Cornelia Neubert

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Dialectology Accents, Dialects Languages
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Dialectology the study of dialects

• Commonly thought
• Substandard form of a language
• Form of language, spoken in isolated parts
• No written form
• Deviation from the norm
• BUT
• All speakers are speakers of at least one dialect!

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Dialect an approach
Subdivisions of a particular language e.g.
Bavarian dialect of German Yorkshire
dialect of English Damascene dialect of
Arabic But how can a language be distinguished
from a dialect?
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Language an approach

• Collection of mutually intelligible dialects
• Mutual intelligibility dependent on
• Degree of education
• Listeners degree of exposure to another
  language
• Willingness to understand

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Language, dialect and accent

• Language is equally a
• political,
• historical,
• sociological,
• cultural and
• linguistic notion.
• Language has an army and a navy.

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Language, dialect and accent

• Variety is any particular kind of language which,
  for some purpose, is considered as a single
  entity
• Saxon German
• Chemnitz German
• Northern Irish English
• Belfast English
• working class Parisian French

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Language, dialect and accent

• Accent is the way in which a speaker pronounces
  words.
• It refers to a variety which is phonetically
  and/or phonologically different from other
  varieties.

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Language, dialect and accent

• Dialect refers to varieties which are
  grammatically (and perhaps lexically) and
  phonologically different from other varieties.
• I done it last night.
• I did it last night.

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Geographical dialect continuum

• Dialects on the outer edge of a geographical area
  may not be mutually intelligible, but they are
  linked by a chain of mutual intelligibility.
• The greater the geographical distance the greater
  the difficulty in comprehension.
• gt cumulative

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Geographical dialect continuum
West Romance dialect continuum (French, Italian,
Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese) Scandinavian
dialect continuum (Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian) West Germanic Continuum (German,
Dutch, Flemish) North Slavic dialect
continuum (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech,
Slovak)
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Social dialect continuum

• Linguistic history of Jamaica
• Highest class Its my book. English
• /??s ma? b?k/ Dialect
• Intermediate /?z ma? b?k/ Conti-
• Classes /?z m? b?k/
  nu-
• /a m? b?k dat/ um
• Lowest class /a f? m? b?k dat/ Deepest
  Creole
• The range between pure English to the deepest
  Creole forms the social dialect continuum.

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Autonomy and heteronomy
The Netherlands Germany
Dutch
German
with Dutch dialects
with German dialects
West Germanic dialect continuum
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Autonomy and heteronomy

• Formerly Danish region of Sweden

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Autonomy and heteronomy
----- pre-1658 post-1658 Scandinavian
dialect continuum
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Dialect geography

• The impetus
• Until the 2nd half of the 19th century the
  characterization of dialect areas were casual and
  intuitive
• Neogrammarians began to search for general
  principles of language changes
• Verners Law (Vernersches Gesetz) Every
  phonological change is rule-governed
• Hypothesis of the Ausnahmslosigkeit der
  Lautgesetze (sound changes are exceptionless)
• Result Development of dialect geography, a
  methodology for the systematic gathering of
  dialect differences

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History of dialect geography

• 1876 Georg Wenker sending 50,000 questionnaires
  with standard German expressions to German
  schools with the request of the transcription
  into the local dialect.
• 1881 Result Sprachatlas des Deutsches Reiches,
  
• the very first linguistic atlas published
• 1896 Jules Gilliéron hired the fieldworker
  Edmond Edmont, who recorded 700 interviews at 639
  sites
• 1902 1910 thirteen volumes on dialects in
  France
• 1940 Sprachatlas und Sachatlas des Italiens und
  der Südschweiz
• 1962 1978 Survey of English Dialects (SED)

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History of dialect geography

• 1930 Funding of the Linguistic Atlas of the
  United
• States and Canada training of
  field workers
• 1939 1943 Linguistic Atlas of New England
• 1949 Word Geography of the Eastern United
  States
• 1953 A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern
  United
• States
• 1961 Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic
  States
• 1973 1976 The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper
  Midwest
• Since 1985 Dictionary of American Regional
  English -
• DARE (2002 Vol. IV, P-SK)

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Bibliography
Chambers,J. K. and Trudgill, P. 1993.
Dialectology. Cambridge University
Press. Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. Neunzehnte
Auflage. F.A. Brockhaus GmbH. Encyclopaedia
Britannica. 2005. http//de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh
ibboleth http//polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.h
tml