- I am deeply grateful to Prof. R. Hotzenköcherle, director and editor of the Atlas, for allowing me to use these materials with complete freedom. Through his kindness I was able to benefit from the years of labor which have already gone into the gathering and ordering of the materials, and to consult the many hand drawn maps which have thus far been prepared. My stay in Zürich was made possible through a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, for which I would also like to express my gratitude. For a general description of the Atlas (publication has not yet begun), see R. Hotzenköcherle, “L'Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Suisse alémanique,” Essais de philologie moderne (1951), pp. 115–32 (Paris, 1953; = Bibl. de la Fac. de Phil, et Lettres de l' Univ. de Liége, fascicule 129).
- Monographs on various parts of this area are available as follows: J. Hunziker, Aargauer Wörterbuch in der Lautform der Leerauer Mundart, Aarau, 1877 (Leerau is point AG 51 on our map); Heinrich Stickelberger, Lautlehre der lebenden Mundart der Stadt Schaffhausen, Leipzig diss., Aargau 1881 (Schaffhausen is point SH7); H. Blattner, Über die Mundarten des Kantons Aargau: Vocalismus der Schinznacher Mundart, Leipzig diss., Brugg, 1890 (Schinznach is near point AG 28); Ernst Hausknecht, Die Vokale der Stammsilben in den Mundarten der Stadt St. Gallen und des Fürstenlandes, Zürich diss., Frauenfeld, [1912?] (St. Gall is five miles east of point SG 5); Ludwig Fischer, Der Stammsilben-Vokalismus der Mundart des Luzerner Gäus, Zürich diss., Frauenfeld, 1927 (based on the dialect of Triengen, point LU 5); Albert Weber, Zürichdeutsche Grammatik, Zürich, 1948; and the following volumes of the series Beiträge zur Schweizerdeutschen Grammatik (=BSG), ed. by Albert Bachmann, Frauenfeld, 1910ff.: BSG 1, Jakob Vetsch, Appenzell (1910); BSG 9, Wilhelm Wiget, Toggenburg (in St. Gall) (1916); BSG 15, Albert Weber, Zürich Highlands (1923); and BSG 20, Georg Wanner, canton of Schaffhausen (1941).
- For example, at AG 21 the word Wespe differs from the others in its group in showing close [e] rather than open [ϵ]. This [e] is assigned to the /e/ established by the words of group (1) rather than to the /ϵ/ established by groups (2) and (3).
- I am indebted to Prof. Hotzenköcherle for allowing me to use part of the base map of the Atlas. On this map, localities are numbered within each canton, and the cantons are indicated by the abbreviations familiar from auto license plates. Our area contains: 3 points in BA (Basel), 3 in SO (Solothurn), 59 in AG (Aargau), 16 in LU (Luzern), all 11 in SH (Schaffhausen), all 66 in ZH (Zürich), 7 in ZG (Zug), 6 in SZ (Schwyz), 24 in TG (Thurgau), 20 in SG (St. Gall), 3 in AP (Appenzell), and 1 in GL (Glarus). By way of orientation: AG 34 is the city of Aarau, ZH 37 the city of Zürich, SH 7 the city of Schaffhausen, TG 15 the city of Frauenfeld.
- At a few points where Wasen was not recorded, the symbol on the map represents the vowel of Nase or Wade. At four points the symbols on the map are incorrect: AG 25, 26 should show two vertical lines, one horizontal line; AG 37, 55 should show two diagonal lines, one horizontal line.
- Weber, Zürichdt. Gram., also notes [ϵ] before /r x m n n /. §41 [hrεt šwεxxər]; correct the statement that [ϵ] occurs only before /r/ and /x/. §127, note 3 [xrεnkx(n)ər]; my informant does not use the form [fεltš(n)ər] ‘falser’ noted here. In §127, note 2, Weber notes [lenər lenšt]; my informant says [lεnər].§141 [dεnə].§149 [wϵmm]. Of these forms with [ϵ] before nasal, only wem is included in the Atlas questionnaire. The Atlas materials show [wϵmm] and [wemm] distributed more or less at random in the Center, with no evidence of a contrast.
- Weber, Zürichdt. Gram., notes not only (§147) [sϵttig] ‘such’ but also (§147, note 1) archaic [sϵlig] ‘such’ and (§151) rural [wϵttig] ‘what sort of’. The demonstrative pronoun and adjective [dϵ] ‘he, that’ (masculine) also occurs in a shortened form [dϵ] (§142), contrasting with [me] shortened from [mē] ‘mehr’ (§158, p. 151, note 3). (My informant also uses these shortened forms.) It is difficult, however, to determine whether these are phonemically short vowels or prosodic allophones of long vowels, since they occur only as variants of long vowels. Weber (§303.1, 2, 3) also notes [ϵ] in the interjections [hϵ εhέ sϵ].
- Points ZH 25, 34, 37 (city of Zürich), 50–53 are underlined to indicate the presence here of a phoneme /ϵ/, giving the front vowel structure /e/—/ϵ/—/æ. This is referred to below as the “Special ZH” system; it may perhaps occur also in other parts of the Center. The shading on Map 4 will be explained in §6 below.
- Undisturbed phonetic change would have neutralized the short ≠ long opposition before fortis stops, with only short /i ü u/ occurring in this position. However, analogy restored the opposition: lit '(er) liegt' (probably after lišt ‘(du) liegst’), šripšt, šript '(du) schreibst, (er) schreibt' (after infinitive šribə etc.).
- The evidence of Schlitten was discounted in parts of TG, SG, and AP, where by a special development (see below, §7) it appears with the vowel /e/: šletə, as against /i/ in the other examples of MHG /i/.
- Rippe also appears as /rippi rip/ or /rippi rip/.
- bibəli also appears at some points as /bíbi/ or /bíbi/, and at SG 23 and 30 as /didəlı/; sieben also appears as /sibni/ or /sıbnı/.
- Because the Atlas workers' transcription is so detailed, an arbitrary grouping of their notations into “same” and “different” had to be made. We classed as “close” all the vowels which they noted as over-close, close, or neutral; and we classed as “open” all the vowels which they noted as open, over-open, or between [i] and [e]. On Map 5 the marking “same” (empty circle) then means that both vowels are “close”: /rittə/=/rippə/, /bibəli/=/sibə/; the marking “different” (solid circle) means that the stressed vowels of /rittə bibəlı/ are “close,” those of /rippə sıbə/ “open”. To this general statement there are six exceptions, each indicated by an exclamation point on the map. At LU 5, 7, 14 the Atlas materials note the vowel of bibəli as open, that of sieben as over-open; I nevertheless classed them as “different.” At ZH 35, 56 the Atlas materials note the vowels of both bibəli and sieben as open; they are therefore “same,” though not in the usual way. At TG 21 the Atlas materials note the vowel of bibəli as open, that of sieben as close, i.e. the reverse of the usual relationship; I interpret both qualities as lying within the allophonic range of the phoneme /i/, and therefore marked them as “same.”
- The shortening of MHG /Ī ū ū/ in open syllable before lenis, mentioned above for the ZH Highlands, appears throughout ZH in a few words. Some of the above differences between A, B, and C undoubtedly come from the fact that one Atlas worker made the records for A and B, another for C; but note that neither A, B, nor C shows complete historical consistency. The few “special” words in the Atlas materials cannot be illustrated for the city of Zürich because they all occur in farming sections of the questionnaire which were not asked in big cities.
- In parts of the canton of Glarus (though not at the one point on our map) the number of front vowels was decreased by a change in the opposite direction: ë (Wetter) was raised until it coalesced with e (Vetter), giving /wettər/=/fettər/:
- The resulting structure is identical with that labeled “West and Center” above. The difference is one of incidence: /wettər/=/fettər/ rather than /wættar/=/wæšpi/. Cf. Catharina Streiff, Die Laute der Clarner Mundarten, §§24, 30 (1915; =BSG 8).
- The start of this split seems to have been the development of a lower allophone of /o/ in certain environments, especially before dental obstruents and /r/: [hosə] ˜ [həsə] etc. The split became phonemic partly through various analogical developments, partly through irregular geographical spread of the new [ə], and partly through the reintroduction of [o] into environments where it had previously been lowered, as when *[wolt] '(ich, er) will' (with close [o] regularly retained before /1/) became [wot], contrasting with [gət]< earlier [got] ‘Gott’ etc.
- Cf. André Martinet, Économie des changements phonétiques, § §3.30, 4.6 (Berne, 1955).
- Forms from BSG 1. Since the various lowerings described here affected no less than five different phonemes, /ö o i ü u/, one might be inclined to view the whole process as a general lowering of vowel articulation (such as we find, for example, in LU and southern AG). This cannot be the case, however, since (1) the phenomenon is structurally not a general lowering but a series of phonemic splits, and (2) the phoneme /e/, which was not subject to any structural pressures, remained unaffected. For a full discussion of these matters, see my article, “Lautwandel durch innere Kausalität: Die ostschweizerische Vokalspaltung,” to appear in the Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung.
- Historical sources and lexical correspondences are of course two aspects of the same thing. We reconstruct the historical sources on the basis of the modern lexical correspondences; hence the modern lexical correspondences can be inferred from an indication of the historical sources. (The vowel system which we reconstruct for our dialects is identical with that of recorded M HG, with some minor differences of phonemic incidence only. We label it “MHG” because there seems to be no good reason for preferring to call it “Proto-Swiss” or some such thing.) In indicating the historical sources, we give only the broad lines of development, ignoring such limited changes as for example MHG /e/> ZH /æ/ before nasals: brennen > /bræna/ 'brennen'
- Since /ə2/ and /ӛ2/ are listed here for both LU and AP, these would seem at first glance to constitute the fully shared diaphonemes //ə2 ӛ2//. This is not the case, however. Whereas all the lexical items identified by subscript /2/ belong to LU/ə2 ӛ2/, only part of them belong to AP/ə2 ӛ2/, the rest belonging to AP/01,2 ö1,2/.
- Cf. the pioneering work done by Einar Haugen, “Problems of bilingual description,” Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics VII (1954). 9–19; “Problems of bilingual description,” General Linguistics I (1955), 1–9; “The phoneme in bilingual description,” Language Learning VII (1956/57), iii—iv, 17–23.
- As used here, “allophonic range” is not necessarily identical with Martinet's very useful concept of “champ de dispersion” (Economie, §2.10). The Central phoneme /E/ has an allophonic range which includes the positional allophone [e] of [fettər] and the positional allophone [ϵ] of [hϵrt]. Each of these positional allophones, in turn, has its own “champ de dispersion,” i.e. a clustering around the quality [e] in [fettər], a clustering around the quality [ϵ] in [hϵrt] etc. As I understand it, at any rate, “champ de dispersion” refers to any dispersion around a single phonetic center (any “shots at a single acoustic target”), whether the center be that of the only allophone of a phoneme or that of one of two or more positional allophones. The term “allophonic range,” on the other hand, is intended to cover the total phonetic range within which a phoneme is realized, whether it be that of a single allophone or that of two or more positional allophones.
- The concept “phonetic interval” is of course identical with Martinet's “marge de sécurité” (Economie, §2.11). Perhaps I am wrong in preferring a less vivid term.
- I owe this term to Hans Kurath.
- Recognition of this concept would go a long way toward resolving the confusion about the status of [i] as a phoneme in American English. It is clear that many speakers have a three-way opposition [I]—[i]—[λ], as in [JIst] (‘the gist of the matter’), J ist] (‘just yesterday’), [JAst] (‘a just man’). I believe many linguists have hesitated to accept [i] as a phoneme precisely because of the fact that it occurs only as an alternant of (principally) [I] and [λ] (though not all examples of [I] and [λ] alternate with [i], by any means). Recognizing this special status of [i], and thus not classing it as a “phoneme like all the rest,” might settle many a heated argument.
- One might surmise that the phonetic interval is small because the opposition is out of balance. However, it is clear historically that the very open [I Ü U] (ranging even to [e ö o]) of the Southwest is an innovation, and that the less open [I Ü u] of the Center is a preservation of what we know about the earlier phonetic quality of this row.
- Such a “strengthening of the opposition” is more familiar when expressed in historical terms. Once the complementary distribution of two allophones has been destroyed in one environment, the two phones—now phonemes—are gradually introduced more and more into other environments as well. For examples, see James W. Marchand, “Germanic short *i and *e: Two phonemes or one?”, Language XXXIII (1957), 346–357, esp. pp. 347–348.
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