The lack of koineization among the German dialects spoken by Wisconsin's European settlers has led to an assumption in the literature that Wisconsin German speakers did not possess strong spoken command of the standard variety. Hypercorrection can indicate, however, that speakers were aware of standard pronunciation practices. Through a primarily phonetic analysis of schwa syllables recorded during interviews with several Wisconsin German speakers, this article challenges the notion that these speakers were aware of the pronunciation of only regional dialects. Instead, this article argues that knowledge of standard pronunciation is evidenced through the individual patterns of hypercorrection identified for each speaker.
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Copyright 2015 by the American Dialect Society
2015
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