Dialectology
Encyclopedia
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect
, a sub-field of sociolinguistics
. It studies variations in language
based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation.
Dialectologists are ultimately concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to regional areas. Thus they usually deal with populations that have lived in certain areas for generations, but also with migrant groups that bring their languages to new areas (see language contact
).
Commonly studied concepts in dialectology include the problem of mutual intelligibility
in defining languages and dialects; situations of diglossia
, where two dialects are used for different functions; dialect continua
including a number of partially mutually intelligible dialects; and pluricentrism
, where what is essentially a single genetic language exists as two or more standard varieties.
William Labov
is one of the most prominent researchers in this field.
, who sent postal questionnaires out over Northern Germany. These postal questionnaires contained a list of sentences written in Standard German. These sentences were then transcribed into the local dialect, reflecting dialectal differences. Many studies proceeded from this, and over the next century dialect studies were carried out all over the world. Joseph Wright
produced the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary
in 1905.
Traditional studies in Dialectology were generally aimed at producing dialect maps, whereby imaginary lines were drawn over a map to indicate different dialect areas. The move away from traditional methods of language study however caused linguists to become more concerned with social factors. Dialectologists therefore began to study social, as well as regional variation. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States (1930s) was amongst the first dialect studies to take social factors into account.
In the 1950s, the University of Leeds
undertook the Survey of English Dialects
, which focused mostly on rural speech in England
and the eastern areas of Wales.
This shift in interest consequently saw the birth of Sociolinguistics
, which is a mixture of dialectology and social sciences
.
Researchers using direct questionnaires will present the subject with a set of questions that demand a specific answer and are designed to gather either lexical or phonological information. For example, the linguist may ask the subject the name for various items, or ask him or her to repeat certain words.
Indirect questionnaires are typically more open-ended and take longer to complete than direct questionnaires. A researcher using this method will sit down with a subject and begin a conversation on a specific topic. For example, he may question the subject about farm work, food and cooking, or some other subject, and gather lexical and phonological information from the information provided by the subject. The researcher may also begin a sentence, but allow the subject to finish it for him, or ask a question that does not demand a specific answer, such as “What are the most common plants and trees around here?”
and Spanish
cited above. While some native speakers of the two may on occasion enjoy some limited mutual understanding, few people would want to classify Italian and Spanish as dialects of the same language in any sense other than historical. Spanish and Italian are similar, but phonology
, syntax
, morphology
, and lexicon
are sufficiently distinct that the two cannot be considered dialects of the same language.
tongue. An example of this is Sanskrit
, which was considered the proper way to speak in northern India, but only accessible by the upper class, and Prakrit
which was the common (and informal or vernacular
) speech at the time.
Varying degrees of diglossia are still common in many societies around the world.
-German
dialect continuum, a vast network of dialects with two recognized literary standards. Although mutual intelligibility between standard Dutch
and standard German
is very limited, a chain of dialects connects them. Due to several centuries of influence by standard languages (especially in Northern Germany
, where even today the original dialects struggle to survive) there are now many breaks in intelligibility between geographically adjacent dialects along the continuum, but in the past these breaks were virtually nonexistent.
The Romance languages—Galician
/Portuguese
, Spanish
, Sicilian
, Catalan
, Occitan/Provençal, French
, Sardinian
, Romanian
, Romansh, Friulan, other Italian
, French, and Ibero-Romance dialects, and others—form another well-known continuum, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
In both areas—the Germanic linguistic continuum, the Romance linguistic continuum—the relational notion of the term dialect is often vastly misunderstood, and today gives rise to considerable difficulties in implementation of European Union directives regarding support of minority languages. Perhaps this is no more evident than in Italy, where still today some of the population use their local language (dialetto 'dialect') as the primary means of communication at home and, to varying lesser extent, the workplace. Difficulties arise due to terminological confusion. The languages conventionally referred to as Italian dialects
are Romance sister languages of Italian, not variants of Italian, which are commonly and properly called italiano regionale ('regional Italian'). The label Italian dialect as conventionally used is more geopolitical in aptness of meaning rather than linguistic: Bolognese and Neapolitan, for example, are termed Italian dialects, yet resemble each other less than do Italian and Spanish. Misunderstandings ensue if "Italian dialect" is taken to mean 'dialect of Italian' rather than 'minority language spoken on Italian soil', i.e. part of the network of the Romance linguistic continuum. The indigenous Romance language of Venice, for example, is cognate with Italian, but quite distinct from the national language in phonology
, morphology
, syntax
, and lexicon
, and in no way a derivative or a variety of the national language. Venetian
can be said to be an Italian dialect both geographically and typologically, but it is not a dialect of Italian.
forms. An example is Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani
, which encompasses two main standard varieties, Urdu
and Hindi
. Another example is Norwegian, with Bokmål
having developed closely with Danish and Swedish, and Nynorsk
as a partly reconstructed language based on old dialects. Both are recognized as official languages in Norway.
In a sense, the set of dialects can be understood as being part of a single diasystem
, an abstraction that each dialect is part of. In generative phonology, the differences can be acquired through rules. An example can be taken with Occitan (a cover term for a set of related varieties of Southern France) where 'cavaL' (from late Latin *caballu-, 'horse') is the diasystemic form for the following realizations.
This conceptual approach may be used in practical situations. For instance when such a diasystem is identified, it can be used construct a diaphonemic orthography that emphasizes the commonalities between the varieties. Such a goal may or may not fit with sociopolitical preferences.
terms of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache, words that are not (yet) loaded with political, cultural, or emotional connotations.
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
, a sub-field of sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
. It studies variations in language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation.
Dialectologists are ultimately concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to regional areas. Thus they usually deal with populations that have lived in certain areas for generations, but also with migrant groups that bring their languages to new areas (see language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
).
Commonly studied concepts in dialectology include the problem of mutual intelligibility
Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
in defining languages and dialects; situations of diglossia
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
, where two dialects are used for different functions; dialect continua
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
including a number of partially mutually intelligible dialects; and pluricentrism
Pluricentric language
A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not, or did not, coincide.-English:...
, where what is essentially a single genetic language exists as two or more standard varieties.
William Labov
William Labov
William Labov born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics...
is one of the most prominent researchers in this field.
History
Dialect studies began in the latter half of the 19th century. The idea of dialect studies began in 1876, by Georg WenkerGeorg Wenker
Georg Wenker was a German linguist who began documenting German dialect geography during the late nineteenth century. He is considered a pioneer in this field and has contributed several groundbreaking publications, most notably, the Deutscher Sprachatlas.- Biography :Georg Wenker was born in...
, who sent postal questionnaires out over Northern Germany. These postal questionnaires contained a list of sentences written in Standard German. These sentences were then transcribed into the local dialect, reflecting dialectal differences. Many studies proceeded from this, and over the next century dialect studies were carried out all over the world. Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright (linguist)
Joseph Wright FBA was an English philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University.-Early life:...
produced the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary
English Dialect Dictionary
English Dialect Dictionary is a dictionary of English language dialects, compiled by Joseph Wright.The English Dialect Dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications of the...
in 1905.
Traditional studies in Dialectology were generally aimed at producing dialect maps, whereby imaginary lines were drawn over a map to indicate different dialect areas. The move away from traditional methods of language study however caused linguists to become more concerned with social factors. Dialectologists therefore began to study social, as well as regional variation. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States (1930s) was amongst the first dialect studies to take social factors into account.
In the 1950s, the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
undertook the Survey of English Dialects
Survey of English Dialects
The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Professor Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. It aimed to collect the full range of speech in England and Wales before local differences were to disappear...
, which focused mostly on rural speech in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and the eastern areas of Wales.
This shift in interest consequently saw the birth of Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
, which is a mixture of dialectology and social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
.
Methods of data collection
Dialect researchers typically use questionnaires to gather data on the dialect they are researching. There are two main types of questionnaires; direct and indirect.Researchers using direct questionnaires will present the subject with a set of questions that demand a specific answer and are designed to gather either lexical or phonological information. For example, the linguist may ask the subject the name for various items, or ask him or her to repeat certain words.
Indirect questionnaires are typically more open-ended and take longer to complete than direct questionnaires. A researcher using this method will sit down with a subject and begin a conversation on a specific topic. For example, he may question the subject about farm work, food and cooking, or some other subject, and gather lexical and phonological information from the information provided by the subject. The researcher may also begin a sentence, but allow the subject to finish it for him, or ask a question that does not demand a specific answer, such as “What are the most common plants and trees around here?”
Mutual intelligibility
Some have attempted to distinguish dialects from languages by saying that dialects of the same language are understandable to each other. The untenable nature of blunt application of this criterion is demonstrated by the case of ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
cited above. While some native speakers of the two may on occasion enjoy some limited mutual understanding, few people would want to classify Italian and Spanish as dialects of the same language in any sense other than historical. Spanish and Italian are similar, but phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, and lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
are sufficiently distinct that the two cannot be considered dialects of the same language.
Diglossia
Another problem occurs in the case of diglossia, used to describe a situation in which, in a given society, there are two closely related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacularVernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
tongue. An example of this is Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, which was considered the proper way to speak in northern India, but only accessible by the upper class, and Prakrit
Prakrit
Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
which was the common (and informal or vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
) speech at the time.
Varying degrees of diglossia are still common in many societies around the world.
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum is a network of dialects in which geographically adjacent dialects are mutually comprehensible, but with comprehensibility steadily decreasing as distance between the dialects increases. An example is the DutchDutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
-German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
dialect continuum, a vast network of dialects with two recognized literary standards. Although mutual intelligibility between standard Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
and standard German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
is very limited, a chain of dialects connects them. Due to several centuries of influence by standard languages (especially in Northern Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where even today the original dialects struggle to survive) there are now many breaks in intelligibility between geographically adjacent dialects along the continuum, but in the past these breaks were virtually nonexistent.
The Romance languages—Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
/Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Sicilian
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Occitan/Provençal, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Sardinian
Sardinian
Sardinian can refer to:* Sardinia* Sardinian people* Sardinian language* Sardinian...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, Romansh, Friulan, other Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, French, and Ibero-Romance dialects, and others—form another well-known continuum, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
In both areas—the Germanic linguistic continuum, the Romance linguistic continuum—the relational notion of the term dialect is often vastly misunderstood, and today gives rise to considerable difficulties in implementation of European Union directives regarding support of minority languages. Perhaps this is no more evident than in Italy, where still today some of the population use their local language (dialetto 'dialect') as the primary means of communication at home and, to varying lesser extent, the workplace. Difficulties arise due to terminological confusion. The languages conventionally referred to as Italian dialects
Italian dialects
Dialects of Italian are regional varieties of the Italian language, more commonly and more accurately referred to as Regional Italian. The dialects have features, most notably phonological and lexical, percolating from the underlying substrate languages...
are Romance sister languages of Italian, not variants of Italian, which are commonly and properly called italiano regionale ('regional Italian'). The label Italian dialect as conventionally used is more geopolitical in aptness of meaning rather than linguistic: Bolognese and Neapolitan, for example, are termed Italian dialects, yet resemble each other less than do Italian and Spanish. Misunderstandings ensue if "Italian dialect" is taken to mean 'dialect of Italian' rather than 'minority language spoken on Italian soil', i.e. part of the network of the Romance linguistic continuum. The indigenous Romance language of Venice, for example, is cognate with Italian, but quite distinct from the national language in phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, and lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
, and in no way a derivative or a variety of the national language. Venetian
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
can be said to be an Italian dialect both geographically and typologically, but it is not a dialect of Italian.
Pluricentrism
A pluricentric language is a single genetic language that has two or more standardStandard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
forms. An example is Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani
Hindustani language
Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan. It is also known as Hindustani , and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta...
, which encompasses two main standard varieties, Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
. Another example is Norwegian, with Bokmål
Bokmål
Bokmål is one of two official Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85–90% of the population in Norway, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language....
having developed closely with Danish and Swedish, and Nynorsk
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
as a partly reconstructed language based on old dialects. Both are recognized as official languages in Norway.
In a sense, the set of dialects can be understood as being part of a single diasystem
Diasystem
In the field of structural dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar is an analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties...
, an abstraction that each dialect is part of. In generative phonology, the differences can be acquired through rules. An example can be taken with Occitan (a cover term for a set of related varieties of Southern France) where 'cavaL' (from late Latin *caballu-, 'horse') is the diasystemic form for the following realizations.
- Languedocien dialect: caval [kaβal] (L > [l], sometimes velar, used concurrently with French borrowed forms chival or chivau);
- Limousine dialect: chavau [tʃavau] (ca > cha and -L > -u);
- Provençal dialect: cavau [kavau] (-L > -u, used concurrently with French borrowed forms chival or chivau);
- Gascon dialect: cavath [kawat] (final -L > [t], sometimes palatalized, and used concurrently with French borrowed forms chibau)
- Auvergnat and Vivaro-alpine dialects: chaval [tʃaval] (same treatment of ca cluster as in Limousine dialect)
This conceptual approach may be used in practical situations. For instance when such a diasystem is identified, it can be used construct a diaphonemic orthography that emphasizes the commonalities between the varieties. Such a goal may or may not fit with sociopolitical preferences.
The Ausbausprache — Abstandsprache — Dachsprache framework
One analytical paradigm developed by linguists is known as the Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework. It has proved popular among linguists in Continental Europe, but is not so well known in English-speaking countries, especially among people who are not trained linguists. Although only one of many possible paradigms, it has the advantage of being constructed by trained linguists for the particular purpose of analyzing and categorizing varieties of speech, and has the additional merit of replacing such loaded words as "language" and "dialect" with the GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
terms of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache, words that are not (yet) loaded with political, cultural, or emotional connotations.