Bidialectalism
Subtitle: an unexpected development in the obsolescence of Pennsylvania Dutchified English
By: Vicki Michael Anderson
Series: Publication of the American Dialect Society -- Number 98; Publication of the American Dialect Society -- no. 98.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
ISBN-13: 9780822367963
Subjects: Languages; Dialects; Bidialectalism; Pennsylvania Dutch; English language
Description: "Pennsylvania Dutchified English, a little-studied German-influenced language variety spoken in south central Pennsylvania, is rapidly approaching extinction as speakers shift to the more standard regional variety of English. Not only are speakers using dialectal features less frequently, but the ways in which they use those features is also changing, thus altering what it means to 'speak the dialect' and rendering the next generation of speakers incapable of acquiring it. In this context of inconsistency, a group of bidialectals have unexpectedly developed who are proficient in both Pennsylvania Dutchified English and the regional standard. Bidialectalism: An Unexpected Development in the Obsolescence of Pennsylvania Dutchified English investigates the shifts in use of various features by this dialect's last generation of speakers and documents the use of those features in an ethnographic and statistical case study of a bidialectal individual. In this way, the volume thus contributes to the study of outcomes of dialect contact, language variety decline and death, and bidialectalism"--Publisher description.
Notes: "Supplement to American Speech, Volume 88."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-198) and index.

Text in English.
Table of contents: title: Outcomes of dialect contact and the case of Pennsylvania Dutchified English; title: A working description of Pennsylvania Dutchified English and South Central Pennsylvania English; title: PDE phonological features and their use : unraveling in action for PDE obstruent devoicing; title: Other PDE phonological features and their use : further evidence for the unraveling of PDE; title: On the trail of the bidialectal; title: The emergence of bidialectalism at the end of the life cycle of PDE : a case study.