Language Maintenance and Language Death : the decline of Texas Alsatian.

Language Maintenance and Language Death; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Dedication page; Table of contents; List of tables; List of figures; List of illustrations; Chapter One. Introduction; 1.1 Overview; 1.2 Methodology and data collection; 1.3 What is Texas Alsatian?; 1.3.1 The land of origin; 1.3.2 The Upper Rhenish donor dialect; 1.4 The decline of Texas German dialects; 1.4.1 Linguistic homogeneity versus heterogeneity; 1.4.2 Standard French and German Uberdachung; 1.4.3 Elsasser and Dietsche: Two cultural communities; 1.5 Adopted home of Texas Alsatian: Medina County 2000.

1.6 Participant profile1.6.1 Speaker fluency; 1.6.2 Language acquisition and fluency; 1.7 Contact with the European homeland and language use today; 1.8 Book overview; Chapter Two. The sociohistorical context; 2.1 The ecology of language; 2.2 Beginnings: The historical context; 2.2.1 German immigration to Texas; 2.2.2 Immigration to Medina County; 2.2.3 Henri Castro, Empresario; 2.2.4 The founding of Castroville; 2.3 Socio-cultural contexts: Religion and education; 2.4 Political and economic contexts; 2.4.1 Insulation; 2.4.2 "Reawakening"; 2.4.3 Verticalization vs. horizontalization.

2.5 Sociolinguistic contexts2.5.1 Language use in early Castroville; 2.5.2 Diglossia and language shift in early Castroville; 2.5.3 Real and apparent-time analysis of 2009 participants; 2.6 "Group vitality" and language maintenance and shift; 2.7 Summary; Chapter Three. The lexicon of Texas Alsatian; 3.1 Introduction; 3.2 Distinguishing Texas Alsatian lexically; 3.3 Lexical borrowing; 3.4 Lexical innovation and convergence; 3.5 Code-switching; 3.6 Summary; Chapter Four. The phonology of Texas Alsatian; 4.1 Introduction; 4.2 Phonological features of European Alsatian.

4.2.1 Regional German dialects in contact with Alsatian4.2.2 Distinguishing consonantal features of Alsatian; 4.2.3 Distinguishing vocalic features of Alsatian; 4.2.4 Alsatian regional varieties: Upper and lower Rhenish; 4.3 Texas Alsatian; 4.3.1 Preservation of Alsatian vocalic features; 4.4.2 Preservation of consonantal features; 4.3.3 Phonological transference; 4.4 Summary; Chapter Five. The morphosyntax of Texas Alsatian; 5.1 Introduction; 5.2 The standard German noun: Gender, case, and number; 5.3 The Upper Rhenish noun: Gender, case, and number.

5.4 The Texas Alsatian noun: Gender, case, and number5.4.1 Gender; 5.4.2 Case marking; 5.4.3 Number and plural formation; 5.4.4 The diminutive; 5.4.5 Pronouns; 5.5 The Upper Rhenish verb; 5.6 The Texas Alsatian verb; 5.6.1 The present perfect tense; 5.6.2 Temporal auxiliaries; 5.6.3 Modal auxiliaries; 5.6.4 Word order in verb complements; 5.7 Summary and analysis; Chapter Six. Language attitudes; 6.1 Introduction; 6.2 Attitudes, feelings, beliefs; 6.3 The Castroville Alsatians; 6.4 Language use and attitudes toward "the other"; 6.4.1 The "other."

6.4.2 The Texas German community: not "the other"?

This book provides the first extensive description of Texas Alsatian, a critically-endangered Texas German dialect, as spoken in Medina County in the 21st century. The dialect was brought to Texas in the 1840s by colonists recruited by French entrepreneur Henri Castro and has been preserved with minimal change for six generations. Texas Alsatian has maintained lexical, phonological, and morphosyntactic features which differentiate it from the prevalent standard-near varieties of Texas German. This study both describes its grammatical features and discusses extra-linguistic factors contributing.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

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