BAG – Bay Area German Linguistic Fieldwork Project

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Preface

The Bay Area German Linguistic Fieldwork Project originated in 1984, emerging out of a rich legacy of mid-century modern linguistics as cultivated in the American School with its amalgams of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, of Contrastive and of Comparative Linguistics, of Synchronic and Diachronic Linguistics, among other methodological pairs. The ebb and flow in the history of the intermingling of these not so opposing methodologies shows them to be ever dependent on one another as they each seek to define their own tools. In recent history the American School is indebted to the Prague School and in turn to the exciting evolutionary Nineteenth Century Linguistics (traced back ultimately to the century by century global history of language studies). Empirical Linguistics of necessity has ever been integral to the history of Linguistics, so that linguistic fieldwork is nothing new. The data elicited by fieldwork, however, are fresh and bear witness to the viability and creativity of language; they serve all methodologies well. Chapter One details the linguistic milieu into which BAG was born three decades ago. The remaining chapters present the fieldwork projects sequentially from the beginning to the present.

Permission to reprint the fifteen articles was granted as follows: By the editor of Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur: “San Francisco Bay Area German: A Pilot Study,” Monatshelfte 80, 1 (1988), 96–104; by Kümmerle Verlag: “Is there an Aspect Distinction in Certain German Strong/Weak Verb Alternations? Evidence from German in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Semper Idem et Novus: Festschrift für Frank Banta, ed. F. G. Gentry, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 481 (1988), 433-443; by Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart: “Bilingual Pragmatics: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area German Project,” Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik LVII, 3 (1990), 295-309; by Verlag Walter de Gruyter: “BAG IV: Phonological Interference,” Insights in Germanic Linguistics I: Methodology in Transition. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 83 (1995), 275-292; and “BAG V: PC German,” Insights in Germanic Linguistics II: Classic and Contemporary. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 94 (1996), 207-226; by the University of Hawai’i College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures: “English Phonetic contrasts in San Francisco Bay Area ← vii | viii → German,” Across the Oceans: Studies from East to West in Honor of Richard K. Seymour, eds. I. Rauch and C. Moore (1995), 167-175; by Peter Lang Publishing: “BAG VI: Toward a Grammar of German E-mail,” New Insights in Germanic Linguistics I. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics 33 (1999), 181-199; and “BAG VI-2: Toward a Grammar of German Snail-mail,” New Insights in Germanic Linguistics II. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics 38 (2001), 147-158; by the editors of the Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis: “On the German Language of Civility/Vulgarity: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area,” IJGLSA 5, 2 (2000), 175-198; and “On the German language of civility/Vulgarity: Evidence from Bonn,” IJGLSA 8, 2 (2003), 261-289; and “BAG VIII: Emotion, Gesture, Language,” IJGLSA 10, 1 (2005), 17-45; and “BAG 9: Toward the Architecture of the Apology, “ IJGLSA 12, 1 (2007), 135-156; and “BAG 10: Toward the Architecture of the Lie,” IJGLSA 15, 1 (2010), 53-89; and “BAG XI: Toward Human : Canine Communication,” IJGLSA 16, 2 (2011), 203-254; and “BAG XII: German Netspeak/Textspeak,” IJGLSA 18,2 (2013).

Special gratitude is extended to Gerald F. Carr, Lindsay D. Preseau, Timothy B. Price, and Richard K. Seymour for their invaluable formatting and proofreading. This book is dedicated to the memory of my universally beloved brother, Dr. Joseph G. Rauch (1943-2009).

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Chapter 1

Contrastive Linguistics, Linguistic Fieldwork, and the Bay Area German Project

Saussure’s equation of being with relatedness is a phenomenological reality deeply fundamental to linguistic analysis. Accordingly a linguistic entity exists because of another entity. Of necessity, then, all linguistic realia are comparative whether within one given language or across two or more languages. Thus it can be claimed that Contrastive Linguistics (CL) is comparative and, indeed, that Comparative Linguistics (CompL) is contrastive. The search for methodological identity (cf. below) is not peculiar to Contrastive Linguistics in today’s melding of approaches. It is not a simple matter of to contrast, i.e., to focus on differences, and to compare, i.e., to focus on similarities.

Comparative Linguistics, that venerable study of historical languages avidly cultivated in the evolutionist nineteenth century owes its name to Friedrich von Schlegel’s first use in modern times of the expression comparative (grammar) in his 1808 Concerning the Language and the Wisdom of the Indians, followed by Franz Bopp’s 1816 Concerning the Conjugational System of the Sanskrit Language in Comparison with that of the Greek, Persian, and the Germanic Languages. Not to be denied is evidence of early modern contrastive analysis by none other than the Schlegel brother, August Wilhelm, in his 1818 typological study “Observations on the Provençal Language and Literature”, in which he proposed agglutinating, analytic, and synthetic language types. This snapshot of the early nineteenth century co-existence of comparative and contrastive analyses bears witness to the long-in-coming development of linguistic thought and thinkers that brought the brothers Schlegel to this point, and the shared birth of their mutual analyses.¹ It is the subsequent methodological histories of CL and CompL that, on the one hand, establish them as fairly separate approaches, and, later again as intersecting, indeed, overlapping methodologies.

Yet another concept of the Saussurean legacy informs the history of CL (and necessarily of CompL). This is the notion synchronic defined by Saussure in 1891 as: “the linguistic facts as given when one confines ← 1 | 2 → oneself to a single state,” in distinction to diachronic, “the successive states of the language considered in contrast [emphasis mine] with one another.”²

In the early modern developmental history of the concept of synchrony it receives a unilateral interpretation, so to speak, i.e., it is identified with the analysis of living languages. Similarities and differences are sought between two or more genetically related or unrelated languages on the basis of an essential common denominator, a so-called tertium comparationis. James 1980:169 explains this metaconcept as follows:³

The first thing we do is to make sure we are comparing like with like: this means that the two (or more) entities to be compared, while differing in some respect, must share certain attributes. This requirement is especially strong when we are contrasting [emphasis his], i.e., looking for differences, since it is only against a background of sameness that differences are significant [emphasis mine]. In the theory of CA [Contrastive Analysis] the constant has traditionally been known as the tertium comparationis or TC for short.

Samples of nineteenth and beginning twentieth century synchronic studies are, C. H. Grandgent’s 1892 German and English Sounds, W. Viëtor’s 1894 Elemente der Phonetik des Deutschen, Englischen und Französischen, and P. Passy’s 1912 Petite phonétique comparée des principales langues européennes. From the standpoint of the emerging theoretical : applied split in CL which is to evolve by the mid-twentieth century, the above early synchronic studies are quite theoretical. With regard to that emerging split, it can be noted that theoretical CL was avidly tended and cultivated by the trend-setting Prague School, so, e.g., in the Functionalism as espoused by Vilém Mathesius, who termed the synchronic study of language “analytical-comparative” in distinction to “genetical-comparative” (1927, 1983:45), and who strongly advocated “the static method in linguistic research” (48). Later twentieth and twenty-first century foci blur the theoretical : applied methodological split, surely due in part, at least, to the penetrating influence of the very formal Chomskyean revolution.

The mid-twentieth century emergence of Applied CL, strictly speaking, is to be attributed to Edward Sapir’s student, Benjamin Lee Whorf,⁴ who named it thus in 1941, and to the American Structuralist School. Other names/titles swirling around the budding conceptions (and misconceptions) of Applied CL are iconically revelatory, so, e.g., L. Zabrocki’s 1970 “Grundfragen der konfrontativen Grammatik” or O. S. ← 2 | 3 → Akhmanova and D. A. Melencuk’s 1977 The Principles of Linguistic Confrontation. J. Ellis in his 1966 Towards a General Comparative Linguistics speaks of a comparative descriptive linguistics where descriptive is identified with synchronic, i.e., static only.

Applied synchrony became synonymous with CL in the American School when World War II foreign language study reached its zenith in prestige. Pioneers in American Applied CL are Charles Fries and Robert Lado, among others, represented prominently at the University of Michigan. With regard to English language learning, Fries (1945:9) wrote: “the most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner.” From this flowed a series of dissertations, monographs, and articles, all of which tended to be pedagogical in focus; they sought learning problems in contrasting native with foreign languages. Robert Lado then in his 1957 Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers hypothesized that elements that are similar between the source and the target language are easy to learn; elements which are different between the contrasting languages are difficult to learn. This view that differences present more of a pedagogical challenge dominated in the United States until the 1960s. The aim of Applied CL to produce fairly full or complete studies rather than grammar fragments was realized in works such as W. W. Gage 1962 (unpubl. ms.) The Sounds of English and Russian; W. Moulton 1962 The Sounds of English and German; H. Kufner 1962 The Grammatical Structures of English and German; R. Stockwell and J. D. Bowen 1965 The Sounds of English and Spanish; F. B. Agard and R. J. Di Pietro 1975 The Sounds of English and Italian. Given the strong Saussurean orientation of American Structuralism, these types of studies came into disfavor due to their admixture of pedagogy and theory.⁵ Simultaneously, other fields such as work on bilingualism, language contact and borrowing, and areal linguistics were theoretically cultivated, e.g., 1953 E. Haugen, The Norwegian Language in America; 1953 U. Weinreich, Languages in Contact (cf. further below).

Meanwhile in Europe the theoretical orientation (cf. Viëtor and Passy above) continued, e.g., N. E. Enkvist 1963 “The English and Finnish Vowel Systems;” J. Orr 1953 Words and Sounds in English and French; H. Glinz 1957; “Wortarten und Satzglieder im Deutschen, Französischen und Lateinischen.” Eventually, pedagogically oriented analyses are accepted as an Applied Linguistics field to co-exist with Theoretical Linguistics. The contrasting language of choice at first is English, e.g., G. ← 3 | 4 → Nickel 1969 PAKS (Projekt für angewandte kontrastive Sprachwissenschaft);⁶ J. Fisiak 1965 PECP (Polish–English Contrastive Project); C. Dumitru 1969 RECAP (Roumanian–English Contrastive Analysis Project); R. Filipović YSCECP (Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian–English Contrastive Project).

Yet the co-existence of so-called Applied Linguistics and CL remains adumbrated already at mid-twentieth century. Research directions which are not essentially pedagogical could be both theoretical and applied. Thus CL became an umbrella term for the inclusion of, e.g., areal linguistics, dialectology, typological linguistics, linguistic universals, translation theory, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, contrastive stylistics and textology, language contact and borrowing, creolization, hybridization, code-switching, language loyalty and maintenance, predictive contrastive analysis (cf. Lado above).

Generative Grammar was invoked, e.g., by Di Pietro (mentioned above) writing (1971:29-30):

The first step is to observe the difference between the surface structures of the two languages… The second step is to postulate the underlying universals… The third step is to formulate the deep-to-surface (or realizational) rules concerning the various expressions…in each of the languages involved in our CA.

As is to be expected, the Generative Grammar approach to CL data was challenged by the rapidly competing Cognitive Linguistic Approach, which significantly modified the heretofore Saussurean structural and the transformational models regarding such notions as equivalence and congruence, central in Contrastive analysis (cf. Krzeszowski 1990).

Present day CL claims further significant modifications, in fact, “a new era…Contrastive analysis had enjoyed a temporary peak of interest in the 1950s and 1960s, but the approach was largely intuitive and limited to comparing abstract language systems (or subsystems) rather than exploring language in use” (Aijmer and Altenberg 2013:1). Driven by computer-generated corpora, the analyist is enabled to produce contrastive paradigms that “are raw material for a maximally rich representation of the meanings and functions of a linguistic item which is based on more objective data than the analyst’s intuitions” (ibid. 2). Similarly, Taboada et al. speak of a “new wave” in CL, writing (2013:1): “there exists a renewed interest in discourse perspectives in the study of language in contrast, and much of that work uses corpora and corpus ← 4 | 5 → linguistics.” To be sure, the digital age in which we find ourselves has modified all fields of linguistics exponentially. With regard to CL, it was once considered quasi-synonymous with Applied Linguistics (cf. Whorf above). Today Applied Linguistics is a multidisciplinary concept very much mirroring the melding of near and not so near related subfields, by far outnumbering the above given areas listed under the umbrella of CL. Without any doubt the digital impetus was preceded by a conceptual turn of mind evident, to take but one example, in the “clear analogies, indeed similarities, to which deconstruction, prototype theory and semiotics are mutually open” (Rauch 1999:25–26). Indeed, the distinction between CL and CompL, the springboard for this chapter (cf. above) is not a simple either/or matter, happily due to their mutual borrowing of methods and approaches, the interdigitation of their approaches. So, e.g., even the methods of contemporary linguistic fieldwork can contribute to the analysis of historical data (cf. Rauch 1999:Chap. 18).

In this narrative seeking the identity of CL, it is fitting to recall the minimal classical tools that help determine the disciplinary nature of CL. These include: primary data from at least two languages, a tertium comparationis, the methodological search for similarities and differences, interference and error analysis, language learner interlanguage.⁷ Integral to American Structuralism even before World War II, but advanced by the foreign language needs of WWII, the gathering of primary language data through fieldwork provided a rich empirical orientation alongside the theoretical focus of the American School, nowhere better represented than at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. And no one embodied this amalgam of the theoretical and the applied better than Kenneth Pike, a student of Fries (above), who understood all human behavior as emic and etic (cf. Pike 1967), while at the same time pursuing fieldwork at the Summer Institute of Linguistics. His celebrated one-hour demonstrations of the monolingual elicitation of an unknown language are heralded to the present day.

To be sure, computer-assisted analysis of corpora is held, on the one hand, to be “based on more objective data than the analyst’s intuitions” (cf. Aijmer and Altenberg cited above); on the other hand, the essence of linguistic fieldwork still resides in one-on-one elicitation of and reliance on native speaker primary data/intuition. These are, accordingly, complementary approaches. One cannot substitute one for the other; both are valuable in what they achieve. Chelliah and de Reuse (2011:8) determine what linguistic fieldwork is and is not: ← 5 | 6 →

Descriptive fieldwork is:

1. Data collection for the purpose of the documentation and description of a language.

2. Data collection through interaction with speakers.

3. Data collection in situations where speakers are expected to use language naturally.

Descriptive fieldwork is not:

1. Data collection only through introspection.

2. Data collection only through examination of written documents or written corpora.