Chapter published in:
Processes of Change: Studies in Late Modern and Present-Day English
Edited by Sandra Jansen and Lucia Siebers
[Studies in Language Variation 21] 2019
► pp. 115–138

Early immigrant English

Midwestern English before the dust settled

We explore the development of final obstruent neutralization (German Bad ‘bath’: /ba:d/ = [ba:t]) and other features of an emerging Wisconsin English variety that has been shaped by contact, while considering multiple factors such as input, contact, and influence from other varieties. We draw our data from immigrant letters and supplement these with what is known about education and language guides available to early immigrants, as well as contact with other language varieties and dialects. Through time and over remarkably heterogeneous varieties of English and German, we trace the presence of this feature in German and English, where it has been transformed.
Keywords: sound change, language variation, immigrant languages, final obstruent neutralization, new dialect formation, koineization, imposition
Published online: 13 August 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.21.07lit
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Cited by other publications

Salmons, Joseph & Miranda E. Wilkerson
2019.  In English in the German-Speaking World, ► pp. 361 ff. Crossref logo

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