LINGUIST List 2.403

Monday, 12 August 1991

Disc: Reflexives, Standard language, Dialect

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Susan Ervin-Tripp, Re: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees
2. Geoffrey Russom, Re: Queries (Part 2)
3. Ellen Prince, Language and dialect
4. , Language and dialect

It is not correct to identify political power with prestige of language
variety. An article by Laura Nader on Arabic in Fishman's sociolinguistics
reader a few decades back discusses this issue, as does more recent work
of Trudgill. A definition of standard should not pre-suppose this identity.
Susan Ervin-Tripp

With regard to a language being a dialect with its own army and navy:
when I first heard this, about 20 years ago,
it was attributed to Paul Kiparsky by a student.
Somehow, though, I suspect Kiparsky could have got it from Roman Jakobson,
whose quips have received pretty wide currency (like his response to the
suggestion that Harvard's linguistics department should hire Vladimir
Nabokov as a linguist: "I have nothing against elephants, but I wouldn't
hire one as a zoologist."
 -- Rick Russom

>Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 17:12:11 CST
>From: txsil!huttardallasutafll.uta.edu
>Subject: language & dialect
>
> Who first said when and where the oft-repeated "A language is a dialect
> with its own army and navy."?
> Thanks.
> George Huttar (huttartxsil.sil.org)
my understanding is that max weinreich said it, but i don't have a reference.
if anyone has, i'd appreciate hearing it. thanks.

 <EVERAERThutruu59.bitnet>
In reply to A. Dench's question. The following two articles might contain
interesting discussion of the latin example you gave:
Bertocchi, A. & C. Casadio (1980) Conditions on Anaphora: An Analysis
of reflexive in Latin, in G. Calboli (ed.) Papers on Grammar, Bologna.
Bertocchi, A. & C. Casadio (1983) Anaphoric Relations, pronouns and
Latin Complementation, in H. Pinkster (ed.) Latin Linguistics and Linguistic
Theory, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Martin Everaert