Date: 04-Aug-2006
From: Benjamin Barnett <Benjamin.Barnetttylerisd.org>
Subject: Dialects Across Borders
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-499.html
EDITOR(S): Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander, Esa PenttilaTITLE: Dialects Across BordersSUBTITLE: Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methodsin Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002SERIES: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 273PUBLISHER: John BenjaminsYEAR: 2005ISBN: 9027247870ANNOUNCED IN: http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-499.html
Benjamin Barnett, University of Texas at Tyler
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION pp. vii-xii
Nonstandard varieties of languages have recently become an object of newinterest in scholarly research. This is very much due to the advances inthe methods used in data collection and analysis, as well as the emergenceof new language-theoretical frameworks. The articles in this volume stemfrom the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (MethodsXI, August 2002, Joensuu). The theme for this conference was ''Dialectsacross borders''. The selection of contributions included in this volumedemonstrates how various kinds of borders exert major influence onlinguistic behaviour all over the world. The articles have been groupedaccording to whether they deal primarily with the linguistic outcomes ofpolitical and historical borders between states (Part I); various kinds ofsocial and regional boundaries, including borders in a metaphorical sense,i.e. social barriers and mental or cognitive boundaries (Part II); andfinally, boundaries between languages (Part III). The introduction providesvery good summaries (approximately 1/3 page in length) of each article
PART I: Dialects across political and historical borders
''The construction of linguistic borders and the linguistic construction ofborders'' pp. 3-30, by Peter Auer.
Using the German language area as his example, Auer discusses the complexlinks between the nation-state and geographical space and the relationshipbetween these two and dialectal variation. An important aspect ofgeographical space is that it is not merely a physical phenomenon, but amental one. This idea, which Auer adopts from the early twentieth-centurysociologist Georg Simmel, explains why lay persons' 'ethnodialectological'perceptions about dialect boundaries may be adjusted by the existence ofpresent or past political borders. As an example, Auer cites the dialectdifferences between Swabian and Low Alemannic; southwest German informantstreat these as different dialects because of their past politicalseparation, although this is not supported by dialectological facts. Theformer political border between East and West Germany had led to similar'cognitive adjustments' in the minds of West German informants. At a moregeneral level, the state borders between Germany, the Netherlands,Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, etc. influence people's 'cognitive maps'and lead to the construction of dialect or language boundaries on the basisof political borders.
''Static spatial relations in German and Romance: Towards a cognitivedialectology of posture verbs and locative adverbials'' pp. 31-50, byRaphael Berthele.
Berthele's article combines in an interesting way methods used indialectology and language contact studies with a cognitive-linguistictheoretical framework. Focusing on spatial expressions, he examines themapping of spatial relational concepts onto syntactic structures indifferent varieties of German across the German-Swiss border and in theneighboring Romance languages, including French, Italian, and Romansh. Theresults suggest that, in the expression of spatial relations, Swiss Germanand Romansh favor verb phrase constructions consisting of a verb followedby locative prepositional phrase + adverb where the adverb can be said tobe semantically redundant. By contrast, in Standard High German, StandardItalian and Standard French, this PP+ADV pattern is either rare ornon-existent. Instead, these languages use the 'simple' prepositionalphrase construction. Berthele's explanation for the distinctive behaviorof Swiss German and Romansh is the adstratal influences between theselanguages within the complex contact situation in Switzerland.
''Ingressive particles across borders: Gender and discourse parallels acrossthe North Atlantic'' pp. 51-72, by Sandra Clarke and Gunnel Melchers.
This article is an interesting survey of a seldom discussed linguisticfeature: pulmonic ingressive articulation. Focusing on ingressivediscourse particles, the authors argue that the use of this feature is anareal feature that stretches from the eastern Baltic to the Atlanticseaboard of the United States. Clarke and Melchers suggest that the use ofpulmonic ingressive discourse particles has diffused via language contactover this geographical area, and as such provides evidence forcross-linguistic transmission of socially and pragmatically determinedfeatures, a phenomenon seldom discussed in the dialectological orcontact-linguistic literature.
''On the development of the consonant system in Mennonite Low German(Plautdietsch)'' pp. 73-86, by Larissa Naiditch.
In her study, Larissa Naiditch investigates the details behind thedevelopment of the consonant system of Mennonite Low German, or Plaudietch,which is an insular dialect of German spoken by the religious minority ofMennonites. The speakers of this dialect can at present be found invarious parts of Siberia, Kazakhstan, the USA, Mexico and Germany. Themigrant past of the Mennonite community comes out in the richness of theirdialect, since its consonant system has traces from a number of dialectsspoken in the areas where this minority has resided in the course of history.
''English dialects in the British Isles in cross-variety perspective: Abase-line for future research'' pp. 87-117, by Sali A. Tagliamonte, JenniferSmith and Helen Lawrence.
This article compares evidence from six corpora representing relic areas inthe North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Its aim is to findsuitable diagnostic features for establishing historical relationshipsbetween New and Old World varieties of English. The authors argue thatwhile verbal '–s' seems to be a suitable diagnostic feature, NEG/AUXcontraction, 'for to' infinitives, and 'zero' adverbs are more problematicfor testing similarities and differences in the Old and New World varietiesof English. Furthermore, they suggest that examining the variableconstraints on linguistic features that are shared across all varietiesoffers a fruitful way forward for tracking trans-Atlantic connectionsbetween varieties of English.
''Dialects across internal frontiers: Some cognitive boundaries'' pp.121-155, by Dennis R. Preston.
In this article, Dennis R. Preston discusses some of the ongoing vowelchanges in the urban dialects of the northern cities of the U.S.A. Alsoknown as the Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), these changes have beeninvestigated by Preston and his research team from the points of view ofdialectology, sociolinguistics, and 'folk linguistics' (this last one beinginspired by social psychology). Preston uses the term 'sociophonetics' todescribe this kind of combination of different methods. His researchfocuses on the productive aspect of speech and on what individual factorsare behind the NCCS: how adoption of this group of changes correlates withage, commitment to residence in a given locality, and how the ethnicbackground and social network relationships of the immigrant speaker affecthis linguistic accommodation process. Also interesting from thefolk-linguistic point of view are his findings on how capable an individualis in imitating a dialect which has a sound system different from his own,and on what impact an adoption of a sound change has on his perceiving ofthe same change in the speech of others. The effect of gender on speakers'perception of their own dialect area is yet another variable studied byPreston.
''On 'dative sickness' and other linguistic diseases in modern Icelandic''pp. 157-171, by Finnur Friðriksson.
In this article, Finnur Friðriksson writes on a number of changes in theuse of some case-inflections (most notably, the dative, accusative andgenitive when in subject position) in certain regional and social dialectsof Icelandic which have been interpreted by some researchers as a threat tothe very stability of the case-inflectional system of the language. Drawingon his own data representing the relevant regional dialects and socialgroups he, however, seeks to demonstrate that this threat is premature, asthe features turn out to be so infrequent that they hardly undermine thestability of the grammatical system of Modern Icelandic. Rather, he seesthe whole debate about their alleged spread as something which hasoriginated in the educational system and in the efforts of school teachersto eradicate usages which deviate from the standard.
''Can we find more variety in variation?'' pp. 173-184, by Ronald K.S. Macaulay.
Ronald Macaulay, in this article, explores ways in which the influence oflanguage-external factors upon linguistic variation could be investigatedin greater detail than has formerly been the case in sociolinguisticresearch. His article is based on data collected from Glasgow English.According to Macaulay, the method of data collection is crucial; specialcare is needed to ensure that the participants in the communicativesituation are on an equal footing; there is no need for an interviewer.Traditional external factors, such as age, gender and social class, shouldbe studied in connection with each other, not as separate factors.Statistical analysis can then be used to discover gender differences withinsocial groups that otherwise do not display significant differences.Furthermore, sociolinguists should look for 'hidden' linguistic variablesthat have not been considered in previous works, such as various discoursefeatures.
''Pronunciation of /ɛi/ in avant-garde Dutch: A cross-sex acoustic study''pp. 185-210, by Vincent J. van Heuven, Renée van Bezooijen and Loulou Edelman.
In this article, the authors present an acoustic analysis of 32Dutch-speaking guests appearing in a television talk show. They focus onthe analysis of the diphthong /ɛi/ in the speech of the speakersrepresenting an emerging 'avant-garde' variety of standard Dutch, alsoknown as Polder Dutch. The authors argue that with the help of acousticmeasurement procedures they can observe a sound change in progressnon-impressionistically and in much more detail than using other methods.From the sociolinguistic point of view, they claim, this new variety ofstandard Dutch represents yet another instance of the widespread phenomenonof women initiating and leading a linguistic change.
''A tale of two dialects: Relativization in Newcastle and Sheffield'' pp.211-229, by Joan C. Beal and Karen P. Corrigan.
In this article, the authors discuss regional variation of English in apaper which is part of an ongoing, extensive project on northern Englishdialects. They concentrate on analyzing the urban dialects of Tyneside andSheffield from a morphosyntactic perspective. Their tentative conclusionssuggest more fine-grained distinctions between northern dialects than havebeen found in some previous studies, which are based on only phonologicalcriteria.
''Crossing grammatical borders: Tracing the path of contact-inducedlinguistic change'' pp. 233-251, by Ruth King.
In her article on grammatical borders, Ruth King addresses the question oflinguistic constraints on borrowability in a bilingual setting. UsingPreposition Stranding data from Prince Edward Island French, King arguesagainst direct syntactic borrowing from English. Instead, she suggests thather Prince Edward Island data support the primacy of lexical borrowing asthe source of syntactic effects in the recipient language.
''The after-perfect in Irish English'' pp. 253-270, by Patricia Ronan.
Patricia Ronan focuses on the well-known Irish English 'after'-perfectconstruction. Ronan examines data based on participant observation and on acorpus of Dublin oral history material compiled by the American sociologistK. Kearns. She presents evidence to support the view that the HE'after'-perfect is not a unified category; for some speakers the'after'-perfect has grammaticalized to denote 'hot news' events, while forothers it presents a more general alternative strategy for perfect marking.
''Dialect history in black and white: Are two colors enough?'' pp. 271-285,by J.L. Dillard.
This article presents a critical comment on some recent views on theorigins of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) with his question,''Are two colors enough?'' Calling into questions the substrate accountdefended by many linguists, Dillard emphasizes the significance ofplurilingualism in the historical circumstances surrounding the growth ofAAVE. He argues that the West-African slaves of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries interacted more with indigenous Americans than withthe Europeans. Consequently, English was not the only influential languagein the contact setting; besides indigenous American languages, the Africansgot into contact with settlers representing different Indo-Europeanlanguages, e.g. in the West Indian Islands. The plurilingual nature of thecontact setting should according to Dillard be taken into account whenwriting the history of AAVE.
EVALUATION
This volume is well-organized and contains good summaries of the articlesin the introduction to the volume (vii-xii). Also helpful were theexplanations for the categorizations of the articles contained in theintroduction. Perhaps the only negative is that this volume was publishedthree years after the conference was held, withholding substantialknowledge from the intellectual community for an unduly long period oftime, especially given that not many of the articles could be easilylocated electronically. Given the amount of articles written by non-nativespeakers of English, I would commend the editors and authors for theirconscientious editing of English mechanics. All of the articles use manyexamples to support their research; in particular, those authors in part I(Auer, Berthele, Clarke and Melchers, Naiditch, and Tagliamonte, et al.)use many graphic representations, as their research deals more specificallywith geographical borders than the rest. Overall, this volume is aninteresting collection of articles on dialectology in a variety oflinguistic subfields and geographical locations; I would recommend it tothe advanced undergraduate linguist up to those more advanced for furtherideas and study.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Benjamin Barnett is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Tylerin the Department of Languages and Literature. Research interests includelanguage acquisition, creoles, and dialects, in particular as relates topostcolonial literature. He is also a bilingual teacher (Spanish/English)for a local school district.
|