Welcome to the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP)
Welcome to the pilot version of the Texas German
Dialect Project (TGDP) in the
Department of Germanic Studies
at the University
of Texas at Austin. Besides useful information
about Texas German language and culture, this site
also contains the pilot user interface and database
of the Texas German Dialect Archive (TGDA). The
TGDA is an online digital archive of audio and textual
materials documenting sociolinguistic interviews
with native speakers of Texas German.
You will have to register and login in order to access any archive
resources, but you can browse other parts of this website without registering.
To get started, go to the Dialect Archive page.
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Access Options
You can explore the holdings of the TGDA by using either
the Browse or Search tools available at this site. You can
access the holdings of the TGDA in two different ways.
The first option is geared towards the general
public who is interested in listening to
Texas German. To listen to and view the materials
available in the TGDA database, your computer will
need to have RealAudio
player and Acrobat
Reader installed (Although other media players
such as Winamp,
Quicktime,
or Windows
Media Player may also be used to listen to the
materials in the TGDA database, we recommend RealAudio
player). The sound files accessed using this
option are in MP3 format (easily accessible using
a dial-up connection). The text files accessed using
this option contain a word-by-word transcription
as well as translation in HTML.
The second option is geared towards professional
linguists and anthropologists who are interested
in gaining access to more detailed information.
To listen to and view more detailed information,
your computer will need to have ELAN
(EUDICO Linguistic Annotator, developed at the Max-Planck
Institute for Psycholinguistics) installed.
Once ELAN is installed, you may download portions
of sociolinguistic interviews conducted with native
speakers of Texas German. Besides offering word-by-word
transcriptions and translations, this option will
also give you more detailed phonetic transcriptions,
information on code-switching, and information on
syntactic structure. Since the sound files are in
wav format, you will also be able to conduct detailed
phonetic analyses on the Texas German data. This
option requires a high-speed connection to the Internet.
Please
explore this site, the TGDA database, and keep your
eye on What's New to learn about recent additions
to the archive and new functionalities added to
this site.
As of June 2006, the TGDA contains more than 350 hours of interviews with
more than 190 Texas German speakers. At the moment, about 10% of these
recordings are available for public access. The remainder will be released
for public access during 2007 and 2008.
The
TGDP and the TGDA are grateful for the technical
assistance of the members of the Archive
of the Indigenous Languages of South America
(AILLA) at the University of Texas at Austin.
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About
the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP)
The Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) is an umbrella
organization for carrying out research in representative
Texas German speech communities in central Texas.
The
goals of the TGDP are:
- to
preserve the Texas German dialect as it reflects
the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of
its residents
- to
gather basic research information about language
variety in order to understand the nature of language
variation and change
- to
provide information about language differences
and language change for public and educational
interests
- to
use the material collected in research projects
for the improvement of educational programs about
language and culture
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About
the Texas German Dialect Archive (TGDA)
The Texas German Dialect Archive (TGDA) holds copies
of recorded interviews conducted by members of the
TGDP. The TGDA is a web-accessible
database of audio and textual materials from
Texas German. The holdings of this archive are primarily
audio and video recordings of sociolinguistic interviews
conducted with native speakers of Texas German.
The
creation of this archive has three primary goals:
- to
preserve irreplaceable recordings of and materials
relating to Texas German
- to
write a popular account of Texas German that can
be used in historical preservation efforts. TGDP
will share this material with local schools, preservation
societies, and museums concerned with preserving
cultural heritage through language. TGDP will
also put together an archival tape collection
of selected descriptions, narratives, and oral
histories for these institutions
- to
render these materials accessible to a wider academic
audience in order to promote further original
research
The
realization of these goals is guided by two primary
objectives:
- to
archive these materials as digital records that
can be stored and maintained in perpetuity, and
- to
make these materials available in a manner that
is guided by our responsibility to protect the
intellectual and cultural property rights of the
individuals and groups from whom these materials
originate
The
TGDP is a project led by faculty and students in
Germanic Linguistics in the Department of Germanic
Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
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How
the TGDP and TGDA came to be
For the past four decades, Texas German has not been
passed on to younger generations at home, meaning
that fewer and fewer young people speak the dialect.
Since the number of native Texas German speakers
will shrink drastically over the next two decades,
the dialect will become extinct by 2040.
Therefore, the TGDP was founded in
September 2001 with financial help from the Dean
of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin
to record, archive, distribute, and analyze the
remnants of this rapidly eroding dialect as it is
spoken at the beginning of the third millennium.
There
has long been a need for an accessible archive of
audio and video materials of language in use. This
need has been felt more and more acutely by linguists
and others working with these materials as time
has shown the fragility of non-digitized media and
the unfortunate frequency with which irreplaceable
data is lost due to any of a number of causes. The
need for such an archive is also felt because of
the difficulty of publishing large corpora, whether
in audio or text format.
Until
the advent of Internet technology, an internationally-accessible
digital audio archive was unfeasible. Now, with
recent advances in digital technology and the decreasing
costs in implementing this new technology, an archive
like the TGDA, long envisioned by scholars and others
who value these materials, is a reality.
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What
is Archived Here
The materials held by the TGDA come from all over central
Texas and for the most part take the form of sociolinguistic/oral
history interviews. In addition to using the holdings
of the TGDA to learn more about Texas German life
in central Texas from 1840 on, these materials offer
a wealth of data on linguistic features of Texas
German from phonology to grammatical patterns. It
is TGDP's goal to enable new research and understanding
of the richness of this unique dialect of German
in use.
There are two types of data archived in the TGDA. The
first type is sociolinguistic interviews where informants
tell stories in Texas German about their lives, their
families, and local history, among many other topics.
The recordings of these stories are transcribed and translated
into English, and accessible through the TGDA. The second
type of data is translations of English words, phrases, and
sentences into Texas German. The data come from lists used by
Fred Eikel (1954) and Glenn Gilbert (1972), see references.
Users can access the Texas German translations in order to
compare how the same words, phrases and sentences are pronounced
differently in various parts of Texas.
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TGDP
Responsibilities and Disclaimers
User
Rights and Responsibilities
"By using the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) website
and the Texas German Dialect Archive (TGDA) database,
I agree to the following conditions:
-
I will not use any resource in the TGDP database
for commercial purposes.
-
I will provide full and accurate citation in any
publication that appears either in print or online
for all resources I use from the TGDP database.
-
I will notify TGDP of any significant research
and/or findings that result from my use of resources
in the TGDP database.
-
I will archive with the TGDP any derivative materials
I create from resources of the TGDP including
transcriptions, translations, re-analyses, and
similar materials.
-
When using the TGDA database and Graded Access
System, I will act and interact with the TGDP
project group in good faith. If the TGDP group
has reason to believe that I am not acting in
good faith, the TGDP group retains the right to
alter or terminate the relationship between myself
and the archive.
-
I will respect the intellectual property rights
and copyrights that pertain to the holdings of
the TGDP to the fullest extent possible.
-
If I have any concerns or questions regarding
my responsibilities as a user of the TGDP website
and database, I will contact the TGDP group at:
texasgermandialect@gmail.com.
Creating
Citations
Disclaimers
concerning the TGDP website and TGDA database
- As
an integral part of the goals of the TGDP to both
preserve and disseminate irreplaceable Texas German
language materials, the TGDP will make available
to you, the user, as many of its holdings as possible.
Access levels for each resource, however, are
set by the depositor and the co-creators of that
resource, and may change if any of the creators
of the resource request it.
- The
TGDP group makes every effort to respect the intellectual
property rights and copyrights associated with
every resource in the TGDP database. If you have
any concern regarding the holdings of the TGDP
or the policies pertaining to them, please contact
the TGDP at texasgermandialect@gmail.com.
- Like
any library, the TGDP database is a safe, organized,
and maintained repository for materials and functions
as a resource for interested persons.
- The
opinions, beliefs, or assertions expressed in
the content of any resource archived in the TGDP
database do not represent the opinions or beliefs
of the TGDP group or of the University of Texas
at Austin.
- The
opinions or beliefs held by any depositor to the
TGDP/TGDA database do not represent the opinions
or beliefs of the TGDP group or of the University
of Texas at Austin.
- The
TGDP is not responsible for and does not necessarily
endorse the content of any website to which it
provides a link, nor does the TGDP necessarily
endorse the content of any website which provides
a link to the TGDP.
- The
TGDP is not affiliated with or sponsored by any
religious or missionary organization.
- The
TGDP is being developed by faculty, staff and
students at the University of Texas at Austin.
However, the opinions expressed at the TGDP website
do not represent the opinions of the University
of Texas. The TGDP group alone is responsible
for the text posted at the TGDP website. Any concerns
should be directed to: texasgermandialect@gmail.com.
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Support
THIS PROGRAM IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY A GRANT FROM
HUMANITIES TEXAS,
A STATE PARTNER OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES.
The
TGDP/TGDA have received financial support to develop
this pilot site from the Dean
of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas,
the Center
for Instructional Technologies at the University
of Texas at Austin, and the Liberal
Arts Instructional Technology Center at the University
of Texas at Austin. We are deeply grateful for their support.
Furthermore, we thank the
North Carolina Language and Life Project
for the inspiration to start the Texas German Dialect Project.