Linguistic Items

1
Linguistic Items

• Linguistic Items
• vocabulary (lexical items, or lexemes)
• sound-pattern (sound)
• larger syntactic patterns (constructions)
• Different linguistic items in the same language
  can have quite different social distribution (in
  terms of speakers and circumstances).

2
Varieties of language

• The flexibility of the term variety
• 1. French, German, and Italian in Swiss or
  Chinese, Malaysian, Tamil, and English in
  Singapore
• 2. Ebonics (African) in the USA Cockney (cockney
  rhyming slang London slang dictionary) in
  Britain Geordie (Newcastle English (Geordie)) in
  Britain

3
Speech Community

• A speech community is a group of people who speak
  a common dialect. However, the linguists know
  that there is really no such thing as a pure
  dialect spoken by a particular ethnic group or by
  people from just one perfectly definable region.
• Example your handout(Untitled Document)

4
Language Language and dialect

• The delimitation of language and dialect
• 1. Size
• 2. Prestige
• 3. Mutual intelligibility
• In terms of the second criterion (prestige), only
  a standard language can be called a language.
• (the right and wrong views in your
  handoutUntitled Document)

5
The family tree model

• The family tree model clarifies the historical
  relations among the varieties concerned, and in
  particular that it gives a clear idea of the
  relative chronology of the historical changes by
  which the varieties concerned have
  diverged.Lynch, Indo-European Language Family Tree

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The family tree model

• The disadvantage of the family tree model
• 1. Showing only vertical descendant
  (subclassification) but not horizontal influence
  (cross-classification)
• 2. only represents a gross simplification of the
  relations between varieties

7
The family tree model

• Disadvantage
• 3.

8
Regional dialects and Isoglosses

• Regional dialects
• 1. Taiwan I-Lang??
• 2. German dialect variety http//lingvo.info/lf/g
  ermana.php?/lingvoen
• Isogloss a boundary line between places or
  regions that differs a particular linguistic
  item.
• Example Map 2.1 (Isoglosses intersect with each
  other.)

9
Isogloss and the wave theory

• The analogy between isogloss intersection and the
  wave (ripple)

10
Isoglosses and the wave theory

• The weakness of the analogy
• Not like the ripples, the waves of linguistic
  influence may freeze and stop expanding
• Another analogy different species of plants sown
  in a field, each spreading outwards by dispersing
  its seeds over a particular area (see Another
  analogy.doc)

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Ways of classifying dialects

• Geography
• 1. pail v.s. bucket
• 2. farm fam v.s. farm farm
• 3. Talk t lk v.s. talk talk Sociolinguistics
  Resources Dialect Map ("talk")
• 4. bought b t v.s. bought bat
  Sociolinguistics Resources Dialect Map ("bought")

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Ways of classifying dialects

• Ethnicity
• May be geography related (e.g., Pennsylvania
  Dutch) or not (African American Vernacular
  English, AAVE or Ebonics)

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Ways of classifying dialects

• Social class
• Example
• 1. Received Pronunciation (RP) in Britain
  Received Pronunciation - Wikipedia, the free
  encyclopedia
• 2. The Boston Brahmin dialect in the USA Boston
  Brahmin
• 3. R-lessness in New York City Ways of
  classifying dialects

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Ways of classifying dialects

• Gender
• Japanese
• Age
• Youth sub-cultural group youth.doc

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Grammatical aspects of language variation

• Phonetic Variation
• In the New York City dialects dental ?t?
• In standard dialects of American English
  alveolar?t?

16
Grammatical aspects of language variation

• Phonological Variation
• In some African American dialects, the Cr and Cl
  (C stands for consonant) are prohibited in
  unstressed syllables.
• So professor is professor
• credentials is cedentials
• ? in Mandarin and Taiwanese

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Grammatical aspects of language variation

• Morphological variation
• In northern England and Southern Wales
• I likes him.
• We walks all the time.

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Grammatical aspects of language variation

• Semantic variation
• knocked up in English English and American
  English
• English Usage in the UK and USA

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Grammatical aspects of language variation

• Syntactic variation
• In many Southern dialects in the USA done as
  an auxiliary
• She done already told you.
• Double modals I might could do it.

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WEBSITE

• Canadian English Canadian

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Assignment 2

• Choose two varieties of a languages (for example
  ?? in Taiwan and ??? in China ?? and ?? in
  Taiwan ,,,) and try to analyze what factor (or
  factors) can explain for this variation. Then
  give examples in the aspects of phonetic,
  phonology, syntax, morphology, and semantics to
  illustrate the variations between these two
  varieties.