J. K. Chambers

Dynamics of Dialect Convergence.

Mobility is the most effective leveller of dialect and accent, and mobility constitutes a powerful linguistic force today. The sociolinguistics of mobility unites several disparate threads in my own research. First, immigration represents extreme mobility, and societies with profuse immigration differ in partly predictable ways linguistically and culturally from those with little or no immigration. Second, dialect acquisition by the children of newcomers provides new perspectives on critical period effects and influences, including the Ethan Experience, in which the nativization of children is abetted by their imperception of foreign-accent features in their parents’ speech. Third, identification of relatively recently-arrived people from other dialect regions allows comparisons of their linguistic norms with the communal norms, and a measure of their linguistic influence. From the cumulative results, we are in a position to frame hypotheses about linguistic variables in terms of their susceptibility to change and their resistance to it, and the identities of inhibitors and accelerators. All these threads should ultimately form integral aspects of the dynamics of dialect convergence.

Forensic Dialectology and the Bear Island Land Claim

If forensic linguistics is to develop into a viable subfield of applied linguistics, it will probably have to accumulate a literature of case studies on the model of most legal research. For that reason, I intend to devote much attention in this paper to a specific Canadian case, known as the Bear Island Land Claim, in which forensic dialectology played a striking role. However, I cannot resist prefacing my case study with a few general remarks on the incipient subfield. The Workshop on the Use of the Language Scientist as Expert in the Legal Setting, upon which this volume is based, is the most conspicuous occasion so far for wider recognition of the interrelationship between linguistics and the law. For 15 years 1 have been viewing that interrelationship more or less on my own (or so I thought), feeling a little soiled as I trudged off to testify about native rights or obscenity or trademarks while my colleagues at the office were worrying about more seemly things such as theta-grids or subjacency. I will try to focus on cases here, but will allow myself a little latitude in what I have to say about them.

Dialectology: Dialectology and linguistics

Dialectology is to some extent an autonomous discipline, with its own goals and methods. In the previous chapter, we reviewed the most distinctive aspects of dialect geography. But we also noted its common ground with other branches of linguistic science, especially phonetics, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. In this chapter, we look more closely at the relationship between dialectology and general linguistics. Modern dialectologists are usually trained as linguists, and many of them contribute to the literature on phonology or syntax or other branches as well as to dialect studies. Obviously, detailed descriptions of peripheral and secondary dialects are directly relevant to theories of phonology and grammar. It is perhaps surprising, then, to discover that interchanges between dialectologists and theoretical linguists are not as common as they might be, though in recent years both groups have come to realise that the rich variability of linguistic systems can illuminate and challenge universal claims about grammar and phonology. Dialectology took its impetus partly out of the desire to illuminate and challenge Neogrammarian principles in the nineteenth century, as we noted in 2.1 above. We begin this chapter with a closer look at the relationship between dialectology and philology, and then move on to discuss its relationship with some other important theoretical frameworks. Dialectology and philology Wenkers original work on German dialects was motivated in part by the claim, new at the time, made by scholars working on the history of languages, that sound change was regular.

Dialectology: Diffusion: sociolinguistic and lexical

In this chapter and the next, we examine a number of hypotheses relating to diffusion, the study of the progress of linguistic innovations. The hypotheses attempt to answer different questions. First, we ask who the innovators are. The answer differs with the social circumstances surrounding the innovation, as we shall see, and we shall look at several studies from urban dialectology for the light they shed on the social factors behind the pattern of diffusion. Then we look at the topic more narrowly, seeking to discover what linguistic elements are the vehicles of innovation. A promising hypothesis, known as lexical diffusion , posits that the lexical formative is the primary vehicle for phonetic change at least. Finally, in the next chapter, we ask how innovations spread geographically and develop a geolinguistic model to account for it. Real time and apparent time Clearly, any study of the spread of a linguistic innovation will necessarily be comparative. The data must include evidence for the same population or at least for a comparable population from at least two different points in time. Ideally, one would like to have the results of a survey designed to elicit a particular variable at a particular time and then a replication of the same survey given to the same population after a lapse of several years.

Dialectology: Cohesion in dialectology

For much of its history, practitioners of dialectology viewed it as an autonomous discipline, with its own goals and unique methods. In this guise, it became established as an academic discipline and contributed a fascinating chapter to intellectual history. Its heritage is the classic dialect atlases of the first half of this century, and they continue to nurture and inspire research on dialects to this day – even, arguably, with greater impact now than a few decades ago. One of our purposes in this book has been to make accessible the methodology and some results of autonomous dialectology or dialect geography to general readers and students. To that end, we devoted much of the book (Chapters 2, 3, 7 and 8 as well as parts of many other chapters) to traditional dialectology. It forms one of the main streams of the modern discipline of dialectology. A second stream, and an enormously influential one, is the study of urban dialects, which is usually referred to under the general heading of ‘sociolinguistics’. The methodology and results of urban dialectology and the crucial perspective it offers on linguistic innovation (as discussed especially in Chapters 4, 5 and 6; 10.1 and 10.2) belong to the foundations of modern dialectology as we see it. Another of our purposes has been to demonstrate that the confluence of these two streams forms a coherent modern discipline.

Dialectology: Dialect and language

Dialectology, obviously, is the study of dialect and dialects. But what exactly is a dialect? In common usage, of course, a dialect is a substandard, low-status, often rustic form of language, generally associated with the peasantry, the working class, or other groups lacking in prestige. dialect is also a term which is often applied to forms of language, particularly those spoken in more isolated parts of the world, which have no written form. And dialects are also often regarded as some kind of (often erroneous) deviation from a norm – as aberrations of a correct or standard form of language. In this book we shall not be adopting any of these points of view. We will, on the contrary, accept the notion that all speakers are speakers of at least one dialect – that standard English, for example, is just as much a dialect as any other form of English – and that it does not make any kind of sense to suppose that any one dialect is in any way linguistically superior to any other. Mutual intelligibility It is very often useful to regard dialects as dialects of a language . dialects, that is, can be regarded as subdivisions of a particular language. In this way we may talk of the Parisian dialect of French, the Lancashire dialect of English, the Bavarian dialect of German, and so on.

Reviews : Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. Series Editor, Michael S. Lewis-Beck. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 108 monographs

one day (as, I suppose, all subscribers did) among my academic junk mail, I was amazed, or at least pleasantly surprised, at the number of titles Sage offered and at the strength of its commitment to the social sciences. Until now, linguistics had not found space in Sage’s offerings, not even sociolinguistics or dialectology, the branches that jut furthest across the social science fence. That will change, not only with JEngL but also with William Kretzschmar’s new monograph series. In the meantime, there are some provocative titles in the current catalog for linguists who have the inclination to look further afield for congenial ideas, points of intersection, or adaptable methods. Most of them turn up in the long list of 108 monographs (and counting) in the series called Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences (QASS). I ordered the monographs on innovation diffusion, analytic mapping, and chaos theory, and my comments on them in this review will tell you what I found in them. These monographs cannot, of course, represent the whole series, and they might not be the three that other readers would choose to sample (I list some other titles at the end), but they do provide a measure of the scope and quality to be found. The monographs are slender paperbacks, fewer than 100 pages (about 80 pages of text), with uniform green cover designs. Bindings are stitched,