Towards determining the influence of internal and external factors on recent developments in Texas German phonology

Abstract

This paper reports on recent developments in the phonology of Texas German, a rapidly eroding dialect spoken in central Texas. We focus on three phenomena in the phonology of Texas German that have undergone changes over the past forty years. Our analysis is based on data taken from interviews conducted in 2002 with seven speakers from New Braunfels, Texas and Freyburg, Texas, that are compared with phonetic transcriptions taken from Eikel (1966) and Gilbert (1972). To determine the possible causes of these changes, we offer a comparison with other German-American dialects to give a preliminary assessment of the influence of internal and external factors. The first development in the change of Texas German (henceforth TxG) phonology concerns the realization of /r/. Whereas data from Gilbert (1972) do not show /r/ to be realized as a retroflex continuant [l] in the New Braunfels and Freyburg areas (see (1a) and (2a)), data from current fieldwork show that /r/ is now predominantly realized as an American-English retroflex continuant [l] as in (1b) and (2b):

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