Sprachgeographische Aspekte der Morphologie und Verschriftung in schweizerdeutschen Chats

Abstract

The regional chat-rooms in Switzerland show an extremely high portion of dialectal contributions (up to 90%). This non-standardized spontaneous writing of a dialectal language still reflects the geolinguistic distribution described in the linguistic atlas of German speaking Switzerland SDS (1962-1997) based on recordings of the 1940s and 1950s. This paper shows some reflexes of this geolinguistic distribution in four chat-rooms. The graphemic representation of the ending vowel of infinitives clearly confirms the traditional structure. Deviating e-graphemes in chat-rooms of alpine regions can be rated as common Swiss German variants for centralized vowels. On the other hand ä-graphemes in chat-rooms of the Swiss midlands are to be rated as marking of the phonetic deviation from the standard German pronunciation. This variation is not only found in inherited words, but also in neologisms with an almost identical distribution. The SDS illustrates a distribution for the use of t-endings in the 2nd and 3rd singular of sein 'to be'. These t-flexives cannot be found anymore in midland chat-rooms. They appear only in alpine chat-rooms, and there they become morphologized in a new way. The dialectal writing of neologisms confirms the validity of the principles for the Standard German writing.