Pennsylvania German in West Virginia as a Linguistic Laboratory

The Pennsylvania German dialect in West Virginia serves as a linguistic laboratory where variation and changes can be studied that are attributable to isolation, language contact, and the preservation of archaisms. In 1930 Schirmunski suggested that speech islands established as recently as one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago offer a unique opportunity as a "sprachwissenschaftliches Laboratorium" a laboratory for language change because their geographic and linguistic isolation reflects developments which required many centuries in the homeland (Schirmunski 1930: 113). While the colonial German of the primary settlements in Pennsylvania has been extensively documented (cf. fieldwork by Buffington 1937; Reed 1941; Seifert 1941; Frye 1941; Raith 1982; Louden 1988; Dorian 1989; Huffines 1989), research on Pennsylvania German in secondary areas has not received the same amount of attention. This is particularly true of the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and its extended territory, Pendleton County, West Virginia (cf. Kyger 1964; Pulte 1971; Kehr 1979). Yet Pendleton County offers extremely insightful data on language development in isolation and contact situations. Based on findings from this early speech island, the study will document that (I) the presence of archaisms in West Virginia is evidence of dialect features in their preleveled form and (II) that contact induced changes conform to rules of English phonotactics. Examples from phonology are used to illustrate most conspicuously the notion of a linguistic laboratory'.