Li2 Language variationLi2 Language variation

Regional variation, part 2

Today’s topicsToday’s topics

How do dialects develop?The current state of dialectology

How do dialects develop?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.

Place names around Boston, MA Place names around Boston, MA

(inspired by Chambers and Trudgill 1998:174)(inspired by Chambers and Trudgill 1998:174)

Synonymy AvoidanceSynonymy 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.

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.

InvasionsInvasions

The DanelawThe 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.

Scandinavian Scandinavian toponymstoponyms

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.

The DanelawThe Danelaw

ON gaukr ‘cuckoo’

SNIPE (Gallinago gallinago) Local name: Horse GowkOrkney (Islands): http://www.westray-orkney.co.uk/nhbirdbreeders.html

The DanelawThe 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)

Norman influenceNorman influenceanimal

cow (Kuh)

sheep (Schaf)

calf (Kalb)

chicken

food– beef (boeuf ‘bovine, ox,

beef’)

– mutton (mouton ‘sheep’)

– veal (veau ‘calf’)

– poultry (Fr. poulet ‘chicken’)

Norman influenceNorman influence

Cf. French automne

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

Norman influenceNorman influence

Physical boundariesPhysical boundaries

Physical boundaries 1:Physical boundaries 1:BrE vs AmEBrE vs AmE

asymmetry in intelligibility?

Physical boundaries 2Physical boundaries 2

“food trough in a cow-house”

Correlation with cultural boundaries:Correlation with cultural boundaries:The western NY boundaryThe 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

Messy boundaries 1Messy 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

Messy boundaries 2Messy 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%)

The current state of The current state of dialectologydialectology

Fricative voicing in SW EnglandFricative voicing in SW England

Traditional isoglosses Traditional isoglosses (Kurath 1949)(Kurath 1949)

Representative isoglosses showing the boundaries of the North, Midlands, and South of the US

whiffletree, whippletree ‘swingletree’

sook! ‘a cow call’lightwood ‘kindling’

whiffletree

whippletree

Sook!

lightw

ood

Multidimensional scalingMultidimensional scaling With Lifeng Zhu, Centre of Chemometrics, University of Bristol

Extracting senseExtracting sense

Statistical analysis over multiple variables can reveal larger patterns:

Corpus searches: wop(atui)Corpus searches: wop(atui)

Googlenews:Googlenews:ginnelginnel

Are dialects disappearing?Are dialects disappearing?

Illusion that TV is homogenizing language Walt Wolfram in American Tongues: kids

pay more attention to their peers than to TVLabov 1994: dialect diversity is

increasingCf. covert prestige and WC Glasgow

males

ConclusionsConclusions

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