Die Nativierung des Standarddeutschen

Abstract Presently, Standard German is in the process of becoming a nativized variety of German after centuries without native speakers. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century, an increasing number of speakers have acquired Standard German as a first language, marking an important transitional phase in its social history. The article first discusses this from a theoretical and socio-historical perspective before providing empirical evidence for this change: Drawing on data from an apparent time study (involving 142 participants aged 20 to 90) and an experimental elicitation (from 35 kindergartners), it documents that at the present stage two typologically distinct systems can be observed in Southern Germany: Both a non-standard suprasegmental system that allows stressed syllables to be light and the Standard German system that requires stressed syllables to be heavy exist and are used simultaneously. The analyses show an ongoing shift towards the Standard German syllable system, proving that the Standard German syllable system is indeed undergoing a nativization process. The article closes with implications for language teaching, variational linguistics and the typological assessment of German that arise from these findings.