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Li2 Language variation

Li2 Language variation. Regional variation, part 2. Today’s topics. How do dialects develop? The current state of dialectology. How do dialects develop?. settlement history (cont. from last week) the challenge of language acquisition semantic differentiation (see next slide)

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Li2 Language variation

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  1. Li2 Language variation Regional variation, part 2

  2. Today’s topics • How do dialects develop? • The current state of dialectology

  3. How do dialects develop? • settlement history (cont. from last week) • the challenge of language acquisition • semantic differentiation (see next slide) • invasions and other localized influences • Danelaw • Norman Conquest • boundaries • political, geographic, transport, etc.

  4. Place names around Boston, MA (inspired by Chambers and Trudgill 1998:174)

  5. Synonymy Avoidance • Anecdotal evidence: • Children say things like That’s not a car, it’s a taxi. • Markmann Effect: • show child pair of pewter tongs and call it biff, child interprets biff as tongs in general; when asked for more biffs, it picks out plastic tongs. • If shown a pewter cup called biff, child assumes it means pewter, not cup, since it already has a word for ‘cup’. When asked for more biffs, the child chooses pewter spoon or pewter tongs. • Many dialect manifestations, including: • cookies (choc chip? big?), fries (McD’s?) • hundreds and thousands… Markman, Ellen. 1989. Categorization and naming in children: problems in induction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  6. What constitutes a jimmy? Is it defined by shape or color? I think sprinkles are small colored balls and jimmies are small colored or brown cylinders. Paul thinks sprinkles are small colored balls or cylinders and jimmies are just the brown cylinders.

  7. Invasions

  8. The Danelaw • Norsemen began invading England in 793 • Following their defeat by Alfred the Great at the battle of Ethandun (878), they withdrew to the north • Treaty of Wedmore (886): Danes agree to settle only in the northeast third of the country, which is subject to Danish law and hence called the Danelaw. • 991 Danes invade the south again, force Æthelred into exile, seize the throne, and rule England for 25 years.

  9. Scandinavian toponyms • most common in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire • 600 in -by (Scandinavian ‘farm’, ‘town’) • most of the remainder: • -thorp ‘village’ • -thwaite ‘clearing’ • -toft ‘homestead’ • Crystal, David. 1997. Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. CUP.

  10. The Danelaw ON gaukr ‘cuckoo’ SNIPE (Gallinago gallinago) Local name:Horse Gowk Orkney (Islands): http://www.westray-orkney.co.uk/nhbirdbreeders.html

  11. The Danelaw • Danelaw (9th C) • bairn = child (ON barn) • gimmer-lamb = newborn female sheep (ON gymbr) • beck = any running water smaller than a river (ON bekkr) • to lake = to play (ON leika)

  12. Norman influence • food • beef (boeuf ‘bovine, ox, beef’) • mutton (mouton ‘sheep’) • veal (veau ‘calf’) • poultry (Fr. poulet ‘chicken’) animal • cow (Kuh) • sheep (Schaf) • calf (Kalb) • chicken

  13. Norman influence Cf. French automne

  14. Norman influence • What do you call the animal with the prickly back that rolls itself up when frightened? • 1 hedgehog • 2 urchin (OF herichon) • other variants: • hedge-boar • prick-urchin • prick(l)y-b(l)ack-urchin

  15. Physical boundaries

  16. Physical boundaries 1:BrE vs AmE asymmetry in intelligibility?

  17. Physical boundaries 2 “food trough in a cow-house”

  18. Correlation with cultural boundaries:The western NY boundary • Finger Lakes • Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 1788 • Buffalo (wNY) vs. NYC (vs. upstate NY) • Erie Canal/Great Lakes, TV ranges, Bills vs. Giants… New York State Association of Municipal Purchasing Officials www.nysampo.org/chapters/sampo/regionmap.cfm

  19. Messy boundaries 1 • Dialect boundaries are not always so neat or sensible: • Chambers, Jack and Peter Trudgill. 1998. Dialectology. CUP. p. 6. • http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/images/FrancLowUpperHigh.PNG

  20. Messy boundaries 2 • Harvard Survey Q59. What do you call the game wherein the participants see who can throw a knife closest to the other person (or alternately, get a jackknife to stick into the ground or a piece of wood)? (10689 respondents) • I have never heard of this "game" and have no idea what it's called (51.32%) • mumbly peg (10.84%) • mumbledy-peg (8.69%) • mumblety-peg (8.07%) • chicken (2.94%) • Russian roulette (1.90%) • mumblely peg (with 2 l's) (1.81%) • stretch (1.14%) • stick-knife (1.01%) • splits (0.49%) • mumbly pegs (0.47%) • mumble peg (0.23%) • numblety peg (0.22%) • baseball jackknife (0.16%) • stick-frog (0.16%) • knifey (0.11%) • mummety-peg (0.02%) • peggy (0.02%)

  21. The current state of dialectology

  22. Fricative voicing in SW England

  23. Representative isoglosses showing the boundaries of the North, Midlands, and South of the US whiffletree, whippletree ‘swingletree’ sook! ‘a cow call’ lightwood ‘kindling’ Traditional isoglosses (Kurath 1949) whiffletree whippletree Sook! lightwood

  24. Multidimensional scaling • With Lifeng Zhu, Centre of Chemometrics, University of Bristol

  25. Extracting sense • Statistical analysis over multiple variables can reveal larger patterns:

  26. Corpus searches: wop(atui)

  27. Googlenews:ginnel

  28. Are dialects disappearing? • Illusion that TV is homogenizing language • Walt Wolfram in American Tongues: kids pay more attention to their peers than to TV • Labov 1994: dialect diversity is increasing • Cf. covert prestige and WC Glasgow males

  29. Conclusions • Dialect differentiation has roots in a combination of historical, geographic, and cognitive sources. • These factors often trump forces of standardisation • Linguistics at nexus of humanities, sciences, social sciences • Dialectology need not be restricted to NORMs and outdated methods • Telephone and internet surveys and corpus searches are yielding promising results, especially in tandem with new mapping and statistical techniques

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