Linguistic Items
Linguistic Items:
—vocabulary (“lexical items, or “lexemes)
—sound-pattern (“sound”)
—larger syntactic patterns
(“constructions)
Different linguistic items in ‘the same
language’ can have quite different social
distribution (in terms of speakers and
circumstances).
Varieties of language
The flexibility of the term “variety”:
1. French, German, and Italian in Swiss or
Chinese, Malaysian, Tamil, and English in
Singapore
2. Ebonics (African) in the USA; Cockney
(cockney rhyming slang London slang
dictionary) in Britain; Geordie (Newcastle
English (Geordie)) in Britain
Speech Community
A speech community is a group of people
who speak a common dialect. However, the
linguists know that there is really no such
thing as a pure dialect spoken by a
particular ethnic group or by people from
just one perfectly definable region.
Example: your handout(Untitled Document)
Language: ‘Language’ and ‘dialect’
The delimitation of language and dialect:
1. Size:
2. Prestige:
3. Mutual intelligibility:
In terms of the second criterion (prestige),
only a ‘standard language’ can be called a
‘language’.
(the right and wrong views in your
handoutUntitled Document)
The family tree model
The family tree model clarifies the
historical relations among the
varieties concerned, and in particular
that it gives a clear idea of the
relative chronology of the historical
changes by which the varieties
concerned have diverged.Lynch, IndoEuropean Language Family Tree
The family tree model
The disadvantage of the family tree
model:
1. Showing only vertical descendant
(subclassification) but not horizontal
influence (cross-classification)
2. only represents a gross
simplification of the relations
between varieties
The family tree model
Disadvantage
3.
Regional dialects and Isoglosses
Regional dialects:
1. Taiwan: I-Lang—滷蛋
2. German dialect variety:
http://lingvo.info/lf/germana.php?/lingvo=
en
Isogloss: a boundary line between places or
regions that differs a particular linguistic
item.
Example: Map 2.1 (Isoglosses intersect
with each other.)
Isogloss and the wave theory
The analogy between isogloss intersection and the wave
(ripple)
Isogloss intersection
wave
Centers of influence
(linguistic items, new
items, innovation)
stone
Isoglosses
Ripples (waves)
There is no reason why
innovations leading to any
two different isoglosses
should have started in the
same place—or for that
matter in the same
period—so convergence
If two or more stones are
dropped into a pool, there
is no reason why they
should fall in the same
place, and there could be
many different centers of
influence from which
Isoglosses and the wave theory
The weakness of the analogy:
Not like the ripples, the waves of linguistic
influence may freeze and stop expanding
Another analogy: different species of
plants sown in a field, each spreading
outwards by dispersing its seeds over a
particular area (see Another analogy.doc)
Ways of classifying dialects
Geography:
1. pail v.s. bucket
2. farm [fa:m] v.s. farm [fa:rm]
3. Talk [t lk] v.s. talk [talk] Sociolinguistics
Resources: Dialect Map ("talk")
4. bought [b t] v.s. bought [bat]
Sociolinguistics Resources: Dialect Map
("bought")
Ways of classifying dialects
Ethnicity:
May be geography related (e.g.,
Pennsylvania Dutch) or not (African
American Vernacular English, AAVE
or Ebonics)
Ways of classifying dialects
Social class:
Example:
1. Received Pronunciation (RP) in Britain
Received Pronunciation - Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
2. The Boston Brahmin dialect in the USA:
Boston Brahmin
3. R-lessness in New York City Ways of
classifying dialects
Ways of classifying dialects
Gender:
Japanese;
Age:
Youth sub-cultural group youth.doc
Grammatical aspects of language
variation
Phonetic Variation:
In the New York City dialects: dental
〔t〕
In standard dialects of American
English: alveolar〔t〕
Grammatical aspects of language
variation
Phonological Variation:
In some African American dialects,
the Cr and Cl (C stands for consonant)
are prohibited in unstressed syllables.
So “professor” is “professor”
“credentials” is “cedentials”
“香” in Mandarin and Taiwanese
Grammatical aspects of language
variation
Morphological variation
In northern England and Southern
Wales:
I likes him.
We walks all the time.
Grammatical aspects of language
variation
Semantic variation:
“knocked up” in English English and
American English
English Usage in the UK and USA
Grammatical aspects of language
variation
Syntactic variation:
In many Southern dialects in the USA:
“done” as an auxiliary:
She done already told you.
Double modals: I might could do it.
WEBSITE
Canadian English: Canadian
Assignment 2
Choose two varieties of a languages (for
example: 國語 in Taiwan and 普通話 in China;
國語 and 台語 in Taiwan; ,,,) and try to
analyze what factor (or factors) can
explain for this variation. Then give
examples in the aspects of phonetic,
phonology, syntax, morphology, and
semantics to illustrate the variations
between these two varieties.