Li2 Language variation

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Li2 Language variation

• Regional variation, part 2

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Todays topics

• How do dialects develop?
• The current state of dialectology

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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.

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• Place names around Boston, MA
• (inspired by Chambers and Trudgill 1998174)

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Synonymy Avoidance

• Anecdotal evidence
• Children say things like Thats not a car, its 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 (McDs?)
• hundreds and thousands

Markman, Ellen. 1989. Categorization and naming
in children problems in induction. Cambridge,
Mass. MIT Press.
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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.
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Invasions
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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.

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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.

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The Danelaw

• ON gaukr cuckoo

SNIPE (Gallinago gallinago) Local name Horse
Gowk Orkney (Islands) http//www.westray-orkney.c
o.uk/nhbirdbreeders.html
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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)

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Norman influence

• animal
• cow (Kuh)
• sheep (Schaf)
• calf (Kalb)
• chicken

• food
• beef (boeuf bovine, ox, beef)
• mutton (mouton sheep)
• veal (veau calf)
• poultry (Fr. poulet chicken)

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Norman influence

• Cf. French automne

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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

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Physical boundaries
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Physical boundaries 1BrE vs AmE
asymmetry in intelligibility?
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Physical boundaries 2
food trough in a cow-house
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Correlation with cultural boundariesThe 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/samp
o/regionmap.cfm
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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/FrancLowU
  pperHigh.PNG

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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)

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The current state of dialectology
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Fricative voicing in SW England
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Traditional isoglosses (Kurath 1949)
whiffletree
whippletree

• Representative isoglosses showing the boundaries
  of the North, Midlands, and South of the US
• whiffletree, whippletree swingletree
• sook! a cow call
• lightwood kindling

Sook!
lightwood
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Multidimensional scaling

• With Lifeng Zhu, Centre of Chemometrics,
  University of Bristol

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Extracting sense

• Statistical analysis over multiple variables can
  reveal larger patterns

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Corpus searches wop(atui)
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Googlenewsginnel
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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

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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