Arend Mihm: FrŸhneuzeitliche
Sprachmodernisierung und Srpachspaltung
The European language modernization processes of the early modern period
were accompanied by the extensive adoption of foreign languages for internal
communication among the upper classes of the individual societies. The
emergence of this new multilingualism is in at least partial conflict with well-established ideas
of language unification in the period and raises the additional question of
whether, as usually assumed, language modernization can have originated
exclusively in the written domain. The article discusses these problems on the
basis of fresh empirical data from a recently completed DFG project that
examines the emergence of Dutch–German bilingualism in northwestern
Germany in the seventeenth century. New findings emerge about the typology of contact-induced
language change, the differential roles of speech and writing in, and the
sociocultural causes of, early modern language modernization.
¯
zurŸck zur homepage
¯
zurŸck zum Gesamtinhaltsverzeichnis