| This investigation uses late-sixteenth century archival material written in Dutch and German to demonstrate the ways in which migration, demographic shifts, and linguistic contact interact in koineization, using the towns of Frankenthal and Wesel as test cases. Beginning in the 1520s, Dutch Calvinist emigration, mainly from the southern provinces of the Spanish-ruled Netherlands, brought speakers of dialects such as Flemish and Brabants into contact in refugee communities in Germany and elsewhere. Dialect contact gave rise to immigrant koines, whose early development this study examines in detail. The comparison of this process with that in other exiled congregations (involving similar dialects and historical circumstances) suggests that comparable contact situations lead to koineization processes along similar paths.;The contact of these developing koines with German vernaculars is central in this investigation. Koineization in Frankenthal and Wesel shared many characteristics: the focusing Dutch dialect, the refugees (their religion, occupations, socioeconomic status), the welcoming hosts, and the historical period. The differences between the two reveal some important factors that help determine the extent to which language transfer occurs: the Dutch founded Frankenthal independently, Wesel was an established town where Dutch success required cooperation with Germans; each language group had its own church in Frankenthal, Wesel's refugees celebrated sacraments with the Germans; in Frankenthal the groups worked in separate economic spheres, in Wesel all benefited from economic collaboration.;These differences in interaction correlate with divergent linguistic outcomes. In Frankenthal, only a few individuals show isolated, context-specific Germanisms. Wesel's records demonstrate systematic linguistic transfer, with German elements appearing regularly in all speech domains, and some letters showing extensive code-switching. Wesel Dutch shows influence from written as well as spoken German, as attested by the frequent occurrence of shifted consonants. Heavier human interaction correlates with greater linguistic transfer.;This investigation advances scholarship on koineization, by observing the process at its inception, rather than examining a final stabilized compromise variety. This study also contributes Early Modern support for the correlation between social interaction among speakers of different language varieties and appreciable linguistic transfer. |
