Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present

Front Cover
Ana Deumert, Wim Vandenbussche
John Benjamins Publishing, Jan 1, 2003 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 479 pages
This volume presents a comparative, socio-historical study of the Germanic standard languages (Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Low German, Luxemburgish, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish, Yiddish as well as the Caribbean and Pacific Creole languages). Each of the 16 orginal chapters systematically discusses central aspects of the standardization process, including dialect selection, codification, elaboration and diffusion of the standard norm across the speech community, as well as incipient processes of de-standardization and re-standardization. The strongly comparative orientation of the contributions allow for the identification of broad similarities as well as intriguing differences across a wide range of historically and socially diverse language histories. Two chapters by the editors provide an overview of the theoretical background and rationale of comparative standardization research, and outline directions for further research in the area. The volume will be of interest to language historians as well as sociolinguists in general.
 

Contents

Taxonomies and histories
1
Afrikaans
15
Caribbean Creoles
41
Danish
69
Dutch 35
93
English
127
Faroese
157
Frisian
193
Low German
281
Luxembourgish
303
Norwegian
331
Pacific Pidgins and Creoles
355
Scots
383
Swedish
405
Yiddish
431
Research directions in the study of language standardization
455

German
211
Icelandic
245

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