there is less syntactic Ger- man influence in Kashubian. Yet, one main typological characteristic of Slavic Kashubian and Polish, the cross-Slavic aspect paadigm, has been expanded by the miec-HAVE and the bëc-BE periphrases expressing tense in the sense of the German perfect tense using the verbal bracket.2 We trace the change from the pretemporal periphratstic tense and attributive pattern in Kashubian as opposed to the superstate German tense periphrasis and the verbal bracket and its link to the Polish aspect and simplle tense pattern. And we ask the question: Are there evolutionary genetic compo- nents in the heritage situation that might lead to genetic patterns of natural L-change and grammaticalization. This paper is based on the view that grammar change in a heritage L is not a case of Darwinian (genetic) evolution in that that the targets are seldom cognitively encapsulated, procedural parts of grammar. Such as the German verbal bracketMuch rather, the cognitively accessible, declarative content of grammars is open for social changes (lexical inventoires). 1. Kashubian: its short history Kashubian is assumed to have evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called Kashubians, in the region of Pomerania, on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula and Oder rivers. The first medieval indentations of the name Cassubia connect it with areas of Mecklemburg and with the area around Gdansk (Danzig). Hilferding made the first attempt to illustrate the geographical scope of Kas- shubian (Treder 2006: 69-72). Later, the scope of the Kashubian dialects was changed several times as a result of the varying historical circumstances. The Pomeranians were said to have arrived before the Poles, and certain tribes managed to maintain their lan- guage and traditions despite German and Polish settlements. It first began to evolve sep- arately in the period from the 13th to the 15th century as the Polish-Pomeranian linguistic 1 The view that Kashubian is a dialect of Polish has not prevailed in the literature. There is ample motivation for our view. In addition to many phonological properties (e.g. the peculiar shwa ë, i.e. the changee of d, z, c and dz), it has many archaic word-forming suffixes (-iczé, etc.). We therefore naintain that Castalese is an independ- ent language, both structurally and functionally. For the specific vocabulary, which has also retained many ar- chaisms from Old or Middle Polish, see: Breza 1992 (ed.). 2 The original aspect paradigm has been extended to include these tense forms. In addition, there is the archaic, analytical "perfect" (which has been synthesized in Polish) and the "simple" preterite (almost as in Polish). In general, the divergences in the verb inflexion of Kashubian–Polish are actually small (since also in Polish the mieć' forms are expansive). 1 For the Heritage WS University of Utrecht 10th October, 2020 area began to divide based around important linguistic developments centered in the western (Kashubian) part of the area. 1.1. Related languages There is a debate between many scholars whether Kashubian should be recognized as a Polish dialect or separate language. From the diachronic view it is a Lechitic West Slavic language but from the synchronic point of view it is a Polish dialect. Kashubian is closely related to Slovincian, while both of them are dialects of Pomeranian. Slo- vincian was "discovered" by Hilferding (prepared in 1856 by a travelogue, where he referred precisely to Kashubian and Slovincian). After Treder, Slovincian formed the northernmost dialects of Kashubian, which, thanks to their geographically peripheral location had maintained many archaisms, although at the same time were exposed to great influences of modern German (Lorentz 1903). Many linguists, in Poland and elsewhere, consider Kashubian a divergent dia- lect of Polish. Dialectal diversity is so great within Kashubian that a speaker of southern dialects has considerable difficulty in understanding a speaker of northern dialects. The spelling and the grammar of Polish words written in Kashubian, which is most of its vocabulary, is highly unusual, making it difficult for native Polish speakers to com- prehend written text in Kashubian. Like Polish, Kashubian includes about 5% loanwords from German. These are mostly from Low German and only occasionally from High German. These estimates are based on Hinze (1965) and have been repeated again and again. We believe that there is more than 5% in modern Kashubian. The older layers of borrowings may well be Low German, but we believe that most of the loanwords in modern Kashubsian come frommodern High German dialects (or the standard language). This becomes most obvious from the "replacement" of the older Lower German forms by "High Ger- man" variants. Consider szëpla > szëfla 'Schaufel shovel’, copac > cofac 'zurück gehen, go back', where nd. [p] corresponds to hd. [f]). According to Mordawski (2005), ithe number of speakers of Kashubian varies widely from source to source, ranging from as low as 4,500 to the upper 366,000. In the 2011 census, over 108,000 people in Poland declared that they mainly use Kash- ubian at home. At the 2011 census, 108 thousand reported they used Kashubian in everyday life (but only about 13 thousand reported it as a native language). According to Treder (2012),, Polish-Kashubian language contacts gives the number of 300,000 people who use Kashubian (mainly orally). More on this is peovided by Mordawski Jan (2005). These estimates vary in literature, however, because most can speak Kashubian but have not mastered ortography. Of these only 10 percent consider Kashubian to be their mother tongue, with the rest considering themselves to be native speakers of both Kashubian and Polish. All Kashubian speakers are also fluent in Polish. A number of schools in Poland use Kashubian as a teaching language (see Treder 2006:119-123). It is an official alternative language for local administrative pur- poses in several communitites. (Treder 2006:114-118). 1.3. German superstrate and Pomerian-Polish substrate yield Kashubian Kashubian has long been seen as a language characterized by retarding processes of linguistic contact thanks to its geographical location on the north-western border of the 2 For the Heritage WS University of Utrecht 10th October, 2020 Slavic languages and due to historical circumstances (cf. Treder 2006, Bartelik 2019). As a direct continuum of Old Pomeranian dialects, which developed the Slavic language substrate into a basical Kashubian and had no autonomous language sys- tem, it was exposed to several periods of influence of the German superstrat in subse- quent periods of its linguistic development. Thus, Kashubian is not a homogeneous language, also thanks to dialectal diversity, which has externally determined language contact results as well as native language units in all its subsystems. However, it is also possible to follow other, internal changes, which have been determined and trig- gered by language contact, but which have taken on an autonomous character in their further course. Individual subsystems of a language are characterized by different "as- similation power" of foreign units. The layers predestined for the inclusion of speech- related results are the closed system of syntax and the lexic, which is at least "open" to phonetics (cf. Zabrocki 1961; Grucza 1968: 126). 1.4. Linguistic heritage Heritage languages are linguistic varieties in foreign contexts such as contemporary Turkish varieties spoken in Berlin, the Spanish used in Los Angeles, or the Kiez in Berlin in which several individual heritges have coaslesced into one single language mix unrelated to one individual oeiginal by itself (Wiese 2018). They are non-dominant languages, used inside families or special genetic groups in the streets often with little prestige like the Kiez in Berlin (Wiese 2018). Their speakers also speak the dominant language of the country they live in. Often heritage languages undergo changes due to their special social status and the length of time they are exposed to the dominant (roof) lanugage. They have received scholarly attention and provide a link between academic concerns and educational issues. The present article expands the synchronic heritage by a diachronic contact per- spective. We consider the language of Kashubian from the perspective of its history, its substrate interaction and growth with superstrate (Low) German with dominant Polish, both in its lexical and syntactic structural properties. According to Weinreich (1976: 15), two or more languages are in contact with each other when they are used alter- nately by the same persons. The individuals using the languages can be foreign or re- lated to one another while the place where the contact takes place can remain identical, - for example, one and the same family or street gang. Linguistic research focuses on linguistic traces left by the contact history. Linguistic contact influences change in par- ticular the open subsystems of the language, the lexics.