Morphology generation for Swiss German dialects

Most work in natural language processing is geared towards written, standardized language varieties. In this paper, we present a morphology generator that is able to handle continuous linguistic variation, as it is encountered in the dialect landscape of German-speaking Switzerland. The generator derives inflected dialect forms from Standard German input. Besides generation of inflectional affixes, this system also deals with the phonetic adaptation of cognate stems and with lexical substitution of non-cognate stems. Most of its rules are parametrized by probability maps extracted from a dialectological atlas, thereby providing a large dialectal coverage

On the relevance of Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland

This article assesses the relevance of Basil Bernstein for German-speaking Switzerland. It argues that Bernstein is potentially relevant for German-speaking Switzerland in light of contemporary studies which highlight a connection between social background and differential school achievement. After contextualising Bernstein's theoretical outlook and critically reflecting upon his use of a static concept of social class, it explores past and present applications of Bernstein. The paper thereby shows that the uptake of Bernstein's outlook was and continues to be minimal for the Swiss German context and reasons for this conclusion are explored. In the final sections of the article connections between social background and differential school achievement are explored for contemporary German-speaking Switzerland. On the basis of this analysis, the paper concludes by arguing that while aspects of Basil Bernstein's theoretical outlook are potentially relevant for the Swiss German context, they need to be reassessed in light of the awareness of the variety of interdependent factors which can and do influence the performance of children and adolescents at school