Intro to Geography of Language
VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES
• What do you fry your eggs in?
• creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan, skillet, or spider
• What do you call a soft drink?
• pop, soda, soda pop, or tonic?
• What do you call a long sandwich containing salami etc.?
• hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy
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• What do you drink water out of?
• drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser
• How do you get something from one place to
another?
• take, carry, or tote
• What do you carry things in?
• a bag, a sack, or a poke
• How do you speculate?
• reckon, guess, figgure, figger, suspect, imagine
3
BRITISH-AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION
DIFFERENCES
• calf, bath, pass, aunt
• learn, fork, core, brother
• carry, very
• secretary, stationery, territory, dictionary, laboratory, necessary,
missionary
• either, neither, potato, tomato
• clerk, schedule
• captain, bottle (glottals [in Cockney])
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BRITISH-AMERICAN VOCABULARY
DIFFERENCES
• girl, cop, hood (of a car), trunk (of a car),
suspenders, apartment, bathroom, elevator,
truck, wig, gasoline, bar, line, monkey
wrench, television, flashlight, subway
• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, braces, flat, loo,
lift, lorry, peruque, petrol, pub, queue,
spanner, tele, torch, tube
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
STRESS DIFFERENCES
• Aluminum
• Applicable
• Cigarette
• Formidable
• Kilometer
• Laboratory
• secretary
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams 413)
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
SPELLING DIFFERENCES
• Cheque
• centre, theatre
• colour, honour
• defence, offence
• labelled, travelled
• Pyjamas
• tyre
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BRITISH EXPRESSIONS TO WATCH OUT
FOR
• fag or faggot (wood for the fireplace, or
cigarette)
• solicitor (lawyer)
• to knock someone up (wake someone up in
the morning, or visit someone)
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COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG
• apples and pears (stairs)
• Aristotle (bottle)
• pig’s ear (beer)
• Mother Hubbard (cupboard)
• plates and dishes (Mrs.)
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Questions about proximate cause of bird song variation:
1. What genes/proteins/hormones are involved in song
production?
2. What are the brain structures involved in song
production and how do they develop?
3. What are the developmental differences between males
and females that produces male singers?
4. How do within species dialects develop what are the
characteristic differences in song pattern?
5. Are there regional preferences among females for local
dialects?
Questions about ultimate cause of bird song variation:
1. Why do birds appear to have to learn the details of their songs as
juveniles?
2. Why do dialects exist in nature?
1. Do dialects provide an adaptive advantage?
2. Are they a product of local genetic differences?
Transmission of an effective dialect in that habitat?
(travel farther?) (less degradation?)
See Great Tit! (sound interference problems)
See Fig 2.21
2.21 Songs match habitats
Figure 2.22 The songs sung by great
tits differ in cities versus forests
Second Hypothesis:
Young males match their song to their neighbor.
Better able to communicate with territory
neighbors and demonstrate his ability to learn.
Males should be able to fine-tune their song even
after settling on an initial version.
EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard 280)
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NORTHERN, MIDLAND & SOUTHERN EXPANSION WESTWARD
(Shuy 294)
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Problems (cont’d)
• Asymmetries in intelligibility, e.g.,
– Danish speakers understand Swedish, but not vice
versa
– Brazilian Portuguese speakers understand Spanish,
but not vice versa
Problems (cont’d)
• Nonlinguistic criteria (political, historical,
geographic etc.) may play a role
– Mandarin, Cantonese are mutually unintelligible,
but are referred to as ‘dialects’ of Chinese
– Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, but
are referred to as separate languages
• Czech vs. Slovak
• Norwegian vs. Swedish
Diagnosing Dialect Differences
Region
Phonological
New
England
(oh)
Upper
North
(r)-deletion
Northern
Vowel Shift
e.g.,
(oh)
(ae)-tensing
Lower
North
Southern
Vowel Shift
e.g.,
short-(e)
short-(i)
“Boston”
“car”
Lexical
Morpho-syntactic
“gumband”
vs.
“rubberband
”
“coffee” “pop” vs.
“soda”
“bad”
Diphthon
gization,
e.g.
“bed”,
“bid”;
”greasy”
Upper
South
(s)vocalization
(ay)monophthon
gization
Lower
South
(ay)monophthon
gization
“bright”
Northwest
(r)-insertion
“warsh”
Southwest
(a~oh)
merger
“cot” =
“caught”
“bright”
“I heard it
whenever that I
was watching
TV.”
“veranda” “The car needs ø
vs.
washed.”
“porch”
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Northern Cities and Southern Cities
Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)
(iy) beat
u˘
i˘
I
(i) bit
(ey) beat
U
(u) book
o˘
e˘
(e) bet
(ae) bat
(o) bottle, father
(uw) boot
(ow) boat
√
E
ç
Q
(uh) but
(oh) ball, caught
a
•key characteristics: fronting of (a), tensing and raising of (ae), backing of short (e,i),
lowering of (oh) in W New England, N PA, N OH, IN, IL, MI, WI (Buffalo, Chicago)
•traditionally tense (long) vowels and /U/ are unaffected
•lax subsystem is moving
•ordering of elements via “push” and “drag” chains somewhat controversial
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Northern Cities and Southern Cities
Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)
(iy) beat
u˘
i˘
I
(i) bit
(ey) beat
(u) book
U
o˘
e˘
(e) bet
(ae) bat
(o) bottle, father
√
E
ç
Q
(uw) boot
(ow) boat
(uh) but
(oh) ball, caught
a
•key characteristics: fronting of long back vowels (uw), (ow), upward rotation and
development of inglides in short (e,i) while long (ey,iy) rotate back and downward in
all of the US South
•both shifts are viewed as related (and separate from a third pattern, associated with
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the merger of (oh-a) ).
A Working Definition of Standard
English
•
•
•
•
A particular dialect of English
the only non-localized dialect
of global currency without significant variation
universally accepted as appropriate
educational target in teaching English
Dialects, Standards, Vernaculars
Wolfram & Schiling-Estes
 we usually make judgments about people by the kind
of language they use




regional background
social status
ethnicity
education
 language differences may serve as most reliable
indicator of social position in society:
 live a certain way  expected to match that
lifestyle with our talk
 don’t meet people’s expectations to match that
lifestyle with our talk (e.g., a teacher talking like a
punk)  mismatch is a topic for conversation
Power and language?
Racism and language?
Bilingual sign