A corpus of (Swiss) German as spoken by Albanian-German bilinguals. Linguistic biography and language usage

Abstract

The full spectrum of linguistic varieties spoken in Switzerland naturally includes the linguistic practice of multilingual speakers. This chapter presents the first corpus of spoken (Swiss) German of Albanian-German bilinguals of three generations of speakers. It illustrates the annotation principles applied to this specific variety, provides insight into typical patterns of language usage and addresses the impact of linguistic biography. In addition, it sketches possible applications in domains such as, e. g., language contact and language variation. In a larger perspective, the data gathered in the corpus presented here contribute to an understanding of the relevance of migration and heritage multilingualism to language change and the dynamics induced by child and adult L2 acquisition.