Why Do Languages Have Dialects?

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Why Do Languages Have Dialects?
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Two kinds of explanations

• Sociohistorical the structure of society and the
  characteristics of individual speakers language
  as a kind of cultural behavior
• (apparently external to language)
• Linguistic the structure of language as a system
• (apparently internal to language)

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2.1 Sociohistorical Explanation

• Settlement patterns
• Migration routes
• Geographical factors
• Language contact
• Economic ecology
• Social stratification
• Social interaction, social practices, and speech
  communities
• Group and individual identity

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2.1.1 Settlement

• Dialect differences from the British Isles
• Dialects from other areas (the Caribbean)
• Changes accompanying stages of settlement the
  founder effect
• (See maps on pp. 117 and 119)

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(No Transcript)
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2.1.2 Migration routes

• East-west fanning pattern of European
  settlers---currently reflected in major highway
  networks
• Into the South through the Cumberland Gap
• South-North-South patterns of African-Americans

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2.1.3 Geographical factors

• Rivers
• Factors contributing to isolation of groups
• IslandsGullah
• MountainsAppalachian speech

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2.1.4 Language contact

• Native American languages
• European languages other than English French,
  German, Spanish
• Vocabulary items
• Morphology suffixes
• Syntax

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2.1.5 Economic ecology

• Ecologically-based occupations farming,
  fishing, coal-mining
• Rural versus urban

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2.1.6 Social stratification

• Social stratification is mirrored in language use
• Social stratification affects language change
• Social stratification appears to exist in even
  the smallest communities

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2.1.7 Social interaction, social practices, and
speech communities

• Patterns of transportation flow and population
  movement
• Social networks
• High density everybody knows everybody
• Multiplex interact with same people in different
  arenas (school, home, work, church)
• Low density everybody knows a particular
  individual but they dont all interact with each
  other
• Uniplex a person interacts with different people
  in each social arena (school, home, work, church)

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Community of practice

• an aggregate of people who come together around
  a common enterprise
• and which is simultaneously defined by its
  membership and the shared practices in which that
  membership engages.

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What the shift to community of practice
represents

• A focus away from pre-established structures
  (whether small or large)
• to ongoing social practices (through which
  structures are maintained and changed)
• which are dynamic and fluid rather than static
• in which individuals are active agents rather
  than passive responders to situations or social
  robots whose language use is determined by the
  social categories to which they belong

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speech community

• Labov a group of people with shared norms, or
  common evaluations of linguistic variables
• Start with social unit or with language variety?
• Defined from outside or inside?
• Issues of size and uniformity
• Partial solution a multilayered rather than a
  unitary construct

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2.1.8 Group and individual identity

• Projecting ones identity as a member of a
  particular group by talking in a way associated
  with that group
• Changes across interactions
• Dilemmas of identity covert prestige

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2.2 Linguistic Explanation

• Rule extension
• Analogy
• The transparency principle
• Grammaticalization
• Pronunciation phenomena
• Words and word meanings

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Changes in English over time

• Old English (about 950 AD)
• Fader urer ðu bist in heofnas, sie gehalgad noma
  ðin.
• Middle English (about 1350 AD)
• Oure fadir Þat art in heuenes, halwid be Þi name.
• Early Modern English (about 1550 AD)
• O oure father which arte in heven, hallowed be
  thy name.
• Modern English (about 1985 AD)
• Our father who is in heaven, may your name be
  sacred.

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2.2.1 Rule extension

• Expansion of subject pronouns to object position
  
• Its me. versus It is I.
• Me and Charlie ate. versus Charlie and I ate.
• Intrusive r
• Park the car by the house/Park the car inside.
• The idear of it
• Cubar

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2.2.2 Analogy

• Four-part or Proportional Analogy
• Typically irregular to regular pattern
• Cow cows ox oxes
• (Irregular older plurals oxen, deer, fish,
  children)
• Also minority pattern analogy
• Sing/sang/sung ----bring/brang/brung
• Leveling making a grammatically conditioned set
  of forms more similar
• I am, you are, s/he is, we are, you are, they are
• Leveled to I, you, s/he, we, you, they IS

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2.2.3 Transparency and grammaticalization

• Transparency
• The need to make meanings as obvious as possible
• can vs. caint
• Redundancy multiple negation
• Aint nothin like em nowhere.

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Grammaticalization

• a process whereby a new meaning becomes linked
  to a particular grammatical structure
• You all yall second person plural pronoun
  in Southern Informal Standard
• DOUBLE MODALS I might could go.
• New auxiliaries
• liketa (I was so cold, I liketa froze)
• fixin to (Its late, and Im fixin to go to
  bed)
• be (He always be coming to school late)

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2.2.4 Pronunciation phenomena

• Articulation-related changes
• ASSIMILATION impossible, illogical, irregular
• WEAKENING bottle
• Dealing with consonant clusters
• Simplification (knee, sixths)
• Elimination by inserting vowels (athuhlete)see
  metathesis on next slide

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• Sound systems low back vowel merger---cot/caught
  CHAIN SHIFTS (cf. Great Vowel Shift 1400-1600)
• Sporadic changes metathesisbird, first ask/aks
• Syllable structure considerations (preference for
  CVCVCV..) nuclear becomes nukular

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2.2.5 Words and word meanings

• Soda/pop/cola/tonic/coke/soft drink
• Mommuck
• yonder

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2.3 The Final Product

• The savory stew metaphor