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German in Austria is claimed to be shaped by wide-spread dialect use and historical language contact. In this context, variation in prepositional phrases (PPs) is frequently cited, but still underresearched. Three linguistic variables are particularly interesting: (1) preposition choice (p-choice), (2) case marking in PPs and (3) preposition–determiner contractions. The present study aims at identifying linguistic and sociolinguistic – including regional – patterns of variation in the realization of PPs with two-way prepositions in German in Austria on the basis of natural production data including formal and informal registers from urban and rural adults of different age groups and different socioeconomic backgrounds living in Bavarian regions of Austria. The data were compared against the German standard variety from Germany to identify all constructions (possibly) specific for German in Austria. Results indicate that p-choice (particularly in directed motion constructions) shows mostly regional effects: South Bavarian varieties are characterized by preposition drop, whereas in the other regions, the preposition auf ‘on(to)’ seems overrepresented. However, case marking is more dependent on sociodemographic variables and accusative–dative syncretism appears more frequently in plural than in singular contexts. Finally, specific preposition–determiner contractions are widespread across all regions and groups investigated, even in (close-to-)standard registers.

This paper focuses on phonetic variation within the standard German language register of Austria. While the norm status and a high socio-symbolic value are attributed to certain lexical variants of standard language in Austria, the norm and usage status of characteristic phonetic properties remain unclear, due to lack of empirical analyses. By investigating the relation between standard language norms and “standard usage” (Gebrauchsstandard) in Austria, our study aims to close this research gap by using the example of unstressed ‹-ig›. The analyses are based on data gathered from 52 speakers from two generations, covering all Austrian dialect regions. Elicitation settings varied from strongly standardized tasks with a graphic or visual stimulus (reading aloud tasks, picture naming tasks) to translation tasks (translation from dialect into standard) with oral stimuli. The results demonstrate that although ‹-ig› is predominantly pronounced like [ɪk], (socio-)linguistic factors as phonetic context, part of speech, setting, gender and regional background influence the ‹-ig›-variation. In total, the data suggest that German speaking Austrians are situated in a conflict between transnationally diverging norms and intra-nationally varying model speakers of German.

Die Sprache, die Eltern an ihre Kinder richten, zeigt abhängig vom soziökonomischen Status (SES) der Familie meist große Unterschiede. Während Eltern mit hohem sozioökonomischem Status häufig einen konversationsanregenden und ermutigenden Erziehungsstil praktizieren, pflegen Eltern mit niedrigem sozioökonomischem Status tendenziell einen verhaltenssteuernden, oft entmutigenden Erziehungsstil. Anhand eines Spontansprachkorpus von 29 Wiener Kindern (15 HSES, 14 LSES, Altersspanne 2;11 – 4;11) und ihren elterlichen Hauptbezugspersonen zeigen wir, dass direktive und expressive Sprechakte besonders große SES-Unterschiede aufweisen.

The judicious use of electronic corpora allows new possibilities in the study of word formation. In contrast to the usual way of contrasting morphosemantic transparency (or compositionality) and morphosemantic opacity (or non-compositionality) in a dichotomous way, we present a ten-step scale from maximum transparency to total opacity, exemplified with the common German diminutive suffixation in -chen and Austro-Bavarian -erl. Our corpus-linguistic investigation allows new insights into problems of distribution of type and token frequency according to degrees of morphosemantic transparency/ opacity and of the two rivalling diminutive formations. An analysis of diminutive acquisition is added as external evidence for or against previous claims. Acquisition data come from three longitudinal corpora and from 24 children of a transversal quasi-longitudinal study. Here the order of acquisition of diminutives according to the ten-step scale of morphosemantic transparency/opacity and to adult type and token frequency will be presented and the relation between morphosemantic and morphopragmatic meaning will be discussed.

Due to high variation and competition of different potential forms, German noun plural formation is known to be challenging for children acquiring German as their first or second language. In order to disentangle linguistic, social and methodological factors, we investigate the acquisition of German noun plurals in 56 kindergarten children living in Vienna (Austria) at four data points from mean ages 3;1 to 4;8. The groups of children were balanced for socio-economic status, language background and gender. We use two different methodologies: (1) a picture-based plural elicitation test in which the plural is formed on the basis of a singular given by the experimenter, (2) spontaneous production data in kindergarten settings. Results demonstrate effects of linguistic background, socio-economic status and methodology: Monolingual high SES children score highest in both settings, but the SES and language gap is greater in the test than in spontaneous speech. If dialect forms are treated as correct plurals, the effects of SES and language background are slightly attenuated. We argue for the use of mixed-methods designs in research projects in order to get a comprehensive picture of children’s linguistic proficiencies, especially when investigating vulnerable populations. En raison de fortes variations et concurrence entre des formes différentes potentielles, la formation du pluriel allemand est connue pour être difficile pour des enfants acquérant l’allemand comme première ou deuxième langue. Pour démêler le rôle des facteurs linguistiques, sociaux et méthodologiques, nous avons examiné l’acquisition du pluriel allemand chez 56 enfants âgés de 3;1 à 4;8 en moyenne habitant à Vienne (Autriche). Les groupes d’enfants ont été équilibrés en contrôlant le statut socio-économique (SES), l’origine linguistique et le sexe. Nous avons utilisé deux méthodologies différentes : (1) un test d’élicitation de pluriels à partir d’images dans lequel l’enfant forme le pluriel d’un singulier donné par l’expérimentateur, (2) la production spontanée à l’école maternelle. Les résultats montrent des effets liés à l’origine linguistique, au SES et à la méthodologie : les enfants monolingues de SES plus élevé obtiennent les meilleurs résultats dans les deux contextes, mais la disparité de SES et d’origine linguistique est plus grande dans le test que dans la production spontanée. Si les formes dialectales sont traitées comme des pluriels corrects, les effets du SES et de l’origine linguistique sont légèrement atténués. Nous plaidons donc pour l’usage de méthodes mixtes afin d’obtenir des analyses aussi complètes que possible sur les compétences linguistiques des enfants, en particulier pour l’examen de populations vulnérables.

According to the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis (SMH), speakers use morphonotactic consonant clusters as morphological boundary signals. Morphonotactic clusters are thereby assigned a morphological function in processing, which is assumed to facilitate processing and acquisition of complex consonantal structures. The aim of this paper is that of testing the SMH from a computational point of view, making use of a corpus-based model of neural network activation (PHACTS) trained on a German corpus. We evaluate whether PHACTS produces different representations for homophonous phonological sequences that either contain or do not contain a morphological boundary. The study provides a psycholinguistically plausible simulation of how the cognitive representation of (mor)phonotactic clusters emerges from corpus information about the phonotactics of a given language. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16–36 months) acquiring eight different languages. Adjectives in child speech and child-directed speech were coded as either unrelated or related to a contrastive term in the preceding context. Results show large differences between children in the growth of adjective production. These differences are strongly related to contrast use. High contrast users not only increase adjective use earlier, but also reach a stable level of adjective production in the investigated period. Average or low contrast users increase their adjective production more slowly and do not reach a plateau in the period covered by this study. Initially there is a strong relation between contrast use in child speech and child-directed speech, but this relation diminishes with age.

A substantial tradition of linguistic inquiry has framed the knowledge of native speakers in terms of their ability to determine the grammatical acceptability of language forms that they encounter for the first time. In the domain of morphology, the productivity framework of Dressler (CLASNET Working papers 7, 1997) has emphasized the importance of this ability in terms of the graded potentiality of non-existing multimorphemic forms. The goal of this study was to investigate what role the notion of potentiality plays in online lexical well-formedness judgment among children who are native speakers of Austrian German. A total of 114 children between the ages of six and ten and a total of 40 adults between the ages of 18 and 30 (as a comparison group) participated in an online well-formedness judgment task which focused on pluralized German nouns. Concrete, picturable, high frequency German nouns were presented in three pluralized forms: (a) actual existing plural form, (b) morphologically illegal plural form, (c) potential (but not existing) plural form. Participants were shown pictures of the nouns (as a set of three identical items) and simultaneously heard one of three pluralized forms for each noun. Response latency and judgment type served as dependent variables. Results indicate that both children and adults are sensitive to the distinction between illegal and potential forms (neither of which they would have encountered). For all participants, plural frequency (rather than frequency of the singular form) affected responses for both existing and non-existing words. Other factors increasing acceptability were the presence of supplementary umlaut in addition to suffixation and homophony with existing words or word forms.

This paper is a contrastive analysis of French and German adult reactions such as repetitions and other reformulations to morphologically incomplete or erroneous child productions on the one hand and to morphologically complete and conventional utterances on the other hand. According to our results, adults of both languages seem to react differently to problems of synthetic morphology and of periphrastic morphology, the former being preferentially corrected whereas the latter tend to be accepted by the adults.

This volume unites six contributions on morphonotactics of consonant clusters and its difference to phonotactics (in a narrow sense). Morphonotactics comprises that part of phonotactics (in the large sense) which is due to interaction with morphology. It deals prototypically with clusters which are due to morphological concatenation as in the word-final consonant cluster in Ger. (er/sie) mach-t '(he/she) make-s', which is morphonotactic vs. its phonotactic homophonous equivalent Macht 'power'. The opening chapter introduces into the area of morphonotactics and into the following five chapters which deal with German or French morphonotactics or both. The first represents the first corpuslinguistic analysis of German morphonotactics based on a large electronic corpus, the second investigates phonetic processing in both languages, the remaining three, equally distributed between both languages, with the impact of (mor)phonotactics on processing and language acquisition. Thus, this volume unites phonological, morphological, phonetic, psycholinguistic, corpuslinguistic and typological perspectives integrated into a series of experimental approaches. The volume publishes selectively results of a bilateral research project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).