Microparametric Syntax and Dialect Variation. James R. Black , Virginia Montapanyane

2000 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-143
Author(s):  
Jonathan David Bobaljik
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Irma Setiawan

Social dialect variation is diversity and richness of dialect owned by an individual or group in Sasak monolingual society. Moreover, the diversity of social dialect is also often used as a medium for transferring ideology, identity, and existence by an individual or group of individual or other groups. Thus, the purpose of this study is to describe the form of vocabulary choice in social dialect variation of Sasak community to show differences in speech who is high social status (superior) and low social status (inferior) between individuals or groups and between women and men. The theory used is social dialect variation form of Janet Holmes and critical analysis Norman Fairclough. The data was collected by observing methods and interview as well as the basic techniques and derivatives, observation and documentation methods. Sources of data gathered from Sasak speakers who are communicating. Data were analyzed by using descriptive qualitative method which aims to make systematic description, categorization, and patterning. Data are presented formally and informally. At last, this study resulted in different forms of social dialect variation by an individual or group and by women and men who can cause physical-psychic intersection.


Author(s):  
Michele Loporcaro

The book addresses grammatical gender in Romance, and its development from Latin. It works with the toolbox of current linguistic typology, and asks the fundamental question of how the Latin grammatical gender system gradually changed into those of the Romance languages. To answer this question, the book capitalizes on the pervasive dialect variation of which the better-known standard Romance languages only represent a fragment. Indeed, inspection of dialect variation across time and space forces one to dismiss the handbook account proclaiming that the neuter gender, contrasting with masculine and feminine in Latin, was eradicated from spoken Latin by late Empire times. Both Late Latin evidence and data from several modern dialects show that this never happened, and that the vulgate account proceeds from unwarranted back-projection of the data from modern languages like French and Italian. Rather, the neuter underwent transformations which are the main culprit for the differences in the gender system observed today between, say, Romanian, Sursilvan, Neapolitan, and Asturian, to cite just a few types of system which turn out to differ significantly. A precondition for establishing the database for diachronic investigation is a detailed description of many such systems, which reveals data whose interest transcends the diachronic issue under consideration: the book thus addresses systems where ‘husbands’ are feminine and others where ‘wives’ are masculine; discusses dialects where nouns overtly mark gender, but only in certain syntactic contexts; and proposes an analysis according to which one Romance language (Asturian) has split inherited grammatical gender into two concurrent systems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 406-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. L. Renwick ◽  
Rachel M. Olsen

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamsin Blaxter ◽  
David Britain

Abstract In this article we assess the extent to which we can collect plausible data about regional dialect variation using crowdsourcing techniques – the BBC Future Survey – without explicitly gathering any user metadata, but relying instead on background information collected by Google Analytics. In order to do this, we compare this approach with another crowdsourced survey, operated from a smartphone application, which examines the same site – the British Isles – but which explicitly asks users to submit detailed social background information – the English Dialects App (EDA) (Leemann et al. 2018). The EDA has the disadvantage that there is a considerable user drop-off between completing the dialect survey and completing the social metadata questionnaire. The BBC Future Survey, however, only collects information on where users are physically located when they complete the survey – not where they are from or even where they live. Results show that the BBC Future Survey produces a plausible snapshot of regional dialect variability that can complement other more sophisticated (expensive, time-consuming) approaches to investigating language variation and change. We suggest the approach constitutes a digital-era rapid anonymous survey along the lines of Labov (1972), serving similar aims, with similar success, but on a much much larger scale.


Author(s):  
Bryan G. Levman

Abstract This article continues the discussion on the nature of the early language of Buddhism and the language that the Buddha spoke, arguing that the received Pāli transmission evolved out of an earlier Middle Indic idiom, which is identified as a koine. Evidence for this koine can be found by examining correspondence sets within Pāli and its various varieties and by examining parallel, cognate correspondence sets between Pāli and other Prakrits which have survived. This article compares 30 correspondence sets transmitted in the Dhammapada recensions: the Gāndhārī Prakrit verses, the partially Sanskritized Pāli and Patna Dhammapada Prakrit verses, and the fully Sanskritized verses of the Udānavarga. By comparing cognate words, it demonstrates the existence of an underlying inter-language which in many cases can be shown to be the source of the phonological differences in the transmission. The paper includes a discussion on the two major factors of dialect change, evolution with variation over time, and the diffusionary, synchronic influence of dialect variation; it concludes that both are important, with dialect variation – and the phonological constraints of indigenous speakers who adopted MI as a second language – providing the pathways on which the natural evolutionary process was channeled.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
William Alfred Pickering

This book is a collection of articles dealing with the phonology and dialectology of Wichí (referred to in the past as Mataco) and Mapuzungun (also called Mapudungun or Mapuche), two unrelated Amerindian languages of South America. Published by the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, it is the end result of a three-year project funded by the Argentine government, the purpose of which was to study dialect variation in these languages. All of the authors are specialists in the indigenous languages of Argentina, and all but one are teachers or researchers at Argentine universities or research institutions. Adopting the “dynamic synchrony” approach of the French functionalist school as a methodological-theoretical perspective, the book pretends to give an overall view of the dialectical continua of the Argentine varieties of the languages under study and at the same time to provide some understanding of sociolinguistic variation and ongoing phonological change in both languages. The four articles on Wichí and the single article on Mapuzungun found in this volume, while falling short of constituting a systematic survey, make significant steps toward achieving these difficult and important goals.


Diachronica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris B. McCully ◽  
Richard M. Hogg

SUMMARY The form and distribution of Middle English poetic texts is neither accidental nor the sole consequence of French (or Latin) literary influence. In particular, we claim that changes in poetic form are enabled by language change, specifically and in the Middle English period by changes in word- and phrase-stress patterning. Such linguistic changes initially take place in different dialects at different rates. Since dialects show at least partial synchronic isomorphism between phonological and metrical forms, it is reasonable to explore the consequences of such isomorphism in Middle English, and come to some (tentative) conclusions about the metres, the alliterative patterning, and the di-atopic variation in Middle English verse. We include data and analyses connected with the coming of systematic rhyme, different forms of alliterative writing, metrical promotion and subordination, and isosyllabism. These help to justify the initial assumptions that dialect variation is metrically significant and that poetic form and change is enabled by changes in stress-patterning. RÉSUMÉ La forme et la disuibution des textes poétiques du moyen anglais n'est ni le résultat d'un accident ni entièrement la conséquence de l'influence littéraire française (ou latine). Nous prétendons, en particulier, que les changements dans la forme poétique deviennent possibles grâce aux changements dans la langue, plus spécifiquement, durant la période du moyen anglais, grâce aux changements au niveau de l'accentuation des mots et des phrases. Initialement, de tels changements linguistiques se produisent dans des dialectes différents et à des vitesses différentes. Puisque les dialectes démontrent un isomorphisme du moins partiellement synchronique entre les formes phonologiques et métriques, il semblerait raisonnable d'explorer les conséquences d'un tel isomorphisme en anglais moyen et d'en venir à quelques conclusions préliminaires sur sa métricité, son allitération et sa variation diatopique. Nous incluons, par ailleurs, les données et les analyses reliées à l'avènement de la rime systématique, aux diverses formes d'allitération, à la promotion et subordination métrique, aussi bien qu'à l'isosyllabisme. Tout cela contribue à justifier les suppositions initiales, voire que la variation dialectale a une importance de nature métrique et que la forme ainsi que le changement poétique sont motivés par des changements au niveau de l'accentuation. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die Art und Verbreitung der mittelenglischen Literatur ist weder zufällig noch als das Ergebnis franzosischer (oder lateinischer) Einflüsse anzusehen. In diesem Aufsatz wird vornehmlich die Auffassung vertreten, daß Ânderungen in der dichterischen Form durch Sprachwandel ermoglicht werden. Während der mittelenglischen Periode geschah dies vor allem durch Ânderungen im Be-tonungsmuster von Wörtem und Wortgruppen. Solche sprachlichen Veränderungen traten in den verschiedenen Dialekten weder gleichzeitig noch regel-maßig auf. Da die Dialekte synchron gesehen zumindest teilweise eine Isomor-phie zwischen phonologischen und metrischen Strukturen aufweisen, lassen sich im Mittelenglischen einige Folgen dieser Isomorphic untersuchen. Sie erlauben zumindest einige vorläufige Schliisse iiber Metrik, Stabreimmuster und diatopische Varianten in der mittelenglischen Dichtung. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wurden Materialien und Analysen berücksichtigt, die sowohl mit dem Auftreten des Endreims als auch mit den verschiedenen Formen der Stabreim-dichtung zusammenhängen, etwa mit dem Isosyllabismus und der metrischen Profilierung oder Unterordnung. Dièse bestätigen großtenteils unsere An-nahmen, da8 Verschiedenenheiten innerhalb der Dialekte fur die Metrik von Bedeutung sind und da6 der Wandel in der poetischen Ausdrucksform durch Ànderungen im Wortbetonungsmuster ermoglicht wird.


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