What’s New with TGDP

After years of work, the Texas German Dialect Project is proud to announce a new tool for exploring transcripts from TGDP open-ended socio-linguistic interviews! Transcripts have been enriched with several new annotation layers (e.g., language, orthographic normalization, part-of-speech, and lemma) and basic speaker metadata is now available. The open-ended interviews can be searched in multiple ways, e.g., using filters (e.g., by speaker, interview location, interview date) and by using the CQP query language for exploring the transcripts themselves. This new version of our open-ended interviews is available HERE or by going to the “Dialect Archive” menu.

TGDP presentation at the Fourth AMC Symposium: Contact and language change at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland: “Evaluating the (Possible) Creole Status of Texas German” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas).

The TGDP is proud to announce that it received a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation in Germany, together with the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. The 18-month long collaborative research project “Let the People of the Past Speak! Turning Migrant Letters of the 19th Century into Speech” will apply artificial intelligence to the transcription of 19th century letters written by German-American immigrants. It will then train artificial intelligence on historical recordings of German dialects from the 1930s and it will apply the resulting language model to train a text-to-speech synthesizer that will read these letters, thereby reconstructing spoken German-American dialects from the 19th century, including Texas German.

TGDP presentation at the 52nd annual New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) conference in Miami, Florida: “On the predictability of Koiné and New-dialect Formation: Branching Pathways of Feature Developments in Texas German.” (Luke Lindemann, Matthias Warmuth, Hans C. Boas).

Prof. Dr. Csaba Foeldes (University of Erfurt, Germany) visits the TGDP and presents a talk on “Wem gehört die Interkulturalität? Über das Verhältnis von linguistischen Teildisziplinen und Kulturforschung” (‘Who owns interculturality? On the relationship between lingusitic sub-disciplines and cultural studies.”

TGDP presentation by Margo Blevins at the New Braunfels German American Society: “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving Texas German Voices for Future Generations.” (October 1, 2024)

German author Thomas Meinecke, who donated his recordings of interviews with Texas Germans from the 1990s to the TGDP last year, publishes his latest novel Odenwald, with Suhrkamp publishing house in Germany. The novel’s story line includes the Texas German dialect as well as TGDP members Hans Boas, Glenn Gilbert, and Jim Kearney. (October 14, 2024)

New student research assistants are joining the TGDP: Tanja Haupt, Leon Nast, Kathrin Norman, Anna Reschke, Moritz Schanbacher, and Julia Schauer. Welcome to the TGDP team!

TGDP presentation by Hans C. Boas at the Boerne public library: “Preserving Texas German Voices for Future Generations.” (September 18, 2024)

Dr. Joren Somers, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Gent in Belgium, is at UT Austin for the academic year 2024-25 and is joining the TGDP to conduct research, among other things, about language contact. Welcome Joren!

TGDP member Ekaterina Levina graduates with her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, with a dissertation on “Accusative external possessives in German, English, Spanish, and Russian.” Congratulations Katja !!!

This fall 2024 semester, TGDP member Jana Weiss offers a class on Texas German history and culture at UT Austin (UGS 302, The Texas-German Experience).

TGDP members Hans C. Boas and Jim Kearney are interviewed for a story about Texas German culture and history in the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL. Click here [ PDF ] for the article.

New TGDP publication: “Zur Dokumentation und Erforschung deutschsprachiger Pressetexte in Texas: Welchen Einfluss hatte das Standarddeutsche auf das Texas-Deutsche?” In C. Foeldes (ed.), Auslandsdeutsche Pressesprache in Europa, Asien und Nordamerika, 301-320. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. (Hans C. Boas & Ekaterina Levina). Click [ here ] for PDF.

TGDP presentation at the monthly meeting of the Comal County Genealogical Society: “The Texas German Dialect Project 2001-2024.” (Hans C. Boas) (April 9, 2024)

Former TGDP member Heiko Wiggers passed away on April 10, 2024. Heiko was with the TGDP from 2002 until he graduated with his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Low German from the University of Texas. After graduation, Heiko became a German professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Heiko was a wonderful, gentle, smart, and funny person and an outstanding linguist. We very much enjoyed working with him for over the years. Our deepest sympathy to his family.

TGDP member Jana Weiss starts a blog miniseries on Texas German, together with students from her spring 2024 Texas German class at UT. What a wonderful way to learn more about Texas German history, culture, and language!

Dallas College student Everett Durand produces and films a documentary film Texasdeutsch fuer Immer on Texas German, click here for the film on Youtube.

TGDP presentation by Verena Sauer at the 48th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “Hochdeutsch and Plattdeutsch as Concepts in the Minds of Texas Germans.” the University of Texas at Austin (April 5, 2024)

Presentation by TGDP members and collaborators Barbara Berthold (UT Arlington), Jana Weiß (UT Austin), Margo Blevins (UT Austin), & Karen Pupp Spinassé (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) at the 48th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “Community-Engaged Teaching in German American Studies: A Roundtable Discussion on High Impact Practices.” University of Texas at Austin (April 6, 2024)

Presentation by Patrick Wolf-Farré (Vienna) and Margo Blevins (Austin) at the 48th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “Towards a Classification of German-Speaking Minorities in Latin America.” University of Texas at Austin (April 6, 2024)

The March 2024 issue of Texas Highway Magazine features a story about the TGDP including interviews with Hans C. Boas and Jim Kearney. Click HERE for the PDF of the article.

TGDP member Ellen Jones receives a Graduate Continuing University Fellowship from the University of Texas for 2024-2025. Congratulations Ellen !!! 

German Americans! Texas Germans! Central Texas! The TGDP is proud to participate in the 48th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, April 4-6, 2024. Click HERE for the conference program.

Hans C. Boas was recently interviewed by the “Deutschlandfunk” (German National Public Radio) about the future of Texas German and his efforts to document the dialect before it is dying out. Click here for the interview. Click HERE for the longer version of the interview.

This spring 2024 semester, there are two classes on Texas German offered at UT Austin: First, a graduate class on Language Contact and Texas German, taught by Hans C. Boas. Second, an undergraduate signature course class on the Texas German Experience, taught by Jana Weiss.

TGDP presentation by Hans C. Boas on “Documenting Texas German: Results, Challenges, and Surprises” at the UT Austin Second Language Studies Speaker Series (26. January, 2024).

Dr. Thomas Schmidt (MusicalBits, Ltd., Germany), visits the TGDP to collaborate on upgrading its Texas German Dialect Archive.

Issue 16 of the annual newsletter of the Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) is published. Click HERE for the latest updates from the TGDP.

Margo Blevins publishes a blog post about Language-tagging and orthographic normalization of Texas German data on the EXMARaLDA blog.

Author Thomas Meinecke visits UT Austin to hold a reading of his novel (in progress) featuring Texas German. He also donated a set of audio and video recordings he made of Texas German speakers in the 1990s and early 2000s to the TGDP.

Prof. emeritus Glenn Gilbert visits UT Austin to give a talk on his pioneering research in the 1960s and 1970s on Texas German.

TGDP member James Kearney is featured with a story on Texas-German History in the Texas Exes’ Alcalde Magazine.

TGDP member Jana Weiss publishes article on The history of beer and German-American Immigration on the UT history department’s Not Even Past blog.

TGDP member Hans C. Boas is interviewed for the Real Life and Other Fantasies podcast. Listen HERE.

TGDP member Margo Blevins publishes a translation of two letters from original German-speaking immigrant to Texas: “Immigrant Letters from Early Settlers (cont)” in the German-Texan Heritage Society Journal, Volume 45, Number 3, p. 38-45.

TGDP presentation by Ellen Jones at the 47th German Studies Association Annual Conference: “Talking German: How Gender Roles Influence the Continued Loss of Texas German.” Montréal, Canada (October 5-8, 2023).

TGDP presentation by Verena Sauer at the German Abroad 5 conference: “wir schnacken plattdeutsch … but wir sprechen hochdeusch — Eine Analyse des Deutschen in Texas” (‘We schnacken (speak) Low German but we sprechen (speak) High German — An analysis of German in Texas’) Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP presentation by Hans C. Boas at the German Abroad 5 conference: “A frame-semantic account of the preposition bei in Texas German.” Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP presentation by Bettina Lindner-Bornemann & Margo Bevins at the German Abroad 5 conference: “Nominale Possessivkonstruktionen im Texas-German” (‘Nominal possessive constructions in Texas German’). Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP presentation by Matthias Warmuth at the German Abroad 5 conference: “Phonetic Drift and Attrition in Fredericksburg Texas German.” Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP poster presentation by David Huenlich at the German Abroad 5 conference: “Linguistic and Ethnic Boundaries in Texas: The Case of Afro-German contact.” Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP presentation by Thomas Schmidt & Margo Blevins at the German Abroad 5 conference: “Getting Ready for TGDA 2.0 — Enriching the Texas German Dialect Corpus for (comparative) corpus analyses.” Eichstätt and Munich, Germany (October 9-13, 2023)

TGDP member Margo Blevins gave a presentation titled “Making Linguistic Maps” to the Texas German Dialect class taught by Vince Vanderheijden at UT Austin (Oct 3, 2023).

TGDP member Margo Blevins gave a presentation titled “Introduction to Texas German” to the Multilingual Texas class at UT Austin taught by Lars Hinrichs (Sept 14, 2023).

TGDP member Margo Blevins gave a presentation titled “Texas German and the Texas German Dialect Project” to the Texas German Dialect class taught by Vince Vanderheijden at UT Austin (Sept 21, 2023).

On August 21-23, 2023, the international workshop on “Focus on Minority Languages” will take place at UT Austin, organized by Verena Sauer. See [ here ] for the full program.

TGDP member Hans C. Boas gives a talk titled “The Texas German Dialect Project” at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 21, 2023)

TGDP member Verena Sauer gives a talk titled “„wir haben hier immer gesagt der war ein Deutscher verderber“ – Attitudes towards Texas German” at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 22, 2023)

TGDP member Marc Pierce gives a talk titled “Untangling the History of Dorsal Fricatives in Texas German” at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 22, 2023)

TGDP member Ellen Jones gives a talk titled “Identity Patterns/Identitätsmuster der Texasdeutschen” at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 22, 2023)

Lisa Dücker gives a talk titled “Die mediale Darstellung von Texasdeutsch” (The Depiction of Texas German in the Media) at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 23, 2023)

TGDP member Margo Blevins gives a talk titled “Texas German Corpora & Materials” at the “Focus on Minority Languages” Workshop at UT Austin (August 23, 2023)

TGDP member Margo Blevins publishes a translation of a letter from an original New Braunfels immigrant: “Immigrant Letter from New Braunfels” in the German-Texan Heritage Society Journal, Volume 45, Number 2, p. 46-57.

Jim Kearney is teaching UGS 303: Texas German Experience at UT Austin, a large lecture course about the Texas German Experience.

Vince Vanderheijden is teaching GER 369: Texas German Dialect, a course focusing on the linguistics of Texas German.

TGDP member Matthias Warmuth successfully defends his dissertation “Phonological Convergence and Variation in a Dying Language Variety: The Case of Texas German.” Congratulations Dr. Warmuth !!! (April 3, 2023)

TGDP alumnus David Huenlich (now at the Catholic University Eichstaett, Germany), visits the UT campus to give a talk on his current research project “Black German speakers in Texas: Biographies, causes, and interethnic dynamics.” (April 5, 2023)

TGDP member Hans C. Boas gives a talk on “The Texas German Dialect Project” in the UT OLLI Program “The German Influence on Texas Part II.” (April 7, 2023)

TGDP member Caroline Reher presents a talk on “Relative clauses in extraterritorial varieties of German – A comparative corpus-linguistic investigation.” Dept. of Germanic Studies, UT Austin (April 12, 2023)

TGDP member Bradley Weiss successfully defends his M.A. report “Latin Loanwords in Old Saxon: A Statistical Analysis of Three Dictionaries.” (April 12, 2023) Congratulations Bradley !!!

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Conference (GLAC) 2023: “A frame-semantic account of the preposition mit in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas and Ekaterina Levina) (April 21, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Conference (GLAC) 2023: “Back vowel variation in Texas German: The case of /u:/.” (Matthias Warmuth) (April 21, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Conference (GLAC) 2023: “Part of speech tagging contact language varieties: A Texas German case study.” (Margo Blevins) (April 21, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Conference (GLAC) 2023:”Gender roles, language attitudes, and language loss in Fredericksburg and New Braunfels Texas German.” (Ellen Jones and Matthias Warmuth) (April 21, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Conference (GLAC) 2023: “A cognitive portrait of Texas German.” (Verena Sauer) (April 22, 2023)

New TGDP publication by Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, and Glenn Gilbert: “Fred Eikel and the Study of Texas German.” In: Yearbook of German-American Studies 56, 131-147. [ PDF ]

New TGDP publication by Ellen Jones: “Gender roles and language loss: An analysis of language attitudes and the potential for gender-influenced language maintenance and loss among Texas German.” Yearbook of German-American Studies 56, 111-129. [PDF]

Hans C. Boas is interviewed for a story on Texas German that was published in the May issue of the Texas Co-Op Power Magazine, see here. [PDF, MP4]

Hans C. Boas is interviewed for a story on Texas German in Fredericksburg in the Fredericksburg Standard, see here. [PDF]

An article about the TGDP appears in German Life, see here [PDF]

TGDP presentation at the 47th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “Monosyllables in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce, Hans Boas, Matthias Warmuth). (April 28, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the 47th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “From language documentation to dictionary compilation: On the structure of a Texas German Dictionary.” (Hans C. Boas) (April 28, 2023)

TGDP presentation at the 47th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies: “Texas German voices: Making 19th and 20th century Texas German letters available.” (Margo Blevins, Verena Sauer, Jana Weiss, Hans Boas) (April 28, 2023)

Caroline Reher from the University of Dortmund (Germany) starts her 2 month research visit in Austin, Texas with the TGDP. Welcome, Caro!

TGDP presentation at the Netzwerk deutsche Sprachminderheitenforschung ‘Network for Research on German as Minority Language’ colloquium, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX: “Soziolinguistische Methoden zur Datensammlung: Beispiele aus dem Texas German Dialect Project” (‘Sociolinguistic methods for data collection: Examples from the Texas German Dialect Project’) (Ellen Jones)

TGDP presentation at the Netzwerk deutsche Sprachminderheitenforschung ‘Network for Research on German as Minority Language’ colloquium, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX: “Introduction to the Texas German Sample Corpus” (Margo Blevins)

TGDP presentation at the 22nd Meeting of the Texas Linguistic Society, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX: “Texas German voices from historical letters: An interdisciplinary project to collect, digitize, and archive 19th and 20th century Texas German” (Verena Sauer, Margo Blevins, Hans Boas, Jana Weiss)

TGDP poster at the 22nd Meeting of the Texas Linguistic Society, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX: “Language-tagging system for contact language varieties: a Texas German case study” (Margo Blevins) [PDF]

The following students start as research assistants for the TGDP this February: Atalia Isreael-Nevo, Kendal James, Elisabeth Mathis, Emma Morrow, Sarah Raymond, and Robert Seiler. Welcome to the TGDP!

TGDP members start scanning Texas German historical letters from the 19th century at the Briscoe Center for American History. This is a joint project with the German Heritage in Letters Project at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.

TGDP presentation at the Dallas Goethe Center (online via Zoom): “The Texas German Dialect Project.” (Hans C. Boas), January 26, 2023.

TGDP presentation at Furman University: “Documenting Texas German: Methodology, Insights, and Challenges” (Hans C. Boas), January 30, 2023.

Click HERE to listen a new episode of NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) podcast “Zwischen Hamburg und Haiti” about Texan German.

TGDP publishes its 15th annual newsletter. Click HERE to download the newsletter in PDF format.

The Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) is excited to announce a generous grant of $1,000,000 from an anonymous donor for its efforts to document and preserve Texas German. The funds will support training graduate and undergraduate students to learn these techniques and interview the remaining speakers of Texas German across the state. The TGDP is extremely thankful for this award, which enables it to continue to build awareness and appreciation for Texas German. This grant comes at a crucial moment for the TGDP: after being spoken for 180 years, this unique dialect is expected to go extinct in the next 10-15 years. The Texas German Dialect Project was started in 2001, and has been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the BBC, German TV and radio stations, as well as in Texas Monthly.

TGDP presentation by Verena Sauer: “Wir schnacken plattdeutsch … but wir sprechen hochdeutsch” – Eine Analyse des Deutschen in Texas. UT Austin, December 8, 2022

New undergraduate student Emma Zimmermann joins the TGDP. Welcome on board Emma!

Dr. Verena Sauer (University of Kiel, Germany), is joining the TGDP as a postdoctoral researcher for a year, thanks to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Welcome on board Verena!

TGDP presentation at the University of Erfurt (Germany): “Zur Bedeutung deutscher Woerter im Texas-Deutschen.” (On the meaning of German words in Texas German) (Hans C. Boas). October 12, 2022.

TGDP member Dr. Marc Pierce is elected as a member of the Agder Academy of Sciences (Norway). Congratulations Marc!

New undergraduate student Zoe Tzanis joins the TGDP. Welcome on board Zoe!

Dr. Jana Weiss, the current DAAD associate professor in Germanic Studies at UT, joins the TGDP. Welcome on board Jana!

Ekaterina Levina joins the TGDP as the new Graduate Research Assistant. Welcome on board !!!

Jim Kearney is teaching UGS 303: Texas German Experience at UT Austin, a large lecture course about the Texas German Experience.

TGDP graduate research assistant Margo Blevins successfully defends her dissertation “The language-tagging & orthographic normalization of spoken mixed-language data, with a focus on Texas German,” July 5, 2022.

TGDP presentation at the 7^th International Congress of the Society of German Dialectology at the University of Salzburg (Austria): “Rhotics and Laterals in Texas German” (Matthias Warmuth and Marc Pierce). July 7, 2022. 

Sascha Daniels joins the TGDP team as a research assistant, and Clara Matlack joins as an undergraduate research assistant.

New TGDP publication: Matthias Warmuth: Rhotics, /u:/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German. Linguistics Vanguard. [PDF]

TGDP presentation at the Goettingen Academy of Sciences (Germany): “Wissen mit und ohne Wörterbücher: Rekonstruktion von texanischen Identitäten vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert” (Knowledge with and without dictionaries: Reconstruction of Texan identities from the 19^th to the 21^st century) (Hans C. Boas). May 19, 2022.

Rebecca Galloway joins the TGDP as an undergraduate research assistant.

TGDP presentation (following the screening of “All Gut Things”) at Texas A&M University: “The Texas German Dialect Project 2001-2021” (Hans C. Boas), April 5, 2022.

TGDP presentation at the 46th Annual Symposium of the Society for German-American Studies at University of Iowa, Iowa City: “Gender roles and language loss: An analysis of language attitudes and the potential for gender-influenced language maintenance and loss among Texas Germans.” (Ellen Jones), April 22, 2022.

TGDP presentation at the 46th Annual Symposium of the Society for German-American Studies at University of Iowa, Iowa City: “On the reliability of Fred Eikel’s New Braunfels German Data” (Marc Pierce), April 22, 2022.

TGDP presentation at the conference on Deutsche Sprachminderheiten weltweit kontrastiv: Fallstudien, Methoden und Korpora (German language minorities worldwide from a contrastive perspective: Case studies, methods, and corpora), at the Otto-Friedrich-Universitaet in Bamberg (Germany): “The Influence of Gender Roles on Language Maintenance and Language Loss: A New Perspective from Texas German.” (Ellen Jones). March 4, 2022.

TGDP presentation at the conference on Deutsche Sprachminderheiten weltweit kontrastiv: Fallstudien, Methoden und Korpora (German language minorities worldwide from a contrastive perspective: Case studies, methods, and corpora), at the Otto-Friedrich-Universitaet in Bamberg (Germany): “On comparing extraterritorial German contact varieties around the world.” (Hans C. Boas). March 4, 2022.

TGDP poster presentation at the IDS Jahrestagung: “Die orthographische Normalisierung deutschsprachiger Kontaktvarietät-Daten” (Margo Blevins). March 16, 2022.

Prof. Hans Boas is interviewed about the Texas German Dialect Project for the Yellow of the Egg podcast. Episode first released on Feb 15, 2022 [Link]

TGDP presentation at the International Conference on the German Language in Newspapers Abroad (Deutsche Pressesprache im Ausland): “Zur Dokumentation und Erforschung deutschsprachiger Pressetexte in Texas 1852-1957” (On documenting and exploring German-language newspaper texts in Texas 1852-1957) (Hans C. Boas). University of Erfurt (Germany), February 25, 2022.

The podcast Zwischen Hamburg und Haiti hosted by the German radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) visits Luckenbach, Texas in their episode Unterwegs in Luckenbach, Texas. Published Jan 30, 2022 by Tom Noga. Available until Jan 28, 2023. [Website link] [JPG] [MP3]

Trevor Tankersley and Sebastian Treier join the TGDP team as undergraduate research assistants. Welcome aboard!

TGDP publishes its 14th annual newsletter. Click HERE to download the newsletter in PDF format.

Jim Kearney’s 2021 book Inside the Texas Revolution: The Enigmatic Memoir of Herman Ehrenberg, receives the Summerfield G. Robertson award for the outstanding Texas history book.

The TGDP makes the front page of the Muenster Enterprise (Vol. 86, No. 5, Published Dec 24, 2021).

TGDP presentation at the conference Rootedness and Acculturation: Experiences from German Immigrant Communities in the USA (1883-1918): “On determining the influence of Standard German on Texas German before 1918.” (Hans C. Boas), University of Bordeaux (France), October 14, 2021.

TGDP presentation at the Pro-Seminar of the Department of Germanic Studies “The language-tagging and normalization of spoken mixed-language data.” (Margo Blevins) October 15, 2021.

Three new undergraduate students, Simon Gerst, Grant Owens, and Samantha Woolard, join the TGDP as undergraduate research assistants.

TGDP presentation at the New Ways of Analyzing Variation 49 Conference in Austin, TX: “Rhotics, /u:/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels Texas German.” (Matthias Warmuth, conference held online because of Covid-19 pandemic).

The TGDP is turning 20 years old. We’re excited and grateful to have had the chance to interview more than 800 remaining speakers of Texas German over the past two decades. We will keep on going and hope to find and record as many of the remaining speakers as possible.

TGDP presentation at the Conference German Abroad 4 Conference in Windhoek, Namibia: “The history of /pf/ in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce) September 28, 2021 (held remotely via Zoom).

TGDP presentation at the Conference German Abroad 4 Conference in Windhoek, Namibia: “Sound change in a moribund dialect: The case of Texas German.” (Matthias Warmuth) September 28, 2021 (held remotely via Zoom).

TGDP presentation at the Conference German Abroad 4 Conference in Windhoek, Namibia: “The forms, meanings, and functions of mit in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas) September 28, 2021 (held remotely via Zoom).

TGDP presentation at the 11th International Conference on Construction Grammar in Antwerp, Belgium: “Causative, resultative, and related argument structure constructions with machen in Texas German.” (Ryan Dux and Hans C. Boas) August 19, 2021.

Hans C. Boas co-organizes (with Steffen Hoeder, Univ. of Kiel) a workshop on Argument Structure Constructions in Language Contact at the 11th International Conference on Construction Grammar in Antwerp, Belgium, August 19, 2021.

Margo Blevins comes back as the Graduate Research Assistant for the TGDP.

TGDP publication by Jim Kearney: Inside the Texas Revolution: The Enigmatic Memoir of Herman Ehrenberg, James Crisp, ed., Louis Brister & James Kearney, transl. (Austin Texas State Historical Association Press, 2021)

David Hünlich publishes the article “Relations between African and German Americans and Black German Speakers in Texas” in the Max Kade Institute Friends Newsletter (Volume 30, No 3, Summer 2021). [PDF]

New TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.). Construction in Contact 2: Language Change, Multilingual Practices, and Additional Language Acquisition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. vii + 437 pp.

New TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder. Widening the scope: Recent trends in Constructional Contact Linguistics. In H.C. Boas & S. Hoeder (eds.), Constructions in Contact 2: Language Change, Multilingual Practices, and Additional Language Acquisition, 2-13. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hans C. Boas receives the prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn (Germany). The award goes to researchers whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or findings have had a lasting effect on their discipline beyond their immediate research area and who are expected, moreover, to continue producing outstanding research in the future.

TGDP presentation at the German Club of Bellaire High School in Houston: “The Texas German Dialect Project: What we have learned in the first 20 years” (Hans C. Boas). May 21, 2021 (held remotely via Zoom).

TGDP presentation at the 45th Annual Symposium, Society for German-American Studies. “Fred Eikel and the Study of Texas German” (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, and Glenn Gilbert), April 21-23, 2021. Held remotely via Zoom.

TGDP presentation for Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens Docents, Museum of Fine Arts Houston: “The Texas German Dialect Project” (Hans C. Boas). April 19, 2021. Held remotely via Zoom.

David Hünlich is interviewed for a story by the Deutschlandfunk (German national public radio) titled “Why Black Slaves Spoke German” (Warum schwarze Sklavinnen und Sklaven Deutsch lernten). April 15, 2021. [web, image, MP3]

TGDP publication: Viewing Texas Germans through the lens of transnationalism: A new form of transmigrant? International Migration. (Matthias Warmuth) https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12832 [ PDF ]

James Kearney presents a talk on “Germans in the Texas War of Independence” in the UT Germanic Studies Lecture Series (March 5, 2021).

Sophie Prabhakar joins the TGDP as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome to the team Sophie!

TGDP members Abbie Amick, Margo Blevins, Hans Boas, and Marc Pierce present on Texas German and the Texas German Dialect Project in Barbara Berthold’s “Texas German Experiences” class at UT Arlington.

Ellen Jones, a first-year graduate student in the Department of Germanic Studies at UT, starts as Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) for the TGDP. Welcome to the team Ellen !

TGDP publishes its 13th annual newsletter. Click HERE for downloading the newsletter in PDF format.

The TGDP has received another very generous gift from an anonymous donor. This gift will fund the TGDP’s Graduate Research Assistant during the upcoming academic year 2021-22. We are so very grateful for the generous gift. Thank you!

Turan Vural, who worked as an undergraduate research assistant for the TGDP in 2018-2019, has been awarded a prestigious Schwarzman scholarship to study in Beijing. Turan is a 2019 German and electrical and computer engineering alumnus from The University of Texas at Austin. He was one of 154 selected for the Schwarzman scholars class of 2022 out of more than 3,600 applicants. He is the fourth UT Austin graduate to receive the award. Congratulations Turan! For more information, see here.

TGDP publication: Zur Vergleichbarkeit von Sprachinseldaten. Ein Plädoyer für eine “bottom-up” Methodologie im Rahmen der Konstruktionsgrammatik und der Frame Semantik (“On comparing speech island data. Developing a bottom-up approach using Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics”). In C. Földes (ed.), Kontaktvarietäten des Deutschen im Ausland. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. 66-88. (Hans C. Boas) [ PDF ]

Bradley Weiss, a second-year graduate student in the Department of Germanic Studies at UT, starts as Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) for the TGDP.

Jim Kearney is teaching UGS 303: Germans in Texas at UT Austin, a large lecture course about the Texas German Experience.

Lars Hinrichs (English Department, UT Austin) is interviewed on the Texas Standard about Texas German. Click here to listen to the interview.

James Kearney publishes The Forty-Eighters on Possum Creek by William Trenckmann (edited and translated) with Texas A&M University Press.

Hans C. Boas presents a talk on Texas German as a part of the Department of Germanic Studies’ summer lecturer series. Watch the presentation “The Texas German Dialect: Past, Present, Future” here.

The TGDP has received a very generous gift from an anonymous donor. This gift will fund the TGDP’s Graduate Research Assistant during the upcoming academic year 2020-21. We are so very grateful for the generous gift. Thank you!

TGDP members are now conducting interviews with Texas German speakers online via Zoom. While ideally we would like to continue in-person interviews with Texas German speakers, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made this impossible. If you know anyone who speaks Texas German and you are able to help them with the technical aspects of conducting an interview online via Zoom, please contact us by email at texasgermandialect@gmail.com or by phone at (512) 910-5047.

Interested in the TGDP? Check out our new online video about the TGDP by clicking here.

TGDP presentation at the 42nd Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), in Hamburg: “Lexical Borrowings in Texas German” (Margo Blevins and Roslyn Burns).

TGDP poster presentation at the annual conference of the Institute for the German Language (Mannheim): “Entwicklung einer vergleichbaren Multi-Ebenen-Annotation von gesprochenen Sprachkontaktdaten (Developement of a comparable multi-layered annotation system for spoken contact-language data” (Margo Blevins)

The conference German Abroad 4, scheduled for March 25-27, 2020, in Windhoek, Namibia, has been moved to the fall because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The six TGDP members scheduled to present at the conference are looking forward to presenting their papers at a later time.

The University of Texas at Austin shut down its on-campus operations on March 13, 2020, because of the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Austin. The TGDP will continue its interviewing and research activities remotely until it is safe to return to campus.

TGDP member Jim Kearney receives the 2020 H. Bailey Carroll Award from the Texas State Historical Association for the best article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly for 2019. The article, “Conrad Caspar Rordorf: Art, Murder & Intrigue on the Texas Frontier,” appeared in the July 2019 Quarterly.

Conference Update: Six TGDP members are scheduled to present their research papers at the German Abroad 4 conference in Windhoek, Namibia, March 25-27, 2020.

TGDP poster presentation at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Orleans: “Contact with English and the history of /pf/ in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce)

TGDP presentation at Triumphant Love Lutheran Church in Austin, TX: “The life and death of Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP publishes its 12th annual newsletter. Click HERE for downloading the newsletter in PDF format.

TGDP poster presentation at the Fourth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology: “The history of /pf/ in New Braunfels German: Another case of rule inversion?” (Marc Pierce).

TGDP presentation at the COLING Project Workshop on Innovative Teaching Methodologies & Language Documentation, University of Texas at Austin: “The Texas German Dialect Project.” (Hans C. Boas & Margo Blevins).

TGDP presentation at Winedale Historical Complex in Fayette County: “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving Texas History, Language, and Culture for Future Generations.” (Margo Blevins & Hans C. Boas).

TGDP publication: Language Death and Language Revival: Contrasting Manx and Texas German. In Charles MacQuarrie & Joseph Nagy (eds) The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea: Manannán and his Neighbors. (Marc Pierce)

TGDP Publication: When is a dissertation not a dissertation? On Eikel 1954. In: Yearbook of German-American Studies 53, 187-196. (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, Glenn Gilbert).

TGDP Publication: New Directions for Historical Linguistics. Leiden: Brill. (Hans C. Boas & Marc Pierce (eds.)).

TGDP presentation at the Institute for German Studies at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea: “Das Texas Deutsche zwischen Sprachkontakt und Sprachtod.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP participation at the Joint Panel Discussion “Teaching German Texas History, Culture, and Language” at the 2019 Annual Conference of the German-Texas Heritage Society in Temple, Texas, Sept. 14, 2019 (Margo Blevins / Hans Boas)

Call for papers for German Abroad 4 Conference in Windhoek, Namibia, is online.

We are happy to announce that the Albert and  Margaret Alkek Foundation is supporting the Texas German Dialect Project with funding for a year-long Graduate Research Assistant position.  The funding will allow the TGDP to continue recording more of the remaining speakers of Texas German and to archive these recordings in the Texas German Dialect Archive. We are extremely grateful for the generous support by the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation.

TGDP presentation at the workshop German(ic) in language contact: Grammatical and sociolinguistic dynamics at the Free University in Berlin, Germany: “A constructional approach to case syncretism in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the workshop German(ic) in language contact: Grammatical and sociolinguistic dynamics at the Free University in Berlin, Germany: “Language Contact and the History of /pf/ in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce)

TGDP presentation at the workshop German(ic) in language contact: Grammatical and sociolinguistic dynamics at the Free University in Berlin, Germany: “Orthographic Normalization of Language Contact Data.” (Margo Blevins)

TGDP publication by James Kearney: “The Murder of Conrad Caspar Rordorf: Art, Violence, and Intrigue on the Texas Frontier,” in Southwestern Historical Quarterly CXXIII, No. 1, 1-28.

TGDP presentation at the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim: “Die orthographische Normalisierung deutschsprachiger Kontaktvarietät-Daten” (On the orthographic normalization of  data from German-based contact varieties)(Margo Blevins)

Deutsche Welle Radio airs a report on Texas German language and culture. In Texas German – Auf Wiedersehen to a Dialect, the report gives an overview of the current state of Texas German in central Tex

Dr. Sheena Shaw (University of Hamburg) visits the TGDP and presents a talk on “An overview of German language varieties in rural South Africa.” (May 2, 2019)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC) at the University of Iowa, Iowa City: “Normalization of Language Contact Data.” (Margo Blevins)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC) at the University of Iowa, Iowa City: “Texas Germans and Transnationalism.” (Matthias Warmuth)

TGDP presentation at the 43th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies, Madison, WI: “On the Possible Creole Status of Texas German.” (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, Margo Blevins).

TGDP presentation at the 43th Annual Symposium of the Society for German American Studies, Madison, WI: “Using Oral History Recordings as the Basis for Research and Teaching.” (Hans C. Boas)

Publication by Luke Lindemann: “When Wurst comes to Wurscht: Variation and koine formation in Texas German.” In Journal of Linguistic Geography 7 (1), 33-45.

TGDP presentation at the Annual Convention of the Texas German Society at the Cat Spring Agricultural Hall in Cat Spring, TX (March 9, 2019): “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving Texas History, Language, and Culture for Future Generations.” (Hans C. Boas, Margo Blevins, Matthias Warmuth).

The Fredericksburg Standard reports on the TGDP’s presentation at the LBJ State Park Visitor Center. Click here for article (March 20, 2019)

TGDP presentations at the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site in Stonewall, TX (March 23, 2019): “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving Texas History, Language, and Culture for Future Generations.” (Hans C. Boas, Margo Blevins)

Test screening of Documentary Film “All Güt Things” on Texas German at UT Austin: Monday, March 25, 2019, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m, RLP 1.302E.

The Fredericksburg Standard reports on Margo Blevins’ TGDP talk at the Johnson State Park and Historic Site. Click here for the article (March 29, 2019).

TGDP presentation at Indiana University, Bloomington: “Documenting Texas German” (March 29, 2019) (Hans C. Boas).

On January 19, 2019, the TGDP hosted its third annual Texas German outreach workshop at UT Austin.

TGDP publishes its 11th annual newsletter. Click here to download the newsletter.

TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.). 2018. Constructions in Contact. Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. vi+316pp.

TGDP publication: Blevins, Margo. 2018. Towards a constructional analysis of the progressive aspect in Texas German. In: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.). Constructions in Contact. Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 73-114.

TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. 2018. A constructional account of the modal particle ‘ja’ in Texas German. In: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.), Constructions in Contact. Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 253-276.

TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder. 2018. Construction Grammar and language contact: An Introduction In: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.), Constructions in Contact. Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 5-36.

TGDP publication: Dux, Ryan. 2018. Texas German word order constructions in contact. In: Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Hoeder (eds.), Constructions in Contact. Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 211-249.

The Institut fuer Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language) in Mannheim, Germany, has awarded TGDP member Margo Blevins a fellowship to attend its 55th Annual Conference on “Deutsch in Sozialen Medien” (German in Social Media) in Mannheim, Germany. Margo is one of ten doctoral students from around the world and the only one from the Americas to receive this fellowship in order to network with other Germanic Linguists for a week in March of 2019 in Mannheim (announced Nov. 18, 2018).

Walter Buenger (UT Austin) and Walter Kamphoefner (TAMU) present and read from their latest book “Preserving Texas German Identity,” dealing with the life of William A. Trenckmann, who was a teacher, journalist, and publisher who successfully combined his German heritage with a new, distinctly Texan identity. Trenckmann, a graduate of Texas A&M University, served on the college’s board of directors and was even offered the presidency. From 1907 to 1909, he represented Austin County in the Texas legislature. Trenckmann’s lasting contribution to Texas history, however, was the creation of “Das Wochenblatt”, a German-language weekly newspaper that he edited and published for over forty years. (Nov. 15, 2018, 4-5 pm, RLP 1.302D, UT Austin)

TGDP member Marc Pierce organizes the Symposium The German Language in (North) America Revisited at the University of Texas at Austin. This is the follow-up symposium to the one organized by Glenn Gilbert at UT Austin in 1968. We are very honored that Glenn Gilbert attended the follow-up symposium in October 2018.

Watch the video recordings of presentations given at the Symposium “The German Language in (North) America Revisited”: Opening Remarks (Marc Pierce), Remarks about the 1968 Symposium (Glenn Gilbert), Texas German (Boas, Pierce), Mennonite Low German (Burns), German in Canada (Dailey-O’Cain and Liebscher), Pennsylvania German (Mark Louden), Wisconsin Low German (Dux), Kansas German (Keel), Wisconsin German (Litty and Salmons), and Indiana German (Roesch), Roundtable Discussion.

TGDP presentation at the Cherry Mountain Community Club “The search for Texas German Speakers.” (Margo Blevins)

Article in “The Local” features the TGDP: “Texas German: How southerners are keeping a distinct dialect alive.“[PDF]

TGDP presentation at the 2018 Annual Conference of the German-Texan Heritage Society in Galveston, TX: “German Heritage in Today’s Classroom.” (Barbara Berthold & Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation “Zur Geschichte der Affrikata /pf/ im Texasdeutschen” at the 6. Kongress der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen (IGDD) in Marburg, Germany (Matthias Fingerhuth).

Michael Szurawitzki (University of Hamburg) presents a talk “Comparing Language Contact: Ethnic Identities in Speech Islands” in the Department of Germanic Studies at UT Austin, and collaborates with TGDP members on a number of research projects.

TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. and Katrin Fuchs. 2018. Zum Einfluss des Standarddeutschen auf das Texasdeutsche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Empirische und methodologische Probleme. In A. Lenz & A. Plewnia (eds.), Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft um 2020: Variation – Norm – Identitaeten. Vol. 4. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. 283-304. [for the open-access eBook click here].

Margo Blevins starts as Graduate Research Assistant for the TGDP for the academic year 2018-2019.

Jim Kearney is teaching GSD 360: European Immigration in Texas in the 19th Century at UT Austin, including Texas German immigration.

Hans C. Boas co-organizes (with Steffen Hoeder, University of Kiel, Germany) a special session “Constructional Approaches to Language Contact and Multilingualism” at the 10th International Conference on Construction Grammar at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France.

TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. and Matthias Fingerhuth. 2018. Deutsche Sprachinselkorpora im 21. Jahrhundert. In M. Kupietz & T. Schmidt (eds.), Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft um 2020: Korpuslinguistik. Vol. 5. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. 125 – 150. [for the open-access eBook click here].

TGDP member Karen Roesch is featured in an article on German dialects and language death in the US in the German newspaper DIE WELT. Click [ here ] for a copy of the article.

TGDP publication. Boas, Hans C. 2018. Texas. In A. Plewnia & C. M. Riehl (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Sprachminderheiten in Übersee. Tübingen: Narr. 171-192. [PDF]

TGDP presentation at the 25th LIPP Symposium “Language Variation: Research, Models, and Perspectives” at the Ludwig Maximiliam University of Munich, Germany. Title of presentation: “The diphthongization of [e:] and [o:] in Texas German. (Matthias Warmuth)

TGDP presentation at the 24th Germanic Linguistic Annual Conference at Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania: “Plural formation in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, Karen Roesch).

TGDP alum Ryan Dux (UT Ph.D. 2016) accepts a tenure track position as Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University. Congratulations Ryan !!!

TGDP radio interview with KURV in MacAllen (TX) (with Hans C. Boas). Listen to the interview [ here ].

TGDP graduate research assistant Alexander Lorenz defends his dissertation “Beliefs about grammar instruction among post-secondary second-language learners and teachers” and accepts a tenure-track Assistant Professorship at the University of South Carolina (Upstate). Congratulations Alex!

Professor emeritus Glenn Gilbert (University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale) visits UT Austin and donates his research materials to the TGDP.

TGDP publication: Katrin Fuchs. 2018. “Word order in dependent clauses in Texas German.” In Zeitschrift fuer Dialektologie und Linguistik LXXXIV, 1-19. [ PDF ]

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Roundtable at the University of California, Berkeley: “A new approach towards a systematic comparison of German-Language Islands.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Roundtable at the University of California, Berkeley: “The diphthongization of [e:] and [o:] in Texas German.” (Matthias Warmuth)

TGDP presentation at the 42nd Annual Symposium of the Society for German-American Studies in Indianapolis, Indiana: “Reassessing the impact of world War I on Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas, Marc Pierce, and Karen Roesch).

Victoria Jesswein successfully defends her senior honors thesis on Texas German at UT Austin.

TGDP presentation at the conference German Abroad 3 at the University of Erfurt, Germany: “A new approach towards a systematic comparison of German-Language Islands.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the conference German Abroad 3 at the University of Erfurt, Germany: “Texas – ein totes Zentrum des plurizentrischen Deutschen?” (Matthias Fingerhuth)

TGDP presentation at Christ the King Lutheran Church Assembly in Universal City, TX: “The Texas German Story: Preserving Texas History, Language, and Culture.” (Alexander Lorenz).

Dr. Thomas Schmidt from the IDS (“Institut fuer Deutsche Sprache” (Institute for the German Language)) spends two months with the TGDP team to collaborate on establishing a common infrastructure for comparative online speech island research.

TGDP hosts its second annual Texas German outreach education workshop at UT Austin with the goal of creating teaching materials for K-16 about Texas German history, language, and culture.

Alexander Lorenz and the Texas German Dialect Project are featured in The Stonewall Heritage Society Newsletter.

TGDP publication: Ryan Dux. 2017. Classifying Language Contact Phenomena: English Verbs in Texas German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 29.4, 379-430. Click [ here ] for a copy.

John Benjamin, a Ph.D. student in Germanic Studies at UT, starts the Texas Polish Project, beginning with linguistic field work in Pana Maria, Texas.

TGDP publishes its 10th annual newsletter.

Hans C. Boas is featured in the documentary by the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (German TV) “Trachten, Tradition und Trump” on German immigration to Texas (November 19, 2017).

TGDP presentation at the annual American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). His talk was titled “Teaching Texas German: Authentic Language in the German Classroom” (Alexander Lorenz).

TGDP member John Benjamin starts the Texas Polish Dialect Project, with fieldwork to begin in Panna Maria, TX, in December 2017.

TGDP presentation at the Annual Convention of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Honolulu, Hawaii: “Texas German in the 21st century: Why is it dying out?” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP continues fieldwork in Columbus, TX.

TGDP member Katrin Fuchs successfully defends her dissertation.

Texas Historical Commission launches new online mobile tour “German Texans: Land, freedom, community,” with input from the TGDP.

TGDP presentation at the Annual Stonewall Heritage Society Meeting in Stonewall, TX: “Das wandernde Volk.  German Migration to Texas, Cultural and Linguistic Similarities and Differences” (Alexander Lorenz).

KMFA Radio 89.5 in Austin, TX, rebroadcasts the “Texanische Liebeslieder” at 6 p.m. on October 27, 2017.

The TGDP interviewed speakers in Schulenburg and Georgetown, TX.

TGDP member James Kearney is featured on German TV show “Willicks weltweit: Yvonne macht den Haushaltscheck in Texas.” (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Germany).

TGDP presentation at the monthly meeting of Andrew Carruthers Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Austin, TX: “Texas German language, culture, and history.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP is featured in the Fredericksburg Standard.

TGDP presentation on the pedagogical applications of the Texas German Dialect Archive (TGDA) at the biennial Texas American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) in Round Rock, TX (Alexander Lorenz).

The TGDP interviews more Texas German speakers in Walburg and Weir, TX.

Hans C. Boas teaches graduate class “Language contact and language death in Texas” at the University of Texas at Austin.

TGDP alum Karen Roesch (IUPUI) spends the fall 2017 semester as a visiting scholar at UT Austin.

TGDP members Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce co-organize a panel on the History of Texas German at the 23rd International Congress on Historical Linguistics in San Antonio, Texas.

Alexander Lorenz becomes the TGDP’s new Graduate Research Assistant.

TGDP alum Ryan Dux begins his Mellon-Volkswagen Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, Germany.

Jim Kearney is teaching GSD 360: European Immigration in Texas in the 19th Century at UT Austin, including Texas German immigration.

TGDP presentation at the 11th International Symposium on Bilingualism, University of Limerick, Ireland: “Social networks and lexical borrowings in Texas German.” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the University of Potsdam, Germany: “Sprachwandel im Texasdeutschen: Interne und externe Faktoren.” (Hans C. Boas)

Review of Karen Roesch’s 2012 book “Texas Alsatian: A case study in dialect maintenance and death” appears on HNet. Congratulations Karen!

TGDP presentation at Tongji University (Shanghai, P.R. China): “Zum Texas Deutschen” (On Texas German) (Hans C. Boas).

TGDP member Matthias Fingerhuth moves to the University of Vienna (Austria) to begin his postdoctoral research position. Congratulations Matthias!!!

TGDP alumnus Ryan Dux receives a prestigious Volkswagen – Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship to spend a year conducting research at the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim (Germany). Congratulations Ryan!!!

TGDP member Katrin Fuchs accepts a tenure-track assistant professorship at Valparasio University in Indiana. Congratulations Katrin!!!

TGDP member Matthias Fingerhuth successfully defends his dissertation at UT Austin. Congratulations Matthias !!!

Members of the TGDP are involved in organizing the 23rd Germanic Linguistics Conference at UT Austin, April 21-22, 2017.

TGDP presentation at the 23rd Germanic Linguistics Conference at UT Austin: “The phonetics of front vowels in New Braunfels Texas German.” (Zoë Wyatt)

Texanische Liebeslieder performance at the Beerthoven concert series at the Austin Saengerrunde, April 23, 2017.

Call for papers posted for German Abroad 3 conference at the University of Erfurt, Germany, March 2018. Consider submitting an abstract!

New TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. and Matthias Fingerhuth. 2017 ”I am proud of my language but I speak it less and less!” – Der Einfluss von Spracheinstellungen und  Sprachgebrauch auf den Spracherhalt von Heritage-Sprechern des Texasdeutschen. In Linguistische Berichte 249, 95-121. [ PDF ]

Members of the TGDP are involved in organizing a special panel on The History of Texas German at the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, on Tuesday, August 1, 2017.

TGDP member Annika VanNoy successfully defends her dissertation. Congratulations Annika !!!

TGDP presentation at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America, Austin TX: “Social networks and language change in New Braunfels German: a case study.” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the winter meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Austin TX: “Is Texas German a creole?” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

First meeting of the Texas German outreach group at UT Austin. Discussion of plans to develop instructional materials for K-12 to teach knowledge about Texas German history, culture, and language to school children across Texas.

TGDP publishes its 9th annual newsletter. Click here: TGDP_Newsletter_2016 to download it as a PDF.

TGDP co-organizes the conference “German Abroad 2” at the University of Texas at Austin, November 2-3, 2016. The event is free and open to the public.

Second performance of the Texanische Liebeslieder on November 2, 2016, 18:00-19:00, in Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall on the UT Austin campus. The event is free and open to the public.

TGDP presentation at conference German Abroad 2 at the University of Texas at Austin, Nov. 2-3, 2016: “White slaves and black German speakers? Towards a history of German-American and African-American contact in Texas.” (David Huenlich)

TGDP presentation at conference German Abroad 2 at the University of Texas at Austin, Nov. 2-3, 2016: “Dative case versus accusative case in Texas German: The case of Texas Alsatian.” (Karen Roesch)

TGDP presentation at conference German Abroad 2 at the University of Texas at Austin, Nov. 2-3, 2016: “Semantic transference in Barossa German and Texas German.” (Matthias Fingerhuth)

TGDP presentation at conference German Abroad 2 at the University of Texas at Austin, Nov. 2-3, 2016: “Lost and found: case syncretism and variation in Texas German.” (Matthias Fingerhuth and Alexander Lorenz)

TGDP presentation at the University of Zuerich, Switzerland: “Complexity and simplification in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

The Daily Texan runs a story on the ongoing effort of an Austin-based film team producing a documentary movie on Texas German language, culture, and history. Click here for the PDF.

Help support the fundraising effort to finish the documentary film “All Güt Things”, which tells the story of Texas German language and culture. The fundraiser will go until early December 2016, please visit this page on Seed & Spark.

TGDP presentation at the Proseminar lecture series in the Department of Germanic Studies, UT Austin: “Vergleichende Sprachinselforschung im 21. Jahrhundert.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the Seventh Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 7), at the University of Georgia, Athens: “V3 in Texas German.” (Margo Blevins and Oliver Bunk).

TGDP poster presentation at the Seventh Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 7), at the University of Georgia, Athens:: “Is Texas German a Creole?” (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, and Margo Blevins)

New TGDP publication. Boas, Hans C. 2016. Variation im Texasdeutschen: Implikationen fuer eine vergleichende Sprachinselforschung. In Alexandra Lenz (ed.), German Abroad. Perspektiven der Variationslinguistik, Sprachkontakt- und Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung, 11-44. Vienna University Press. [ PDF ]

Program posted for German Abroad 2 Conference. The program for the conference German Abroad 2, to take place at UT Austin (Nov. 2-3, 2016) is now posted online.

TGDP presentation at the 2016 Annual Conference of the German-Texan Heritage Society in La Grange, Texas: “Investigating Texas German in the 21st Century.” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the International Workshop on Discourse Analysis, Santiago de Compostela, Spain: “On the borrowing of English discourse markers into Texas German and Texas Spanish.” (Hans C. Boas)

Margo Blevins becomes the TGDP’s Graduate Research Assistant for the TGDP during the 2016-17 Academic Year. Welcome on board Margo !

TGDP poster presentation at the AMC Symposium at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland: “The for … zu construction in Texas German” (Marc Pierce and Hans Boas)

Dr. Hans Boas teaches a class on “Language Contact in Texas” at the Europe University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder.

Prof. Sebastain Kuerschner (University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany) visits the TGDP and gives a talk on the “Mutual Intelligibility of Germanic Languages and Varieties.”

TGDP presentation at the 22nd Germanic Linguistics Association Conference at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, Iceland: “A new approach towards a systematic comparison on German Language Islands.” (Hans C. Boas and Todd Krause)

GLAC 2017 in Austin, Texas ! Several TGDP members are on the organizing committee that will host the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference 23 in April 2017 (chair or organizing committee is Marc Pierce). Watch out for the call for papers some time in September 2016.

TGDP members Ryan Dux and David Huenlich graduate with their Ph.D. in (Germanic) Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. Congratulations Ryan and David !!!

We are very excited to announce that TGDP member Ryan Dux has accepted the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at Bucknell University. He will be teaching German and Linguistics. Congratulations Ryan!!!

We are pleased to announce that TGDP member Dr. James Kearney  has been elected to be a member of the Texas Institute of Letters on the basis of his unparalleled work on German-Texan history and culture. Congratulations Jim!!!

Dr. Peter Wagener (Institute for the German Language, Mannheim (IDS)) visits the TGDP to provide advice on the architecture of a comparative speech island archive and to give a talk: “Of German neighborhoods and Low German villages: Spoken German in South Africa.”

TGDP presentation at the Linguistics Department of the University of Chicago: “Internal and external factors in Texas German language variation.” (Hans C. Boas)

Congratulations to TGDP member Alexander Lorenz for winning the “2016 Foreign Language Teaching Award” of the Texas Language Center at UT Austin!!!

We are very excited to announce that former TGDP member Dr. Heiko Wiggers (UT Ph.D. 2006) has received tenure and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at Wake Forest University. Congratulations Heiko !!!

Patrick Wolf-Farre (University of Heidelberg) visits the TGDP and give a talk on “What is a German-Chilean? Studying identity through language biographies.”

TGDP presentation at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for German-American Studies in San Antonio, TX: “Investigating Texas German in the 21st Century.” (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce)

TGDP presentation at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for German-American Studies in San Antonio, TX: “Semantic Transfer in Texas German.” (Matthias Fingerhuth)

TGDP presentation at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for German-American Studies in San Antonio, TX: “Linguistic variants as sociolinguistic markers in Texas Alsatian.” (Karen Roesch)

TGDP presentation at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for German-American Studies in San Antonio, TX: “How much of Texas German is English?” (Ryan Dux)

TGDP presentation at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for German-American Studies in San Antonio, TX: “Teaching history through language games: The German-Comanche Treaty.” (David Huenlich and Adams LaBorde)

We are very excited to announce that TGDP member David Huenlich has accepted a position as a junior researcher at the Institut for the German Language (Institut fuer Deutsche Sprache) in Mannheim, Germany. David will be involved in researching the linguistic integration of refugees in Germany. Congratulations David!

TGDP member Ryan Dux successfully defends his dissertation “A usage-based account of verb classes in English and German.” Congratulations Ryan!

TGDP presentation at the UT College of Liberal Arts Academic Advising Retreat, Austin Saengerrunde Building: “Texas German Language, Culture, and Music: 1850 -2015.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the German-American Society of New Braunfels, TX: “15 years of TGDP research on New Braunfels German: What have we learned?” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP member David Huenlich’s research on multiethnolects in Germany is prominently featured on the College of Liberal Arts news page: Generations later, language continues to isolate immigrant communities.

TGDP member Karen Roesch (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis) offers a course “Immigrant Experience: Tales of German-Americans in Indiana” that has been endorsed by the Indiana Bicentennial Commission.

TGDP presentation at the international workshop on Historical Construction Grammar at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany: “Language change and language contact: A constructional analysis of mit in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

German television broadcaster ZDF releases a documentary about Herman Lehmann. 43 minutes. Published on 21 Feb 2016, available until 22 Feb 2026. [Website link to video] [PDF of website]

Conference “German Abroad 2” announced! From Nov. 2-4, 2016, the TGDP is involved in hosting the conference “German Abroad 2: Perspectives from variationist sociolinguistics, language contact, and multilingualism.” Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 1, 2016.

TGDP presentation at the 2016 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Austin, TX: “Identity versus social networks in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce)

Hans C. Boas organizes workshop on “(Re)Living Language Change” at the 2016 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Austin, TX.

TGDP presentation at the 2016 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Austin, TX: “Central Wisconsin Pomeranian Low German: Language contact in a close-knit rural community.” (Ryan Dux)

TGDP presentation at the 2016 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Austin, TX: “Viva la kleine Alsace!” (Karen Roesch)

TGDP presentation at the monthly meeting of the Houston-Leipzig Sister City Association in Houston, TX: “Culture in Language: The Texas German Dialect Project.” (Hans C. Boas)

New TGDP Publication: Hans C. Boas. 2015. Linguistic Splits along religious lines: The role of language maintenance among Catholics and Lutherans in Texas. In: P. Rosenberg, K. Jungbluth, and D. Zinkhahn Rhobodes (eds.), Linguistic Constructions of Ethnic Borders, 167-181. Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang.

TGDP presentation at the International Workshop “Kognition und Konversation” (cognition and conversation) at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany: “Frames and Constructions in Spoken Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP Graduate Research Assistant David Huenlich successfully defends his dissertation “The roots of multiethnolects: Effects of migration on the lexicon and speech of German-speaking school children” at the University of Texas at Austin. Congratulations David !!!

The TGDP interviews its 500th speaker!

Fieldwork begins in Pfluegerville, Texas.

Prof. Peter Maitz (University of Augsburg, Germany) visits the TGDP and gives a talk on “Unserdeutsch” (Rabaul Creole German)

TGDP presentation at the Center for Volga-German Studies at Concordia University, Portland, OR: “Preservation of German-American dialects in the 21st century.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP publishes its 8th annual newsletter. Click here for a PDF copy.

TGDP presentation at the Cleng Peerson Norwegian Symposium in Clifton, TX: “Patterns of German Immigration to Texas and Migrations within Texas in the late 19th Century.” (James Kearney)

TGDP presentation at the Cleng Peerson Norwegian Symposium in Clifton, TX: “Documenting Texas German language, culture, and heritage.” (David Huenlich)

TGDP presentation at the Central Texas Historical Conference in Washington-on-the-Brazos, TX: ” Friedrich Ernst, Detlef Dunt, and German immigration to south-central Texas in the 19th century.” (James Kearney)

World premiere of “Texanische Liebeslieder” by David Hanlon with lyrics by Kathleen Kelly (on the UT Austin campus, August 28, 2015), based on transcripts of interviews stored in the Texas German Dialect Archive. We are thrilled that the interviews and transcriptions of the Texas German Dialect Project have formed the basis of such wonderful and inspiring music about German immigrants and their descendants in Texas. For a recording of Texanische Liebeslieder No. 8, click here

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During the fall 2015 semester, Dr. Hans Boas teaches undergraduate course “Language and society in the German-speaking countries” at UT Austin, using many materials from the Texas German Dialect Archive.

Jim Kearney discusses German immigration to Texas with the Austin American Statesman. See article here.

Margo Blevins, graduate student with the TGDP, successfully defends her Masters Report on “Auxiliary tun in Texas German.” Congratulations Margo!

Maggie Gemmel, Graduate Student with the TGDP, graduates with her Ph.D. from UT Austin. The topic of her dissertation is “Semantic role alignment to metaphor: A frame semantic approach to metaphoric meaning.” Congratulations Maggie! We will miss you.

Presentation on how to use the Texas German Dialect Archive materials for teaching in the classroom, at the 21st Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference in Provo, UT: “Texas German, a whodunit: A modern application for the classroom.” (Tyson Brown and Larissa Kranewitter, Brigham Young University). To view the poster, click here.

TGDP presentation at the 21st Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference in Provo, UT: “A constructional approach to Texas German mit (”with”).” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP poster presentation at the 21st Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference in Provo, UT: “The unbroken Treaty: Learning language through role-play.” (Adams LaBorde and David Huenlich)

New book publication by Dr. James Kearney: “Journey to Texas 1833”, University of Texas Press.  The first English translation of the earliest German book about Texas, Journey to Texas, 1833 offers a unique portrait of colonial Texas on the eve of revolution and of the nascent German communities in Austin’s Colony. – See more at: Journey to Texas 1833

Prof. Alfred Wildfeuer (University of Augsburg, Germany) visits the TGDP and presents a talk on “Is the term Sprachinsel/ Language Island still appropriate?”

TGDP presentation at the 39th Annual Symposium of the Society for German-American Studies in St. Louis, MO: “The Texas German Dialect Project in 2015.” (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce)

We are happy to announce that Margo Blevins is the recipient of a DAAD fellowship to spend the academic year 2015-16 at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Congratulations Margo!

TGDP presentation at the monthly meeting of the Victoria Chapter of the Texas German Society: “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving our Heritage for Future Generations.” (Ryan Dux)

TGDP presentation at the monthly meeting of the Columbus Chapter of the Texas German Society: “The Texas German Dialect Project: Preserving our Heritage for Future Generations.” (Ryan Dux)

TGDP presentation at the 130th Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in Vancouver, BC: “The Texas German Dialect Archive: Fourteen Years Later”. (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce)

Linguistic Fieldwork begins in Columbus, Texas

Together with five graduate students, Hans Boas interviews seven speakers of Texas German at the Nesbitt Memorial Library in Columbus, Texas.

TGDP presentation at the conference German abroad – variationist, language contact, and multilingualism research perspectives.    University of Vienna, Austria: “Variation im Texas Deutschen: Interne und Externe Faktoren (‘Variation in Texas German: Internal and External Factors’)”. (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the International Symposium Contrastive Linguistics and Diachrony (CoLiDi), University of Gent, Belgium: “Semantic and syntactic change in language contact: A constructional analysis of Texas German mit(‘with’)”. (Hans C. Boas)

Fieldwork begins in Serbin, TX.

TGDP presentation at the Symposium about Language and Society Austin XIII at the University of Texas at Austin: “Social Networks and Language Change in Texas German: A Case Study.” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

TGDP is featured in the “Global Post”. Click here for article.

TGDP presentation at the Workshop on Structural Changes in Heritage Languages, University of Leiden, The Netherlands: “English Influence on Texas German.” (Marc Pierce, Hans C. Boas, and Ryan Dux)

Fifth TGDP newsletter is published. Click here for the newsletter.

TGDP presentation at the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Zuerich, Switzerland: “The History of English Influence on Texas German” (Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference, University of Indiana at Bloomington: “Revisiting Case Loss in Texas German Dialects: Texas Alsatian vs. Texas German” (Karen Roesch)

TGDP is mentioned in the Orange County Register’s article on the German roots of the Texas Hill Country. Click here.

Hans Boas is interviewed by Fox News about Wurstfest in New Braunfels

The Texas German Dialect Project at the University of Texas at Austin celebrates its 10th Anniversary!

Fourth TGDP newsletter is published. Click here for the newsletter.

TGDP presentation at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany: “Variation in Texas German” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the Conference Religion, Migration, Germany, at Ohio State University: “Language, Religion, and Immigration: Texas Germans 1850-1950” (Hans C. Boas)

Article “Lexical Developments in Texas German” by Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce is published in M. Putnam(ed.), Studies on German-Language Islands. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.129-150.

Hans Boas receives the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistic Society of America for the most outstanding contribution to the development of our understanding of language and linguistics. For his 2009 book The life and Death of Texas German. LSA Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, January 2011. See these links: item 1 and item 2

Article “The Texas German Dialect Archive: A Multimedia Resource for Research, Teaching, and Outreach” is published in the Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 22.3, 277-296.

Texas German Endowment at the University of Texas passes the $30,000 mark. Only $970,000 to go! For more information about the Texas German Endowment, please go to http://tgdp.org/contribute.php

TGDP presentation at the Germanic Linguistics Association Annual Conference (Banff, Canada): “English lexical borrowings in Texas German” (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce)

TGDP presentation in the departmental lecture series of the Department of Germanic Studies, UT Austin: “The functions and meanings of the discourse marker “well” in Texas German” (Hans C. Boas)

The book “The Life and Death of Texas” (Hans C. Boas) is published by Duke University Press.

TGDP Presentation at the conference “40 Years of Particle Research” (Berne, Switzerland): “The distribution of English discourse markers in Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas)

Second annual TGDP newsletter is published. Click here for the newsletter.

Texas German Endowment reaches its first milestone: $25,000. Only $975,000 to go! For more information about the Texas German Endowment, please go to http://tgdp.org/contribute.php

TGDP starts work on an on-line Texas German history and culture website. The website will present digital copies of original Texas German documents (newspapers, letters, diaries, images, etc., including their translations), organized along a time-line. The first prototype will be tested in April 2009.

Luke Lindemann (Pomona College, CA) starts is one-month internship with the TGDP.

TGDP is featured in the Wilson County News. Click here for article in PDF.

TGDP is featured in “Unterricht Englisch” (Teaching English), a prominent magazine for English school teachers in Germany. Click here (article in German).

First TGDP newsletter is published. Click here for an electronic version.

Article on the Texas German Dialect Project is distributed by the Associated Press. It is featured in more than 70 newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and France. Click here for article. Click here for the interactive video (search for Texas German).

Hans Boas receives the Hugo-Moser Prize for Germanic Linguistics for his work on Texas German. The prize is awarded by the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (“Institute for the German Language”), a federally-funded research institute concerned with the documentation and analysis of contemporary German.

TGDP publication: “From the Field to the Web: Implementing Best-practice Recommendations in Documentary Linguistics” (Hans C. Boas) appears in the journal Language Resources and Evaluation. Click here for the article.

TGDP presentation at the Meeting of the College of Liberal Arts Leadership Council, University of Texas at Austin: “The Texas German Dialect Project.” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the conference on “Diaspora Experiences: German-speaking Immigrants and their Descendants” at the University of Waterloo, Canada: “Documenting Diaspora Experiences: The Texas German Dialect Archive” (Hans C. Boas and Hunter Weilbacher)

TGDP presentation at the Jank family reunion, Meyersville, TX: “The Texas German Dialect Project” (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP presentation at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society: “The unexpected survival of German discourse markers in Texas German” (Hans C. Boas and Hunter Weilbacher)

TGDP presentation at the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives, La Grange, TX: “The Future of the Texas German Dialect Project” (Hans C. Boas). Click here for announcement in the Fayette County Record.

Article in Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post reports on TGDP fieldwork in Doss, on January 12, 2006. Please click here.

Follow-up article on the TGDP appears in the San Antonio Express-News; please click here.

Ulrike Bathe (Germanic Studies, UT Austin) finishes her M.A. thesis entitled “Plural Formation in Texas German.”

TGDP-presentation at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (‘Institute for the German Language’), Mannheim, Germany: “Das Texas-Deutsche Dialekt Projekt” (‘The Texas German Dialect Project’) (Hans C. Boas)

TGDP receives instructional technology grant from the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fieldwork begins in Harris County.

TGDP-presentation at the Sophienburg Archive (New Braunfels, TX): “The Future of the Texas German Dialect Project” (Hans C. Boas)

Hans C. Boas receives fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (http://www.neh.gov) to complete his book on Texas German.

TGDP receives instructional technology grant from the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fieldwork begins in Bulverde.

TGDP-Presentation at the Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable in Berkeley (California): “Texas German – or – the Dialect that Never Happened” (Hans C. Boas)

Fieldwork begins in Lee County.

TGDP-presentation at the Heart of Texas chapter of the Texas German Society in Waco: “The Texas German Dialect Project”(Hans C. Boas)

TGDP-presentation at the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the 2003 German-Texan Heritage Society, New Braunfels: ‘What is happening with Texas German?’ (Hans C. Boas).

TGDP-presentation at the 7th International Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, Broome, Australia: ‘Social Factors Contributing to the Death of Texas German’ (Hans C. Boas). For a review of the conference, see Ogmios newsletter November 2003.

TGDP receives media grant from the Texas Council for the Humanities.

TGDP receives instructional technology grant from the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.

TGDP receives ~FASTTEX development grant from the Centerfor Instructional Technologies at the University of Texas at Austinfor re-design of pilot web-site and database user interface.

TGDP-presentation at the Linguistics Circle, University of Texasat Austin: ‘Building a Multi-Media Archive of Texas German’ (HansC. Boas).

TGDP-presentation at the International Workshop on Resources and Tools in Field Linguistics, held in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation(LREC 2002), Las Palmas, Spain: ‘The Texas German DialectArchive as a Tool for analyzing Sound Change’ (Hans C. Boas).

TGDP-presentation at the 28th Annual Meeting of the BerkeleyLinguistics Society, University of California at Berkeley: ‘TracingDialect Death: The Texas German Dialect Project’ (Hans C. Boas).

Systematic fieldwork begins in areas surrounding New Braunfels,Fredericksburg, and Schulenburg.

TGDP receives Special Research Grant from the Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin to conduct linguistic fieldwork in the areas surrounding New Braunfels, Fredericksburg,and Schulenburg.

TGDP receives ~FASTTEX development grant from the Center for Instructional Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin for design and implementation of pilot web-site.

Preliminary fieldwork begins in New Braunfels and Fredericksburg.

Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin provides startup funds for Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP).