A question of dominance: Statistically approaching grammatical variation in German standard language across borders

Abstract

This paper revisits the question of national varieties in German, a concept that still has not found solid empirical proof, at least not from a quantitative-etic perspective. The question raised is how data collected in the course of the international research project, Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen (Handbook of Grammatical Variation in Standard German), and the application of spatial statistical methods to geographical variant distribution patterns can contribute to this discussion. With the aid of Factor Analysis and spatially modified clustering of variant distribution patterns it is shown that—at least from a quantitative/corpus linguistic point of view—there is no evidence for assuming nation-specific varieties. Importantly, this result does not imply the existence of a homogenous German standard language; rather, it is argued that geographical variation does not self-evidently legitimize the assumption of standard varieties.