German Studies Institutional Partnership (GIP) with Brazil

Since 2013: FAU Erlangen–Nuremberg, UFRGS Porto Alegre, UFPEL Pelotas, in cooperation with the KU Eichstätt–Ingolstadt

The DAAD-funded German Studies Institute Partnership (GIP) with Brazil was initiated by the FAU Erlangen and is being continued together with the Chair of German Linguistics at KU Eichstätt–Ingolstadt. Its objectives include student exchange, teaching exchange, and cooperation in research. Among other activities, the partners are coordinating their research efforts on so-called Hunsrückisch, a group of German dialects that are still spoken in southern Brazil today by descendants of German emigrants. The Brazilian and German partners plan to include additional dialect groups in southern Brazil and to explore didactic approaches that capitalize on dialect competence for German foreign language instruction in the region.

Further information on multilingualism in southern Brazil can be found here.

Research Network MinGLA

The research network MinGLA was founded in 2019 during the Eichstätt conference “German and other Germanic language minorities in Latin America: methods, foundations, case studies.” MinGLA aims to connect research on Germanic language minorities in Latin America by facilitating regular exchange in the form of conferences and workshops.

More information about the network, its members and activities can be found on the MinGLA homepage .

Oxford Encyclopedia of Germanic Linguistics

The aim of the project Oxford Encyclopedia of Germanic Linguistics is to provide a systematic overview of the comparative study of the Germanic languages. The project envisions an online publication integrated into the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, as well as a print publication. The approximately 100 articles cover the following areas:

1. Profiles of individual Germanic languages
2. Grammar
3. Variationist linguistics
4. Language contact research
5. Research traditions and challenges in the field of Germanic linguistics

The Editors-in-Chief of the encyclopedia are Sebastian Kürschner and Antje Dammel (Münster). The Co-Editors are Steffen Höder (Kiel), Jarich Hoekstra (Kiel), Oliver Schallert (Munich), and Freek Van de Velde (Leuven).

Nominal Inflectional Morphology of Upper German Dialects

Nouns exhibit considerable variation in their marking of number and case—not only in Standard German, but also in the German dialects. However, this variation has so far been only minimally investigated with regard to the differences in declension classes. Our research focuses on how the declension system is structured in contemporary dialects and which historical changes in declensional morphology have occurred to produce the current systems.

In the process, we also critically examine important theories of morphological change. For example, we observe that - contrary to the predictions of major theories - in East Upper German dialects the plural marking is often reduced through morphological change: a suffix -n that originally functions as a plural marker is generalized to the singular as well (cf. Bavarian Sg. die Stuben < die Stube – Pl. die Stuben). Furthermore, changes in declension classes are related to typological patterns, such as German’s tendency toward bracket-forming structures, particularly within the noun phrase. The evolution of declension classes is also studied in the context of comparative Germanic linguistics.

Intelligibility of Closely Related Varieties

There is often a certain degree of intelligibility between the dialects of a single language (e.g., Bavarian and East Franconian) and between closely related languages within a language family (e.g., German and Dutch), without the speakers of one variety having previously learned the other. For example, knowledge of German allows one to understand Dutch newspaper texts to a certain extent, and within the German-speaking area, speakers can process some of the dialectal variation. Studies on inter-dialectal and interlingual comprehension investigate which factors determine the degree of intelligibility, taking into account both non-linguistic factors (language contact, attitudes) and linguistic factors (distance in lexicon and grammar).

Personal Names: Nicknames and Family Names

Using the example of nickname formation, this project investigates which patterns systematically occur in short names. The study consistently adopts a comparative perspective across languages and name types, considering both personal and animal names. For instance, it can be observed that German and Dutch nicknames frequently have two syllables ending in -i (e.g., Sani < Sandra), whereas in Swedish, two-syllable nicknames commonly feature a schwa with a geminate consonant (e.g., Lasse < Lars). In addition to nicknames, the project also examines family names from a contrastive Germanic perspective.

Academy Project „RuneS: Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages“

2010-2025:  Collaborative project based at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities with three research units: Kiel (overall project coordination), Göttingen, Eichstätt–Munich

The project is dedicated to the study of runic writing in the Germanic languages, focusing on two main areas: runic graphematics and runic text grammar and pragmatics. Its goal is to investigate the developments and changes in runic writing based on more than 6,000 inscriptions on durable materials as well as a large number of so-called runica manuscripta. The research results are successively made available through a modular data base. RuneS is funded within the framework of the German Union of Academies’ research program and is carried out at the three research units in Kiel, Göttingen, and Eichstätt–Munich, each with a different area of focus.

Further information about the project and the Eichstätt–Munich research unit can be found here.