@phdthesis{319, keywords = {Linguistics, Kitchener, Waterloo, Germans}, author = {Judith Mehrer}, title = {Lexical and morphological interference phenomena in the German speech of German immigrants in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, Ontario, Canada}, abstract = {This thesis attempts to scrutinize the lexical and morphological interference phenomena in the German speech of German immigrants in the Kitchener-Waterloo area in Ontario. Interview data revealed that the lexicon is the main area of English interference, which manifests itself through the employment of loan words, loan formations, and loan creations in the immigrant's speech. Assigning German genders to loanwords is determined by the speaker's word associations and congeners. Prepositions and the case they govern are also affected by interference; however, they reflect the speaker's idiolect as well. Alterations within the morphological sector are concerned with the inflectional system. Immigrants from German-speaking countries modify such complex grammatical forms as case endings of nouns, adjectives and pronouns in accordance with the English uninflected system. Besides all linguistic factors one has to take the social, psychological and individual determinants into account, since these elements influence the speaker's abilities to separate the two languages. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)}, year = {1990}, edition = {M.A.}, number = {Dissertation/Thesis}, publisher = {University of Waterloo}, language = {English}, }