Zur Sprachdynamik des Konjunktivs im Bairischen in Österreich

Abstract

The paper deals with the morpho-syntactic variation of subjunctive II in Bavarian dialect regions of (former) Austria and focuses on language dynamics.

The broad empirical basis comes from two different corpora: The first corpus consists of data from the “Dictionary of Bavarian dialects in Austria” (WBÖ), reflecting the base dialects of the first half of the 20th century. These data are supplemented by recent oral data that were elicited in project part 03 “Speech repertoires and varietal spectra” of the Special Research Programme “German in Austria. Variation – Contact – Perception” (DiÖ).

Combining WBÖ and DiÖ, PP03 data, a real time comparison is carried out. For additional apparent time evidence, the internal variation within the two datasets is taken into account: While in the WBÖ data different registers are compared, variation in the DiÖ, PP03 data is analyzed with respect to different registers and different speaker groups (old vs. young).

The WBÖ and the DiÖ, PP03 data provide empirical evidence that the -ad-marker that was initially restricted to weak verbs has exceeded its domain and is universally compatible with all verb classes. In connection with this, there is a decrease of strong synthetic subjunctive II forms.

The real time as well as the apparent time findings indicate an increase of analytic subjunctive II constructions at the cost of synthetic forms. Furthermore, we find an expansion of the werden-periphrasis, while the number of tun-subjunctives declines.