Bilingual Communicative Structures Based on Recent Franconian-based German Dialects in Hungary

Abstract

This evidence-based study presents current German contact varieties of Franconian origin from Southern Hungary. Based on a research and documentation project, the paper reveals characteristic processes, patterns and results of intensive German-Hungarian contact and interaction. Among other things, the research has revealed specific intermediate forms and convergences that could be gathered from the speakers’ language use. By describing numerous overt and covert transfer processes, code switches, bilingual doublings and similar phenomena, the profile of a “post-Franconian” dialect manifestation as a specific linguistic and communicative “cross-border variety” was developed. Within the detected contact phenomena, three prototypical classes could be identified: (a) interlingual transfers/adoptions, (b) instances of interlingual copying, and (c) instances of code-switching. The paper presents the first two types of phenomena as hybridisms, while type (c) is regarded as syncretism. It also became clear that the language of the Germans in Hungary is increasingly affected by phenomena of erosion. Word fluency is diminishing and a slow restructuring of the system is beginning to take place, probably first in the semantic and morphological domains. At a second stage, this can lead to a decrease in the functional vitality of German dialect varieties in Hungary.