Language change across speech islands: The emergence of a Midwestern dialect of Pennsylvania German

This dissertation studies the emergence, maintenance, and cultural significance of a Midwestern variety of Deitsch, also known as Pennsylvania German, in geographically isolated Amish communities in the American Midwest. In spite of the apparent lack of contact between them, these speech islands take part in recent linguistic changes which differentiate them from speakers in Pennsylvania. These common developments in relative isolation can be interpreted as a violation of "natural linguistic laws" (Chambers 1995). The aim of this research is to provide an account for the unusual homogeneity of Midwestern Deitsch. In so doing, I consider a question of crucial and ongoing importance in the study of language change: how do external factors (that is, contact with speakers of other dialects and other languages) interact with internal factors (that is, the structure of the language itself) to effect linguistic change?;First, utilizing audiotaped data collected in interviews and conversations with over 140 speakers, the dissertation details the patterns of lexical, phonological, and morphological variation that characterize Midwestern Deitsch and identifies a particular sound change in progress, the monophthongization of /aI/ to /epsilonI/, that serves as a point of comparison between Midwestern communities. Second, it explores the settlement histories of Deitsch speech islands in the Midwest as well as the current patterns of interaction between them and with the Pennsylvania settlements. Finally I synthesize the historical, social, and linguistic facts and show that Midwestern Amish speech islands are better conceived of as a loosely connected "archipelago" whose interconnecting family and church networks have promoted the emergence of a regional dialect as a marker of a distinct regional social identity. This dissertation is a contribution both to the theory of language change as well as to the dialectological landscape of America viewed cross linguistically.