This article presents computer supported “language production experiments” (LPEs) as a method for the investigation of syntactic variation. It describes the setup for the investigation of numerous syntactic phenomena and provides a sample study of the German GET passive across Austria. It also suggests that LPEs offer possibilities for the targeted investigation of linguistic variation in various ways. They may be used to explore speakers’ individual linguistic repertoires and an according corpus setup can be used to examine e.g., interspeaker patterns of variation. LPEs also enable researchers to investigate which linguistic factors control or influence syntactic variation.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden Teilergebnisse aus Sprachproduktionstests zur syntaktischen Variable "unbestimmter Artikel vor Massennomen" eines laufenden Dissertationsprojektes zur syntaktischen Variation in Wien vorgestellt. Dabei wird kurz auf das "Wienerische" eingegangen, woraufhin die direkten Erhebungsmethoden vorgestellt werden, die mit Unterstützung des Phonogrammarchivs der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften durchgeführt worden sind. Der Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Gestaltung der Aufgaben aus dem Sprachproduktionstest und zeigt anschließend auf der Grundlage verschiedener Variablenbetrachtungen, inwiefern Variation in den erhobenen Daten festgestellt werden kann. Besonders der Steuerungsfaktor der generischen bzw. Portionenlesart bedingt unterschiedliche Variantenfrequenzen, aber auch Alter und formaler Bildungsabschluss der Gewährspersonen erweisen sich als beeinflussende Faktoren für die Variantenwahl. This paper presents partial results of language production tests for the syntactic variable "indefinite article with mass nouns". The results are part of an ongoing dissertation project devoted to the study of syntactic variation in Viennese German. Outlining Viennese German, the paper then depicts the direct survey methods applied, which were conducted with the support of the Phonogrammarchiv, the Institute for Audiovisual Research and Documentation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The paper focuses on the design of the language production tests and shows to what extent variation can be found in the collected data: the frequency of the variants is particularly influenced by the interpretation of mass nouns as generic or as a unit, and likewise by the age and educational level of the informants.

Abstract:The Special Research Programme (SfB) 'German in Austria: VariationContact -Perception' is a project financed by the Austrian Science fund (fWf f60). Its nine project parts are collaboratively conducting research on the variation and change of the German language in Austria. The SfB explores the use and the subjective perception of the German language in Austria as well as its contact with other languages. Methodologically and theoretically, most SfB project parts are situated within variationist linguistics, others in contact linguistics and perceptionist linguistics. This paper gives an insight into the conception of a framework for the annotation and ultimately also classification of language varieties, which is being developed within the SfB. It outlines the requirements of the various project parts and reviews, whether and how standardised language codes (ISO 639) and language tags (following BCP 47) can be utilised for the annotation of language varieties in variationist linguistic projects.

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The investigation of linguistic phenomena in corpora of spontaneous speech is sometimes hindered by corpus size or by the complexity of the factors influencing their occurrence. Language Production Experiments (LPEs) can specifically elicit such phenomena and can therefore be used to build corpora that allow for their investigation. Yet experiments are a wide category that covers very different tasks, and there is little empirical research that compares speakers’ response behavior to different task types. In this paper, we compare the responses of a group of 22 speakers to a translation task and a completion task, both of which target the syntactic phenomena complementizer agreement (CA). The results indicate that both experimental methods offer legitimate ways to investigate the phenomenon with specific advantages and disadvantages. However, a comparison of results from both tasks allows for insights that a single task could not have provided.