Nonstandard varieties of languages have recently become an object of new interest in scholarly research. This is very much due to the advances in the methods used in data collection and analysis, as well as the emergence of new language-theoretical frameworks. The articles in this volume stem from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI, August 2002, Joensuu). The theme for this conference was "Dialects across borders". The selection of contributions included in this volume demonstrates how various kinds of borders exert major influence on linguistic behaviour all over the world. The articles have been grouped according to whether they deal primarily with the linguistic outcomes of political and historical borders between states (Part I); various kinds of social and regional boundaries, including borders in a metaphorical sense, i.e. social barriers and mental or cognitive boundaries (Part II); and finally, boundaries between languages (Part III).

Table of contents

Introduction vii–xii

PART I: Dialects across political and historical borders 1

The construction of linguistic borders and the linguistic construction of borders Peter Auer 3–30

Static spatial relations in German and Romance: Towards a cognitive dialectology of posture verbs and locative adverbials Raphael Berthele 31–50

Ingressive particles across borders: Gender and discourse parallels across the North Atlantic Sandra Clarke and Gunnel Melchers 51–72

On the development of the consonant system in Mennonite Low German (Plautdietsch) Larissa Naiditch 73–86

English dialects in the British Isles in cross-variety perspective: A base-line for future research Sali A. Tagliamonte, Jennifer Smith and Helen Lawrence 87–117

PART II: Dialects across social and regional borders 119

Dialects across internal frontiers: Some cognitive boundaries Dennis R. Preston 121–155

On 'dative sickness' and other linguistic diseases in modern Icelandic Finnur Friðriksson 157–171

Can we find more variety in variation? Ronald K.S. Macaulay 173–184

Pronunciation of /ei/ in avant-garde Dutch: A cross-sex acoustic study Vincent J. van Heuven, Renée van Bezooijen and Loulou Edelman 185–210

A tale of two dialects: Relativization in Newcastle and Sheffield Joan C. Beal and Karen P. Corrigan 211–229

PART III: Dialects across language boundaries 231

Crossing grammatical borders: Tracing the path of contact-induced linguistic change Ruth King 233–251

The after-perfect in Irish English Patricia Ronan 253–270

Dialect history in black and white: Are two colors enough? J.L. Dillard 271–285

Index of languages and dialects 287

Subject index 289–291

"When languages are carried across borders of various kinds - social, regional, national and multinational - they undergo surprising accommodations. Dialects Across Borders looks at some of the ways they adapt through case studies from Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, the British Isles, the European Common Market, and North America. Together, these insightful studies bear witness to the resilience and resourcefulness of our languages, and to the people who use them."