Sprachverlust und Halbsprecher einer sterbenden Sprache : Die Infinitivendungen in der friesischen Sprache des Harlingerlandes

Dying language varieties are often characterised by attrition of their structural features and large scale borrowing from the competing dominant language. The linguistic characteristics of such a dying language are particularly difficult to interpret when an extinct language is only scarcely attested (Trummersprache) and its major informant is a non-native, who learned the language from native speakers who were potentially only imperfect learners. The East Frisian Harlingerland dialect is attested only in a manuscript booklet from the late 17th century (1691), written by the local priest Johannes Cadovius-Muller, who was not a native speaker of Frisian. He uses the two infinitive markers of Frisian in an unhistorical way. This study tries to disentangle whether this is the result of his individual imperfect learning of the language or of a restructuring in the language of the natives speakers. It is hypothesised that the last generation of native speakers of the dialect developed a synchronic phonological rule for the distribution of the two infinitive markers, based on vowel harmony, which was again partly distorted by Cadovius-Mullers imperfect learning.