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Grammatische Helvetismen im Wörterbuch

2014, Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik

The German standard language shows diatopic variation on all linguistic levels. This article analyses to what extent lexicography does justice to this situation. The focus lies on the Swiss variety of standard German, in particular the grammatical helvetisms which occur in this variety. As an introduction, we illustrate characteristics of the Swiss standard variety with some examples and address the distinction between absolute/regional varieties and dialectisms/helvetisms. This is followed by an analysis of three selected dictionaries ("Schweizerhochdeutsch-Duden", "Variantenwörterbuch des Standarddeutschen" and "Zweifelsfälle-Duden"). In this context, the article shows which criteria are used to classify a variety as belonging to the standard in each case, in connection to which database these classifications take place and which information is provided concerning the diatopic-grammatical variation. The last chapter illustrates with two examples how dictionaries on grammatical-diatopic variation in standard German may be designed and which procedure is best suited for the collection of data in this case. The paper is therefore located at the interface between research in grammar, variational linguistics and lexicography.