Martin Hansen
About Martin Hansen
Research Project
My thesis project focuses on the Pomeranian language spoken in Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, which are three federal states of Brazil. While this Low German dialect is no longer in active use in its European home region, it remains the common language of descendants of the first Pomeranian emigrants who came to Brazil mainly from 1859 to 1880.
The empirical basis of the research project comprises a spoken language corpus that I recorded in 2010 and 2015/16.
The purpose of my study is to (1) illustrate by means of select language variables how language contact between the Pomeranian language and mostly Portuguese occurred and can be described. The analysis of the development of this minority language will also take into account the influence of standard German and the German dialect Hunsrückisch. Besides that, it seems to be obvious that the potential for language variation in Pomerano depends on socio-biographical factors (diatopic, diagenerational, diastratic) of the speakers. (2) Furthermore, I want to prove with additional lexical variants to what extent regional-distinctive configurations of Pomeranian can be found in Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.
Publications
2017
Article in an anthology of Low German in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania "Zum Wandel des Niederdeutschen auf der Insel Rügen zwischen dem 19. und 21. Jahrhundert – Ein diachronischer Vergleich anhand ausgewählter Sprachmerkmale".
Published in 2017: Arendt, Birte / Bieberstedt, Andreas / Ehlers, Klaas-Hinrich (eds.) Niederdeutsch und regionale Umgangssprache in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Strukturelle, soziolinguistische und didaktische Perspektiven. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang (Regionalsprache und regionale Kultur. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern im ostniederdeutschen Kontext 1).
2013
Contributor and cartographer of a language atlas about West-Pomeranian Low German Herrmann-Winter, Renate: Sprachatlas für Rügen und die vorpommersche Küste. Rostock 2013.
2006
Contributor of a teaching book in Low German Herrmann-Winter, Renate: Ein Hör- und Lernbuch für das Plattdeutsche mit einer CD erzählender Mundartsprecher aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Rostock 2006