Language Contact Phenomena in the Corpus of German-Polish Bilingualism Langgener. Practices and Attitudes Within Two Generations

Abstract

Based on the typology of Matras (2009) and his distinction between material replications (MATs), in which the morphological material and its phonological form from one language to another language, and pattern replications (PATs), in which linguistic patterns and functions from the contact language are replicated, the paper analyses language contact phenomena used by German-Polish bilinguals interviewed as part of the German-Polish project “Language across generations: contact induced change in morpho-syntax in German-Polish bilingual speech” (abbreviated as LangGener) fi nanced by the National Science Centre, Poland, project no. 2016/23/G/HS2/04369, carried out at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. The bilinguals represent two generations, which diff er in terms of the period of birth as well as the existing language regimes: (1) An older generation who live in Poland, in the territories that belonged to Germany until 1945 who were born before 1945. (2) A younger, middle-aged generation of people born in Poland in the 1950s and 1960s in the same territories who currently live in Germany who emigrated in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. The aim of the paper is to examine whether and to what extent the two groups diff er with regard to the so-called ‘pattern replications’, i.e. functional language contact phenomena, and the ‘mattern replications’, i.e. formal language contact phenomena, and whether the occurrence of these types of language contact phenomena can be linked to language biographical factors, language attitudes or the diff erent language contact situation. The corpus of analysis will be thereby limited to speakers in or from Silesia.