DIALECTS ACROSS BORDERS
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin) Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City); Sheila Embleton (Toronto) Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin); E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.) Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)
Volume 273
Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä (eds.) Dialects Across Borders Selected papers from the th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, Finland, August 2002
DIALECTS ACROSS BORDERS SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON METHODS IN DIALECTOLOGY (METHODS XI), JOENSUU, AUGUST 2002
Edited by
MARKKU FILPPULA University of Joensuu
JUHANI KLEMOLA University of Tampere
MARJATTA PALANDER University of Joensuu
ESA PENTTILÄ
University of Joensuu
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dialects Across Borders : Selected papers from the th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002 / edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 273) Includes bibliographical references and index. . Dialectology--Methodology--Congresses. P367 .I49 2005 47/.20--dc22 2005055892 ISBN 90 272 4787 0 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2005 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 2759 • Philadelphia PA 98-059 • USA
CONTENTS Introduction
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PART I: Dialects across political and historical borders
1
The construction of linguistic borders and the linguistic construction of borders Peter Auer
3
Static spatial relations in German and Romance: Towards a cognitive dialectology of posture verbs and locative adverbials Raphael Berthele
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Ingressive particles across borders: Gender and discourse parallels across the North Atlantic Sandra Clarke and Gunnel Melchers
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On the development of the consonant system in Mennonite Low German (Plautdietsch) Larissa Naiditch
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English dialects in the British Isles in cross-variety perspective: A base-line for future research Sali Tagliamonte, Jennifer Smith and Helen Lawrence
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PART II: Dialects across social and regional borders
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Dialects across internal frontiers: Some cognitive boundaries Dennis R. Preston
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On ‘dative sickness’ and other linguistic diseases in modern Icelandic Finnur Friđriksson
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Can we find more variety in variation? Ronald Macaulay
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Pronunciation of /i/ in avant-garde Dutch: A cross-sex acoustic study Vincent J. van Heuven, Renée van Bezooijen and Loulou Edelman
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A tale of two dialects: Relativization in Newcastle and Sheffield Joan C. Beal and Karen P. Corrigan
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PART III: Dialects across language boundaries
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Crossing grammatical borders: Tracing the path of contact-induced linguistic change Ruth King
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The after-perfect in Irish English Patricia Ronan
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Dialect history in black and white: Are two colors enough? J. L. Dillard
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Index of languages and dialects Subject index
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INTRODUCTION
Until fairly recently, the word ‘dialect’ carried the connotation of being something antiquated and having low social status. The situation is now very different: along with the general rise of language awareness in modern societies, nonstandard varieties of languages have become an object of new interest, which in turn is reflected in their generally improved position even in educational systems. A similar change has taken place in scholarly research on dialects. This is partly due to the recent advances in the methods used in dialectological research. The advent of computer-assisted methods has enabled study of significantly larger databases than in traditional dialectological research. Also, methods derived from sociolinguistic and variation studies have greatly added to the general interest of dialect studies and distanced them even further from the ‘butterfly collecting’ mentality often associated with traditional dialectology. New language-theoretical frameworks form yet another source of inspiration for dialect studies today: typology, cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics have provided fresh perspectives on old problems and opened up completely new lines of research such as cognitive dialectology, folk linguistics, and perceptional dialectology. The articles in this volume arise from The Eleventh International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), which was held from 5 to 9 August 2002, at the University of Joensuu, North Karelia, Finland. The special theme for Methods XI was “Dialects across borders”. This theme was chosen because it accords well with the nature of North Karelia as a historical border area between two states and two different linguistic and cultural traditions. As can be seen from the selection of contributions included in this volume, various kinds of borders exert major influence on linguistic behaviour all over the world. The articles have been grouped according to whether they deal primarily with the linguistic outcomes of political and historical borders between states (Part I); various kinds of social and regional boundaries, including borders in a metaphorical sense, i.e. social barriers and mental or cognitive boundaries (Part II); and finally, boundaries between languages (Part III). In the first five articles, grouped under the heading of “Dialects across political and historical borders”, the main concern is the effects of political and historical borders on dialects. This chapter opens with Peter Auer’s article on “The construction of linguistic borders and the linguistic construction of
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borders”. Using the German language area as his example, Auer discusses the complex links between the nation-state and geographical space, on the one hand, and the relationship between these two and dialectal variation (or continua), on the other. An important aspect of geographical space is that it is not merely a physical phenomenon but a mental one. This idea, which Auer adopts from the early twentieth-century sociologist Georg Simmel, explains why lay persons’ ‘ethnodialectological’ perceptions about dialect boundaries may be adjusted by the existence of present or past political borders. As an example, Auer cites the dialect differences between Swabian and Low Alemannic: southwest German informants treat these as different dialects because of their past political separation, although this is not supported by dialectological facts. The former political border between East and West Germany had led to similar ‘cognitive adjustments’ in the minds of West German informants. At a more general level, the state borders between Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, etc. influence people’ ‘cognitive maps’ and lead to the construction of dialect or language boundaries on the basis of political borders. Auer’s contribution is followed by Raphael Berthele’s article on “Static spatial relations in German and Romance: towards a cognitive dialectology of posture verbs and locative adverbials”, which combines in an interesting way methods used in dialectology and language contact studies with a cognitivelinguistic theoretical framework. Focusing on spatial expressions, he examines the mapping of spatial relational concepts onto syntactic structures in different varieties of German across the German–Swiss border and in the neighbouring Romance languages, including French, Italian, and Romansh. The results suggest that, in the expression of spatial relations, Swiss German and Romansh favour verb phrase constructions consisting of a verb followed by locative prepositional phrase + adverb where the adverb can be said to be semantically redundant. By contrast, in Standard High German, Standard Italian and Standard French this PP+ADV pattern is either rare or non-existent. Instead, these languages use the ‘simple’ prepositional phrase construction. Berthele’s explanation for the distinctive behaviour of Swiss German and Romansh rests on adstratal influences between these languages within the complex contact situation in Switzerland. Third in this group, Sandra Clarke and Gunnel Melchers present an interesting survey of a seldom discussed linguistic feature: pulmonic ingressive articulation. Focusing on ingressive discourse particles, the authors argue that the use of this feature is an areal feature that stretches from the eastern Baltic to the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. Clarke and Melchers suggest that the use of pulmonic ingressive discourse particles has diffused via language
INTRODUCTION
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contact over this geographical area, and as such provides evidence for crosslinguistic transmission of socially and pragmatically determined features, a phenomenon seldom discussed in the dialectological or contact-linguistic literature. In her study, Larissa Naiditch investigates the details behind the development of the consonant system of Mennonite Low German, or Plautdietsch, which is an insular dialect of German spoken by the religious minority of Mennonites. The speakers of this dialect can at present be found in various parts of Siberia, Kazakhstan, the USA, Mexico and Germany. The migrant past of the Mennonite community comes out in the richness of their dialect, since its consonant system has traces from a number of dialects spoken in the areas where this minority has resided in the course of history. In the final article in Part I, Sali Tagliamonte, Jennifer Smith and Helen Lawrence compare evidence from six corpora representing relic areas in the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their aim is to find suitable diagnostic features for establishing historical relationships between New and Old World varieties of English. They argue that while verbal -s seems to be a suitable diagnostic feature, NEG/AUX contraction, for to infinitives, and zero adverbs are more problematic for testing similarities and differences in the Old and New World varieties of English. Furthermore, they suggest that examining the variable constraints on linguistic features that are shared across all varieties offers a fruitful way forward for tracking trans-Atlantic connections between varieties of English. Part II (“Dialects across social and regional boundaries”) opens with Dennis R. Preston’s article on “Dialects across internal frontiers: some cognitive boundaries”, in which he discusses some of the ongoing vowel changes in the urban dialects of the northern cities of the U.S.A. Also known as the Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), these changes have been investigated by Preston and his research team from the points of view of dialectology, sociolinguistics and ‘folk linguistics’ (this last one being inspired by social psychology). Preston’s uses the term sociophonetics to describe this kind of combination of different methods. His research focuses on the productive aspect of speech and on what individual factors are behind the NCCS: how adoption of this group of changes correlates with age, commitment to residence in a given locality, and how the ethnic background and social network relationships of the immigrant speaker affect his linguistic accommodation process. Also interesting from the folk-linguistic point of view are his findings on how capable an individual is 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 of the same change in the speech of others. The effect of
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gender on speakers’ perception of their own dialect area is yet another variable studied by Preston. Next, in his article entitled “On ‘dative sickness’ and other kinds of linguistic diseases in Modern Icelandic”, Finnur Friđriksson writes on a number of changes in the use of some case-inflections (most notably, the dative, accusative and genitive when in subject position) in certain regional and social dialects of Icelandic which have by some researchers been interpreted as a threat to the very stability of the case-inflectional system of the language. Drawing on his own data representing the relevant regional dialects and social groups he, however, seeks to demonstrate that this threat is premature, as the features turn out to be so infrequent that they hardly undermine the stability of the grammatical system of Modern Icelandic. Rather, he sees the whole debate about their alleged spread as something which has originated in the educational system and in the efforts of school teachers to eradicate usages which deviate from the standard. Writing also on social boundaries, Ronald Macaulay explores ways in which the influence of language-external factors upon linguistic variation could be investigated in greater detail than has hitherto been the case in sociolinguistic research. His article, entitled “Can we find more variety in variation?”, is based on data collected from Glasgow English. According to Macaulay, the method of data collection is crucial: special care is needed to ensure that the participants in the communicative situation are on an equal footing; there is no need for an interviewer. Traditional external factors, such as age, gender and social class, should be studied in connection with each other, not as separate factors. Statistical analysis can then be used to discover gender differences within social groups that otherwise do not display significant differences. Furthermore, sociolinguists should look for ‘hidden’ linguistic variables that have not been considered in previous works. Such are, for instance, various discourse features. Fourth in Part II, Vincent J. van Heuven, Renée van Bezooijen and Loulou Edelman present an acoustic analysis of 32 Dutch-speaking guests appearing in a television talk show. They focus on the analysis of the diphthong /i/ in the speech of the speakers representing an emerging ‘avantgarde’ variety of standard Dutch, also known as Polder Dutch. The authors argue that with the help of acoustic measurement procedures they can observe a sound change in progress non-impressionistically and in much more detail than using other methods. From the sociolinguistic point of view, they claim, this new variety of standard Dutch represents yet another instance of the widespread phenomenon of women initiating and leading a linguistic change. Finally in Part II, Joan C. Beal and Karen P. Corrigan discuss regional
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variation of English in a paper which is part of an ongoing, extensive project on northern English dialects. They concentrate on analysing the urban dialects of Tyneside and Sheffield from a morphosyntactic perspective. Their tentative conclusions suggest more fine-grained distinctions between northern dialects than have been found in some previous studies, which are based on only phonological criteria. Part III consists of three articles, all concerned with dialect variation or continua across language boundaries. In her article on grammatical borders, Ruth King addresses the question of linguistic constraints on borrowability in a bilingual setting. Using Preposition Stranding data from Prince Edward Island French, King argues against direct syntactic borrowing from English. Instead, she suggests that her Prince Edward Island data support the primacy of lexical borrowing as the source of syntactic effects in the recipient language. Moving on to another kind of linguistic scene which also involves contacts between two languages, Patricia Ronan focuses on the well-known Irish English after-perfect construction. Ronan examines data based on participant observation and on a corpus of Dublin oral history material compiled by the American sociologist K. 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 grammaticalised to denote ‘hot news’ events, while for others it presents a more general alternative strategy for perfect marking. This volume closes with J. L. Dillard’s article “Dialect history in black and white: are two colours enough?”. This is a critical comment on some recent views on the origins of AAVE. Calling into question the substrate account defended by many linguists, Dillard emphasises the significance of plurilingualism in the historical circumstances surrounding the growth of AAVE. He argues that the West-African slaves of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries interacted more with indigenous Americans than with the Europeans. Consequently, English was not the only influential language in the contact setting; besides indigenous American languages, the Africans got into contacts with settlers representing different Indo-European languages, e.g. in the West Indian Islands. The plurilingual nature of the contact setting should according to Dillard be taken into account when writing the history of AAVE. Finally, we would like to thank all those people who were involved in the preparation of this volume. Our special thanks go to scholars who acted as referees for the articles submitted for this volume: Angela Bartens, Walter Chichocki, Helena Halmari, Brian Head, Raymond Hickey, Pekka Hirvonen, Heikki Hurtta, Neil G. Jacobs, Kaisu Juusela, Bernhard Kelle, William A. Kretzschmar, Kaija Kuiri, Ulla-Maija Kulonen, Timo Lauttamus, Tapani
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Lehtinen, Marja Leinonen, Matti Leiwo, Daniel Long, Kevin McCafferty, Natalie Maynor, Anneli Meurman-Solin, Terttu Nevalainen, Jussi Niemi, Pirkko Nuolijärvi, Patricia Poussa, Heinrich Ramisch, Ilkka Savijärvi, Muusa Savijärvi, Lea Siilin, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Irma Taavitsainen, Kalaya Tingsabadh, Clive Upton, and Maria Vilkuna. We are also grateful to those who provided us with other kinds of assistance: to Prof. Christopher Hall for his translation of Larissa Naiditch’s article from German to English; to Prof. Stefan Werner for various kinds of editorial and technical assistance; to Mr Mika Saarelainen of the Joensuu University Press for his help with maps; and last but not least, to Ms Minna Korhonen for her invaluable editorial contribution to the preparation of this volume, its layout and the index.
Joensuu and Tampere, October 2005 Markku Filppula Juhani Klemola Marjatta Palander Esa Penttilä
PART I Dialects across political and historical borders
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LINGUISTIC BORDERS AND THE LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF BORDERS PETER AUER Universität Freiburg 1.
Introduction In the relationship between geographical space, language variation, and the (European) nation-state, space and language appear to be trivially linked; in fact, a whole sub-discipline of linguistics (that of dialectology) construes its professional identity around the assumption that languages vary in geographical space. The link between the nation-state and geographical space appears just as natural — there are no nations without a territory. But unlike dialectologists, political scientists, sociologists and others who have investigated the emergence of the European nation-states have given this link a considerable amount of theoretical reflection (starting with Simmel 1903 [1995]). This suggests that this link — and perhaps that between language and space as well — is not as natural as it may look at first sight. But how are dialectal variation and the nation-state related to each other? Empirically, the question becomes relevant as soon as we look at dialect continua across national borders. I will turn to this in Section 4. However, there may also be a more ideological relationship between the two; after all, the origins of systematic dialect geography go back to the late 19th century, the very same time when nationalist thinking reached a climax in Europe. At first glance, the coincidence seems to be purely coincidental, for dialectology was at the time, and continues to be, interested in (areal, diatopic) diversity; as such, it would hardly seem to be able to contribute to the ideological construction of a geographically bounded nation state. But at a second look, it becomes apparent that early dialectology and the nation-state had some common interests (as will be shown in Section 2). I will try to develop my arguments using examples from German, not because they uniquely apply to this language area (and the German nationstate), but because the German language area is rich in examples of political (nation state) borders cutting across dialect continua. At least the following types can be distinguished:
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the German standard language (with small differences) may be one or the only standard language used, and dialects of German are spoken, on both sides of the border (as between Switzerland/Germany, Austria/South Tyrol and Austria/Germany); a Germanic dialect continuum may be ‘roofed’ by a structurally relatively distant (exoglossic) standard variety on one side of the border and by standard German on the other (this is, cum grano salis, the case of the border between Germany and the Alsace/France); or, a Germanic dialect continuum may be roofed by different (endoglossic) Germanic standard varieties, as at the state border between the Netherlands and Germany, but also between Luxembourg and Germany (Letzebuergish is one of the standard languages used in Luxembourg 1 ).
Dialectology and the nation-state: ideological connections The 19th century saw the triumph of the nation-state, on the one hand, and of the establishment of dialect geography, on the other. In Germany, the link between the two was established in the late 19th century with the foundation of a national dialect atlas (the famous Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs), which from 1888 on was a state-financed project directly approved of by the government in Berlin. (The literal and metaphorical owner of the atlas was the Prussian ministry of education. With its nationalisation, and following the wish of the ministry, not of its director Georg Wenker, the reach of the atlas was extended to the total territory of the German state.) This raises the question of whether there was a common ideology shared by the nation-state and dialect geography which suggested this kind of cooperation. I would like to suggest that this ideological affinity consisted (among other things) of a (at the time) new and sharpened interest in geographical space in general, and in the boundedness of geographical spaces (i.e. in ‘borders’) in particular. 2 We know, for example, that Georg Wenker, the founder of the Sprachatlas, was determined to detect dialect borders at the start of his project; he thought that dialect areas were set off against each other in a clear-cut way (although this expectation was quickly disappointed when he did his first maps of the Rhineland). 3 To the present day, many dialectologists use maps on which
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French and German are used as (written) standard languages as well. There were other points of collaboration which moved into the foreground in the 1920s and 30s; in particular, the atlas was able and wanted to prove that the German “language islands” outside the German-speaking territory were ‘rooted’ in the dialects spoken in Germany itself. 3 Contrary to what many textbooks say, it was this geographical interest much more than the theoretical debate around the Neogrammarian idea that phonetic rules have no lexical 2
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LINGUISTIC BORDERS
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dialect areas are delimited against each other like state territories are delimited against each other on political maps. 4 Thus, the standard map of the German dialects which goes back to the Deutscher Sprachatlas and has been reproduced again and again, is the one in Figure 1 — this version being taken from Niebaum and Macha (1999: 193). Dialect boundaries cut the German language area into sections in a complete and exhaustive way, and without internal differentiations, just as in a political map. In reality, of course, dialect spaces are not organised like this.
Figure 1: The German dialects around 1900 (from Niebaum & Macha 1999: 193).
restrictions (as one may re-formulate their ‘exceptionless sound laws’) which motivated Wenker; cf. Wenker (1886: 190). 4 Transition areas came much later.
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But even when dialect areas were not treated as sharply delimited from each other, the keen interest in borders was (and partly continues to be) at the heart of dialectological thinking: isoglosses, i.e. dividing lines between single feature realisations in geographical space, are a good example of this. In the classical books on (German) dialectology (such as Bach 11934, 31969), isoglosses are described as physically real phenomena when they are stable, like contour lines on a geographical map referring to points of equal height. (When they change, they are described like battle lines which recede or advance in a certain territory. While the geographical metaphor suggests perfect isomorphy with some kind of physical reality, the metaphor of the battle lines suggests impermeability and solidity; a battle line which dissolves means defeat.) It is important to note here that the interest in geographical space and the interest in borders are not the same. There are ways to think about geographical space which do not focus on boundaries, such as, for instance, the centre/periphery model. Ethnodialectological (folk) representations of dialect space are usually structured according to this latter model, with more or less prototypical core areas and indeterminate outer limits. Some typical folk maps of the dialects of Germany are reproduced as Figures 2 and 3.
Figures 2 and 3: Folk-dialectological maps of the dialects of Germany, drawn by two informants from Bocholt (from Stegger 2000).
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The designated dialect areas do not cover the area of Germany exhaustively but rather omit certain areas (often in the middle). Frequently, a large city is taken to be the centre of a dialect, as can be seen in Figures 4 and 5, cumulative representations of the Bavarian ethnodialectology as drawn by informants (students) from Dresden (Saxony), and Detmold (in northwest Germany, close to the Dutch border). For both groups of informants, the radiation centre of Bavarian is Munich. The city is included into the Bavarian dialect space by all informants; the borders of folk Bavarian, however, differ quite considerably among these informants.
Figure 4: Ethnodialectological maps of Bavarian, as drawn by 20 informants from Dresden; shadings refer to degrees of overlap (from Stegger 2000).
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Figure 5: Ethnodialectological map of Bavarian, as drawn by 20 informants from Bocholt; shadings refer to degrees of overlap (from Stegger 2000).
Contrary to these folk dialectologists, professional dialect geographers developed a keen interest in spatial boundedness; and the prevalent nationalist discourse all over Europe was equally interested in the borders of the nations (which of course, according to this discourse, ought to be the borders of the states). As an example, one may think of the fixation of Germans and French on the river Rhine as their state border (Wacht am Rhein), or of Hofmann von Fallersleben’s text for the later German national anthem, the first verse of which lists the boundaries of the German nation (Etsch, Belt, Maas, Memel) in order to claim its unity. As Anderson (1983 [21991: 19]) points out, this was a new way of looking at state borders: the pre-national “dynastic model” did not imply a kind of sovereignty which was “fully, flatly, and evenly operative over each square centimetre of a legally demarcated territory”, but rather, these
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“states were defined by centres, borders were porous and indistinct, and sovereignties faded imperceptibly into one another”. 5 But did the borders of the German nation-state coincide with the language border on the dialectological map? A look at Figure 1 makes clear that the fit was far from perfect: on the one hand, there was (and continues to be) at least one non-Germanic enclave within the German language area, i.e. Sorbian; on the other hand, the German dialects partly transgressed the state borders of Germany at 1900 (for instance, into Czechia), partly they included non-German speaking populations (for instance, in East Prussia or the Lorraine). In this sense, the linguistic borders did not lend support to the existing state borders. However, the argument could be turned around. The misalliance of language and state territory could be used in the framework of nationalist thinking to argue for a ‘correction’ of the state borders, i.e. an extension of the German state. This argument became more and more popular after the first World War, when Germany lost territory both in the east and in the west, and thus excluded many more speakers of German than it included speakers of other languages in the border areas. The argument was not alien to some of the Sprachatlas dialectologists, either. When the ‘correction’ of the borders became reality in the war, Walther Mitzka, then the director of the Sprachatlas and professor at the university of Marburg (and a member of the Nazi party) from 1933 onwards, propagated German settlements in the occupied Slavic territories with the argument that the German dialects would be instrumental in the Germanification of the Slavs who would give up their languages because of the superiority of German (“sprachliche Raumgewinnung”; cf. Mitzka (1941) and (1943/44)). 6 Consequently, the dialect map which Mitzka published in his textbook on dialectology in 1943 is quite different from the traditional one in Figure 1.
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He refers to the house of Habsburg as the prototypical representative of the dynastic idea of the state. 6 In his yet unpublished PhD thesis on the Sprachatlas during the Nazi period, Wilking (1998: 138) comes to the following conclusion: “(Es) besteht kein Zweifel, daß Mitzka mit seinem Beitrag die Absicht hatte, Hitlers außenpolitisches Programm zu legitimieren” (‘there can be no doubt that Mitzke intended to legitimize Hitler’s foreign policy with his contribution’). But he also points out in a detailed analysis of many sources, that Mitzka’s concept of the Germanification of the Slavic east through language was naive compared to reality: the Nazi government and the SS had no intention to assimilate the occupied territories, they rather intended to reduce them to slavery.
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Figure 6: The German dialects according to Mitzka (1943).
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There are many striking changes: the Dutch language area has now become part of Low German; West Prussia (formerly Slavic: Kashubic) has become incorporated into the German language area; the Slavic areas in the Lausitz (Sorbian) but also in the southern part of East Prussia (Mazurian) have disappeared; language islands are now only found in Hungary but no longer (or at least not in a clear representation) in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia, where an uninterrupted German language area has taken over. The most striking fact on this map is that the German language area is not externally bounded — it seems to be potentially expansive in every direction. Very clearly, this war map reflects and ideologically supports the military expansion of Nazi Germany. By and large, however, the nationalist discourse focused on the national standard language, not on the traditional dialects. In summary, it rested on the equation one (standard) language = one nation = one territory = one state. Anderson (1983) has argued that the “imagined community” of a nation depended to an important degree on the codification of a unifying and unified standard variety and on the spread of its acceptance (which must not be equated with mastery) over the totality of the territory associated with the nation by means of a certain technology, i.e. printing. Anderson referred to the spread of a written standard variety, but it can be argued that the full penetration of modern society by the nation-state is in an important way linked to the spread of a spoken standard as well. This spoken standard was not available as a unifying force in many European nation states before the late 19th century when compulsory schooling was established and brought not only the written but also the spoken language to even the remotest areas of the national territory — and to the speakers of the remotest dialects (cf. Auer, in press). All this is well known, but it needs to be remembered in the context of a discussion of linguistic divergence at political boundaries. Since the nationstate equated nation, language and territory, it located the standard language in geographical space — it territorialised language. 3.
Towards a theory of space in dialectology Space as constitutive of the nationalist discourse of the 19th century has been given a brilliant analysis by Georg Simmel in an essay written in 1903 on the Soziologie des Raums (‘sociology of space’). In many ways, the arguments he develops for the relationship between the nation-state and space can also be applied to the relationship between geographical space and (national standard) languages. The central point in Simmel’s text is that in modern societies (nation-states), the state (and, as we can add, the standard language) becomes
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associated with a geographical area in a unique and exclusive way; the area belongs to these institutions, and it is neither possible to think of the institution without a territory 7 nor to imagine two institutions of a kind in the same territory. As a consequence, no more than one nation (and no more than one standard language) can ‘occupy’ a territory, and no nation (and no standard language) is conceivable without a territory. 8 This view, when applied to the standard language, explains why in the nationalist ideology, the Hochsprache ‘roofs’ the totality of the state-territory; it is no longer a medially (written language) nor a regionally bound variety (such as that of the ‘educated people’ in the capital, as the standard language was often defined in previous times), but evenly distributed over the area. The state borders thereby become identical with the boundaries of a standard language. At the heart of Simmel’s theory is the idea that space is not a physical phenomenon, but a mental one: Nicht die Form räumlicher Nähe oder Distanz schafft die besonderen Erscheinungen der Nachbarschaft oder Fremdheit, so unabweislich dies scheinen mag. Vielmehr sind auch dies rein durch seelische Inhalte erzeugte Tatsachen [...]. In dem Erfordernis spezifisch seelischer Funktionen für die einzelnen geschichtlichen Raumgestaltungen spiegelt es sich, daß der Raum überhaupt nur eine Tätigkeit der Seele ist, nur die menschliche Art, an sich unverbundene Sinnesaffektionen zu einheitlichen Anschauungen zu verbinden. (1995: 133, 9 emphasis P.A.)
And, with reference to borders: Wenn dieser Allgemeinbegriff des gegenseitigen Begrenzens von der räumlichen Grenze hergenommen ist, so ist doch, tiefer greifend, dieser letztere nur die Kristallisierung oder Verräumlichung der allein wirklichen seelischen Begrenzungsprozesse. Nicht die Länder [...] begrenzen einander; sondern die Einwohner [...]. Ist sie ((die Grenze, P.A.)) freilich erst zu einem räumlich-sinnlichen Gebilde geworden, das wir unabhängig von seinem soziologisch-praktischen Sinne in die 7 One may think of early 20th-century attempts to establish a Yiddish standard language, which were caught in what was considered to be a dilemma of not having a state territory unique to the Jewish nation and a corresponding national standard language. 8 Of course, the idea never quite tallied with reality; many European nations had or have de facto or de jure more than one standard variety (Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Finland). 9 ‘It is not the form of spatial proximity or distance which creates the specific phenomena of being neighbours or strangers, irrefutable as this may appear. Rather these are also facts which are purely caused by mental contents (...). If we require specific mental functions for the individual formations of space in history, this mirrors the fact that space in general is but an activity of the mind, the human way to combine sensual affections into uniform ideas which as such are separate.’
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Natur einzeichnen, so übt dies starke Rückwirkungen auf das Bewußtsein von dem Verhältnis der Parteien. [...] ((dann)) wird sie zu einer lebendigen Energie [...] (1995: 141). 10
It is the cognitive-mental act of construing those on the other side of the border as being different from those within one’s own social group (nation) that has an impact on language. Note that the application of Simmel’s notion of cognitive space, when applied to language, contrasts with the one traditionally accepted in dialectology. Here, we find a long tradition which tries to explain linguistic divergence in space within an interactional frequency model (cf. Auer & Hinskens in press, for a critical appraisal). According to this model, dialects (or languages) diverge when there is little direct contact (Verkehr, ‘intercourse’) between the speakers on each side of the border. Hence, impermeable borders will lead to more divergence than open borders. Frequency of interaction results in the transfer of linguistic elements from one speaker to the next. Saussure speaks of (aires de) contagion (1974: 283), and Bach, one of the most influential German dialectologists of the 20th century, writes (31969: 80–81): [...] so stellen unsere Mda-Grenzen (‘Linienbündel’) Verkehrsgrenzen dar, die Kernlandschaften aber sind Gebiete verhältnismäßig einheitlichen landschaftlichen Verkehrs [...]. Wenn wir nach den Kräften forschen, die sie ausgeformt haben und zusammenhalten, so finden wir, daß es sich nicht selten um staatliche Organisationsräume des späteren Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit handelt, also um die Territorien, die in einem Zeitalter strenger Gebundenheit und schlechter Verkehrsverhältnisse, vor allem aber mangelnder Freizügigkeit, eine außerordentliche Macht über die Verkehrsbeziehungen der in ihnen lebenden Menschen besaßen. 11
There are, however, good arguments against such an explanation. First of all, there is a methodological issue. The dialect boundaries Bach refers to were 10
‘Although the common notion of ‘mutual limitation’ derives from spatial limits, at a deeper level the latter is only the crystallisation or spatialisation of mental processes of limitation which alone are real. It is not the states [...] which limit each other, but the inhabitants [...]. However, as soon as it [the border] has become a spatial-sensual phenomenon which we draw into nature independent of its practical sociological function, it has strong repercussions on the mental representation of the parties’ relationship. [...] It then becomes a living energy [...].’ 11 ‘[...] our dialect boundaries (‘bundles of isoglosses’) represent borders of intercourse, and the core areas are regions of relatively uniform areal intercourse [...]. If we inquire into the forces which formed them and keep them together we find that they are not seldom the state territories of the late middle ages and of early modern times, i.e. the territories which in times of strict boundedness and poor means of transportation, and above all a lack of freedom of movement, had an enormous power over the communicational relationships between the people inhabiting them.’
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described empirically around 1900 when the old territories he refers to had long disappeared, i.e. they had survived these territories and the putatively closed networks (communities of discourse) of their inhabitants. If they are to explain these boundaries, one has to answer the question of how linguistic borders can remain intact over centuries despite the fact that the old communication borders (Verkehrsgrenzen) have disappeared, and ‘intercourse’ between people on both sides of the border is no longer impeded. The obvious answer is that historical political borders may leave their traces in cultural memory and the ethnodialectological representations of the population, which in turn may influence their way of speaking. They are not a direct function of communicational frequency. Ethnodialectological representations (cognitive maps) of the language at political borders confirm this view. While they usually follow the centre/periphery model (see above, Figures 2–5), they often switch to the model of bounded, mutually exclusive geographical spaces when it comes to political borders. Evidence for this ideological construction of the political border as a separation line between two linguistic spaces comes from those instances in which a former political border has left its traces in the ethnodialectological map of the speakers although, in fact, there is no linguistic divergence. An example is the dividing line between Low Alemannic (or Lake Constance Alemannic, as this particular area is sometimes called) and Swabian. On ethnodialectological maps drawn by southwest Germans this dividing line usually runs north/south somewhere along the peaks of the Black Forest and turns east south of the ‘Swabian Alps’ towards Lake Constance. This is also where most of the factual isoglosses run. However, although informants do not agree on the exact dividing line between Swabian and Low Alemannic in general, most of them agree on one small geographical detail: their ethnodialectological borderlines all converge to separate the twin towns of Villingen and Schwenningen (which nowadays form one commune). Dialectologists’ maps of the area do not agree with this at all. Only very few isoglosses separate the two towns — most notably, the one between western /ai/ and eastern /oa/ in some MHG ei words (e.g. std. Ei ‘egg’; cf. Klausmann, Kunze & Schrambke 1993, Map 66). The main isoglosses which dialectologists use in order to separate eastern Swabian from (Lake Constance/Low) Alemannic run east (or west) of both Villingen and Schwenningen (cf. Figure 7, and for details, Figure 8).
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Figure 7: The Swabian/Low Alemannic part of South-West Germany. Thin black lines represent ethnodialectological representations of the dialect border between Swabian and Low Alemannic as drawn by southwest German informants. Thick black lines represent the most important isoglosses. The blue line represents the former state border between Württemberg and Baden. From Hättich (1999).
This means that the ethnodialectological consensus does not reflect the objective facts. An explanation is easy to find: until 50 years ago, when the state of Baden-Württemberg was founded by merging the territories of Württemberg (Swabia) and Baden (which had been independent for centuries), the two towns were separated by a political border. Since the regional identities of Schwaben (Württemberger) and Badener continue to be very strong, the two towns are salient ethnogeographical landmarks of the former political division. The general knowledge southwest German informants have about the dialect differences between Swabian and (Low) Alemannic are mapped onto the political territories: the political border leads to the cognitive adjustment of the objective dialectal isoglosses and their displacement in geographical space.
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Figure 8: Isoglosses separating Low Alemannic and Swabian (from Klausmann, Kunze & Schrambke 1993, map 74).
The same holds true for the former political border between East and West Germany. Most West Germans believe that East and West Germans speak differently, and not rarely is the ethnodialectological space of Upper Saxonian, the vernacular spoken in the southern part of the (former) GDR, expanded to the whole of the country. The most salient East German variety is looked upon as typical for the entire (former) East German state territory (see Figure 9).
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Figure 9: Ethnodialectological maps of the Upper Saxonian dialect area as drawn by 20 informants from Bocholt (north-west Germany); shadings refer to degrees of overlap (from Stegger 2000).
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While the intercourse model offers no explanation for this divergence of ethnodialectological and dialectological boundaries, Simmel’s account of space as a cognitive construct does. The German state borders and the dialect continua crosscutting it In the last section, I have argued that political boundaries are not directly (i.e., as a hindrance of communication) responsible for linguistic (dialect) divergence, but can influence people’s cognitive maps to such a degree that an actual or former political border is automatically treated as a dialect boundary as well — even if the dialectological facts contradict this correlation. In this section, I will discuss examples in which there is actual divergence of the dialects spoken on both sides of the border. As outlined in Section 3, the territorialised national standard languages extend their geographical reach exactly to the border of the nation state and roof the dialects up to this spatial limit. From this perspective, it is not the dialects on both sides of the border which cannot surmount it (as the ‘intercourse’ model suggests); rather, the state borders are construed as the insurmountable territorial limits of the national standard varieties because of the ideological equation of one nation = one territory = one standard language. Let us first look at the western border. The speakers of the adjoining Germanic dialects in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France (in Lorraine and, above all, Alsace) dispose of linguistic repertoires which include Dutch, French and Letzebuergish, i.e. the standard languages of the respective nationstates. 12 For the Dutch/German border, there is ample evidence collected by Kremer (1990), Niebaum (1990) and others that the dialects have diverged considerably at the national border over the last 60 years. As one example of many, consider the changes in the word for the bird ‘wren’ (std. German Zaunkönig, std. Dutch winterkoninkje) between 1940 and 1975, as shown in Figure 10. It is easy to see on the left-hand map that the usual word, on the German as well as on the Dutch side of the northern part of the border, was nettelkönning before the war, a word which neither corresponds to the German nor to the Dutch standard. On the 1975 map, this word has been replaced on the Dutch side almost entirely by the standard Dutch word winterkoninkje, while on the German side some dialect speakers still use low German nettelkönig, but mostly std. German Zaunkönig or its phonologically adapted Low German form (tuunkönning) have taken over. As a consequence, there is 4.
12 The very small German-speaking population in the westernmost part of Belgium will not be considered here.
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Figure 10: Word for ‘wren’ on both sides of the national border between Germany and the Netherlands in the area of Enschede/Rheine (En = Enschede, Bo = Bocholt, Bh = Bentheim, Al = Almelo, We = Wesel); left: 1940, right: 1975 (from Kremer 1990).
divergence between one western and several eastern forms exactly at the state border. This is but a small example of the larger trend in this area. It agrees with the ethnodialectological representations; informants were asked to list those of the neighbouring villages in which ‘the same dialect’ was spoken as in their own village (indicated by arrows in the Figure 11). With very few exceptions, the state border turned out to be the ethnodialectological border as well. There can be no doubt that dialectal divergence at the national border between the Netherlands and Germany is but a side-effect of the much more powerful processes of dialect-to-standard advergence which are in full progress, particularly in the Netherlands, but also in Germany. Auer and Hinskens (1996) tried to capture this development as in Figure 12.
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Figure 11: The ethnodialectological border between Germany and the Netherlands in the Enschede/Rheine area (from Kremer 1984). Arrows indicate those villages in which according to the informant’s opinion ‘the same’ dialect was spoken as in his/her own village.
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standard Dutch
21
standard German
advergence
advergence
national border
convergence
convergence
traditional dialect continuum NL
divergence
D
Figure 12: Dialect divergence at the Dutch/German border as a consequence of dialect/standard advergence; adapted from Auer & Hinskens 1996.
The former dialect continuum across the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with a political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the respective national standard varieties. In terms of the previous discussion, this can be interpreted as a long-term victory of the standard language discourse of the 19th century which, strangely enough at first sight, has had its strongest impact at a time in which the political border between Germany and the Netherlands has lost most its significance (and certainly no longer impedes communication). A similar scenario applies to Luxembourg. However, Letzebuergish is a very young standard variety not yet fully supported by writing (for which mainly French and to a lesser degree German are used); it therefore has a lesser impact on the dialects. Nonetheless, convergence of the eastern dialects towards the central variety of Luxembourg city has progressed considerably, and has dissolved the old dialect continuum with the Franconian dialects spoken in Germany at the German/Luxembourg border (cf. Gilles 1999). The situation at the French/German border is obviously different since French, the standard language almost exclusively used on the French side, is exoglossic to the Alsatian dialects. Therefore, dialect-to-standard advergence can only take place east of the Rhine. On the French side of the border, the strong pressure towards standard French has led to language shift, but also to a high amount of borrowing into Alsatian, not only on the lexical level (cf. Klausmann 2000) but also in grammar and in prosody (cf. Gilles & Schrambke
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exoglossic standard (French)
endoglossic standard (German)
borrowing
advergence
NATIONAL BORDER
convergence
convergence
traditional dialect continuum F
divergence
D
Figure 13: Dialect divergence at the French (Alsatian)/German border as a consequence of dialect/standard advergence and borrowing.
2000). The factual divergence of the dialects spoken on both sides of the border is once more accompanied by a strong ethnodialectological divergence. As a recent thesis by Finger (2002) shows, particularly the Alsatians no longer see any resemblance between their language and the Alemannic dialects spoken on the other side of the border. It is mainly the increasing relevance of the standard languages which makes the traditional dialects diverge, together with a strong ethnodialectological feeling of difference (cf. Figure 13). We now turn to the southern border between Germany and Switzerland and Austria. In these countries, German is the/one national standard variety just as in Germany, i.e. the dialects on each side of the border are roofed by (approximately) the same standard. The Swiss/German language border has been described in some detail by Schifferle (1990) and Seidelmann (1989). They agree that there is a rapid process of divergence of these traditionally very similar High Alemannic dialects 13 at the state border. 14 Again, one example may suffice to show the
13
Schifferle and Seidelmann disagree on the age of this divergence; while Seidelmann argues that it goes back to Napoleonic times when the former Habsburg area was divided politically along the river Rhine, Schifferle believes that we are dealing with a 20th century phenomenon. Schifferle stresses the more conservative character of the Swiss dialects and attributes most divergences to northern innovations which were stopped at the border, while Seidelmann points out that the Swiss dialects in the Aargau also undergo changes under the influence of the Zurich dialect. However, these differences do not touch my argument.
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type of divergence; it is that of the front vowel systems of High Alemannic (cf. Moulton 1961). In the area around Waldshut investigated by Schifferle in the early 80s, there is a strikingly consistent difference between a southern (Swiss German) three-level front vowel systems (/e:/ ~ /ε:/ ~ /æ:/), and the two-level systems (/e:/ ~ /ε/) on the German side of the border. (The difference is salient in words such as northern open [ε]sse vs. southern extra-open [æ]sse ‘to eat’.) Schifferle cites a number of older studies (from the 20s and 30s of the 20th century) in
Figure 14: The front vowel systems north and south of the Swiss/German border (from Schifferle 1990).
14 The possible counterargument that, rather than the state border, the river Rhine or Lake Constance might be responsible for this divergence (the political border runs along the river most of the time) does not only fail to explain why divergence only set in in the last century, it is also falsified by the very strong dialect boundary between the town of Constance in Germany and the adjoining town of Kreuzlingen in Switzerland, which are both located south of the river Rhine/Lake Constance.
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which a three-level system is still attested for the southernmost part of Germany as well. 15 Some 70 years ago, the dialects on the German side of the border must have started to diverge with respect to this (as many other) variable(s). How can this divergence be explained? Once more, we have to consider the whole repertoire of the speakers, which, in this case (unlike the Alsatian one), includes a German standard variety and traditional dialects both in Switzerland and in Germany; however, in terms of usage domains and in terms of attitudes towards dialect and standard, the German and the Swiss German situation are very different. The use of Swiss Standard German is more or less restricted to reading and writing (‘medial diglossia’). The Swiss German dialects are much more widely used and have a much higher prestige than the German dialects of Alemannic. With regard to the national discourse of the standard languages in Europe, Switzerland is an interesting exception; it is the only old nation in Europe for which the equation of one nation = one language never held. Instead, Swiss German identity is very much tied to the Swiss German dialects. The linguistic repertoire structure of German-speaking Switzerland therefore stands in sharp contrast with that of southern Germany where the dialects are no symbols of national collective identity, while the standard language is. What ends at the national border between Germany and Switzerland then is not the reach of standard language, but a certain repertoire type (diaglossia on the German side, medial diglossia on the Swiss side; cf. Auer, in press). This leads to divergence because the dialects are no longer considered to be equivalent; the national border is construed as a language repertoire (and prestige) border. As a consequence, new developments do not cross the border. The type of innovations that reach the border area from the south and from the north (i.e., in Switzerland and in Germany) is also different. In Germany, the standard variety, or a regional dialect which is closer to the standard, is more and more accepted as the unmarked way of speaking, while in Switzerland the more prestigious urban dialects (in our case the Zurich dialect) exert an influence on the border region. As a consequence, vertical convergence in Germany contrasts with horizontal convergence in Switzerland. Schematically:
15
The data elicitation techniques of the Südwestdeutscher Sprachatlas, which were able to dig up the most archaic forms as late as the 1970s, also document this older state of the vowel systems, which Schifferle was no longer able to find in Germany; cf. map II–3.02, essen.
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endoglossic (regionalised) standards (Swiss German standard/southwest German standard)
. southwestern
regiolect
advergence
national border
convergence
convergence
traditional dialect continuum
CH
divergence
D
Figure 15: Dialect divergence at the Swiss/German border as a consequence of dialect/standard advergence and dialect convergence.
Once more, it is not impeded ‘intercourse’ across the border which has led to dialect divergence and the dissolution of a former dialect continuum, but rather the ideological construction of the border as the dividing line between two different repertoire types (which both contribute to national identity). Let us finally turn to the German/Austrian border. Scheuringer (1990) points out that the traditional dialect isoglosses in this area (some of which are shown in Figure 16) run north/south and do not orient themselves to the national border at all. On both sides of the border, very similar dialects of Middle Bavarian used to be spoken. Scheuringer took a closer look at the situation in the border towns of Braunau in Austria and Simbach in Germany. He observed two types of developments. In one group of dialect features traditionally shared by both towns, a gradual process of standardisation has set in on both sides of the border. This process is stronger in Austria than in Bavaria. It applies to basilectal features with a wide geographical distribution such as han instead of (otherwise) Bav. san = std. sind ‘(we/they) are’, or kemm(t)/kimm(t) instead of (otherwise) Bav. kumm(t) = std. kommt/komme
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Figure 16: Traditional isoglosses in the border area between Germany (Lower Bavaria) and Austria (Upper Austria); from Scheuringer (1990). The isoglosses separate the western from the eastern area of Middle Bavarian. 1 = western l-vocalization in syllable coda; 2 = western diphthongs for MHG ô; 3 = western han instead of san for 1. & 3.Pl.Pres. of sein ‘to be’.
‘s/he, I come(s)’. The second development holds for dialect features with a more restricted range, not shared by the two towns traditionally. Here, local realisations are given up in favour of more regiolectal ones. Again the process is more advanced in Austria, but in addition, the target of this regionalisation process is different: while Braunau takes over Vienna features, Simbach in Bavaria assimilates to the Munich regiolect. This applies, for instance, to the various vowel changes conditioned by the vocalisation of /l/ in syllable coda, where a Munich system with unrounded vowels such as in /fu:i/ = std. /fi:l/ ‘a lot’ contrasts with a Vienna system with rounded and also monophthongised vowels such as in /fy:/ ‘a lot’, as well as to the realisation of MHG ei as in std. kein ‘no’ as /koa/ in the Munich regiolect, but as /kã:/ in the Vienna regiolect.
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Compared to the situation in the west or south, divergence is less dramatic. The repertoires on both sides of the border are similarly structured; both are diaglossic (Bellmann 1998; Auer, in press), which means that intermediate forms (regiolects) of speaking between dialect and standard become more and more important. In many ways, they are closer to the standard variety, but they also show features of their own, spreading from the large cities which act as radiation centres for either area. The impact of these cities — Munich and Vienna — stops at the national border. In addition, Braunau has resisted the Vienna regiolect less than Simbach has resisted the Munich regiolect. Schematically:
endoglossic standard (Bavarian, Austrian regional standard variety)
Munich regiolect
Vienna regiolect
advergence
advergence national border
convergence
convergence
traditional dialect continuum
divergence Figure 17: Dialect divergence at the Austrian/German border as a consequence of dialect/standard advergence.
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5.
Conclusions On the basis of a cognitive approach to space in the tradition of Georg Simmel, I have argued in this paper that geopolitical (above all, national) borders should be looked upon as cognitive constructs intimately linked to the “imagined communities” (Andersen) they delimit. These “imagined borders” can nonetheless have a strong impact on the dialect continua which they crosscut. Dialect divergence at the national borders of Germany is therefore not due to impeded communication as suggested in traditional dialectology (Verkehr); rather, they are the limits (boundaries) of the reach of the national standard languages or of repertoire types which symbolise, in some way or other, national identities. This divergence can be expected to increase to the degree that (in this order) (a) the national standard languages, (b) the repertoire types (diaglossic/diglossic), or (c) the regional dialects differ on both sides of the border. References Anderson, Benedict. 1983 [21991]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Auer, Peter. In press. “Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations”. Perspectives on Variation ed. by Nicole Delbecque et al. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Auer, Peter & Frans Hinskens. 1996. “The convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe. New and not so new developments in an old area”. Sociolinguistica 10.1–30. Auer, Peter & Frans Hinskens. In press. “The role of interpersonal accommodation in a theory of language change”. Dialect Change. The Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in Contemporary Societies ed. by P. Auer, F. Hinskens & P. Kerswill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bach, Adolf. 1934 [31969]. Deutsche Mundartforschung. Heidelberg: Winter. Bellmann, Günter. 1998. “Between base dialect and standard language”. Folia Linguistica XXXII:1–2.23–34. Finger, Bernd. 2002. “Die Verwendung von Nicht-Standardvarietäten in der transnationalen Kommunikation: Ausgehend von grenzüberschreitendem Dialektgebrauch am Oberrhein”. Sprachbewussheit im schulischen und sozialen Kontext (= forum Angewandte Linguistik Bd. 39) ed. by J.A. Bateman & W.W. Wildgen, 91–116. Frankfurt: Lang. Gilles, Peter. 1999. Dialektausgleich im Lëtzebuergeschen: zur phonetischphonologischen Fokussierung einer Nationalsprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
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Gilles, Peter & Renate Schrambke. 2000. “Divergenzen in den Intonationssystemen rechts und links des Rheins. Die Sprachgrenze zwischen Breisach (Baden) und Neuf-Brisach (Elsass)”. Bausteine zur Sprachgeschichte ed. by E. Funk, W. König & M. Renn, 87–98. Heidelberg: Winter. Hättich, Stefanie. 1999. Erkennen der sog. Schwarzwaldschranke. Unpublished seminar paper. Department of German I, University of Freiburg. Klausmann, Hubert. 2000. “Changes of dialect, code-switching, and new kinds of usage: the divergence of dialects along the border between Germany and France in and around the region of the Oberrhein”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 145.1009–1130. Klausmann, Hubert, Konrad Kunze & Renate Schrambke. 1993. Kleiner Dialektatlas: Alemannisch und Schwäbisch in Baden-Württemberg. Bühl/Baden: Konkordia. Kremer, Ludger. 1984. “Die niederländisch-deutsche Staatsgrenze als subjektive Dialektgrenze”. Driemaandelijkse Bladen 36.76–83. ----------. 1990. “Kontinuum oder Bruchstelle? Zur Entwicklung der Grenzdialekte zwischen Vechtegebiet und Niederrhein”. Germanistische Linguistik 101:3.85–123. Mitzka, Walther. 1941. “Bauern- und Bürgersprache im Ausbau des deutschen Volksbodens”. In Von deutscher Art in Sprache und Dichtung. Vol. I (Die Sprache, ed. by F. Maurer), 67–97. Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer. ----------. 1943/44. “Die Ostbewegung der deutschen Sprache”. Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 19.81–140. ----------. 1943. Deutsche Mundarten. Heidelberg: Winter. Moulton, William G. 1961. “Lautwandel durch innere Kausalität: die ostschweizerische Vokalspaltung”. ZfM 28.227–251. Niebaum, Hermann. 1990. “Staatsgrenze als Bruchstelle? Die Grenzdialekte zwischen Dollart und Vechtegebiet”. Germanistische Linguistik 101:3.49–83. Niebaum Hermann & Jürgen Macha. 1999. Einführung in die Dialektologie des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1974. Cours de linguistique générale (ed. Charles Bally etc., critical edition by Tullio de Mauro). Paris: Payot. Scheuringer, Hermann. 1990. Sprachentwicklung in Bayern und Österreich. Hamburg: Buske. Schifferle, Hans-Peter. 1990. “Badisches und Schweizerisches Alemannisch am Hochrhein”. Germanistische Linguistik 101:3.315–340.
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Seidelmann, Erich. 1989. “Der Hochrhein als Sprachgrenze”. Dialektgeographie und Dialektologie (= FS Bellmann). Marburg 1989. Simmel, Georg. 1903. “Soziologie des Raums”. Gesamtausgabe ed. by Otthein Rammstedt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. Vol 7: Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1901–1908, pp 132–184. Südwestdeutscher Sprachatlas. Marburg: Elwert (1989–?). Stegger, Inga. 2000. Ethnodialektologische Untersuchungen zur Wahrnehmung des deutschen Dialektraums durch Sprecher aus Obersachsen und Nordwest-Deutschland. Wissenschaftliche Arbeit im Fach Deutsch, University of Freiburg, Department of German I. Wenker, Georg. 1886. “Vortrag”. Verhandlungen der 38. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Gießen vom 30. Sept. bis 3. Okt. 1885 [Proceedings of the 38th Convention of German Philologists and Schoolmen in Gießen, Sept. 30–Oct. 3, 1885], 187–194. Leipzig. Wilking, S. 1998. Der deutsche Sprachatlas im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Dialektologie und Sprachwissenschaft zwischen 1933 und 1945. Diss. Heidelberg.
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE TOWARDS A COGNITIVE DIALECTOLOGY OF POSTURE VERBS AND LOCATIVE ADVERBIALS
RAPHAEL BERTHELE Universität Bern Traditionally, dialectologists have been interested in the variety of words and expressions used in local vernaculars to refer to physical space. In German dialectology, particularly the spatial adverbs and adverbials have been discussed repeatedly and broadly (cf. Stadelmann 1978; Rowley 1980). At the same time, spatial referencehas been an important issue in other linguistic subdisciplines such as cognitive linguistics (cf. Talmy 2000b), typology (cf. Wälchli 2001), psycholinguistics (Becker 1994; Bowerman 1996), and anthropological linguistics (Levinson 1996; Bloom et al. 1996). This contribution combines methods from variationist linguistics with a framework from cognitive linguistics in order to shed new light on some particularly striking facets of spatial reference in non-standard forms of both German and Romance. An attempt will be made to integrate frameworks from neighboring sub-disciplines into dialectological research, and it will be shown that, ideally, this combination is able to contribute to all sub-disciplines concerned. The data analyzed in this paper are part of a larger research project on variation in the field of spatial reference expressions. The project focuses on German, particularly on differences between the standard variety (Standard High German, SHG) and a group of Swiss German Dialects (SG). Additionally, some of the neighboring Romance languages (French, Italian, Romansh) will be taken into consideration. The project involves both motion in space and static relations. For the present contribution, however, we will only be concerned with linguistic descriptions of static relations of two (or more) objects in space. Two salient phenomena are singled out: firstly, the semantics of the finite verbs and, secondly, the structure and semantics of the verb-sister elements in the locating verb phrase (VP). The variation in these two syntactic slots will be presented and, finally, an attempt will be made to explain the patterns found in the data.
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32 1.
Data, varieties and informants The data analyzed in this contribution have been collected using a picture book containing 71 pictures. This picture book has been elaborated and used by researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute in Nijmegen in order to collect spatial language data from many different languages (cf. e.g. Bowermann 1996; Bowerman/Choi 2001). The drawings always contain a marked object in a particular spatial situation (cf. the examples below, Sections 3 and 4). The informants are asked to locate the marked object with regard to its environment. The data have been collected by myself and by some of my students. 1 As Table 1 shows, 15 informants are speakers of SG dialects, and 12 informants speak SHG. Since in German-speaking Switzerland all natives are firstly speakers of one of the SG dialects, the Swiss informants speaking SHG do not speak their native dialect in the data collection situation, but rather the Swiss variety of the standard language which they have learnt from media use and in school (for a broader discussion of the Swiss German diglossia, cf. Kolde 1981; Rash 1998). In order to compare the German standard and nonstandard data, Romansh (19 informants), standard Italian (6 informants), 2 and standard French (5 informants) data have been collected as well. Romansh is spoken in the eastern part of Switzerland, the language is highly endangered and virtually all of its speakers are bilinguals (with SG) or trilinguals (with SG and Italian, cf. Carigiet 2000: 235). German
Romansh
Total 27 Inf. Total 19 Inf.
SHG (Germans)
SHG (Swiss)
Bern dialect
Wallis dialect
Muotathal dialect
Sense dialect
5
7
3
3
6
3
Surmiran
Sursilvan
Vallader
7
8
4
French
5 Inf.
(all standard French)
Italian
6 Inf.
(all standard Italian) Table 1: Informants.
1
Acknowledgment: The data presented here have partly been collected by some of the students who participated in a class on spatial language. Many thanks to Michael Ehrler, Martin Klopfenstein, Marlene Schild, Susanne Schneider, Denise Pfammatter, and Michele Werner. I am also very grateful to Paola Gilardi’s help with some additional Italian data, and to Adrian Farrér for collecting additional data from Romansh Surmiran. Finally, I want to thank Georges Darms who allowed me to collect data in his Romansh classes at the University of Fribourg. 2 Unfortunately, it was not possible at this stage to include the still quite vital Italian dialects of Ticino.
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2.
33
Conceptual structure of a spatial expression There are different approaches and competing terminologies in the realm of spatial linguistics (for an overview, see Levinson 1996). However, the basic concepts are quite similar in most of those approaches. The most basic concepts are the objects which are physically related in a particular situation. To give a simple example, the basic parts of a spatial expression are described in Figure 1. By definition, spatial expressions serve to locate objects and events in space. The located entity is the figure (in Langacker’s terminology: trajector, see Langacker 1990: 10), the environment with respect to which the figure is located can be called ground (Langacker: landmark). Since this contribution addresses some issues raised by Talmy (1985, 2000b), Talmy’s terms figure and ground will be used throughout the paper. Figure 2 shows the main conceptual parts of a spatial expression. The figure is the entity which is located in space. In discourse, the figure is the element on which attention is focused. A typical spatial expression involves a — more or less schematic — concept of a process, which Talmy calls ‘activating process’ (Talmy 2000b: 218). The activating process has one of two possible parameter settings, namely static or dynamic. Even if the figure is not moving but simply remains in a static relation to the ground, we can assume that at least some basic interplay of physical forces must take place in order to keep the figure stable at its location. Thus it seems justified to assume a process also for the static relations, although it might be a limiting case.
Figure 1: Example for a picture from the picture book.
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Figure 2: Conceptual structure of a spatial expression.
In the languages and varieties discussed in this paper, the association function is usually expressed by a spatial preposition (P). Some of the Ps are topological — i.e. dimensionally neutral — in nature (e.g. German an, bei, or in), others combine topological relations with axis-related concepts (auf, unter [vertical axis]; hinter, vor [transversal axis], cf. Becker 1994: 18). The ground is the object or the set of objects with relation to which the figure is located. In the languages and varieties falling within the scope of this paper, the ground is most frequently expressed by the NP governed by the spatial preposition. The prepositional phrase (PP), which is in a sister-position to the verb, expresses thus what Talmy calls the core schema, i.e. the association function plus the ground-object. 3 In typical responses to the picture stimuli, the figure is expressed by the Subject-NP and the activating process is mapped onto the verb. In the remainder of this paper, the variable realizations of two conceptual ‘slots’ in Figure 2 are analyzed: firstly, the linguistic and conceptual variation in the domain of the association function (Section 3), and secondly, the conceptual and linguistic construal of the activating process, i.e. the verb-slot (Section 4).
3
Talmy’s terminology has been widely used in order to investigate the typological differences in the domain of motion verbs (Slobin 1991 and 1996; Talmy 1985, 2000a and 2000b). Even though this contribution is concerned with static spatial settings, the debate on motion verbs and motion events is an interesting parallel and will be discussed briefly in Section 5.
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
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3.
Simple vs. complex expression of the association function With only very few exceptions, the association function is mapped onto the P. 4 However, this does not mean that it is exclusively located in the P, as is shown by examples (1) to (4). (1)
d’sigarett isch schräg im mundwinkul dri the cigarette is diagonally in the corner-of-the-mouth insid
WS 5
(2)
dr schluuch isch um d baumwürz ume the hose is around the stomp around
MU
(3)
ds stirnband giit ume chopf um the headband goes around-the head around
BE
(4)
der Hund sitzt in der Hütte drin the dog sits in the kennel inside
SHG
In examples (1) to (4) we discover the same spatial concept both in the semantics of the P and of an additional Adverb (ADV). The syntactic status of this additional ADV is not quite clear. Many scholars assume that the ADV is part of the PP, while for others the ADV is an adverbal modifier or even a part of a (particle-)verb (cf. McIntyre 2001: 63f.; Pittner 1999: 88; Stadelmann 1978: 108; Olsen 1996: 306). For the present purposes, the exact syntactic analysis is not at issue, and it may well be that the constructions listed above are structurally ambiguous, as in examples (5) and (6).
4
(5)
...dass ds stirnband [ume chopf um] [giit]
(6)
...dass ds stirnband [ume chopf] [um giit] ...that the headband around-the head around goes
Exceptions are the cases where a picture is described without using genuinely spatial language, as in diese Tasse hat einen Sprung (‘this cup has a crack’) instead of in dieser Tasse ist ein Sprung. 5 The labels can be read as follows: WS: Wallis dialect; MU: Muotathal dialect; BE: Bern dialect; SHG: Standard High German spoken by Germans; SHG_CH: Standard High German spoken by Swiss (L1 is always a SG dialect); FR: French; IT: Italian; ROM: Romansh; RO_SUS: Romansh Sursilvan; RO_VAL: Romansh Ladin (Vallader); RO_SUM: Romansh Surmiran
RAPHAEL BERTHELE
36
The respective spatial relational concepts which are mapped onto the P and the ADV stand either in a relationship of redundancy, as in examples (1)– (4) above, or in a complementary relation, as in examples (7)–(10): (7)
der henkul hanget uber di täscha embri the handle hangs over the bag down
WS
(8)
il bal ei sut la sutga en the ball is under the chair inside
RO_SUS
(9)
la cozza ei sulla meisa giu the tablecloth is on the table down
RO_SUS
(10) la suga ei sur la cuscha vi the hose is on the stump over
RO_SUS
The English glosses are only approximate, since there is no strict congruence between the application of the German/Romance Ps and ADVs and their English counterparts. It seems appropriate to assume two semantically distinct categories for the verb phrases with P and ADV: the ADV can be either in a complementary or in a redundant semantic relation to the P.
Figure 3: Two picture stimuli for partial containment relations.
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
37
The question is whether the semantically redundant PP+ADV constructions are really equivalent to their corresponding simple PP constructions. Examples such as the one in (4) above could evidence a similar distinction as in the English in vs. inside, i.e. partial vs. complete containment of the figure in the ground. The data analyzed in this sample do not point to this direction, since the dog in the picture which stimulates responses such as the one in (4) is not completely inside the kennel (cf. Figure 3). Even the cigarette, which undoubtedly is located mostly outside the mouth, can be located using this construction, as in example (1). None of the varieties investigated here uses the complex PP+ADV constructions categorically for a particular picture stimulus. Since both simple PPs and complex PP+ADV constructions occur for the same pictures and in the same varieties, the data analyzed here do not support any other systematic semantic differentiation than the ‘redundancy-hypothesis’. Other means of data elicitation and/or meta-semantic judgements of informants might shed more light on this issue. 27% of all PP+ADV constructions are uttered in order to describe a stimulus which represents a spatial setting where the figure surrounds the ground: (11) dr haag isch ums huus ume the fence is around-the house around
MU
(12) s mäscheli isch um d cherze ume the ribbon is around the candle around
MU
Almost 9% of all PP+ADV constructions can be attributed to the inverse relation of a ground-element encircling the figure, as shown by example (13): (13) de öpfel isch im ring inne the apple is in(side) the ring in(side)
MU
It seems very clear that the encircling configurations favor the use of PP+ADV, and more precisely redundant PP+ADV constructions. The remaining 64% of the PP+ADV constructions are distributed more or less equally over a multitude of core schema types. In the following paragraphs the occurrences of the complex PP+ADV constructions are analyzed in terms of their frequencies in the respective linguistic varieties. Figure 4 gives an overview of their average frequencies.
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Figure 4: Average frequencies of redundant (left columns) and complementary (middle columns) PP+ADV constructions. The right column represents the sum of all PP+ADV constructions. All bars are relative frequencies in relation to the total number of responses.
Figure 4 shows that the numbers of PP+ADV constructions are negligible in both SHG spoken by Germans as well as by Swiss informants. There is no doubt that the construction is in principle grammatical in SHG, too, 6 but its occurrences in our data are very rare. All dialects, on the other hand, show higher frequencies of the PP+ADV constructions, and within the group of those constructions the use of the redundant variant is by far the most frequent. For the redundant constructions and for the sum-values (but not for the complementary constructions), the difference between the group of SG dialects, on the one hand, and SHG, on the other, is statistically significant (on the p<0.05 level, independent sample t-test). Among the SG dialects, the differences once again are considerable. The Muotathal dialect from central 6
Cf. Olsen 1996 for a syntactic description of very similar phenomena. It is not unlikely that a similar investigation into different dialects, sociolects and registers of German in Germany or Austria could uncover comparable patterns of variation.
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
39
Switzerland shows very high values for the redundant constructions, whereas the Bern dialect and the Sense dialect display somewhat lower values. The Wallis dialect, on the other hand, shows a saliently higher use of the complementary constructions of the type given in example (7) above. Additionally, Figure 4 makes it clear that the PP+ADV constructions are not a typical Romance pattern. Neither the French nor the Italian data show even a single token of this type. Only the Romansh informants use comparable constructions. Given the intensive contact situation of Romansh with SG, it seems quite probable that SG as a contact language has left its traces in the Romansh varieties. However, the Romansh examples are not simple copies of the (mostly redundant) German pattern; they rather display a high amount of the complementary constructions, which are only rarely used in SG. The aim of this section is to give an account of the lexical and conceptual variation in the domain of the core schema. Regarding the expression of the association function, the SG dialects are marked by a significantly higher degree of redundancy. The Romance languages, including standard Italian and French, do not seem to share this feature. Both languages simply express the association function by means of the spatial P. The Romansh dialects, most likely due to their sociolinguistic embedding, display similar structural possibilities as the SG dialects. However, they do it with a different semantic ‘stuffing’. The — admittedly expected — convergence in the Romansh dialects has thus to be understood as a self-assured convergence, a linguistic change which takes a structural pattern from the adstratum and uses it in its own way. 4.
Co-event verbs In Section 3, the lexical and syntactic patterns in the domain of the core schema were analyzed. In this section, the lexical choices for the verb will be examined. As we have seen in Section 2 above (cf. Figure 1), the primary role of the verb is to express the activating process in the locating expression. In the case of static spatial relations, a semantically quite simple and schematic concept is fully sufficient to express this activating process. The simple fact that the figure ‘is’ at a particular place can be rendered by the equivalents of sein (‘to be’) in all varieties and languages within the scope of this paper. However, as will be shown in this section, additional concepts (in Talmy’s terminology: ‘events’) can be packed into the verb slot, i.e. there are semantically more complex verbs which can be used in responses to the picture stimuli. Once again, the different languages and varieties show considerable degrees of variation in this area. In order to be able to analyze the frequencypatterns in the verb slot, some additional categories and terms are needed.
40
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Figure 5: Integration of co-events into a spatial expression (simplified from Talmy 2000b: 212).
Figure 5 enhances the conceptual structure introduced in Figure 1 at the beginning of this contribution. According to Talmy (2000b: 212), speakers tend to integrate more than just a single event into their simple clauses. A ‘macro event’, as displayed in Figure 5, can be seen as a clause that represents a conceptual merger of two events. The syntactic structure of a simple clause mirrors a conceptual integration. Thus, in Figure 5, the verb not only accounts for the (static) activating process, but additionally expresses a subsidiary conceptual entity. This additional content is called a co-event, and in the case of static relations, the co-event most often basically adds information about the dimensional and positional properties of the figure, as expressed by posture verbs such as sit, stand, lie. In addition to that, verbs such as hang, stick, or hide can be used in order to describe the picture stimuli. Some of those coevent verbs thus do not add information about positional properties, but rather about the nature of contact (stick), the physical properties of the ground (swim), or even the figure’s intention (hide; cf. examples [14]–[17]). (14) il pesciolino nuota nell’acqua the fish-little swims in-the water
IT
(15) il flaster tacca vida la comba the bandaid sticks to (at) the leg
ROM_SUS
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
(16) quelqu’un qui se cache derrière un fauteuil somebody who is hiding behind the arm-chair
FR
(17) A däm Mässer chläbt Bluet to (at) this knife sticks blood
BE
41
As shown in examples (14)–(17), the integration of co-events into the verb slot is possible in all varieties. There are two ways of integrating coevents into the predicate: either it is mapped onto the finite verb or onto a past participle. The latter variant, too, is found in all varieties. Examples (18)–(21) are responses to the same stimulus picture — the drawing of a jacket that is hanging on a coat hook. (18) le veston est suspendu à un crochet the jacket is hung-up on a hook
FR
(19) la giacca es pichada vi dal crötsch
RO_VAL
(20) de chittel isch amene haggä ufghänkt
MU
(21) la giacca é appesa al gancio
IT
Just as for the phenomena in the domain of the core schema, the different languages and varieties at issue here vary considerably regarding the extent of co-event integration. In the following paragraphs, the corresponding descriptive statistics will be shown and discussed. In Figure 6, the box-plot conventions are used in order to show the distribution of the co-event verbs. Each informant has a value for the percentage of use of co-event verbs. If an informant uses co-event verbs virtually in every response, his/her value converges towards 1. Conversely, some informants hardly ever use co-event verbs, and their corresponding values are close to 0. Each informant is a case, the hatched boxes represent the middle 50% of all cases. The scattering is expressed by the vertical line, extreme values are marked with asterisks. For every language, the boxes on the left show the amount of co-event verbs (finite), those in the middle the amount of co-event participles, and those on the right the sum of finite verbs and participles. The bold line inside the box is the median, i.e. the value which best represents the whole distribution.
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Figure 6: Percentages of the co-event verb use, grouped according to ‘Abstandsprachen’ (German, French, Italian, Romansh).
The category ‘German’ in Figure 6 includes both SHG and all SG dialects, and, correspondingly, the category Romansh includes all Romansh dialects. Thus, Figure 6 shows clearly that German has a strong tendency to express co-events (in the finite verb). The median line at about 50% suggests that the ‘average’ speaker of German uses co-event verbs in about 50% of all responses. The scattering is very high, from almost 0 to almost 1, which means that some speakers of German hardly ever integrate co-events, whereas others almost always do. The very low values for co-event participles indicate that — although they are possible — co-event participles do not play an important role in this language. If speakers of Italian and French express co-event information at all, they tend to do this using participles. On the whole, as the corresponding boxes in Figure 6 show very clearly, the responses given in these two languages tend to express fewer co-events than those given in German. The differences between German, on the one hand, and Italian or French, on the other, are statistically
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
43
significant (t-test p<0.01). I have no sensible explanation or interpretation for the frequency differences between Italian and French; however, they are not statistically significant. Again, the Romansh data are interesting: on the one hand, Romansh behaves like a ‘decent’ Romance language to the extent that it has much (=significantly) lower values for event-integration than German. This can be seen when we compare the medians of the sum-boxes for French, Italian, and Romansh. However, in the relatively infrequent responses in which the speakers of Romansh do use co-event verbs, they stick, in the majority of the cases, to the ‘German way’. In other words, they use finite verbs and not, as would be the ‘Romance way’, complex predicates with co-event participles. As we have seen in Section 3 above, varieties within the category ‘German’ apparently do not necessarily resemble each other in all aspects that are under investigation in this paper. It seems thus appropriate to take a closer look at the different varieties which make up the German count in Figure 6. In Figure 7, exactly the same tools from descriptive statistics are used as in Figure 6 above. the frequencies here are grouped separately according to the different varieties of German in the sample. At a glance, Figure 7 makes it very clear that the amount of co-event integration varies dramatically across the varieties of German. The speakers of the standard language, both Germans and Swiss, use co-event verbs in about 70% (Swiss) to 80% (Germans) of the responses (cf. the medians for the two categories). What distinguishes the Swiss SHG speakers from the Germans is not so much the average use of co-event verbs, but rather the higher scattering of the cases. This means that some Swiss, when they are speaking SHG, tend to use relatively little co-event verbs. This last finding immediately makes sense if we take into account that all SG dialects display lower co-event values than SHG. If we compare SG (as one group) and SHG (as another group), the differences in the use of finite co-event verbs is very significant (t-test p<0.01). Within the group of SG dialects, there are once more considerable differences. 7 Whereas Bern SG and Sense SG display relatively high co-event values, Muotathal SG scores very low for coevent integration. In other words: in the Muotathal dialect, the most common locating VP is stereotypically headed by the V sein, i.e. be. Although the previously mentioned differences between German SHG and Swiss SHG are not statistically significant, the scattering nevertheless suggests that one of the dialectal features, namely the relatively infrequent use 7
Muotathal dialect is very significantly different from both Bern and Wallis dialects (t-test p<0.01) and significantly different from the Sense dialect (p<0.05).
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of co-event verbs, can interfere with the SHG use of the Swiss (who, as must be noted again, all have a SG dialect as their L1). Even though some Swiss speakers of SHG display relatively low values for this feature, most of them, as a rule, converge towards average SHG choices. To conclude this section, we can state that German on the whole is more inclined to use co-event verbs than the neighboring Romance languages. This tendency, however, applies above all to SHG. The speakers of SG dialects are less likely to use co-event verbs, in some cases co-event verbs average only about 10% of all responses. Romansh behaves, in terms of co-event frequencies, quite like a Romance language but, syntactically, the co-event integration resembles strongly the German pattern. Given the sociolinguistic embedding of the Romansh dialects, it is not very risky to hypothesize a considerable amount of interference with the adstratum, the SG dialects. In the next section, these results will be discussed together with those from the previous section.
Figure 7: Co-event integration frequencies for 6 different varieties of German.
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5.
Discussion In this contribution, several varieties of two typologically different language groups have been compared. Variation in two syntactic-semantic slots has been shown to cross-cut the traditional categories of genetically related languages: if we focus on the feature of co-event integration, some SG dialects seem to look more like Romance languages; in the case of the complexity of the VP, Romansh dialects look more like the SG varieties. This closing discussion of the data presented in Sections 3 and 4 will address the following three points: − Can the variation observed in the data be related to the typological debate about motion events (satellite-framed vs. verb-framed languages)? − Do the observed patterns of variation reflect differences in the cognitive construal of the spatial setting (“thinking for speaking”)? − Are there any explanations for the emergence of the observed differences (particularly SG vs. SHG)? Since the typological debate about the difference between satelliteframed and verb-framed languages primarily addresses issues in the domain of motion verbs, it does not directly concern the data analyzed in this paper. According to Talmy (2000a, 2000b), Slobin (1988, 1991, 1996) and others, satellite-framed languages pack the association function into a particle which, syntactically, is a sister of the verb (such as in English go in/out/up/down), whereas verb-framed languages tend to express the path in the verb (French entrer, sortir, monter, descendre). Since the verb-slot in a satellite-framed language is available for other conceptual content than the association function, it is used very frequently in order to express co-events, whereas the expression of co-event in a verb-framed language is syntactically more complex. As a consequence, verb-framed languages tend to express less co-events than satellite-framed languages (for a cross-linguistic comparison of English and Spanish, see Slobin 1996). The work on satellite- and verb-framed languages has some implications for our data, however, as the issue in this contribution is not exactly the same. The main difference between our static data and motionverb data is that it is — at least in the languages discussed here — very unlikely to find verbs which encode the association function in static spatial relations, and this applies both to the (verb-framed) Romance varieties as well as to the (satellite-framed) German varieties. Undoubtedly, in all responses, the core schema as a whole is located in the PP which is the verb sister. Thus, at least in the case of the static spatial relations, the verb slot is in principle available for additional conceptual content, regardless of the typological
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affiliation of the variety. As has been shown above (Section 4), German varieties on the whole nevertheless tend to integrate more co-events in the verb slot than their Romance counterparts. But, at the same time, some particular German varieties display as little co-event integration as the Romance languages. Given this more complex pattern of resemblance and distinctiveness, it seems that the amount of co-event saliency of a particular variety not only correlates with the typological features of a variety, but with other factors as well. Before we try to hypothesize what kind of factors could govern the lexical and conceptual shape of the verb slot, we need to focus on the link between the variation phenomena observed here and possible corresponding differences in the mental construal of the spatial setting. According to Slobin, satellite- and verb-framed languages do not only have different lexical inventories and different grammars, but those differences favor fundamental differences in construal, i.e. in thinking: I offer this analysis of the constructions associated with motion events as another piece of evidence for the pragmatic functions of grammar. And, further, I suggest that typologies of grammar have consequences for ‘typologies of rhetoric.’ The effects of such typologies on usage may be strong enough to influence speakers’ narrative attention to particular conceptual domains. And, as a consequence, the meanings of verbs of motion in a given language must be considered in the light of both the typological frame of the language and the discourse frame in which such verbs occur. (Slobin 1996: 218)
If we accept the conclusions drawn by Slobin, there must be similar differences linked to the static data discussed in this contribution. As an example, the analyses in Section 4 might suggest that the more elaborate verb slot in the responses from SHG-speakers represents a richer mental construal of the depicted situation. Indeed, speakers of SG dialects and the Romance languages seem to construe the setting using a more schematic representation. The association function, on the other hand, seems to be more profiled in the non-standard varieties of German, but also in the Romansh dialects (Section 5). Clearly, the complementary PP+ADV constructions as found in Romansh and particularly in Wallis SG seem to represent a higher resolution of this association function. The figure is located using two particles which express complementary aspects of the relation between figure and ground. In the case of the redundant constructions, the SG dialects do not seem to be more elaborate, as those constructions are often interpreted as simply emphasizing the spatial concepts (Harnisch 1982: 123; Stadelmann 1978: 216). Even though any thinking-for-speaking hypothesis bears a certain risk of speculation, it
STATIC SPATIAL RELATIONS IN GERMAN AND ROMANCE
47
seems that SG and Romansh focus primarily on the core schema, more precisely the association function, whereas SHG, Standard Italian and Standard French do not profile the association function in the same way. SHG, on the other hand, shows the use of an elaborate repertoire of posture and location verbs, which seems to be a unique characteristic within the sample of varieties treated in this paper. Undoubtedly, more research on the mental representations should be undertaken in order to find out to what extent the differences in form mirror differences in mental construal. The last point to be addressed here is whether there is any explanation or interpretation for the patterns observed in our data. What makes SG dialects simpler in the verb slot and more complex in the PP? Obviously, as discussed before, the typological issue does not help here, since both SG and SHG are undoubtedly satellite-framed languages. Although this type of explanation has to be considered with circumspection, one fundamental difference between SG and SHG could be taken into consideration here: what characterizes our SHG data is lexical variation, i.e. the high diversity of verb-types which occur in the finite verb slot. SG, on the other hand, is characterized by a high amount of redundant expression of the association function. Since SG is overwhelmingly used as an oral variety (speakers of SG use, at least in formal contexts, written SHG), it can be classified as a conceptionally oral variety in the sense of Koch and Oesterreicher (1994–1996). SHG, on the other hand, even in its spoken form, is conceptionally literal. As Reichmann (2002) points out, the historical development of the German standard language must be understood as a gradual process, starting on the basis of a set of conceptionally oral varieties and ending with a dramatically different standardized language in the state of conceptional literacy. According to the framework proposed by Koch and Oesterreicher, a conceptionally literal language is not necessarily written; it may as well be spoken, and vice versa. Since the Swiss diglossia — sometimes labeled a medial diglossia (Kolde 1981: 65ff.) — implies a considerably independent status of the written and the spoken varieties, we can assume that, despite the unquestionable influence of SHG on the SG dialects, the latter still have a genuinely conceptionally oral make-up. Among other features, finally, a conceptionally oral language tends to be more redundant, and it does not show the same degree of lexical differentiation as a conceptionally literal language (Koch & Oesterreicher 1994–1996: 591). There is no doubt that this hypothesis has to be tested with additional data and probably different methods, but in my view the dichotomy of conceptional orality/literacy seems to be a promising path to a better understanding of the phenomena discussed in this paper. In the introductory remarks to this contribution, I stated that the research presented here could contribute both to dialectology and to cognitive and
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typological linguistics. It seems to me that this contribution shows clearly that the latter offer theoretical frameworks which can easily and fruitfully be adapted for dialectological research. Conversely, dialectological and variationist thinking and analyzing involves a genuine questioning of language categories such as ‘German’, ‘Spanish’, etc. As has been shown in this contribution, substantial amounts of variation are neglected if we do not ‘zoom in’ into the different varieties of a particular language. And even within the varieties singled out, rather than simply comparing average uses of a particular feature, spaces of individual variation have to be explored. I am convinced that this is the contribution variationist linguistics in general can make to the fascinating investigation into the interdependency of thinking, speaking, and linguistic form. There is no doubt that this contribution is only a modest beginning for such an interdisciplinary enterprise. References Becker, A. 1994. Lokalisierungsausdrücke im Sprachvergleich: eine lexikalisch-semantische Analyse von Lokalisierungsausdrücken im Deutschen, Englischen, Französischen und Türkischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Berthele, R. 2003. “The typology of motion and posture verbs: a variationist account”. Dialectology Meets Typology (= Trends in Linguistics) ed. by B. Kortmann, 93–126. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ----------. In press. “Spatial reference in an endangered Romance language: The case of Romansh”. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS), 2003. Bickel, H. & R. Schläpfer. 2000. Die viersprachige Schweiz. 2., neu bearbeitete Auflage. Aarau: Sauerländer. Bloom, P., M. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett, eds. 1996. Language and Space. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press. Bowerman, M. 1996. “Learning how to structure space for language: A crosslinguistic perspective”. Bloom et al. 1996. 385–436. Bowerman, M. and S. Choi 2001. “Shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories”. Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development ed. by M. Bowerman & S.C. Levinson, 475–511. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carigiet, W. 2000. “Zur Mehrsprachigkeit der Bündnerromanen”. Bickel & Schläpfer 2000. 235–239. Harnisch, K-R. 1982. “Doppelpartikelverben als Gegenstand der Wortbildungslehre und Richtungsadverbien als Präpositionen”. Tendenzen
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verbaler Wortbildung in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache ed. by L. Eichinger, 107–133. Hamburg: Buske. Kolde, G. 1981. Sprachkontakte in gemischtsprachigen Städten. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Koch, P. & W. Oesterreicher. 1994–1996. “Funktionale Aspekte der Schriftkultur”. Writing and Its Use: An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research ed. by H. Günther & O. Ludwig, 587–604. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Langacker, R. W. 1990. Concept, Image, and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Levinson, S. C. 1996. “Language and Space”. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 25. 353– 382. ----------. 1996b. “Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslinguistic evidence”. Bloom et al. 1996. 109–169. McIntyre, A. 2001. German Double Particles as Preverbs. Morphology and Conceptual Semantics. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag Olsen, S. 1996. “Pleonastische Direktionale”. Wenn die Semantik arbeitet: Klaus Baumgärtner zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by G. Harras & Bierwisch, 303–328. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Pittner, K. 1999. Adverbiale im Deutschen. Untersuchungen zu ihrer Stellung und Interpretation. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Rash, F. 1998. The German Language in Switzerland: Multilingualism Diglossia - Variation. Bern: Lang. Reichmann, O. 2002. “Die Entstehung der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache: Wo bleiben die Regionen?” Die deutsche Schriftsprache und die Regionen. Entstehungsgeschichtliche Fragen in neuer Sicht ed. by R. Berthele et al., 29–56. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Rowley, A. 1980. Sprachliche Orientierung: Untersuchungen zur Morphologie und Semantik der Richtungsadverbien in oberdeutschen Mundarten Bayreuth: Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät Universitat Bayreuth. Slobin, D. I. 1991. “Learning to think for speaking. Native language, cognition, and rhetorical style”. Pragmatics 1.7–26. ----------. 1996. “Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish”. Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning ed. by S. Thompson & M. Shibatani, 195–217. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slobin, D. I. & A. Bocaz. 1988. “Learning to talk about movement through time and space: The development of narrative abilities in Spanish and English”. Lenguas Modernas 15.5–24.
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Stadelmann, M. 1978. Orts- und Richtungsadverbien bei Siedlungsbezeichnungen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Talmy, L. 1985. “Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms”. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Volume III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon ed. by Timothy Shopen, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ----------. 2000a. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Volume I: Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: MIT Press. ----------. 2000b. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: MIT Press. Wälchli, B. 2001. “A typology of displacement (with special reference to Latvian)”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 54:3.298–323.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS GENDER AND DISCOURSE PARALLELS ACROSS THE NORTH ATLANTIC
SANDRA CLARKE & GUNNEL MELCHERS Memorial University of Newfoundland & University of Stockholm Pulmonic ingressive articulation — that is, speech produced when inhaling rather than exhaling air from the lungs — represents an articulatory mode which, because of its very nature, cannot be sustained for speech sequences of more than a few seconds. Its unusual nature as a means of speech production makes it fairly rare in occurrence across the linguistic spectrum, and ensuingly highly marked from a typological perspective. It is also a feature that has come in for little scrutiny in the literature. 1 In this paper we examine one of the several uses of pulmonic ingressive speech: ingressive discourse particles. We establish these forms as an areal feature, and point to the existence of a zone stretching from the eastern Baltic to the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, across which ingressive particles have been transmitted via language contact. More importantly, we show that the cross-language-boundary diffusion of these particles has been accompanied by the diffusion of social and pragmatic constraints on their usage. Though this phenomenon plays an obvious role in language-internal, cross-dialect transmission (as has been amply demonstrated by both social and regional dialectology), it is one that has rarely been noted in the language contact literature. 1.
Background The few publications that deal with pulmonic ingressive articulation suggest that, cross-linguistically, ingressive speech serves a small number of well-defined paralinguistic functions. Two of these functions appear grounded in physical or biological factors. The first involves the gasp-like inhalation of breath that registers strong emotion, including surprise, pain, or fear. When 1
Other types of ingressive articulation (i.e. glottalic or velaric), which are used in a small number of the world’s languages for individual sound production (e.g. clicks), are better known in the literature. Citing Hockett (1955), Shorrocks (2003) also mentions the use of the pulmonic ingressive airstream to articulate b- and d- like sounds in Maidu, a Penutian language spoken in California.
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verbalized, this results in such ingressively articulated phrases as English Oh my God or What?. In languages like Swedish, longer emotive sequences may also be articulated ingressively; an example of this, on the topic of Caesarean sections, appears in (1) below (where ingressives are provided in italics, within angled brackets): 2 (1)
nej de skiter man fullständigt i, men just detta att man har så ont så man <å herre gud det var ju läckert> det var därför hon var så stor om skallen “no, you don’t give a shit, but it’s just that you’re in such pain that
that’s why her head was so big”
A second function involves routine tasks to which little attention is devoted, in particular counting ‘under one’s breath’. Though possibly widespread, this has been documented primarily for the Germanic languages (e.g. Crystal 1987, Dieth 1950). As Hill and Zepeda (1999) point out, the use of alternating ingressive and egressive airstreams for this task may constitute a means of avoiding strain on lung capacity. Two other paralinguistic functions of ingressive speech have been noted in the literature, both involving social and pragmatic factors. The first is the use 2
This example has been taken from the Göteborg University Spoken Language Corpus of Swedish (e.g. Allwood et al. 2000), our major source of data for ingressive use in Swedish. For permission to use this corpus we are extremely grateful to Jens Allwood; Leif Grönqvist deserves special thanks for all his assistance with the practical problems of access. We also owe special thanks to Amanda Newhook, Danny Snow and Faith Wilkes, whose tapes constitute our Newfoundland corpus, as well as to Glenn Peters for his transcription of the Newfoundland data. Our paper would not have been possible without input from many sources. We thank Nazuki Kobayashi for providing us with a copy of her thesis on Norwegian ingressives (as well as Lise Opdahl for bringing this thesis to our attention); Robert Eklund for making available a pre-publication version of his 2002 paper on Swedish ingressives; Ragnhild Söderbergh and Åsa Nordqvist for permitting us access to their corpus of Swedish child speech; and Mark Jones for the SED ingressive examples from Patterdale, Cumbria. For information on the occurrence of ingressive variants in their respective regions, we would like to thank Joan Beal (England), Barbara Bird (the Hebrides), Julie Brittain (Scotland), Wladyslaw Cichocki (New Brunswick), Karen Corrigan (Ireland), Peter French (England), Terry Gunnell (Iceland and the Faroes), Caroline Macafee (Scotland), Michael Montgomery (the southern U.S. and Appalachia), and Peter Trudgill (England). We are also grateful to Jim Black and Doug Walker for information on French, and to a number of native speakers for information on Estonian and Russian — not to mention relatives and friends located in various parts of the world, from Hungary to Tennessee to Australia. Finally, we are very thankful to Olle Engstrand for placing a query about ingressives on the (Scandinavian) Phonetics list, and to the various people who responded — in particular, Claes-Christian Elert, who provided us with valuable references.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
53
of ingressive articulation for the purpose of voice disguise and identity concealment, whether on the part of male suitors engaged in courtship (e.g. Conklin 1959 for the Philippine language Hanunóo; Dieth 1950 for Swiss German), or in folk traditions involving disguised participants — notably the ‘julebukk’ in mainland Scandinavia along with the Grýla tradition in the Faroes and possibly Iceland (Gunnell 1995, 2001), ‘skakling’ or ‘skekling’ in Shetland (Gunnell 2001; Johnson 1962), and Christmas ‘mummering’ in Newfoundland (e.g. Kirwin 1971). The second, which constitutes the focus of this paper, is the use of ingressively-articulated discourse particles, which in the relatively sparse literature on the topic occur most frequently as variants of the words for yes and no. In the Scandinavian languages — the language subgroup in which their use is best known — these discourse particles appear as ja ‘yes’ (with such variants as Norwegian [eja:], Norwegian and Swedish jaha, northern Swedish jo); and as nej ‘no’(spelled nei in Norwegian), which also has a number of variants, among them Swedish nää. Ingressive ja — like still another Scandinavian ‘yes’ variant, mm or mmhmm — typically represents agreement with a speaker’s affirmative statement, as in the following example from the Göteborg Spoken Language Corpus (where F = female speaker and M = male speaker): (2)
F: ja(g) tror de M: ja de e dom F: <ja>
“I think so” “Yes, they are” “”
The negative particle nej signifies agreement with a speaker’s negative statement, as in the following Swedish example, collected via participantobservation: (3)
F: Finns det några textilfabriker kvar i Manchester? “Are there any textile factories left in Manchester?” M: Det är inte mycket. “Not many.” F: “<no>”
As a variant of ja, standard Swedish and Norwegian also possess a (variably ingressive) particle jo, typically used in response to a negative query when the conversational interactants share the assumption or knowledge of the truth value of an event. A Swedish participant-observation example is provided in (4), and a Norwegian example in (5):
CLARKE & MELCHERS
54 (4)
Vet du inte att Sverige vann? Jo. “Don’t you know that Sweden won? Yes (I do).”
(5)
Så du ikke din far? Jo. (Peters 1981: 26) “Didn’t you see your father? Yes (I did).”
In the Scandinavian languages, pulmonic ingressive articulation also regularly occurs for a number of evaluative particles (e.g. Swedish bra ‘good’; jorå/jadå, signalling semi-reluctant agreement; cf. Eklund 2002), as well as for such frequently-occurring discourse formulae as tack så mycket (‘thanks a lot’) and ja vet inte (‘I don’t know’). More rarely, it is used to articulate sentential constituents, as in the Swedish example in (6) below, from a story about cats that appears in the Göteborg Corpus: (6)
... ut mot hallen (sighs) ja å <så sprang> ju katterna ut å in här “out towards the landing (sighs) yes and the cats in and out here, you know...”
Whether or not sequences of this last type result from physical considerations (the need to take a breath while continuing to speak) or are governed by other factors (cf. example [1] above) is an issue that merits further investigation. In any case, the Göteborg Corpus suggests that in Swedish such sequences are relatively rare — indeed, in this corpus we uncovered only 217 occurrences (mostly monosyllabic in nature) that were other than discourse particles, out of a total of 1563 ingressive articulations. Though it has been barely documented, pulmonic ingressive articulation is also found in a number of varieties of spoken English, where its use is largely restricted to the particles yeah and no. 3 The following examples from Newfoundland English, obtained via participant-observation, illustrate usage of confirmatory yeah and no (cf. examples [2] and [3] above) after, respectively, affirmative and negative statements: (7)
3
M: The other window has to be painted. F: Well, it’s a good day to do it. M:
While ingressive articulations of yes (in which the glide and vowel are articulated ingressively and the s egressively) do sporadically occur in some varieties of English, it is ingressive yeah which is the focus of this paper.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
(8)
55
F1: Bubble lights [=a Christmas tree decoration] are coming back. F2: They weren’t very popular for a while, were they? F1: <no>
Ingressive discourse particles as an areal feature Our experience suggests that even in areas where their use is fairly common, ingressive discourse particles tend to be favoured by certain segments of the population, and surface in particular registers; they also tend to remain beneath the level of consciousness for their users, at least until pointed out by others. It is therefore quite possible that they may go unreported. That said, our survey of all the available literature on ingressive speech suggests that outside of the well-delimited geographic area to be discussed below, discourse particles articulated via the pulmonic ingressive airstream have been documented only for Tohono O’odham, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the southwestern United States and Mexico (Hill and Zepeda 1999). Pulmonic ingressive articulation in Tohono O’odham appears to resemble the situation found in the Scandinavian languages, in that it is not restricted to discourse particles, but also occurs with full clauses. 4 However, the historical and language contact literature provides no reason to suspect that this is other than a coincidental development. Otherwise, the existing literature on ingressive articulation clearly points to Scandinavia, and the Nordic area in general, as the focal area of ingressive discourse particle use. This phenomenon has been described in some detail by Peters (1981) for mainland Scandinavian languages, Stølen (1994, 1995) for Danish, Kobayashi (2001) for Norwegian, and Eklund (2002) for Swedish. Ingressive particles have also been noted for the Scandinavian-settled North Atlantic islands of the Faroes and Iceland (e.g. Peters 1981), and are likewise found in Finland (e.g. Hakulinen 1993). What is less clear from the literature, however, is that there is an obvious pattern of linguistic diffusion of this feature which encompasses a much wider geographical area, the eastern extremity of which is constituted by the eastern Baltic; the current southern extremity, by Switzerland and Austria; and the western extremity, the eastern seaboard of the United States. For want of a better term, we will call this area the ‘North Atlantic/Baltic Zone’. For the eastern edge of this Zone, the eastern Baltic, we are not aware of literature on the topic, apart from a mention in Steinbergs (1993). We have 2.
4
Use of pulmonic ingressive articulation outside of discourse particles has also been noted for a handful of the world’s languages. Japanese, for example, possesses an ingressive whistle-like or hiss-like sound that expresses disapproval (Kobayashi 2001).
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however independently confirmed from native speakers the existence of ingressive yes equivalents in Estonian and Latvian, as well as in the Russian spoken in the area of St. Petersburg. Linguistic diffusion from the Nordic area also appears to account for the appearance of ingressive particles further south in Europe: as Pitschmann (1987) notes, ingressive ja is found in northern Germany, occurs to a lesser extent in the south of Germany, and, within perhaps the past thirty or so years, has spread to younger speakers in Austria. Though apparently not overly common, ingressive ja has also been noted in Dutch (Rietveld & van Heuven 1997). And while ingressive oui occurs in French (e.g. Léon 1992), ingressive particles have not been documented for other Romance languages. Ingressive discourse particles have also been recorded in the British Isles, particularly on the coastal and Celtic fringes — that is, in the language varieties spoken in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Thus Peters (1981) records (infrequent) ingressive articulations of yeah in observational data from Ireland and Wales; and in at least some parts of Scotland (e.g. the areas around Glasgow and Aberdeen), aye may be articulated ingressively. Ingressives also occur in both the Gaelic and English spoken in the Hebrides, where their use is apparently not limited to discourse particles. 5 Within England itself, however, the distribution of ingressive particles appears to be restricted to the northern region. Thus they were not documented in the mid-20th century Survey of English Dialects (SED), apart from a single male speaker from Patterdale in Cumbria, who was recorded in the 1970s. This speaker used ingressive aye and neh, as in the following examples: (9)
I mow the lawns and do fencing, anything what I can do, aye, , that's right
(10) ... no, it wasn't really, wasn't economical, eh, <(n)eh>, aye Shorrocks (2003) also notes reports of ingressive particle use in various parts of northern England (e.g. Durham, Teeside, East Yorkshire). While the distribution of ingressive discourse particles is minimally documented within the British Isles and Ireland, it is even less well-known that this region does not constitute their western geographic boundary. These 5
We have confirmation of ingressive use in Hebrides Gaelic from Barbara Bird (p.c.). However, there are no single particles for yes and no in the Celtic languages: thus yes is typically realized by a verbal form equivalent to ‘it is’. Spoken Gaelic varieties offer an obvious target for future investigation of pulmonic ingressive articulation patterns.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
57
particles also characterize some of the varieties of English spoken along the eastern seaboard or Atlantic coast of North America. Here, the southern boundary of ingressive use appears to be the northern United States, and specifically, New England. Ingressive yeah has been documented by Peters (1981) in a coastal fishing village in Maine (Vinalhaven); Peters also noted its occurrence elsewhere in the state. Ingressive particles were also recorded in five different Massachusetts communities by the Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE; Kurath et al. 1943). Across the Canadian border, the only reference in print that we could uncover for the three Canadian Maritime provinces was Pratt’s 1988 Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English, which notes ingressive yeah to be a feature of the provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. We ourselves have also confirmed its existence in the neighbouring Maritime province of Nova Scotia, and particularly in its insular portion, Cape Breton Island. As has been observed by several writers (Kirwin 1971, Paddock 1981, Steinbergs 1993, and, most recently, Shorrocks 2003), ingressive yeah and no are also common on the island of Newfoundland which, along with mainland Labrador, constitutes Canada’s most easterly province. Though we have occasionally come across users of ingressive yeah in central Canada (e.g. Toronto), the phenomenon appears to be extremely rare outside the Atlantic area. It has however been recorded in one inland Canadian location, namely, the region of Ottawa in the province of Ontario (Woods 1999). The geographical distribution of ingressive particles across the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone clearly suggests a common heritage, and diffusion by language contact across linguistic boundaries. At the northeastern periphery of the Zone, language contact is evident in the presence of ingressive particles in Finnish and Estonian, yet they are absent from a more southerly member of the Finno-Ugric family, Hungarian. The spread of pulmonic ingressive articulation at the western edges of the Zone finds a ready historical explanation, in the form of early westward expansion by the Vikings to the Faroes, Iceland, Scotland, England and Ireland. Indeed, the areas of Britain in which ingressive usage is currently attested are areas which in medieval times came under varying degrees of Scandinavian influence and settlement; the apparent result was the diffusion of ingressive articulation into both the Gaelic and English varieties spoken in these regions. From there, ingressive articulation was in all likelihood carried to the eastern seaboard of North America by Scottish and Irish emigrants, where it has been preserved in peripheral, and largely rural, areas in which these emigrants constituted the numerically dominant founder populations. In Canada, these areas include southeastern Newfoundland, settled heavily by migrants from the southeastern counties of Ireland; Cape Breton
58
CLARKE & MELCHERS
Island, which had a high proportion of highland Scots among its founder population; and the rural Ottawa Valley area of Ontario, which likewise received considerable Irish and Scots-Irish in-migration. As to the eastern seaboard of the United States, in one of the two American states in which ingressive discourse particles have thus far been documented — the fishing community of Vinalhaven, Maine — Peters (1981) attributes their presence to Scandinavian settler input. The above account of transatlantic diffusion notwithstanding, a number of points relating to the transmission of ingressive discourse particles to North America remain unclear. The region of the United States that received the highest proportion of Scandinavian immigrants — the Upper Midwest — does not seem to have preserved ingressive usage: for example, there is no record of this feature in the Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest (LAUM) (Allen 1973, 1975). That the absence of ingressives in this region may not be merely an artifact of the data collection methods used by LAUM receives confirmation from several other sources. As noted by Peters (1981: 22), no ingressive pronunciations were recorded by Einar Haugen in his investigation of the English spoken by Americans of Norwegian ancestry. Likewise, the second author of the present article, Gunnel Melchers, did not come across this feature in her interviews with Swedish immigrants to the U.S. (primarily in Minnesota); nor did she find it among speakers from the Bishop Hill Swedish colony in Illinois, mostly second- or third-generation, whose variant of choice was the American-like ‘uh-huh’. Ingressive particles also do not occur in at least one relatively isolated variety of American English the ancestry of which is primarily Scots-Irish, namely, Appalachian English. Peters’ (1981) proposed Scandinavian origin of ingressives in Vinalhaven, Maine, is also somewhat problematic, in that the founder populations of this community were overwhelmingly British rather than Scandinavian. Similarly, the Massachusetts communities documented by LANE as displaying ingressive particles appear to have been initially settled by emigrants from England. In Newfoundland, ingressive usage is perhaps even more in evidence in rural coastal areas settled almost exclusively by migrants from West-Country England rather than southeastern Ireland. Of course, as a lexically-transmitted feature, ingressive particle articulation could well have diffused throughout the island in much the same way as have a number of Irish lexical items (though not typically phonological and grammatical features; see Clarke 2004). In short, these tantalizing bits of evidence invite speculation as to whether, in previous centuries, ingressive discourse particles might have occurred in a wider geographical portion of England than is suggested by the current situation. Of course, for the moment, this must remain no more than speculation.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
59
Whatever the precise transatlantic connections, the evidence from settlement history and population contact strongly suggests that we are dealing with an areal phenomenon rather than a feature which arose independently in communities on both sides of the Atlantic. The language contact or diffusion position is considerably strengthened by the cross-linguistic parallels in social and pragmatic function which can be observed from one end of the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone to the other. It is to these parallels which we now turn. Our investigation focuses on two linguistic varieties located towards the eastern and western peripheries of the Zone: Swedish and Newfoundland English, respectively. 3.
Ingressive usage in the Swedish and Newfoundland English taped corpora With the exception of several recent studies (Eklund 2002, Kobayashi 2001), documentation of ingressive particle use derives from non-taperecorded observational data. In the present study, however, we rely primarily on tape-recorded corpora. For Swedish, we utilized the Göteborg University Spoken Language Corpus of Swedish. This corpus — the collection of which began in the 1980s and is still ongoing — was designed to include representation of a full range of registers and speech genres, as well as of various regions throughout Sweden. At the time of our study it contained 1,263,408 word tokens. Our Newfoundland English (NE) taped corpus was considerably smaller. It consisted of approximately 50,000 words, or five hours of tape-recorded speech, both same- and cross-sex, representing three separate and largely rural areas of the island: the West-Country-English-settled southwest coast; the central region; and the Irish-settled southeastern area, south of the capital city, St. John’s. Unlike the Göteborg corpus, the NE data consisted entirely of informal small-group interaction, involving an inside interviewer; the groups contained between four and six participants, the majority aged over 40. The recordings which constitute the NE corpus were specifically selected because they contained pulmonic ingressive articulation; a number of NE tapes surveyed — while representing informal conversational style and participants of similar backgrounds — simply did not exhibit any ingressive particles, though many examples of their egressive counterparts. This points to the existence of considerable interspeaker variability in ingressive use, a fact which we have independently confirmed both in Newfoundland and in Sweden. Our analysis has been supplemented with participant-observation data collected over the past number of years in Newfoundland and Sweden by each
CLARKE & MELCHERS
60 Type ja + jo
Egressive tokens Ingressive tokens 39315 (2068 of which = jo)
1082 (9)
Total per type 40397 (2077)
% ingressives (of total) 2.7
mm/mmhmm 12340 114 12454 0.9 nej 7558 150 7708 1.9 Overall total 59213 1346 60559 2.2 Table 1: The Göteborg Spoken Language Corpus of Swedish – Overall Summary.
author, both of whom are native speakers of ingressive varieties. Our records have proven very useful in corroborating the observations that have emerged from the taped corpora, particularly with respect to the range of discursive meanings conveyed by ingressives. We began the investigation of our taped corpora by examining the relative rates of occurrence of ingressive variants of yeah and no equivalents: i.e. ja/jo, mm and nej for Swedish, and yeah, mm and no for NE. This we calculated by dividing the number of ingressive variants by the total number of tokens of each particle, i.e., by the number of ingressive + egressive articulations. Results for Swedish are presented in Table 1, and for NE in Table 2. The overall Swedish rate of only 2.2% ingressive discourse particle use stands in marked contrast to the c. 18% usage in the NE corpus. Yet this discrepancy is undoubtedly the result of the style and genre differences between the corpora. Our NE data consist entirely of informal interactional speech among family members and acquaintances, while the Göteborg corpus contains a wide range of speech genres. In fact, its informal conversational component represents only about 5% of the total, or some 7 ½ hours of the c. 118 hours of total recording; substantially larger portions (just over 29, 15 and 14 hours respectively) are represented by interviews, discussions (including academic, TV, radio), and formal meetings. Speech of an essentially monological nature is also represented in the Göteborg corpus, and the fact that ingressives are very much an interactive device is borne out in that virtually the Type
Egressive tokens
Ingressive Total per type % ingressives tokens (of total) yeah 1926 522 2448 21.3 mm/mmhmm 428 21 449 4.7 no 327 49 376 13.3 Overall total 2681 592 3273 18.1 Table 2: The Newfoundland English Taped Corpus – Overall Summary.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
F, age 72 Particle
F, age 70
F, age c. 45 N Ingr % Ingr Total
F, age 23
Total
N Ingr
yeah
811
325
40.1
570
93
16.3
204
38
18.6
258
7
2.8
mm
105
9
8.6
61
2
3.3
56
10
17.9
85
0
0.0
no
114
31
27.2
99
7
7.1
13
4
30.8
28
0
0.0
1030
365
35.4
730
102
14.0
273
52
19.0
371
7
1.9
Overall total
% Ingr Total
61
N Ingr % Ingr Total
N Ingr % Ingr
Table 3: Interspeaker Variability in Ingressive Use, Newfoundland English (Partial) Corpus. [Key per speaker: col 1 = total n of ingressive + egressive tokens; col 2 = n of ingressive (Ingr) tokens; col 3 = percentage of tokens realized ingressively]
only monologue containing ingressive particles is a lecture on linguistics in which the lecturer discusses ingressives and produces illustrations of them. Nonetheless, there are obvious parallels between the two corpora: in both, the highest ratio of ingressive usage is found for yeah/ja, followed by no/nei, with affirmative mm or mmhmm displaying the lowest ingressive ratio. The NE corpus confirms a point made above, namely the existence of considerable interspeaker variability in ingressive use, even among speakers from virtually identical regional and social backgrounds. Table 3 summarizes ingressive rates in one component of the NE corpus, an all-female group interview in a tiny rural community on the southwest coast of Newfoundland; the total of 2404 discourse particles in this approximately one and a half hour recording displays an overall ingressive rate of almost 22%. The two older women represented in the leftmost columns are almost identical in age and social background, have spent their entire lives in the community, and interact closely. Nonetheless, they differ considerably in the degree to which they favour ingressive as opposed to egressive articulation: the ingressive rate of the 72-year old is two and a half times that of the 70-year old. This same table also suggests a further observation, one which corroborates the intuitions of both authors, although it must remain tentative because of lack of adequate data. This is the fact that in at least some areas of the ‘North Atlantic/Baltic Zone’, ingressive use appears to be declining among younger and more urban or urbanized speakers. Thus in Table 3, the 23-year old — a community member who moved to the city to obtain post-secondary education — uses ingressives at the extremely low rate of just under 2%, even in this extremely informal situation. 6 6
This observation should not be taken to mean that children in Sweden and Newfoundland are no longer acquiring ingressive particles. Though we have no recent child data, we note that there is some evidence that children may acquire these at a very early age: thus the ‘Dollhouse Play Corpus’, assembled in the 1970s by Professor (now Emeritus) Ragnhild Söderbergh of the
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4.
Cross-linguistic gender correlates within the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone In both Swedish and English, then, ingressive discourse particles seem to surface primarily, though by no means exclusively, in informal interactional contexts. What is considerably more striking, however, are the social — as well as pragmatic or discourse — parallels that emerge from examination of ingressive usage not only in our corpora, but all across the Zone. In this section, we deal with gender parallels. The existing literature indicates that ingressive particles are used throughout the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone by men as well as women. However, those observation-based ingressive studies that have dealt with gender — among them Peters (1981) for Norwegian (as well as the English of the U.S. state of Maine); Stølen (1994, 1995) for Danish; Pitschmann (1987) for German and Austrian German — have noted an obvious gender difference. Strikingly, this difference is always in the same direction: greater use of ingressives on the part of female speakers. In fact, ingressives seem to be a gender-stereotyped feature: despite the fact that most speakers seem to use ingressive particles unconsciously, there is none the less awareness in at least some regions of their social value as gender markers. Pitschmann (1987), for example, has noted that in some parts of Germany, it would be considered effeminate for men to use ingressive ja. For Newfoundland, Paddock (1981) impressionistically links ingressive speech to women. Steinbergs’ (1993) observational sample of 26 adultspeakers of various ages from the Newfoundland capital, St. John’s, bears this out; in fact, Steinbergs noted that no male members of her sample under the age of 40 made use of ingressive discourse particles. In mainland Canada, Woods’ survey of Ottawa English (Woods 1999) recorded a mere 18 tokens of ingressive speech, from a total of only five speakers in a 100-speaker corpus;
University of Göteborg, involves verbal interactions of Swedish three-year olds and their mothers, and provides clear examples of ingressive ja use among the children. In addition, our observation is not meant to imply that there is no ongoing geographical expansion of ingressive particle usage within the ingressive Zone. In at least one area, Austria, Pitschmann (1987) documents ingressive particle introduction from Germany via the often-observed sociolinguistic mechanism of adoption of a supralocal form by teenage girls and young women. In areas like Atlantic Canada, however, younger speakers are coming into more extensive contact than did their elders with speakers of North American non-ingressive dialect types, a factor which might well clarify the apparent reduction of ingressives among younger generations — particularly when these are linked, as they are for some, with a less prestigious local speech variety.
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
Particle ( ) = total n of tokens, egressive + ingressive ja (38320) jo ( 2077) mm (12454) nej ( 7708) Overall total
Total n of ingressive N of ingressives by females tokens
63
Percentage of ingressives produced by females
1073 592 9 6 114 110 150 78 1346 786 Table 4: Results for Gender - Göteborg Corpus of Swedish.
55.2 66.7 96.5 52.0 58.4
of the five, all but one were female, and these females accounted for almost 90% of ingressive tokens. Our corpus data representing both Swedish and Newfoundland English confirm the gender pattern. Table 4 presents results for the Göteborg corpus of Swedish. In this corpus, though they were slightly under-represented relative to men, women not only used more ingressive variants overall (just over 58% of the total), but also consistently produced a higher ratio of ingressive articulations than men for each of the four categories of discourse particles examined. The NE results in Table 5 are even more gender-marked: the ratios of ingressive use in the two all-female interactional segments of the corpus (approx. 22% and 14%) are considerably greater than the ratios in mixed-sex interaction. And while in interaction 3 males accounted for somewhat more ingressive tokens than did women, in interaction 4 they produced not a single ingressive articulation, even though they readily used egressive variants of yeah and no. The Newfoundland results for gender are corroborated by Kobayashi’s recent (2001) study on the use of ingressive ja in Norwegian. This study Group type 1. All-female 2. All-female 3. Mixed
Total n of yeah, mm, no
Total n of ingressive tokens
% ingressives
2404 135 449
526 19 33
21.9% 14.1% 7.3%
% ingressives by gender
— — M 8.0 (26/324) F 5.6 ( 7/125) 4. Mixed 285 14 4.9% M 0.0 ( 0/85) F 7.0 (14/200) Table 5: Results for Gender - Newfoundland English Corpus. [Overall ingressive use in mixed-sex groups: F 6.5% (21/325); M 6.4% (26/409)]
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Dyad type
N egressive ja N ingressive ja Total ja tokens % ingressives (of tokens tokens total) Mixed 277 9 (9 F; 0 M) 285 3.2 Mixed 266 48 (45F; 3M) 314 15.3 All-male 617 17 (3; 14) 634 2.7 All-female 348 41 (20; 21) 389 10.5 Overall total 1508 115 1623 7.1 Table 6: Kobayashi’s (2001) Norwegian Results for Same- and Mixed-Sex Dyads. (Numbers within brackets represent n of ingressives per dyad participant.)
involved two and a half hours of taped face-to-face unstructured and informal dyadic conversations between young-adult strangers. As in the case of our NE data, two of these settings involved mixed-sex interaction, and two, same-sex. 7 Of the total of 116 ingressive ja occurrences in Kobayashi’s data, an overwhelming 82.6% (n=95) were produced by women. As Table 6 shows, however, this is not because male participants did not make use of minimal responses in their verbal interaction. In fact, the all-male dyad produced the highest number (634) of ja tokens of any of the dyads, yet at the same time the lowest percentage (under 3%) of ingressive ja variants. In the mixed-sex dyads, the discrepancy between male and female ingressive use was particularly obvious. Women produced from nine to fifteen times as many tokens of ingressives as did male participants; that is, they were responsible for 94% and 100% of the ingressive particles that occurred in the two cross-gender interactions. The above results from Swedish, Norwegian and Newfoundland English offer clear support for the hypothesis that cross-linguistically, ingressive discourse particles carry gender marking. And, as will be shown below, the ingressive variants of discourse particles for yes and no also carry a pragmatic meaning of interactional involvement. Since cross-culturally, as Hill and Zepeda (1999: 38), among many, have pointed out, “a high level of attention to interlocutor needs” is a fundamental part of the construction of female gender identity, it is not surprising that ingressive particles would have been transmitted across linguistic borders not simply as an articulatory type, but also with appropriate gender-related meaning. The results outlined above should however by no means be taken to imply that ingressive discourse particles are the exclusive domain of women. 7
A difference between Kobayashi’s data and ours, however, is that we were unable to include in our NE taped corpus an example of an all-male interaction involving ingressives. Yet ingressives do occur in all-male conversation in Newfoundland.
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65
As several studies have shown (e.g. Eklund 2002, Peters 1981), these particles, like their egressive minimal response counterparts, are readily used by males to provide verbal feedback. For both genders, use of ingressive particles is obviously also role-related: hence Eklund’s (2002) finding of ingressive usage in an all-male setting in which verbal feedback is in order, namely, one involving a relationship of client to service provider. Indeed, in Eklund’s overall results — i.e., including both same- and cross-sex interactions — 82% of ingressives (68 out of 83) were produced by those cast in the role of client rather than service provider (in this case, travel agent). Different interactional roles assumed by males in interactions 3 and 4 of Table 5 undoubtedly account for the slight discrepancies in findings within the Newfoundland data: the males in interaction 3 provided considerable verbal feedback, both to one another and to the females (their wives) who were present, while in interaction 4 the males were obviously cast in the role of information providers, and the females, of interested listeners. None the less, the results outlined above clearly suggest that ingressive usage is gender-stereotyped. Peters’ (1981) investigation of ingressive yeah in the community of Vinalhaven, Maine, provides further support for this interpretation. According to Peters, though in Vinalhaven children of both sexes and women of all ages employ ingressive particles, the use of these forms is substantially reduced in teenage and adult males who opt for traditional employment in the fishery; however, males employed in non-marine pursuits maintain their use of ingressives. Thus avoidance of ingressive particles constitutes one aspect of the construction of working-class male identity in this fishing community. 8 5.
Discourse parallels across the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone Cross-linguistic gender similarities in usage add supporting evidence to the hypothesis that pulmonic ingressive usage across the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone represents an areal phenomenon. The language contact argument is reinforced by the close parallels in discourse or pragmatic meaning that are likewise to be observed within the Zone. The examination of cross-linguistic discourse similarities naturally raises 8
Our interpretation of ingressive usage in terms of a shared social construction of gender across the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone differs from the physiological explanation offered by Hill and Zepeda (1999), who propose that greater use of pulmonic ingressive articulation on the part of women is related to size differences in the vocal tract, i.e., the smaller female pharynx and larynx. However, the fact that these forms are used readily by males in a number of communities suggests that the observed gender difference across the Zone is more social than biological in nature.
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the more fundamental issue of whether ingressive particles carry different pragmatic or discourse meanings from their egressive counterparts. According to Pitschmann (1987: 155), German “ja produced by an ingressive air-stream exhibits distinct semantic values which differ from those of the ja produced on the more common egressive air-flow”. While Pitschmann’s (1987) overall assessment also applies to the languages we have surveyed, we do not share his views on the underlying pragmatic function of ingressive articulation, namely, to convey confirmation in a ‘routine’ and ‘fairly passive’ way. 9 Analysis of our Swedish and NE taped corpora as well as participantobservation data — coupled with the remarks of such investigators as Stølen (1994, 1995) and Kobayashi (2001) — points to the conclusion that there is clear semantic and pragmatic overlap between ingressive and egressive variants of discourse particles. However, we suggest that ingressive variants invariably carry special pragmatic meaning which is not a necessary component of their egressive counterparts. This is perhaps best seen by way of the following hypothetical example, which constitutes a request for (new) information: (11) Did you do it? (Egressive) (Ingressive)
Yes/Yeah ?
Native speakers tend to agree that if the ingressive response is judged acceptable, it is only in the sense of confirmation of what the respondent perceives to be the assumptions or expectations of the questioner; in (11), the ingressive implies ‘Yes, I agree with you/ Yes, as you already know/Yes, I admit it...’ That is, an ingressive particle is not generally appropriate in situations in which the particle represents new information. Rather, ingressive variants imply some sharing of contextual or situational knowledge — and opinion — on the part of interactants. Two naturally-occurring participantobservation examples follow, the first from NE and the second from Swedish; the participants in (13) were of the opinion that had the first statement not been articulated, and had the interaction consisted simply of a request for
9
This does not mean that such pragmatic meanings do not surface in certain contexts of usage. For example, repetition at intervals of ingressive ja or yeah may offer a bored listener an easy mechanism for feigning interest in a long-winded speaker to whom he or she is not paying much attention. Even a response consisting of a single ingressive may signal that the speaker’s mind is elsewhere, and that he or she does not wish to be disturbed (cf. the ‘counting under one’s breath’ phenomenon mentioned earlier).
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67
information (‘Have you tried the chair?’), the ingressive would have been unlikely. (12) F: Oh, that’s a different one. You have two, do you? M: (i.e., ‘as you have already concluded...’) (13) F: Den här stolen är väldigt bekväm. “This chair is very comfortable.” M: Har du suttit i den? “Have you tried it?” F: <ja> “” In short, ingressives are characterized by a feature which we will term [+affiliative], that is, a presupposition or presumption of shared or affiliative orientation on the part of discourse interactants. These are particles the most usual pragmatic meaning of which is to establish and maintain interactional solidarity and harmony, particularly in informal conversational settings. While this pragmatic meaning may also be associated with the egressive counterparts of these particles, it is not central to the meaning of the latter. 10 Our investigation of the pragmatic functions carried by ingressive discourse particles across the North Atlantic/Baltic Zone suggests a high degree of commonality of discourse meaning. In their role of maintaining good conversational interaction, these particles are most commonly associated across the Zone with listeners rather than with speakers. Their most frequent use is that of minimal response or backchannel, where they signal not only passive, but in particular, active or supportive listenership — or as Stølen (1994) puts it, interactional alignment. Yet within the languages of the Zone, they are also used by speakers, with the basic meaning of confirmation or agreement, and often with the discourse function of maintaining conversational rapport and harmony. Yet like minimal responses in general, ingressive particles across the Zone carry a second and simultaneous discourse dimension, that of turn regulator. Indeed, in some contexts, this may be their dominant function. As minimal responses on the part of listeners — whether articulated on their own, or in strings of two, three or more, involving both egressive and ingressive 10
Perhaps the most striking confirmation of the ‘shared orientation’ pragmatic meaning conveyed by ingressive discourse particles emerges from Eklund’s (2002) investigation of Swedish ingressives. In this experimental study, when participants were placed in a telephone situation in which they believed they were interacting with a machine voice rather than a human voice, they readily produced egressive discourse particles, but not a single example of an ingressive particle.
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articulation — they typically signal a lack of intent to initiate a turn as speaker. They function as what Schegloff (1982:81) has termed ‘continuers’, or verbal indications that the ‘interlocutor orients to a speaker signal that there is a possible turn change point, and uses the backchannel to pass over the opportunity to take the turn’. As turn regulators, they may also be used by speakers as opposed to listeners: here, they carry a full range of functions, as they serve as signals of turn initiation, of intent to continue, or (perhaps most frequently) of end of turn. We illustrate these diverse functions with several examples. (14) below — part of a verbal exchange among the four female participants from our NE taped corpus represented in Table 3 — provides a good illustration of listener backchannelling. Both statements are followed by a chorus of minimal responses from all participants, involving both egressive and ingressive articulation. In addition, the chorus is joined by the two speakers (F2 and F1), both of whose use of ingressive not only indicates verbal support, but concurrently functions as a signal that the speaker does not intend to resume the floor immediately. (In examples (14) and following, ingressives are italicized within < >, as per our usual convention; overlapping speech is indicated by [ ) (14) F2: well they’d have to have their room like, you know, and then we’d have to double up sometimes, [like, you know F3: [yeah F1: [ F4: [yeah F2: [ F1: [yeah, there’d be two or three of us in bed together F2: yeah F4: yeah F1: F2: F3: mm This interaction is also characterized by sequences of backchannels, with ingressives appearing at or near the end of the sequence. An illustration of this occurs in the following example of overlapping speech involving three of the same participants, where the series of minimal responses from F2 and F1 is interwoven with the statement of F3:
INGRESSIVE PARTICLES ACROSS BORDERS
(15) F3:
F2: F1:
69
Was the same thing [with the youngsters you’d take yer youngsters to ‘em or – if there was something wrong or [oh yes, yeah, oh yes, , yeah [oh yeah, yeah, , yeah
In examples (16) and (17), from a mixed sex interaction in the NE taped corpus, speakers use ingressives to reconfirm the truth value of a previous statement. The pattern in (17) — in which the speaker follows an initial egressively-articulated confirmation (often, as here, representing new information) with an ingressive particle when further probed by a conversational partner — is a commonly-occurring one throughout our taped corpora and observational data. (16) F: They says alcohol wasn’t a factor. M: It wasn’t? F: <no>, no (17) M: Chris gone back to ‘im? F: yeah M: Is she? F: Example (18), from the Göteborg corpus, illustrates the same phenomenon in Swedish: (18) B: vilken buse “what a scoundrel” A: ja “yeah” B: <ja> “” Example (19), from the same corpus, provides an illustration of confirmatory ingressive no in turn-final position, a pattern very common across the ingressive Zone: (19) A: nä hon röker inte heller ... gymnastiklärare “no, she doesn’t smoke either ... PE teacher” B: nä de gör hon inte “no she doesn’t, <no>” While in (19) the turn-final ingressive ultimately reconfirms the words of a conversational partner, such is not necessarily the case. Ingressive particles are often found with a pragmatic meaning termed ‘self-directed’ by Stølen
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(1994) — that is, confirmation is with the speaker’s own statement rather than that of an interlocutor. Perhaps more importantly in such instances, the ingressive often functions as an end of turn marker, as in the British English examples in (20) (the Cumbrian SED speaker also illustrated in [9]–[10] above), as well as the (overheard) Swedish example in (21): 11 (20) a. No, I've just heard them called Herdwicks, aye, b. Oh aye, aye ...aye, that's right (21) Du menar att du gillar henne inte i den där rollen, “You mean you don't like her in that part, <no>” 6.
Conclusion In our cross-linguistic sketch of pulmonic ingressive discourse particle use, we have delimited a northern European and transatlantic zone through which these particles have diffused via language contact over the course of centuries. The striking parallels evident within this broad geographical region provide evidence of cross-linguistic transmission of social and pragmatic factors, a rarely-noted phenomenon in the language contact literature. Since little has likewise been written on pulmonic ingressive articulation in general, we hope that our findings will stimulate further research in this area. References Allen, H. B. 1973, 1975. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest, Vols 1 & 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Allwood, J., M. Björnberg, L. Grönqvist, E. Ahlsén and C. Ottesjö. 2000. “The spoken language corpus at the Department of Linguistics, Göteborg University”. Forum: Qualitative Socialforschung/Social Research 1.3. [For online information on the Göteborg University Spoken Language Corpus of Swedish, see www.ling.gu.se/SLSA/SLcorpus.html] Clarke, S. 2004. “The legacy of British and Irish English in Newfoundland”. Legacies of Colonial English: Transported Dialects ed. by R. Hickey, 242–261. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11 Our participant-observation data suggest that in Sweden (as apparently throughout Scandinavia), ingressive particle articulation may signify little more than turn closure in certain specialized types of interaction. This is most obvious in service interactions involving a sequence of transactions (e.g. a shop assistant providing a number of individual items for a customer) where the phrase ja tack (lit. yes thank-you), articulated ingressively by the serviceprovider, in effect has the pragmatic meaning of ‘What’s next?’. This usage is not parallelled in Newfoundland English.
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Conklin, H. C. 1959. “Linguistic play in its cultural context”. Language 35. 631–636. Crystal, D. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dieth, E. 1950. Vademekum der Phonetik. Bern: A. Francke. Eklund, R. 2002. “Ingressive speech as an indication that humans are talking to humans (and not to machines)”. Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 7), Denver, Colorado. Gunnell, T. 1995. The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia. Woodbridge UK/Rochester NY: D.S. Brewer. ----------. 2001. “Grýla, grýlur, ‘grøleks’ and skeklers. Medieval disguise traditions in the North Atlantic?” Arv 57 (Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2001): 33–54. Hakulinen, A. 1993. “Inandningen som kulturellt interakionsfenomen”. Språk och social context ed. by A.M. Ivars et al., 49–67. Helsinki: Institutionen för Nordiska Språk och Nordisk Litteratur, University of Helsinki. Hill, J. H. and O. Zepeda. 1999. “Language, gender, and biology: pulmonic ingressive airstream in women’s speech in Tohono O’odham”. Southwest Journal of Linguistics 18:1.15–40. Hockett, C. 1955. A Manual of Phonology. (= Memoir 11, Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics). Reprinted in 1974, 1988 by the University of Chicago Press. Johnson, L. G. 1962. “Laurence Williamson”. Scottish Studies VI.49–59. Kirwin, W. J. 1971. “Ingressive speech reported in Newfoundland ‘mummertalk’”. Regional Language Studies (Newfoundland) 3.24. Kobayashi, N. 2001. Ingressivt ja: Ja på innpust – ikke tegn på overraskelse eller dårlig hjerte. Bergen: M.A. thesis, University of Bergen. Kurath, H., M. L. Hanley, B. Bloch, G. S. Lowman Jr. and M. Hansen. 1943. Linguistic Atlas of New England, vol. 3, part I. Providence, RI: Brown University. Léon, P. 1992. Phonétisme et prononciations du français. Paris: Nathan. Paddock, H. 1981. A Dialect Survey of Carbonear, Newfoundland. (= Publication of the American Dialect Society 68). University of Alabama Press. Peters, F. J. 1981. The Paralinguistic Sympathetic Ingressive Affirmative in English and the Scandinavian Languages. New York, NY: New York University Ph.D. dissertation. Pitschmann, L. 1987. “The linguistic use of the ingressive airstream in German and the Scandinavian languages”. General Linguistics 27.153–161.
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Pratt, T. K. 1988. Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rietveld, A. C. M and V. J. van Heuven. 1997. Algemene fonetiek. Bussum: Coutinho. Schegloff, E. A. 1982. “Discourse as an interactional achievement: some uses of “uh-huh” and other things that come between sentences”. Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk ed. by D. Tannen, 71–93. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Shorrocks, G. 2003. “Pulmonic ingressive speech in Newfoundland English: a case of Irish-English influence?” The Celtic Englishes III ed. by H.L.C. Tristram, 374–389. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. Steinbergs, R. 1993. The use of the paralinguistic sympathetic ingressive affirmative in speakers of English in the St. John’s, Newfoundland area. St. John’s, NF: Memorial University (Linguistics), ms. Stølen, M. 1994. “Gender-related use of the ingressive ja in informal conversation among speakers of Danish”. Cultural Performances: Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference ed. by M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, L.A. Sutton and C. Hines, 668–677. University of California at Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group. ----------. 1995. “Multi-functional ja: an analysis of the Danish affirmative ingressive ja as conversational structuring device in informal conversations”. Nordlyd: Tromsø University Working Papers on Language and Linguistics 23.217–229. Woods, H. B. 1999. The Ottawa Survey of Canadian English. Kingston, Ontario: Strathy Language Unit, Queen’s University.
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONSONANT SYSTEM IN MENNONITE LOW GERMAN (PLAUTDIETSCH) LARISSA NAIDITCH Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1.
Introduction This article is part of my research on an insular dialect (Sprachinsel) of German, in which I consider both synchronic and diachronic developments. For this research I have been able to consult both primary and secondary sources. The former include tape recordings and notes I was able to make in Kazakhstan (Martuk, Aktyubinsk district) and in Germany among immigrant families from the former Soviet Union (especially from the Orenburg district). In the summer and autumn of 2001 I was able to work for three months in Marburg (Institut für Deutsche Sprache – Deutscher Sprachatlas) studying sources relevant to my project. 1
2.
The historical background The Mennonites are an independent religious community, the oldest evangelical Free Church, which arose out of the Baptist movement at the time of the Reformation. They took their name from their founder, the former Catholic priest from Friesland Menno Simons (1496–1561). Their way of life is characterised above all by the renunciation of violence and absolute truthfulness; the Mennonites do not baptise their children and refuse all oaths. They have frequently been persecuted on account of this way of life and on several occasions have been forced to migrate from one country to another. A considerable number of Mennonites fled to the Weichselland (the Vistula area), which at that time belonged to Poland. This area became their temporary home. According to Walther Mitzka (1930: 7) the Mennonites have ‘ihren stärksten Prozentsatz innerhalb der Bevölkerung […] im Großen und Kleinen Werder, also im ehemaligen Kreise Marienburg und in der westlich der Kreisstadt
1 This study trip was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD; I would like to thank the DAAD and the staff in Marburg for their support.
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gelegenen Hälfte des alten Kreises Elbing’. 2 After the first partition of Poland (1772), the territory of the Weichselland (but not the Free City of Danzig) became part of Prussia. Soon after this the Mennonites came into conflict with the Prussian government, principally because of their refusal to do military service. On the other hand, the Russian Empress Catherine the Great promised the foreign colonists numerous privileges. The Russian government made suggestions which were particularly advantageous to the Mennonites, including exemption from military service, freedom of worship and large tracts of land (Schirmunski 1928: 22). The migration of the Mennonites to Russia began in 1789 and continued until the 1870s. The first group of Mennonite colonies (Chortitza, also known as Alt-Kolonie) was created in the south of the Russian Empire, not far from Zaporožje on the Dnieper. In 1804 a second group of colonies was founded, this time on the Molochnaya River in the Melitopol’ district. In the 1850s new colonists from Prussia settled on the Volga (the colonies of Am Trakt and Alexandertal). Further Mennonite settlements came into being either as mother colonies as a result of the arrival of new colonist from Prussia or as daughter colonies. Thus there were also Mennonite settlements in the Mariupol’ district, in the Don region, in the northern Caucasus, in the administrative district of Orenburg and in Siberia. The two last-named groups of colonies, especially the settlements in the Kalunda steppe of the Altai region, founded in 1907, have survived up to the present (Klaube 1991). Nowadays the dialects, culture and way of life of these settlements form a valuable material which is utilised by a number of researchers. In the 1880s many Mennonites emigrated to Canada and the USA; the reasons for this emigration were political reforms in Russia, in particular the introduction of general military service. Some of these emigrants moved on from Canada and the USA to Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil or Argentina (see Brandt 1992). Emigration to Canada and Paraguay was still possible in the 1920s, and a number of Mennonite colonies were founded at that time (Rotkohl 1993: 17–18). In the 1920s and 30s and during the Second World War Russian Germans were subject to harsh reprisals; finally they were deported from the European parts of the Soviet Union and sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan. In recent times many of them have emigrated to Germany. The dialect of the Russian German Mennonites, usually referred to as ‘Plautdietsch’ or ‘Mennonitenplatt’ (PD, in English ‘Mennonite [Low] German’), was formed in the Weichselland and is in all probability a form of 2
The Mennonites ‘form the majority of the population […] in Gross Werder and in Klein Werder, in other words in the former district of Marienburg and in the part of the old district of Elbing which lies to the west of the district town.’
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the Low German dialect which was spoken in this area. The emigrants who moved there thus gave up their mother tongue in exchange for the Low Prussian dialect of the Weichselland, which according to Mitzka (1930: 9) was ‘gewiss nicht ein schroffer Übergang’. 3 The linguistic basis of Mennonite Low German are the Low-Prussian German dialects of the Weichselland (these were thoroughly researched by Walther Mitzka between the two World Wars; cf. also Pinnow 1998, 2000). Although the places in the Weichselland from which emigration took place are known, a precise determination of the linguistic home of the Mennonites is a complicated problem (Mitzka 1930; Thiessen 1963; Moelleken 1987). Today PD can be heard in far-flung countries such as Siberia and Kazakhstan, the USA, Mexico and Germany. It is used as a home language and is experienced by the religious and cultural community of the Mennonites as an important factor in their identity. Although it is primarily a spoken language, there is also a literature in PD, especially poems, most of which originate from North America, but which are sometimes also know to Mennonites in other countries (Reimer, Reimer & Thiessen 1983). Thus from a sociolinguistic point of view PD is more than a dialect; it can be seen as a daughter language of German and an Ausbausprache (Kanakin & Wall 1994: 1). PD is represented in many variants which differ according to the phonetic and phonological, lexical and — more rarely — grammatical levels. These can often be observed in the same family, for instance where man and wife come from different areas. This variation can be traced to the following factors: 1) the original differences between the dialects of the first two colonies (Chortitza and Molochnaya); 2) different results of autochthonous developments in individual dialects; 3) the results of dialect mixing; 4) the influences of the languages and dialects of the different surroundings. In spite of these differentiations, PD is undoubtedly a single dialect, which can be seen for instance in common trends in its development. 3.
Phonetic and phonological studies on PD: The state of research The first phonetic description of PD was undertaken by Jacob Quiring in his doctoral dissertation (1928), a traditional Neogrammarian sound history treatise on the dialect of Chortitza. In the period between the two World Wars, Walther Mitzka, who was researching the German dialects in the region around Danzig, also studied the Low German of the Russian-German Mennonites. He had the opportunity of making field notes, as a group of Russian-Germans had
3
‘Certainly not a sharp transition.’
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to wait months in Germany for their crossing to America. His main purpose was a localisation of this dialect in terms of linguistic geography and typology within the framework of a general study of a linguistic area. An overview of PD is also given by Viktor Schirmunski (1928: 51–53). In the post-war period, the subject of Russian-Germans in the Soviet Union was practically prohibited. It was only in the 1960s, from the beginning of the Thaw, that Russian-German dialects were occasionally discussed in dissertations and publications of Germanists from Siberia and Kazakhstan (Berend & Jedig 1991, bibliography: 269–374). Thus Avdeev (1968) and Jedig (1966) studied the phonetic/phonological system of PD in the Altai region. The latter’s research was published in German. Foremost among the American scholars who contributed to our knowledge of PD phonology were Goerzen (1952) and Moelleken (1972). A number of studies of the dialects and the linguistic integration of Russian-Germans appeared in Germany in the 1990s as a reaction to the new wave of immigration of ethnic Germans from the countries of the former Soviet Union; individual works are devoted to the Mennonites (see e.g. Heidemann & Sawatzky 1996; cf. also works by the Groningen linguists de Graaf & Nieuweboer 2001). The phonology of PD is treated in a number of works published in the last decade (Brandt 1992; Kanakin & Wall 1994; Nieuweboer 1999; Naiditch 2001). In spite of this, the diachronic development of the sound system has not been researched satisfactorily. 4.
The consonant system of PD: Synchronic and diachronic problems According to Niebaum (1985: 1226), the consonant system of Middle Low German had the following structure: /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/ /[g] /l/ /v/ /[z] [ƒ]/ /j/ /f/ [s]/ /x/ /h/ /m/ /n/ /N/
/r/
In Mennonite Low German we find the following consonants: /p/ /b/ /v/ /f/ /m/
/t/ /t’/ /k/ /d/ /d’/ /[g] /z/ /ž/ /j/ [ƒ]/ /s/ /S/ /C/ /x/ /h/ /n/ /n’/ /N/ /l/ /r/
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The affricates which occur in loan words in PD can be interpreted as biphonemic clusters, and are thus not contained in the table. There are a number of partially overlapping factors which are relevant for the development of the Middle Low German consonant system (which can be seen as the reference system) in PD. The most important of these are changes which affect the system, e.g. by adding new phonemes. These phonemes are 1) the set of palatalised consonants; 2) the phoneme /S/, later also /ž/; 3) the phoneme /ç/. Other features apply to the rules of phoneme use and to the phonological structure of individual lexemes. These are: 1) Auslautverhärtung (final devoicing of obstruents), which was already completed in the Middle Low German period, and the restoration of the consonant oppositions in question in final position; 2) lenition of the plosives intervocalically, which already took place in earlier periods of the language history; 3) the further development of the velar consonants and of /j/; 4) changes in consonant groups with /n/; 5) vocalisation of /r/. In this general list only the first point — the development of /t’, d’, n’/, which is restricted to a small number of the dialects — is not usual. Some of these phenomena are discussed in greater detail below. The phoneme /S/, which is also new for High German dialects, is foreign to many Low German dialects (Žirmunskij 1956: 330–335); in others, including those which can be regarded as linguistic sources for PD (the dialects of the Danzig area), /S/ is present. As is well known, the phoneme /S/ developed as a result of the monophonemisation of the consonant group sk (sch) and as a phonologisation of an allophone of /s/ before consonants in initial position (PD: /S´u/ ‘shoe’, /Slu:p´/ ‘to sleep’), sometimes also in other positions. In PD, as in many dialects, /S/ appears after r in medial position; cf. the examples from PD: /da:rS t / ‘thirst’, where r is retained, and /boÅ t ’/ ‘birch’, where r has been vocalised (Kanakin & Wall 1994: 15). A new phoneme which came into being partly in analogy to the consonant /S/ and has only a weak functional load, is /ž/: /hi´ž/ ‘millet’. Auslautverhärtung, i.e. the neutralisation of the opposition between voiced and voiceless consonants (in other dialects of that between fortis and lenis consonants) in final position, took place in most German dialects. This development was ‘completed by the time of the earliest Middle Low German records’ (Niebaum 1985: 1226). It can also be observed in PD, cf. the sound alternations /ti:t/ – /ti:d´/ ‘time – times’, /bli:v´/ – /bl´if/ ‘to stay – stayed’, /le:z´/ – /lçus/ ‘to read – read (past tense)’. Nowadays this neutralisation rule no longer applies. A new final position, which came about because of apocope, also allows for voiced consonants (cf. Nieuweboer 1999: 82). The phonological character of the sound alternations between voiced and voiceless consonants has also changed: they are no longer automatically determined by their
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position. Following the sound changes mentioned, the opposition between voiced and voiceless consonants has gained a new morphonological function: voicing serves as a marker of the plural in one of the morphological noun types: /br´if/ ‘letter’ – /br´iv/ ‘letters’, /frint/ – /frind/ ‘friend’ – ‘friends’. The development of the velar consonants It is well known that the velar consonants have a particular fate in German dialects which is different from that of the other consonants (Frings 1967). The fricative pronunciation of g [ƒ] is characteristic of many High and Low German dialects. This is particularly typical in postvocalic position, in which reflexes of g can appear as [ƒ, C, j, x] (Žirmunskij 1956: 284–293; Lasch 1974: 178–186); there are numerous contractions, which were characteristic of late Old High German, Middle High German and Middle Low German and which can be observed in individual words in the standard language as well as in some dialects (Žirmunskij 1956: 291–293). In PD the plosive [g] occurs in initial position when it is followed by a back vowel in the word stem: /glçus/ ‘glass’, /gçust/ ‘guest’. If the velar consonant is followed by a front vowel (directly or after a consonant) g becomes [j]: /jin’t’/ ‘went’, /je:v´/ ‘to give’, /jle:zÅ/ ‘glasses’, /jri:p´/ ‘to grasp’. After a vowel g is realised as a fricative in many varieties of PD. After a back vowel we have the following picture: [ƒ] intervocalically and in the new final position (as a result of apocope), but voiceless [x] in the old final position — [u:ƒ] ‘eye’, [u:ƒ´] ‘eyes’, [foŃ´l] ‘bird’, [doŃ] ‘days’, [fru´x] ‘asked’. In another variant of PD g occurs as a plosive after back vowels (including intervocalically): /joÅg´/ ‘to hunt’, etc. As a result of the loose connection and the glide before g, which leads to diphthongisation, [ƒ] is only possible after long vowels and diphthongs. After front vowels and sonorant consonants /j/ occurs in this position: /bi:j´/ ‘to bend’, /fçlj´/ ‘to follow’. The fate of gg should also be examined in this context. According to Niebaum (1985: 1225), the original simplex and geminate, generally, merged in the Middle Low German period: the double letter in the spelling indicates a short preceding vowel. But the development of g – gg is more complicated, as the PD material shows. Niebaum writes about the consonant system of Middle Low German: ‘Bei g, gg hat sich etwas kompliziertere Entwicklung ergeben. Als Fortsetzer des alten /g:/ und in Verbindung mit /N/ dürfte der Konsonant, das legen die graphischen Befunde nahe, als Verschlußlaut [g] anzusehen sein, 4.1
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ansonsten als Spirant [ƒ].’ 4 The transition from gg to [d’] in PD, which in all probability took place in a more recent period in the development of the dialect, shows a differentiation between the reflexes of gg and g. At the time of the relevant sound changes, after front vowels the only /g/ remaining was that which had developed from gg, because the simplex had become a fricative. This velar plosive was palatalised to /d’/ (see below). The phonological results of these developments can be summarised as follows: 1) the plosive /g/ in initial position became identified with the reflex of the corresponding geminate in medial and final position following a back vowel, i.e. /g/ in /glçus/ ‘glass’ as in /pog/ ‘frog’ (<pogge). The plosive is identified with the same phoneme in those dialects which did not have spirantisation: /kloÅg´/ ‘to complain’, etc. The voiced velar fricative [ƒ] (in the dialects with spirantisation) is correctly viewed as an allophone of /g/, from which it developed. It occurs only after long vowels and diphthongs — intervocalically or in the new final position: ([foŃ´l] ‘bird’, [doŃ] ‘days’) — and is never in opposition to the plosive /g/ in any position. 2) /j/ ( /a˘/: cf. the alternations /doxtÅ/ – /da:CtÅ/ ‘daughter’ – ‘daughters’ and minimal pairs: /va:C/ ‘way’ – /va:x/ ‘guard’, /a:Ct/ ‘genuine’ – /a:xt/ ‘eight’ (Kanakin & Wall 1994: 15). An additional factor is the development of the new diphthong /oå/ < er: /boÅC/ ‘mountain’ (cf. a rare example of /x/ after this diphthong: /j´froÅxt/ ‘asked’). Finally we should mention some sound alternations in which the phonemes under consideration take part. They have a morphonological function (Kanakin & Wall 1994: 21–28) and at the same time show the connections between the phonemes /g/, /C/ and /j/ in the phonological system.
‘The development of g, gg was somewhat more complicated. As a continuation of the old /g:/ and in conjunction with /N/, the spelling in the records indicates that the consonant is to be viewed as the plosive [g], otherwise as the fricative [ƒ].’
4
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/g/ – /j/: /go:n´/ – /jin’t’/ ‘to go – went’, /glçus/ – /jle:zÅ/ ‘glass – glasses’, /g/([ƒ]) – /x/ : [droŃ´ – dru´x] ‘to carry – carried’, [u:ƒ] – /u:xt’´/ ‘eye – little eye’. /j/ – /C/: /boÅC/ – /boaj/ ‘mountain – mountains’, /va:C/ – /veÅj/ ‘way – ways’, /j/ – /x/: /fli´j´/ – /flu´x/ ‘to fly – flew’, /zy:j´/ – /zu´x/ ‘to suck – sucked’, /x/ – /C/: /doxtÅ/ – /da:CtÅ/ ‘daughter – daughters’. The development of the palatalised consonants The most striking peculiarity of PD, which deserves particular attention, is the series of palatalised consonants: /t’, d’, n’/. Diachronically they have the following sources /t’/ < /k/; formerly this was an allophone of /k/ in the positions: 1) before front vowels; 2) before sonorants followed by front vowels; 3) after front vowels and front vowels + sonorant. The phonemic split was triggered by the following factors: 1) e> /a:/ in a closed syllable, e.g. /ra:t’/ ‘skirts’, /dra:t’/ ‘dirt’, /da:t’/ ‘ceiling’, /za:t’/ ‘sacks’, /a:t’/ ‘corner’, /ha:t’/ ‘hedge’. This e was often the result of an umlaut from a or o (> ö, e), in individual cases it was derived from i: /t’a:p/ ‘heads’, /t’a:rtÅ/ ‘shorter’. 2) ir, er >/oå/: /t’oÅt’/ ‘church’, /boÅt’/ ‘birch’. Cf.: /koÅk/ ‘(I) cook’ – /t’oÅt’/ ‘church’, /jeStoÅk´/ ‘stabbed’ – /StoÅt’/ ‘to strengthen’. 3). An additional factor in the phonologisation process is apocope, which causes the ocurrence of minimal pairs: /za:k/ – /za:t’/ ‘sack’ – ‘sacks’. Before the vowel /y:/, which is the result of the so-called spontaneous palatalisation of /u:/, the consonant was not palatalised: /kry:pe/ ‘to crawl’, /kry:t/ ‘cabbage’. (Before /k/, /y:/ does not occur because of the shortening of long /u:/ to /u/: /bruk´/ ‘to need’, /buk/ ‘stomach’, /luk/ ‘hatch’). These data demonstrate that the phonetic/phonological process of consonant palatalisation was completed before the change from /u:/ to /y:/. However, we find consonant palatalisation in some more recent loan words with k after and before e, i; the palatalisatioin process is thus not purely phonetic, but phonetic/phonological. Cf. loans from Russian: /lçuft’ç/ Russ. lawka [lafka]> lafke ‘shop’, /č´snit’/ ‘garlic’ aus Russ. česnok, Wrentjes from Russ.wareniki (a kind of food) , Plemjanit’ Russ. plemjannik ‘nephew’, Respublitje ‘republic’ from Russ. respublika; Kelchosnitj from Russ. kolchosnik ‘kolkhoz farmer’ (Klassen 1993: 63, 50), borrowings from other sources, mainly from Standard German: /tECnit’/ ‘technology’, /muzit’/ ‘music’, /cirt’el/ ‘ compass’. More recent loan words show a loosening of the positional dependence on /k/: cf. a variant plemjannik (Nieuweboer 1999: 194), and also occasional borrowings such as /žulik/ ‘swindler’. 4.2
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Nowadays the phoneme /t’/ is thus found in the following positions: initially before vowels and sonorant consonants – /t’a:lÅ/ ‘cellar’, /t’i:n’Å/ ‘children’, /t’ni:p´/ ‘to pinch’, /t’ri:C/ ‘war’, /t’li:n/ ‘little’; medially following vowels and sonorants – /drint’´/ ‘to drink’, /t’le:t’Å/ ‘wiser’; finally following vowels and sonorants – /rint’/ ‘ring’, /malt’/ ‘milk’, /voÅt’/ ‘work’. The connection between /t’/ and the velar consonants /k/, /x/ is shown by phonemic alternations: /t’´ip´ – koft/ ‘to buy – bought’, /zi´t’´ – zoxt/ ‘to seek - sought’, /za:k/ - /za:t’/ ‘sack – sacks’, /k´u/ - /t’i:/ ‘cow – cows’, /klu´k/ – /t’le:t’Å/ ‘wise – wiser’ (vgl. Kanakin & Wall 1994: 22–26, 28). This corresponds to variations in PD spelling: /t’/ is given as tj in some sources, in others as kj, or in initial position as kj, otherwise as tj (Nieuweboer 1999: 218–225). The development in the palatalised consonants is seen in the emergence of the new phonemes /n’/ und /d’/. The phoneme /d’/ carries a much smaller functional load than /t’/. Its historic source is the geminate gg after /i/, including after /i/ < /y/: /lid’´/ ‘to lie’, /rid’´/ ‘back’, /vrid’l´ / ‘to totter’, /brid’/ ‘bridge’. Thus the changes associated with g and gg can be seen as follows: e:, i: + g + Vowel> ej, ij; e, i + gg + Vowel > eg, ig (+ Vowel) > ed’, id’(+ Vowel). The independence of the phoneme /d’/ in the phoneme system is shown by the following examples: /a:d’/ ‘the edge of material’ - /fla:g/ ‘flag’, /ti:d´/ ‘times’ - /mid’´/ ‘mosquitoes’ (cf. Nieuweboer 1999: 87; Moelleken 1972: 35; Avdeev 1968: 4– 5). The historical source of /n’/ are the phoneme clusters nd, ng after front vowels (in final or intervocalic positions): /vEn’/ ‘walls’, /En’/ ‘end’, /vo:nin’/ ‘apartment’, /rin’/ ‘ring’, /zin’´/ ‘to sing’, /t’in’Å/ ‘children’. Thus we have here a syntagmatic monophonematisation of the two consonant clusters. The fronting of the articulation of /N/ corresponds to that of the reflexes of gg. /n’/ alternates with /N/: /bin’´ – j´buN´/ ‘to bind – bound’. In individual cases nd also became /n’/ after u, causing among other things the opposition /n’/ – /N/: /hun’/ ‘dogs’ - /juN/ ‘young’. The emergence of /n’/, which took place in parallel to the other palatalisations and can thus be explained as a case of analogy, was also promoted by the weakening, assimilation and gutturalisation of d after nasals, which is familiar from the history of German, including the Low German dialects (Niebaum 1985: 1226; Foerste 1957: 1779 f.). The new set of consonants fits in with the old proportional oppositions in the system: /t/:/d/:/n/ = /p/:/b/:/m/ = /k/:/g/:/N/ = /t’/:/d’/:/n’/. Its development is a clear demonstration of the tendency towards symmetry in the system. In spite of this, the old phoneme oppositions retain some functional differences of the new oppositions. Thus the phoneme pair /t’/:/d’/ does not take part in the alternation of the voiceless and voiced consonants (see above).
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4.2.1 Hypotheses on the reasons for the development of palatalised consonants in German dialects. There are some spellings which indicate a strongly palatalised pronunciation of k before e in Old Saxon: an i is introduced after k. According to A. Lasch (1974: 178): ‘[Es] ist anzunenehmen, dass die Anlage zu dieser Entwicklung über ein weites Gebiet verbreitet und in verschiedenem Maße vorgeschritten war.’ 5 However, palatalised consonant phonemes are found in only a small number of German dialects: particularly in East Pomeranian and some West Prussian dialects (Teuchert 1913; Koerth 1913; Semrau 1915); also in the Zips dialect islands (Gréb 1921; Valiska 1967). As it is not a typical feature of German dialects, scholars have attempted to explain it by means of language contact, assuming either Frisian or Slavonic influence. As has already been mentioned, the first generation of Mennonites who settled in the Weichselland came from Friesland. The influence of Frisian, which is otherwise apparent only in individual words, can thus be viewed as a kind of substrate. The Frisian palatalisation or assibilation is a striking feature of this language. Even in Old Frisian there are cases where t is written instead of k (a number of spellings are found: t, ty, thi, thy, tti, tty, tthi, tthy, tt); the phonetic realisation of this k is said to have varied in the different dialects (Loopstra 1935: 10). Palatalised /t’/, /d’/ and their development mechanisms in PD can be compared to the phonological developments in the languages of the AngloFrisian group (see e.g. Penzl 1947, who discusses the phonemic split of /k/ to /k/ and /č/ in Old English). On the other hand, north-eastern German dialects were in contact with Polish and Kashubian dialects. It is well known that palatalisations are a typical feature of Slavonic languages; in this respect Kashubian dialects have similarities with the Low German dialects discussed here (Lorentz 1925: 74– 75, 82–83). Walther Mitzka stressed that the dialect speakers in the Slavonic – Low German contact zone were bilingual, and this could have assisted a common development: ‘Am kaschubischen Rande […] spricht der Kaschube seine und die deutsche Mundart, der Deutsche neben seiner das Kaschubische’ 6 (Mitzka 1928: 22). And:
5
‘Presumably the seeds of this development were spread over a wide area and had progressed to different stages.’ 6 ‘In the Kashubian border region […] the Kashubian speaks his and the German dialect, the German speaks Kashubian in addition to his own dialect.’
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‘k wird in deutschen, polnischen und kaschubischen Mundarten Westpreußens zu verschiedenen Formen des tχ-Typs gewandelt [...]. Slawische Ortsnamen zeigen diese Sibilierung in der zweiten Hälfte des 13.Jahrhunderts. [...]. Also hier ist ein geographischer Vergleich der Geltung dieser palatalisierten k in den deutschen und in den slawischen Mundarten derselben Großlandschaft möglich’ (Mitzka 1959: 120f.). 7
The palatalised consonants are said to have been very widespread in the Pomeranian and West Prussian German dialects. The Mennonites may have borrowed this characteristic feature in their dialect. An important argument for the influence of the Slavonic languages is the presence of the same set of palatalised consonants in the dialects which were subject to Slavonic contacts. These include not only the Low German Pomeranian dialects, but also the East Central German dialects in eastern Slovakia, which developed in contact with Polish, Slovakian and Ukranian dialects (Gréb 1921; Valiska 1967). Cf. the following examples of the ‘Chmel’nicaer palatalisation’: [t’ent] ‘child’, [d’i:n] ‘to go’, [diRen’] ‘easy, small’ < geringe (Valiska 1967: 40, 43). Thus we can be dealing with either a contact zone or a development of typical characteristics of certain Germanic languages. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive if we view them in the framework of the concept of a broader Sprachbund (language union). As we know, Roman Jakobson (1962: 164–190) saw the correlation of palatalisation as one of the most important features of the Eurasian Sprachbund (cf. also Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 247). It is too early for such a general conclusion from our material in the framework of this hypothesis; that requires further typological and contact linguistic research. Finally I would like to mention some examples from Russian dialects which show an obvious typological parallelism with the features of PD examined in this article. It is also significant that the results of the palatalisation in these dialects are phonetically strikingly similar to those in PD. In some modern Central Russian dialects /k’/, /g’/ are replaced by /t’/, /d’/ before front vowels: [ruka] – [rut’i], [rut’e] ‘hand’, [d’ib’el’] < [g’ib’el’] ‘death’ (Kasatkin 1989: 57). Cf. also corresponding forms in the dialects with progressive assimilative softening: [van’t’a] Wan’ka (name), [den’d’am] ‘money, dat. pl.’ (Kasatkin 1968: 4). This similarity can be explained in purely typological terms, but it can also point to common Slavonic-Northwest 7
‘k is changed to different forms of the tχ-type in the German, Polish and Kashubian dialects of West Prussia [...]. Slavonic place names show this sibilation in the second half of the 13th century. [...]. So here it is possible to make a geographical comparison of the appearance of this palatalised k in the German and Slavonic dialects of the same region.’
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Germanic developmental tendencies. The question as to which of these two solutions comes closer to reality must be left open here. It can only be resolved by further studies. References Avdeev, I.E. 1968. “O vzaimodejstvii meždu glasnymi i soglasnymi (na materiale nižnenemeckich govorov)“. Novosibirskij Gos. Pedagogičeskij Institut. Naučnye trudy, vypusk 25. Germanskie i romanskie jazyki. Novosibirsk. Berend, N. & H. Jedig. 1991. Deutsche Mundarten in der Sowjetunion. Geschichte der Forschung und Bibliographie. Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag. (Schriftenreihe der Komission für ostdeutsche Volkskunde in der deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde e.V. Bd.53). Brandt, C. 1992. Sprache und Sprachgebrauch der Mennoniten in Mexiko. Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag. (Schriftenreihe der Komission für ostdeutsche Volkskunde in der deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde e.V. Bd.61). De Graaf, T. & R. Nieuweboer. 2001. “The language of the Siberian Mennonites”. New Insights in Germanic Linguistics ed. by I. Rauch and G.F. Carr, 21–34. N.Y. Berkley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics, Vol.2. Goerzen J.W. 1952. Low German in Canada, a study of ‘Platdietsch’ as spoken by Mennonite immigrants from Russia. Diss. Foerste, W. 1957. “Geschichte der niederdeutschen Mundarten”. Deutsche Philologie im Aufriß. Hrsg. von W. Stammler. 2.überarbeitete Auflage. Bd.1. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Frings, Th. 1967. “Vom g und seinen Lautwerten und von germanischen Sprachlandschaften”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 88, 329–357. Halle. Gréb, J. 1921. “Palatalisierung in Zipser Mundart von Hobgarten”. Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten 16.67–76. Heidemann, G. & N. Sawatzky. 1996. “Etjch wejtj von Schiller “Der Taucher”. Zur autochtonen Varietät des Niederdeutschen von Aussiedlern aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion”. Niederdeutsches Wort Bd. 36.75–106. Jakobson, R. 1962. “K charakteristike evrazijskogo jazykovogo sojuza”. Roman Jakobson. Selected Writings. Phonological Studies. V.1 The Hague: Mouton & Co. S’-Gravenhage. Jedig, H. 1966. Laut- und Formenbestand der niederdeutschen Mundart des Altai-Gebiets. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. (Sitzungsberichte der
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Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philologischhist.Klasse, Bd. 112, H.5). Klassen, H. 1993. Mundart und plautdietsche Jeschichte. Marburg: N.G.Elwert Verlag. (Schriftenreihe der Komission für ostdeutsche Volkskunde in der deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde e.V. Bd. 65). Kanakin, I. & M. Wall. 1994. Das Plautdietsch in Westsibirien. (Lingua Mennonitica. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen). Kasatkin, L.L. 1968. Progressivnoe assimiljativnoe smjagčenie zadnenebnych soglasnych v russkich govorach. Moskau: Nauka. ----------, ed. 1989. Russkaja dialektologija. Izd. 2 pererabotannoe. Moscow: Prosveščenie. Koerth, A. 1913. “Zur niederdeutschen Mundart aus der Gegend von Rogasen in Posen”. Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten 6.275–281. Lasch, A. 1974. Mittelniederdeutsche Grammatik. 2nd unaltered edition. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Loopstra J.J. 1935. De assibilatie in de oudfriese oorkonden. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon N.V. Lorentz, F. 1925. Geschichte der pomoranischen (kaschubischen) Sprache. Berlin und Leipzig: W. de Gruyter. Mitzka, W. 1928. Sprachausgleich in den deutschen Mundarten bei Danzig (= Königsberger Deutsche Forschungen 2). Königsberg. 1928 = Kleine Schriften zur Sprachgeschichte und Sprachgeographie. Hrsg. von L.E. Schmitt, 1968: 211–230. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ----------. 1930. Die Sprache der deutschen Mennoniten. (Heimatblätter des Deutschen Heimatbundes. Danzig. Heft 1). ----------. 1959. Grundzüge nordostdeutscher Sprachgeschichte. 2nd edition. Marburg: Elwert Verlag. Deutsche Dialektgeographie, Bd.59. Moelleken, W. W. 1972. Niederdeutsch der Molotschna- und Chortitzamennoniten in British Columbia / Kanada. Phonai. Deutsche Reihe. Band 10. Monographien 4. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ----------. 1987. “Die linguistische Heimat der rußlanddeutschen Mennoniten in Kanada und Mexiko”. Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch, Jahrbuch des Veriens für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 110.89–123. Naiditch, L. 2001. “Die Entwicklung des Vokalismus im Mennonitenplatt”. Beiträge zu Linguistik und Phonetik. Festschrift für Joachim Göschel zum 70. Geburtstag. Hrsg. von A. Braun. Stuttgart: Steiner. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Beihefte. H.118: 242–256. Niebaum, H. 1985. “Phonetik und Phonologie, Graphetik und Graphemik des Mittelniederdeutschen”. Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte
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der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung. Hrsg. von W. Besch, O. Reichmann, S. Sonderegger. Berlin, New York. Halbband II: 1220–1227. Nieuweboer, R. 1999. The Altai Dialect of Plautdiitsch. West-Siberian Mennonite Low German. (LINCOM Studies in German Linguistics 07.) München/Newcastle: Lincom Europa. Penzl, H. 1947. “The Phonemic Split of Germanic k in Оld English”. Language XXIII.34–42. Pinnow, J. 2000. Düüsend Worta Schtoothöffa Plaut. Tausend Worte Stutthöfer Platt. Gesammelt von Kurt Gutowski und Harry Grieger. Zusammengestellt, ergänzt, erläutert und herausgegeben von Jürgen Pinnow. Westerland / Sylt. Pinnow, J. & L. Tetzlaff. 1998. Von Labommels on andre spoß’ge Lied von Otto Müller in Danziger Platt mit übertragung in die Mundart der Danziger Niederung und Übersetzung ins Hochdeutsche von Lothar Tetzlaff. Hrsg. von Jürgen Pinnow, Lothar Tetzlaff. Westerland / Sylt. Quiring, J. 1928. Die Mundart von Chortiza in Süd-Rußland. PhD thesis, München. Reimer, A., A. Reimer & J. Thiessen, eds. 1983. A sackfull of Plautdietsch. A Collection of Mennonite Low German Stories and Poems. Winnipeg, Canada: Hyperion Press Limited. Rohkohl, K. 1993. Die Plautdietsche Sprachinsel Fernheim/Chaco (Paraguay). (Schriftenreihe der Komission für ostdeutsche Volkskunde in der deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde e.V. Bd.64). Marburg: Elwert Verlag. Schirmunski, V. 1928. Die deutschen Kolonien in der Ukraine. Moskau: Zentral-Völkerverlag der Sowjet-Union. Semrau, M. 1915. “Die Mundart der Koschneiderei”. Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten 8.143–202. Teuchert, H. 1913. “Die niederdeutsche Mundart von Putzig in der Provinz Posen”. Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten 6.3–44. Thomason, S.G. & T. Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. Thiessen, J. 1963. Studien zum Wortschatz der kanadischen Mennoniten. Marburg. (Deutsche Dialektgeographie, 64). Valiska, J. 1967. Die zipserdeutsche Mundart von Chmel’nica (Hopgarten). Bratislava. Žirmunskij, V.M. 1956. Nemeckaja dialektologija. Moskva, Leningrad.
ENGLISH DIALECTS IN THE BRITISH ISLES IN CROSS-VARIETY PERSPECTIVE A BASE-LINE FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ∗
SALI TAGLIAMONTE†§, JENNIFER SMITH†, HELEN LAWRENCE† University of York, UK†, University of Toronto, CDA§ 1.
Introduction The task of establishing historical relationships between new and old world varieties of English is one of the ‘hot topics’ in contemporary language variation and change as researchers attempt to trace the origins and development of linguistic features in North American dialects back to the British Isles (Clarke 1997a, 1997b, 1999, Hickey 2005b, Jones & Tagliamonte 2004, Poplack 2000, Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001, 2005, Rickford 1986, Tagliamonte & Smith 2002). The quest for the origin of dialect differences in North America is not new. It can be traced to the early 1900s when there was a surge of interest in spoken American English and its history (Kurath 1928, 1964). Despite a great deal of research in subsequent decades, however, there is more debate than consensus on precisely how linguistic links can be established between the varieties of English that left the British Isles during the colonization period and those that emerged in the rest of the world. A major conundrum has been to set the standards for comparison (Montgomery 1989, Montgomery 2001, Schneider 2005) and to constitute appropriate research methods (Clarke 1997b, Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991, 2001). Poplack and Tagliamonte (1991: 316) argue that in order to resolve the prior status of a linguistic feature:
∗ The first author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom (the ESRC) for research grant #R000239097, Back to the Roots: The Legacy of British Dialects and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (the AHRB) for research grant AN6093/APN11081 Vernacular Roots: A database of British dialects. We would like to thank Annie Johnson, Mercedes Durham, and Rika Ito for their assistance in extracting and coding the data. We dedicate this article to the ‘northerners’ in Cumnock, Cullybackey and Maryport who took the time to share their stories with us and provide this legacy of English dialects of the British Isles for the future.
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it is not its current existence that is decisive, nor even its rates of occurrence, but its distribution in the language, as determined by the hierarchy of constraints conditioning its appearance.
Bailey and Ross (1992: 520) echo this stipulation with their “roots fallacy” where they argue that simply “identifying the analogs of forms in source languages” cannot adequately explain their history. Given these developments in methodology, the checklists of features which typify some research may not be sufficient, nor are simple proportions. But are the criteria proposed by Poplack and Tagliamonte too rigorous, as argued by Clarke (1997b: 291), or necessary and vital as argued by Jones and Tagliamonte (2004)? Until more linguistic features and more situations have been examined, it is perhaps too early to tell, especially when many old linguistic variants and variables may have already disappeared from transported dialects (Clarke 1997b, Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001: 241). Perhaps the most “crucial long-ignored difficulty” (Montgomery 1997: 123) is the dearth of information from earlier non-standard, regional English dialects of the British Isles 1 (Clarke 1997b: 290, Montgomery 1997: 122). Without the perspective from the source dialects, the enterprise of making trans-Atlantic comparisons suffers from lack of historical and comparative linguistic evidence. Unfortunately, any real facsimile of the original spoken language of the original settlers is beyond reach. Thus, researchers have resorted to studying written sources, particularly old letters written by immigrants to their families back in Britain (e.g. Montgomery 1995). Indeed, Montgomery (1995: 15) argues that such data is “as rich a source as there is to be found”. Others have mined data from the rich oral traditions in enclave communities in North America (Poplack 2000, Poplack & Sankoff 1987, Poplack & Tagliamonte 1989, 1991, 2001, Wolfram & Thomas 2002, Wolfram et al. 1997, Wolfram et al. 1998). However, in this paper we explore the possibility that there is another invaluable source: many of the linguistic features which have figured prominently in the literature involve linguistic phenomena that can still be heard in some dialects in Britain. Can such data provide adequate comparative evidence to track trans-Atlantic connections? An advantage of such materials, if they can be acquired, is that through accountable fieldwork, sample design and corpus construction we can gain access to sufficient amounts of data which are representative of the vernacular norms of dialects at the community level
1
We use “English dialects of the British Isles” as a neutral, geographically based, cover term for the varieties we target for investigation.
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(Labov 1972, see also Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991). If so, we may be able to gain much more in-depth knowledge of the grammar of particular linguistic features. Such information will contribute important linguistic details for establishing which linguistic features are actually diagnostic of the putative source dialects and also which features may distinguish them. One of the major goals of this paper is to introduce new data from a number of communities in Britain whose antecedents have direct historical connections with North America. To date, there are very few accountable quantitative studies of English dialects in the appropriate source regions in the British Isles. In fact, there is almost no evidence from these specific locales. Thus, we target a number of non-standard linguistic features which are differentiated on key characteristics. The perspective afforded by cross-variety comparison will impel us to seek explanations beyond a single community of speakers and outside the boundaries of a single region. A broader goal is to provide new evidence for use in future research contributing to the enterprise of making trans-Atlantic connections. More generally we hope that these results may broaden the understanding of the differential development of English in varying contact situations over the last 300 years (Mufwene 2001). To situate this enterprise, we begin with a historical perspective. 2. 2.1
Historical background British roots: American soil During the colonial period in the 18th century, at least 275,000 people left Britain for North America (Bailyn 1986, Bailyn & DeWolfe 1986, Fischer 1989: 609, Wood 1989). Although these migrants came from many different locales, the vast majority who immigrated between 1717–1775 originated from the lowlands of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the northern counties of England (Campbell 1921: 51, Fischer 1989: 619, Landsman 1985: 8). The American destinations of these British migrants were somewhat concentrated — southwestern Pennsylvania, western parts of Maryland and Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Appalachian mountains (Crozier 1984: 315, Fischer 1989, Leyburn 1962: 184–255). Although certain areas involved British settlers from a wide-range of dialect regions (McDavid 1985), census data reveals that the British “northerners” outnumbered all other population groups in most regions (Fischer 1989, Montgomery 2001). Thus, there are socio-historical links between Northern Ireland, Lowland Scotland and Northern England and the mid to southern United States during the colonial period.
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2.2
Back to the roots The areas from which most British migrants to North America originated between 1717–1775 were the counties of Derry, Antrim and Down in Northern Ireland; Ayr, Dumfries, and Wigtown in Scotland; and Cumberland and Westmorland in Northern England, (Fischer 1989: 622, Leyburn 1962: 94). The sea itself is said to have united the regions bordering the Irish sea “in a single cultural region” which was “unique in its speech” (Fischer 1989: 622, 786): first, the dialects of Lowland Scotland and Northern England both have their origins in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English (Murray 1873). This, coupled with proximity to Scotland, is said to be “reflected in the linguistic characteristics of the area” (Beal 1993: 187–188), which shares many of its features with Scots. Similarly, Lowland Scotland has strong linguistic links with certain parts of Northern Ireland. The Ulster Plantations of 1610 (e.g. Gregg 1985: 9, Leyburn 1962: 94) led to a dominance of Scottish migrants in certain areas and the development of a unique variety — Ulster Scots (e.g. Barry 1981, Gregg 1985), which is different from other varieties in Ireland, which developed out of contact with speakers from England. The connections between these source linguistic regions as well as the relative proportion of British migrants from these areas in the southern United States in the colonial period suggest that the available linguistic model for English must have been at least somewhat “northern” in nature. According to the Founder Principle (Mufwene 1996: 122–123), the language to emerge in such a situation would be influenced by the frequency and nature of the linguistic features of the varieties spoken by the dominant founder population, as these have ‘selective advantage over competing alternatives’ (Ibid.). Similar processes are invoked for dialects in contact (Trudgill 1986, 1999, Trudgill et al. 2000). Thus, we hypothesize that the variety of English that developed in the American South during the colonial period may have contained features from these areas and some of the constraints on their use. One of the long-term goals of this research program is to test that possibility. Before embarking on such a project, however, we must first have detailed information about the relevant dialects to establish the point of comparison from the right place(s) and further, to assess whether the materials provide data which can be taken to represent the right time. 3.
The data As outlined elsewhere (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001: 97, Tagliamonte & Smith 2000: 141), one of the most informative constructs which can shed light on the origins and development of languages is the relic area. Such areas, because of their peripheral geographic location and/or isolated social political
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circumstances, tend to preserve older features. In fact, the construct of the relic area has been fundamental to historical linguistics in reconstructing earlier stages in the history of a language (Anttila 1989: 294, Hock 1986: 442). Among the more recent criteria for establishing the status of a variety as “peripheral” include geographic location, historical continuity and group identity (Wolfram & Thomas 2002: 26–36). Our fieldwork and data collection come from just such areas. These are indicated on the Map in Figure 1. 2
Buckie
Cumnock Cullybackey Maryport
Wheatley Hill
Tiverton
Figure 1: The communities from which the data were collected.
2
We refer to these corpora by the names of the communities where the data were collected.
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Maryport, Cumbria. Maryport is an ex-trading port on the north Cumbrian coast about 27 miles from Carlisle with a population of 11,500. It was settled in the mid 18th century and developed along with the main industries of coal mining, fishing and ship building. In recent years these traditional industries have dramatically declined. Unlike some areas of Cumbria, Maryport was not included in the tourist boom of the last century and still remains off the traditional tourist route. Cumnock, south west Scotland. Cumnock is a small ex-mining town in Ayrshire (population 11,000) in south west Scotland. The nearest substantially sized town is Ayr, sixteen miles to the west. The area has been settled for at least 800 years. In the 18th century there were substantial industrial developments and a railway link established Cumnock as a growing mining community in the 19th century. The collapse of this industry in the 1980’s has resulted in high unemployment and a breakup of the traditional fabric of the community. Cullybackey, Northern Ireland. The village of Cullybackey (population 2,500) is situated 30 miles north-west of Belfast in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. This is a predominantly Protestant area with most of the residents of Scottish descent. The main industries are agricultural, retail, and manufacturing service. The Environmental Improvement Plan for the area states that “despite its picturesque setting, Cullybackey has not developed its potential as a leisure/tourist destination, or stopping off point”. Of these three areas, the connection between Cumnock and Cullybackey is the closest. Ayrshire, where Cumnock is located, was one of the source areas for the Ulster plantations in Northern Ireland. To these corpora we add the rich resources of a number of other datasets, which are comparable across a range of extra-linguistic characteristics. This will allow us to explore further regional comparisons in the use of particular linguistic features. Tiverton. Tiverton is a small town in mid Devon. In this area, the industry has always been primarily agricultural and for many residents, continues to be today (Godfrey & Tagliamonte 1999). Wheatley Hill. Wheatley Hill is a village in County Durham in northeast England. It was once an insular mining community, but in the last few decades many of the mines have closed down, forcing the inhabitants to find work in nearby urban centres (Martin & Tagliamonte 1999).
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Buckie. Buckie is a small town on the far northeast shore of Scotland. Despite the decline in the traditional fishing industry, the community has been able to maintain its cultural cohesiveness due to the maintenance of local employment provided by the oil industry (Smith 2000). The speaker sample and total number of words in each corpus is shown in Table 1. All the speakers are over 60 and were born and raised in the community.
Tiverton [TIV] Maryport [MPT] Wheatley Hill [WHL] Cumnock [CMK] Buckie [BCK] Cullybackey [CLB]
MALE FEMALE TOTAL SPEAKERS 7 2 9 20 23 43 3 3 6 18 23 41 4 5 9 12 5 17 Table 1: Sample design and characteristics.
TOTAL WORDS 96,472 401,376 206,320 349,428 302,894 198,086
In each locale we interviewed the most insular speakers from the oldest generation at the time of the fieldwork. Crucial to the enterprise of collecting representative dialect data, in all the peripheral communities the fieldworker was an in-group community member (Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991). 3 Each corpus comprises tape-recorded conversations representing in many cases hundreds of thousands of words (see Table 1) which include discussions about local traditions, narratives of personal experience, local gossip and informal discussions. While there are undoubtedly formality effects operating within the context of the interview situation, these are within normal parameters of conversational interaction. None of our material contains dramatic styleshifting or the self conscious speech that appears to be present in fieldwork sites where the interviewers were alien to the community (Schilling-Estes 1998). Indeed, the ‘broad’ dialectal quality of these materials along with their generally informal tone makes us confident that the speech faithfully reflects the typical discourse found in each community and is as close as we can get to the vernacular norms of the regional dialects.
3 The only exception is Cumnock where the second author carried out the interviews. Although not native to this particular village, she shared salient cultural characteristics with community members.
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4. 4.1
Diagnostic features investigated Introduction The most important decision to make in tracking linguistic origins is to find the right linguistic feature to examine (Hickey 2005b, Jones & Tagliamonte 2004, Montgomery 1989, Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001, Wolfram 2000: 47). Ideally, a diagnostic should have a unique association with a source variety. However, this is a very demanding criterion, as we shall see. At the very least the linguistic feature should be attested in the comparison varieties and occur frequently enough in each of them to admit large scale quantitative analysis of variable conditioning (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001: 100–101). However, many prized features are simply not frequent enough, others may not exist in all the relevant dialects under investigation, some are just not diagnostic (Schneider 2005: 284), but the product of universal tendencies shared by all varieties (e.g. Chambers 1995, 2001). Moreover, any one feature is unlikely to provide all the relevant qualities. As Wolfram and Thomas (2002: 16) argue with respect to African American Vernacular English: An authentic picture of earlier African American speech can emerge only if a wide array of dialect structures is considered … While selective single-structure studies may reveal significant insight into a particular linguistic process, they may obscure or even distort our understanding of the overall relationship of African American speech to other varieties.
In an attempt to approach this level of adequacy, we shall compare and contrast four different variables: verbal -s, (1), NEG/AUX contraction, (2); the for to infinitive, (3) and zero adverbs, (4). Equally as important as having an array of features to study, however, is the fact that each of these features differs in status across varieties. The first two: verbal -s and NEG/AUX contraction, are reported to distinguish northern varieties of British English. Verbal -s is the “show case variable” (Rickford et al. 1991: 104) for making trans-Atlantic connections. NEG/AUX variation presents another putative diagnostic of specific regional dialects in Britain, but much less is known about it. The third variable, the for to infinitive, is a remnant from an earlier stage of English, but may have receded differentially across regions. The fourth — the zero adverb — is more pervasive, it is reported across all vernacular English dialects. Verbal -s (1) a. People has no sense with youngsters. (CLB:j) b. They come up to the moss and they get on. (CLB:j)
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NEG/AUX contraction (2) a. But that isn’t what you wanted was it? (TIV:b) b. And it’s not put on or false or anything like that. (TIV:b) For to (3)
a. There was no buses to take you back and forward then. (MPT:v) b. So the roads were crowded when it was time for to start. (MPT:v)
Zero adverbs (4) a. It was a real lovely. (WHL:c) b. It’s really marvellous when you think back. (WHL:c) Thus, we have data from six different dialects around the British Isles, and four features which should both distinguish them on some counts, and ally them on others. We now subject these data to empirical analysis. We follow methods and criteria previously established in the comparative quantitative sociolinguistic tradition (Poplack & Tagliamonte 1989, 1991, 2001, Tagliamonte & Smith 2000, Tagliamonte 2001). Further, the cross-variety comparative method will serve as an important check in controlling for the possibility of language universals (see also Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001: 101), while the various lines of evidence provided by these techniques will serve to assess the relationship amongst varieties (see Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001: 94). All these will contribute to assessing whether any of the forms under investigation can serve as useful diagnostics for making trans-Atlantic connections. 4.2
Verbal -s Variable use of verbal -s in 3rd person plural subjects, as in (5) is the feature most widely-used for establishing links between North America and Britain. (5)
a. They hate being called Americans. They’re Canadians. The really take offence if they call them American. (BCK:i) b. When they go back, the teachers asks them to write something. (BCK:b) c. No discipline at home, no discipline in the school. And they go on that. (CLB:b)
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d. Youngsters gets far too much and they’ve no manners some of them at all. (CLB:e) e. They have a student there every year for help with the lambing, a student vet. (TIV:r) f. Small children goes er up there you see, they have super night there, kiddie’s night, very nice really for ’em. (TIV:p) g. I know there’s a lot of young people at the weddings now and they want a disco. (CMK:g) h. Him and my brother goes out drinking. (CMK:G) i. They live in the end bungalow at the bottom of the bridle-path and you go- the farm’s theirs. (WHL:y) j. There ø always one or two starts to fade a bit. (WHL:c) k. I said, ‘Lads at pits has three pound’. (MPT:a) l. They only live two doors off us. (MPT:a) The origin of verbal -s can be traced back to Scottish, Northern Irish and Northern English dialects (Clarke 1997a, Montgomery 1989, 1994, Montgomery & Fuller 1996, Poplack & Tagliamonte 1989, Schneider 1981, 1983). Not only did this feature exist at earlier stages in these regions, but also a number of constraints operated on its application: when the subject is a noun the verb takes an -s suffix, but when the subject is a pronoun, it does not (Murray 1795/1968: 211). 4 This rule is attested as far back as the 13th century (Murray 1795/1968: 212). Montgomery’s (1997) analysis of 16th and 17th century letters confirm that it was present in the written record of Ulster Scots and Bailey and Ross’s study of Ship English confirm that it was present amongst 18th century sailors (1988). Both studies make an explicit transAtlantic link. Indeed, most studies concur that this is a transported constraint par excellence. In fact, the use of plural -s in contemporary Appalachian English in the United States displays “remarkable retention of linguistic patterns and constraints across more than four centuries and two continents in
4 Other constraints relate to the adjacency of the subject (Murray 1795/1968:211); however, these data do not contain sufficient non-adjacent contexts across all communities to make a comparison possible.
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the evolution of Scots English to Scotch-Irish English to Appalachian English ” (Montgomery 1997: 137). What do the data from our six varieties reveal? Table 2 shows the distribution of verbal -s across plural NPs and pronominal they. 5
BCK CMK WHL MPT CLB TIV
NP PRO % N % N 74 23 2 123 25 117 1 555 22 41 0 216 24 192 1 617 71 56 2 259 49 65 33 223 Table 2: Overall distribution of NP vs pro across communities.
All the northern communities maintain the historically renowned NP/PRO distinction. Indeed, we can confirm that it is still intact in these contemporary dialects after 700 years, and this despite its more recent demotion to non-standard status. In Tiverton, on the other hand, we observe something a little different: the pronouns are not categorically unmarked. Nevertheless, the NP over PRO ranking prevails (see also Godfrey & Tagliamonte 1999). The strong convergence of results from all the communities provides further confirmation that the NP/PRO constraint must have been present in the source dialects and made its way via diffusion to North American dialects. This robust data confirms the findings from much smaller data sets gleaned from historical written sources. In addition, these same dialects also exhibit variation in was and were and is and are (Smith & Tagliamonte in preparation), just as we reported for was and were in Buckie in Tagliamonte and Smith (2000). Thus, although “it is difficult to really pin down individual sources and lines of historical transmission” (Schneider 2005: 264), verbal -s appears to be a linguistic feature whose lineage is transparent. These findings substantiate that these present-day dialects do preserve features typical of earlier stages in the history of the same dialects. 6 We submit
5
In these analyses, the NP category included relative pronouns, in line with the historical record (Murray 1795/1968: 211). Subjects such as some of them were first treated separately but since they were found to pattern along with NPs in their patterns of use, they were subsequently collapsed with NPs.
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therefore that these data provide an informative window on the past, and thus may contribute important evidence for tracking the origins of North American dialects. 4.3
NEG/AUX contraction The second variable is NEG/AUX contraction, which may occur with the verbs be, have and will, as in (6)–(8). 7 (6)
AUX contraction a. But she’s not that daft, though, Geoff. (MPT:%) NEG contraction b. I said “I know it isn’t gonna affect you.” (MPT:%)
(7)
AUX contraction a. And I’ve no been so mobile since. (CMK:A) NEG contraction b. I don’t know her, I haven’t seen her. (CMK:A)
(8)
AUX contraction a. He’ll not be better again Margaret, no.(CLB:e) NEG contraction b. And you won’t have the same interest. (CLB:e)
Although this feature has never been used to establish trans-Atlantic links, there is good reason to assume that it might provide an excellent diagnostic. According to Trudgill (1978: 13) the frequency of AUX contraction increases “the further north one goes”. The forms with n’t are more common in Southern British English, while in Scotland and Northern England, “forms such
6
Data from 18th and 19th century Yorkshire letters and diaries do not exhibit the NP/PRO constraint (Montgomery to appear). Based on this evidence Montgomery concludes that “North Britain does not appear to have been a single linguistic territory for variation between was and were” (Montgomery to appear). This may be true. However, Yorkshire is not amongst the main regions included in the 1717–1775 migrations to North America. Our data, on the other hand, which come from the areas of greatest population migration to North America do in fact appear to represent a single linguistic territory for this particular linguistic feature, i.e. the NP/PRO constraint with was/were, is/are and verbal -s. 7 Some communities differ in the phonological rendition of the overt negator not and the cliticised form n’t. In Cullybackey and Cumnock, the non-cliticised form is no and the cliticised form is nae. In Buckie, the non-cliticised form is nae and the enclitic is na. In this analysis all these forms are referred to as not (non-clitic) or n’t (enclitic).
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as ‘ll not are preferred to forms such as won’t” (Aitken 1984, Beal 1993, see also Haegeman 1981, Miller 1993, Quirk et al. 1985, Swan 1980: 159). Do the data from our six varieties substantiate these claims? Table 3 shows the overall distribution of AUX contraction with be, have and will across the communities. TIV WHL MPT CLB CMK BCK % N % N % N % N % N % N have 1 52 0 37 0 234 7 72 3 99 0 57 would 0 40 0 26 0 151 1 168 0 89 0 54 will 0 24 70 10 6 70 91 64 88 32 0 22 be 43 82 98 48 50 163 97 118 100 162 100 83 Table 3: Overall distribution of auxiliary contraction with have, would, will and be by community.
The propensity for AUX contraction differs dramatically depending on the verb. Have has virtually no AUX contraction, nor does would in any community. This means that examples such as (9) are the predominant forms. (9)
a. They havena been getting the break. (BCK:f) b. No my Daddy wouldn’t let you put artificial manure to the spuds. (CLB:n)
Distributional results for will and be present an entirely complicating perspective. Two communities have very frequent AUX contraction with will: Cullybackey at 91% and Cumnock at 88%. 8 These varieties typically contain examples such as (10). (10) a. Then I’ll no get hurt, I’ll no be choked. (CLB:b) b. It’ll no be a lot smaller but it is smaller, aye. (CMK:A) According to the reports in the literature there should be a consistent pattern for the northern communities. However, Maryport and Buckie in the north pattern with Tiverton in the south, in using forms such as (11). (11) a. I said ‘One thing, when I die, you winna have no debt.’ (BCK:g) b. He won’t talk if ee do that. (TIV:a) c. When I do my talking, thou won’t understand us. (MPT:a)
8
Wheatley Hill has too few contexts of use (N=10) for comment.
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As far as the verb be is concerned, Buckie, Cumnock, Cullybackey and Wheatley Hill have categorical or near categorical AUX contraction, as in (12). (12) a. The driver’s nae gan naewhere. (BCK:d) b. It’s not every day that your husband goes up in flames. (WHL:a) Maryport and Tiverton are different. Here, AUX contraction occurs, but it is highly variable with NEG contraction, as in (13). (13) a. Children aren’t allowed to buy anything now. (TIV:c) b. There isn’t anybody can tell me that they can dance. (MPT:x) In sum, two main points can be made. First, there is variation amongst the dialects in the propensity of AUX contraction, both for will and for be. But these do not support a broad regional split between north and south. Second, of the three varieties that make up the key input dialects to North America, two (Cullybackey and Cumnock) pattern the same, and the other patterns completely differently (Maryport). The distributional analysis confirms a complex pattern of regional differentiation. As far as we can ascertain a similar situation exists in North America, as Yaeger-Dror (2002) highlights in a recent paper: “The more [a] corpus is expanded to include speakers from different regions, the more diverse the regional pattern becomes.” This is exactly what we have experienced here (see also Tagliamonte & Smith 2002). Moreover, we cannot establish whether the current situation in Britain is a historical remnant or a product of recent developments. Unlike the case of verbal -s, there is no straightforward picture of the historical patterns of use for this feature. For all these reasons, we conclude therefore that this variable is a poor diagnostic for making transatlantic connections. 4.4
A relic feature: for to A third linguistic feature is the for to infinitive, which is variable with the infinitive to in some English dialects in the British Isles (e.g. Beal 1993, Edwards & Weltens 1985, Finlay 1988, Henry 1995, Macafee 1983, Macaulay 1991), as in (14). Tiverton (14) a. He’d light a furnace for to wash the clothes (TIV:a) b. Jobs took five times as long but you had the labour to do it. (TIV:I)
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Wheatley Hill c. They’ve got the money to pay the debts. (WHL:k) d. I was called up for to go and get a- a medical. (WHL:c) Maryport e. I went into a shop to be a shop assistant. (MPT:v) f. I were fortunate enough for to get the higher-national. (MPT: ¢) Cullybackey g. And I went down to the market there last Monday to check the slurry tank. (CLB:b) h. And I washed nine baskets of prittas every day and them was boilt for to feed everything. (CLB:a) Cumnock i. And I brought a pail of coal in to mend the fire and I fell with the pail of coal. (CMK:m) j. He must’ve kent I must’ve got tickets for to get through the gate. (CMK:f) Unlike verbal -s or NEG/AUX contraction, this is not a feature circumscribed to any particular dialect area in Britain. It is mentioned in the inventories provided by Schneider (2005: 264) and Hickey (2005a), though not as a diagnostic. However, certain linguistic constraints operated on this variable in the past (e.g. Warner 1982) and continue to distinguish contemporary dialects (e.g. Henry 1995). Semantic and syntactic constraints distinguish the use of for to. In some areas, it is restricted to clauses of purpose or intention (Macafee 1983: 50–51). In others, a broader range of contexts is found (Finlay 1988, Macaulay 1991: 106). Given that even obsolescing features may still maintain linguistic conditioning (Jones & Tagliamonte 2004) a distributional analysis may uncover important evidence. However, we found that this form was very rare indeed. In Tiverton, there were only 3 tokens, in Wheatley Hill 8, and in Buckie, none. Three of the communities had substantially more tokens — Maryport, Cullybackey and Cumnock. Table 4 shows the overall distribution of for to infinitives across communities.
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102 MPT % 2
CLB
CMK
N % N % N 2773 1 1440 1 2423 Table 4: Overall distribution of for to infinitive across varieties.
The rarity of this feature becomes even more dramatic when it is viewed as a proportion of all possible contexts. The for to infinitive represents only 1– 2% of the entire set of infinitives in these three corpora. Closer examination of the data according to these syntactic environments reveals that the for to infinitives are restricted to clauses of purpose in Cumnock and Cullybackey, as in (14g–j). In Maryport, however, for to can appear with a verbal complement as well, as in (14e&f). Thus, like the patterns of use for NEG/AUX variability, the northern communities are actually different amongst each other. Once again Cumnock and Cullybackey pattern in tandem, but not Maryport. However, it is difficult to determine whether these inter-community differences are the result of actual dialect differences or ongoing obsolescence. Thus, in the end the for to variable provides little evidence which can be used for diagnostic purposes. There is too little data here for establishing trans-Atlantic connections. 4.5
Features reported in all English dialects: zero adverbs The last feature we will consider is the unmarked, or what we will refer to as, zero adverbs, as in (15). (15) a. Oh aye, they go regular. You’re lucky, Morag’s daughters go regular. (CMK:g) b. Oh I could’ve had a job quite easy with him. (CMK:C) These are widely reported in English dialects in the British Isles (e.g. Milroy & Milroy 1993, Tagliamonte & Ito 2002, Trudgill 1990: 86) and in North American dialects (Görlach 1991: 103, Mencken 1961), most often for non-standard usage (Quirk et al. 1985). Variation between -ly and zero adverbs is the result of diachronic change. Zero is the earlier form which is gradually replaced by -ly in Early Modern English (Nevalainen 1994a, 1997). Given its productivity both at earlier stages in the history of English as well as more recently, we would expect all our data to evidence this feature. And indeed it does. A full 45% of all the dual form adverbs surface as zero, resulting in robust alternation in our data. This is highlighted by the examples in (16) from the same speakers in the same stretch of discourse.
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(16) a. And he was awful homesick you know my Uncle John. (CMK:j) b. He worked awfully hard. (CMK:j) c. He wanted to get as many finished as he could that night as quick as he could. (WHL:c) d. Be able to think twice as quickly as your customer. (WHL:c) Table 5 shows the overall distribution of this variability across communities. TIV % 27
WHL
MPT
CLB
CMK
BCK
N % N % N % N % N % 55 36 42 19 195 41 247 48 196 92 Table 5: Overall distribution of zero adverbs by individual community.
N 136
Proportions of zero range from a high of 92% in Buckie to a relatively low of 19% in Maryport. If this is a feature that is supposed to be uniform across English dialects, why are the communities so different? An examination of the internal constraints might provide further information. Adverbs which alternate between -ly and zero comprise three main grammatical functions, intensifiers, as in (17), manner adverbials as in (18) and sentence adverbials, as in (19). (17) a. Well I was really scared. (CLB:b) b. If you did nae do what was right you get a real good battering. (CLB:b) (18) a. Aye- I could’ve passed it quite easily, you-know. (CMK:A) b. Oh I could’ve had a job quite easy with him. (CMK:A) (19) a. And I wouldn’t have give tuppence for her lyke, quite honestly. (MPT:P) b. Oh, aye ‘cos they look like that e? Honest. (MPT:P) Unfortunately, sentence adverbs were infrequent in general and erratically distributed across corpora. 9 For this reason, we restrict our examination to manner and intensifier adverbs.
9
Moreover, most of these were the expression “funnily enough”.
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Table 6 shows the results for the communities across these different adverb types. TIV WHL MPT CLB CMK BCK % N % N % N % N % N % N manner 56 16 62 13 35 49 83 35 36 39 77 22 intensifier 15 39 27 26 12 121 34 194 50 141 95 114 Table 6: Overall distribution of zero adverbs by function and community.
We now observe a number of similarities and differences. Some communities exhibit a higher percentage of zero marking on manner adverbs: Tiverton, Wheatley Hill, Maryport, Cullybackey. Others have a higher percentage of zero marking on intensifiers: Cumnock and Buckie. This reveals that there is no pan-community hierarchy here either, therefore, we need to delve deeper into the data. Further examination of the lexical distributions within these categories may provide the key. Intensifiers. The main intensifiers used in these data are shown in Table 7. In line with Quirk et al. (1985) we also include the adverb nearly (which is an approximator) in this category. TIV WHL MPT CLB CMK BCK % N % N % N % N % N % N nearly 0 12 0 5 0 46 15 130 10 20 89 18 awfully 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 2 97 69 100 90 really 15 20 33 21 20 51 44 32 3 31 20 5 terribly 0 0 0 0 33 3 100 30 0 2 0 0 absolutely 0 3 0 0 7 14 0 1 0 16 0 0 other 75 4 0 0 38 8 100 4 0 3 100 1 Table 7: Use of zero adverbs by individual intensifier and community.
This table shows that there are community specific uses of particular intensifers: Cumnock and Buckie use awful, Tiverton, Wheatley Hill and Maryport use reall(ly) and Cullybackey uses terrible and real(ly). Moreover, within these intensifiers, the propensity for zero differs dramatically. Cullybackey, Cumnock and Buckie have categorical zero marking on awful and terrible, as in (20): Tiverton, Wheatley Hill, Cullybackey and Maryport have variable use of zero on really, as in (21):
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(20) a. Aye and his mother was aie awful cheery ken. (CMK:E) b. She’s an awful nice quinie. (BCK:f) c. That’s terrible good for your blood. (CLB:l) (21) a. b. c. d.
It was real dark and the handlebars broke. (CLB:f) He was a real quiet Scotchman. (MPT:r) Makes me really wicked. (TIV:h) Your nana used to have a really hard hand you know. (WHL:d)
Nearly is also differentiated across the six communities: variable zero marking in Buckie, Cullybackey and Cumnock, but no zero marking in Tiverton, Maryport and Wheatley Hill, as in (22). (22) a. It’s near all pensioners that they depend on for the post-office. (BCK:a) b. In fact it nearly fetched country till its knees. (MPT:j) Thus, we find dramatic inter-variety differences on two counts: first, community specific selection of adverbs used to intensify and second, propensity for zero marking on these. Manner. The main manner adverbs used in these data are shown in Table 8. TIV
WHL MPT CLB CMK BCK % N % N % N % N % N % N quickly 75 4 80 5 60 5 100 7 71 7 100 3 regularly 0 1 0 0 29 7 100 1 60 10 0 0 easily 0 0 50 2 40 5 89 9 33 3 100 3 other 55 11 50 6 31 36 74 23 11 19 22 18 Table 8: Use of zero adverbs by individual lexical item and community.
In contrast to the results for intensifiers, here all communities use -ly and zero variably across all manner adverbs where there is data to tell. In other words, manner adverbs behave consistently across the communities. The differential status of intensifiers and manner adverbs in Buckie, Cullybackey and Cumnock — zero marking on intensifiers, but variable marking on manner adverbs — may be a remnant of a constraint from the historical record. Examples of the following type, (23) are found easily in written sources:
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(23) ‘tis terrible cold … it has snowed terribly all night. (Swift, J., quoted in Jespersen 1961a: 371–372) If this historical constraint is still operational in some communities, then we might also expect the varieties to maintain another. In the trajectory of change from zero marking to -ly, concrete adverbs, as in (24), were said to occur more with the zero form than abstract adverbs, as in (25) (Donner 1991, Jespersen 1961b, Nevalainen 1994a, 1994b, 1997, Schibsbye 1965). (24) a. I’m missing a lot of conversation because I can nae hear properly. (CMK:t) b. It was all carpetted beautiful. (WHL:d) c. They did used to come and clean the drains out very, very regularly. (MPT:t) (25) a. But they’d be sore needing it. (BCK:c) b. I was never loved properly. (WHL:l) c. They were all very closely connected. (CMK:A) Table 9 separates the data according to this factor. TIV
WHL MPT CLB CMK BCK % N % N % N % N % N % N concrete 60 15 64 11 36 39 84 37 50 26 88 16 abstract 0 1 50 2 30 10 100 2 8 13 50 5 Table 9: Overall distribution of zero adverbs by CONCRETE vs ABSTRACT and community.
Remarkably, in the communities where there are sufficient data to tell — Maryport, Cumnock and Buckie — all retain this older constraint. In sum, examining the overall distribution of zero adverbs across communities revealed relatively little. From this perspective one would have reasonably concluded that zero adverbs were simply part of “general nonstandard English grammar” (Schneider 2005: 264). However, once the syntactic function of forms was distinguished, we discovered that adverbs behave quite differently, not only amongst each other, but also across communities. Moreover, once we took into account lexical effects, we discovered that intensifiers are idiosyncratic to the individual community: each selects its own. On the other hand, manner adverbs are remarkably the same across the board. Thus, as far as making trans-Atlantic connections is concerned, only one highly circumscribed area of the adverbial system
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provides a potential diagnostic. This highlights the importance of underlying constraint ranking effects in a distributional analysis (see also Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991, and passim). 5.
Conclusion We have now compared four linguistic features across six English dialects in the British Isles. We have attempted to fulfill as many of the rigorous standards for comparison laid out in earlier research as possible, including historical connections, the use of distributional data, constraint hierarchies (Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991) and “the joint weight of several sets of data” (Schneider 2005). What conclusions can be drawn from these results? As we might have predicted given the tremendous consensus in the literature, verbal -s, which can be traced back to 13th century northern British regional dialects is still evident today: the five northern varieties showed identical patterns for verbal -s, along with the foremost constraint on its use. The ‘legacy’ of English dialects in the British Isles seems straightforward in this case. Such evidence corroborates the notion, following Mufwene’s (1996) Founder Principle, that this feature was transported, as well as selected into the emergent varieties in North America. Perhaps a more vexing finding for the purposes of pinpointing particular regions for trans-Atlantic connections is that the patterns and constraints for this feature apply for all the communities, not just the northern ones. Verbal -s does not appear to be a unique feature of a particular source variety in Britain. Thus, it does not present a sure diagnostic for northern origins (Godfrey & Tagliamonte 1999, Tagliamonte 2001). Interestingly, however, the regional split between a categorical pattern in the north and a variable pattern in the south may distinguish North American dialects. If so, this may provide a new angle for tracking the origins of dialects which employ verbal -s. The promising diagnostic of NEG/AUX contraction does not differentiate dialects in the way the literature predicts — higher rates of AUX contraction in the north. Nor is there any clear regional distribution of forms. However, in the midst of varying patterns across communities, two varieties stand out for their parallelism — Cumnock and Cullybackey. This isn’t surprising, of course, given the 17th century population movements from the Lowlands of Scotland to Northern Ireland during the Ulster Plantations. Indeed, these results provide quantitative linguistic evidence strongly aligned with the socio-historical links between these two communities. This provokes an interesting question — given the parallels between Appalachian English and Ulster Scots already established by Montgomery (1989, 1997, 1992), were the NEG/AUX patterns visible in these communities transported to North America
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as well? And if not, why not? Indeed, if the current literature on NEG/AUX contraction is any indication (Yaeger-Dror et al. 2001), it does not appear that AUX contraction is robust in any dialect in North America. This may be due to the fact that unlike the case of verbal -s there is and was no uniform parallelism across all the northern dialects with this linguistic feature. The northern English community, Maryport, differs from Cullybackey and Cumnock. This means that competing variants must have been transported to North America. On the other hand, there does seem to be some evidence for distinct regional patterns in the United States, e.g. there is more AUX contraction with be in the southern United States (Yaeger-Dror et al. 2001). Thus, further research on this variable may prove to be quite informative. The obsolescing form for to is on the brink of extinction. There was simply too little data here for investigation. Unfortunately, for this feature we are too late to establish the basis for any trans-Atlantic link, at least with these varieties. This highlights the worst problem for tracking the origins of dialects. Many of the older features are long gone. With zero adverbs, on the hand, no particular regional differentiation was expected: all the varieties had robust variation between -ly and zero. But once the different adverbial functions are separated, we find that some patterns are consistent across the dialects, but others are highly community specific. Manner adverbs have all the characteristics of a universal non-standard English form. All the varieties had the same patterns of use. In the case of adverbial intensifiers, however, the dialects present a highly differentiated and multilayered system. First, the selection of the particular intensifier differs from community to community. Second, the propensity for zero or -ly marking on intensifiers differs as well. Thus, the use of intensifiers appears to be a salient marker of particular communities. Can such features be used for establishing trans-Atlantic links? This remains a highly interesting, and empirical, question for future research. To return to our original goal, the impetus for this analysis was to provide a preliminary base line perspective on a number of linguistic features in some of the non-standard regional dialects of English in the British Isles. The varieties we studied are situated in the regions of the largest migrations out of Britain and Northern Ireland and into North America during the early colonization period. Thus, in future comparative research we hope these results may shed important light on the origins and development of North American dialects. Building from on Mufwene’s (1996) and Trudgill et al.’s (2000) theories about the formation of new dialects, the findings from our four linguistic variables in six British varieties permit us to posit the following hypotheses. Where source varieties share the same linguistic feature, as well as
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the constraints on its use, the feature stands an excellent candidate for transportation as well as selection intact into emergent dialects. The show case variable, verbal -s in 3rd person plural, is precisely this type. No wonder it has engendered so much research in the study of trans-Atlantic dialect connections. Not only does the feature endure in contemporary peripheral dialects, but so do constraints that were likely in operation from the time period of colonisation. In contrast, where source dialects are differentiated, the features that are transported are mixed from the outset, both in form and patterning. This dilution may have disastrous consequences for the selection process. Features which are marginal or marked when viewed against the total cohort of linguistic features appear less likely to find their way into the developing dialects. Variable NEG/AUX contraction is of this type. Two out of the three the source dialects use the form ‘ll not; the other uses won’t. This means that ‘ll not might be expected to have selective advantage. Yet it is the form won’t that is actually selected into North American varieties (Yaeger-Dror et al. 2001). Why? Here, we may appeal to the rest of the structured set in the language. Most of the other forms in the input dialects are NEG contraction, e.g. wouldn’t, haven’t, hasn’t, hadn’t. Therefore, in this case, it may be that what gets selected is the form which matches the rest of the system, pushing out the marked variant ‘ll not. The evidence from adverbs permits further elaboration of these general processes. First, given the high frequency of zero adverbs in these data we might predict that they would have had selective advantage in North American dialects. Indeed, research suggests that the zero adverb is far more frequent in North America and Britain (Opdahl 2000a, 2000b). The reason for this may now be plausibly reconstructed. The transported dialects likely had more zero than mainstream English dialects in the British Isles do today pre-disposing the emergent dialects to use it (see also Tagliamonte & Ito 2002). Given the findings for intensifiers however, we might expect that peripheral dialects in southern United States and other locales relevant to these founding dialect areas might retain their ancestor’s intensifiers as well — terrible and/or awful with varying rates of real vs. really and near vs. nearly. However, aside from Labov (1985) and Ito & Tagliamonte (2003), the study of intensifier use, layering and conditioning in peripheral North American dialects (to our knowledge) is a virtually untapped area of study, which could be fruitfully investigated. In sum, these findings offer the type of evidence which can now be used in future research to test similarities and differences in the comparison of old and new world varieties of English on a comprehensive scale. The results confirm earlier admonitions that the frequency of a given feature in one community cannot unambiguously establish if that form or its frequency is
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unique to that community or where it would be positioned amongst others. Moreover, we suggest that unless underlying linguistic factors and lexical distributions are taken into account, the conclusions may be questionable. This highlights the advantages to be gained from taking a cross-variety quantitative, constraints-based perspective. Perhaps the most compelling finding of this study is the fact that linguistic features which are shared across all varieties, but whose variable constraints, relative strength and significance differ offer previously untapped evidence for tracking trans-Atlantic connections. Regionalisms are often difficult, if not impossible to pin down precisely (Montgomery 2001). However, given the results we have reported here, in conjunction with earlier findings on was/were variation (e.g. Tagliamonte and Smith 2000) it may be the case that linguistic features which have previously been relegated to the area of “generalized vernacular features” may actually provide very useful evidence for disentangling the origins of different dialects (see also Smith 2001, Tagliamonte 2001). Such variables may be differentiated across dialects, reflecting their progress along the cline of grammaticization in ongoing linguistic change (e.g. Poplack and Tagliamonte 2000). Thus, although communities may share the same linguistic forms, the varying strength and conditioning of factors can be correlated with the relative degree of separation of the communities from mainstream varieties (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2000, Tagliamonte & Smith 2000, Tagliamonte 2003). In this way, the imprint of dialect origins and development may be subtly etched in the contrasting patterns of alliance or variance in linguistic weights and constraints (Labov 1982: 76). Studies putting such comparative work into action promise to keep us busy for years to come. References Aitken, A. J. 1984. “Scottish accents and dialects”. Language in the British Isles ed. by P. Trudgill, 94–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anttila, R. 1989. An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bailey, G. & G. Ross. 1988. “The shape of the superstrate: Morphosyntactic features of Ship English”. English World-Wide 9:2.193–212. Bailey, G. & G. Ross. 1992. “The evolution of a vernacular”. History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics ed. by M. Rissanen, O. Ihalainen, T. Nevalainen & I. Taavitsainen, 519–531. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bailyn, B. 1986. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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Papers in Linguistics. Volume 7.3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Montgomery, M. B. & C. Chapman. 1992. “The pace of change in Appalachian English”. History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics ed. by M. Rissanen, O. Ihalainen, T. Nevalainen & I. Taavitsainen, 624–639. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Montgomery, M. B. & J. M. Fuller. 1996. “What was verbal -s in 19th-century African American English?” Focus on the USA ed. by E. W. Schneider, 211–230. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mufwene, S. S. 1996. “The founder principle in creole genesis”. Diachronica 13:1.83–134. ----------. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murray, J. A. H. 1873. The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland: Its Pronunciation, Grammar and Historical Relations. London: Philological Society. Murray, L. 1795/1968. English Grammar. Menston, England: Scolar Press. Nevalainen, T. 1994a. “Aspects of adverbial change in Early Modern English”. Studies in Early Modern English ed. by D. Kastovsky, 243–259. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ----------. 1994b. “Diachronic issues in English adverb derivation”. Creating and Using English Language Corpora: Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Language on Computerized Corpora, Zürich 1993 ed. by U. Fries, G. Tottie & P. Schneider, 139– 147. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. ----------. 1997. “The processes of adverb derivation in Late Middle and Early Modern English”. Grammaticalization at Work: Studies of Long Term Developments in English ed. by M. Rissanen, M. Kytö & K. Heikkonen, 145–189. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Opdahl, L. 2000a. LY or Zero Suffix? A Study in Variation of Dual-form Adverbs in Present-day English. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ----------. 2000b. LY or Zero Suffix? A Study in Variation of Dual-form Adverbs in Present-day English. Volume 2. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Poplack, S., ed. 2000. The English History of African American English. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Poplack, S. & D. Sankoff. 1987. “The Philadelphia story in the Spanish Caribbean”. American Speech 62:4.291–314.
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Poplack, S. & S. Tagliamonte. 1989. “There’s no tense like the present: Verbal -s inflection in Early Black English”. Language Variation and Change 1:1.47–84. Poplack, S. & S. Tagliamonte. 1991. “African American English in the diaspora: The case of old-line Nova Scotians”. Language Variation and Change 3:3.301–339. Poplack, S. & S. Tagliamonte. 2000. “The grammaticization of going to in (African American) English”. Language Variation and Change 11:3.315–342. Poplack, S. & S. Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora: Tense and Aspect. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Poplack, S. & S. Tagliamonte. 2005. “Back to the present: Verbal -s in the (African American) diaspora”. Hickey 2005. 203–223. Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. New York: Longman. Rickford, J. R. 1986. “Social contact and linguistic diffusion: Hiberno-English and New world black English”. Language 62:2.245–289. Rickford, J. R., A. Ball, R. Blake, R. Jackson, & N. Martin. 1991. “Rappin on the copula coffin: Theoretical and methodological issues in the analysis of copula variation in African American Vernacular English”. Language Variation and Change 3:1.103–132. Schibsbye, K. 1965. A Modern English Grammar. London: Oxford University Press. Schilling-Estes, N. 1998. “Investigating ‘self-conscious’ speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English”. Language in Society 27.53– 83. Schneider, E. W. 1981. Morphologische und syntaktische Variablen im amerikanischen Early Black English. Frankfurt am Main and Bern: Peter Lang. ----------. 1983. “The diachronic development of the Black English perfective auxiliary phrase”. Journal of English Linguistics 16.55–64. ----------. 2005. “The English dialect heritage of the southern United States”. Hickey 2005. 262–309. Smith, J. 2000. Synchrony and Diachrony in the Evolution of English: Evidence from Scotland. D.Phil. dissertation. University of York. ----------. 2001. “Negative concord in the old and new world: Evidence from Scotland”. Language Variation and Change 13:2.109–134. Smith, J. & S. Tagliamonte. In preparation. Agreement Patterns Prevails: The Legacy of -s in Northern Britain. Manuscript. University of York; University of Toronto.
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Swan, M. 1980. Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tagliamonte, S. A. 2001. “Comparative sociolinguistics”. The Handbook of Language Variation and Change ed. by J. Chambers, P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ----------. 2003. “‘Every place has a different toll’: Determinants of grammatical variation in cross-variety perspective”. Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English ed. by G. Rohdenburg & B. Mondorf, 531–554. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Tagliamonte, S. A. & R. Ito. 2002. “Think really different: Continuity and specialization in the English adverbs”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6:2.236–266. Tagliamonte, S. & J. Smith. 2000. “Old was; new ecology: Viewing English through the sociolinguistic filter”. The English History of African American English ed. by S. Poplack, 141–171. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Tagliamonte, S. A. & J. Smith. 2002. “Either it isn’t or it’s not: NEG/AUX contraction in British dialects”. English Word Wide 23:2.251–281. Trudgill, P., ed. 1978. Sociolinguistic Patterns in British English. London: Edward Arnold. ----------. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ----------. 1990. The Dialects of England. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ----------. 1999. “New-dialect formation and dedialectalisation: Embryonic and vestigial variants”. Journal of English Linguistics 27:4.319–327. Trudgill, P., E. Gordon, G. Lewis and M. Maclagan. 2000. “Determinism in new-dialect formation and the genesis of New Zealand English”. Journal of Linguistics 36.299–318. Warner, A. 1982. Complementation in Middle English and the Methdology of Historical Syntax. London and Canberra: Croom Helm. Wolfram, W. 2000. “Issues in reconstructing earlier African-American English”. World Englishes 19:1.39–58. Wolfram, W. & E. Thomas. 2002. The Development of African American English: Evidence from an Isolated Community. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Wolfram, W., E. Thomas & E. Green. 1997. Reconsidering the Development of AAVE: Insights from Isolated African American Speakers. Paper presented at NWAVE 26. Québec City, Canada. Wolfram, W., E. R. Thomas & E. Green. 1998. The Regional Context of Earlier African-American Speech: Evidence for Reconstructing the Development of AAVE. Manuscript. North Carolina State University. August 1998.
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Wood, P. H. 1989. “The changing population of the Colonial South: An overview by race and region, 1685–1790”. Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians of the Colonial Southeast ed. by P. H. Wood, G. A. Waselkov & T. M. Hatley, 25–103. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Yaeger-Dror, M., L. Hall-Lew & S. Deckert. 2002. “It’s not or isn’t it? Using large corpora to determinate the influence on contraction strategies”. Language Variation and Change 14:1.79–118.
PART II Dialects across social and regional borders
DIALECTS ACROSS INTERNAL FRONTIERS SOME COGNITIVE BOUNDARIES
DENNIS R. PRESTON Michigan State University 1.
Introduction Over the last several years a number of previously compartmentalized activities have been coming together, or are at least sharing some secrets with one another. First, dialectology, including its social as well as regional aspects, has become increasingly sensitive to acoustic analysis (e.g., Thomas 2001; Labov, Ash, & Boberg forthcoming). The use of such techniques has reached down even to individuals, so that variable speaker identity, related specifically to the differential use of repertoire alternatives, has also been investigated (e.g., Bucholtz 2001). Second, the social psychology of language (or language attitude research) has also been influenced by detailed phonetic studies. The ratings of different varieties, pioneered by Lambert (e.g., Tucker & Lambert 1969) and most fully exploited in the work of Giles (e.g., Ryan & Giles 1982), were studies in which the more or less influential elements of the stimulus signal were not determined. More recently, synthesized or carefully selected stimulus signals have allowed researchers to pinpoint the specific linguistic elements that trigger attitudinal responses, and a growing number of such studies have appeared in the literature (e.g., Milroy & Preston 1999). Finally, the discoursal turn in the social sciences has had an impact on both language variation and social psychological studies. This turn should not be confused with increased interest in the structure or organization of discourse itself (e.g., Schiffrin 1994). The influence I refer to here is the one that extracts meaning, attitude, or ideology from conversational evidence. It is essentially ostensive, i.e., it points to what a respondent has said and then engages the analyst’s skills in interpretation. Such approaches have been particularly exploited (along with other more quantitatively -oriented techniques) in the general area of folk linguistics, an area of enquiry that attempts to discover, analyze, and account for nonlinguists’ beliefs about language (e.g., Niedzielski & Preston 1999).
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Acoustic sophistication has appeared to help free dialectology from errors of perception and language attitude studies from those of production. Dialectologists are now more assured that what they hear is what was produced, and dialectology has always had a production bias, making such accuracy of primary importance. On the other hand, language attitude studies, in spite of the dominance of perception in that enterprise, have always had difficulty with production. How could this or that response to a regional voice be a pure response to region, one not cluttered by other factors — speech rate, pitch, and the notorious vocal quality, among others? New acoustic techniques allow attitude studies to go beyond the matched guise approach, which many believe was inappropriately used in studies of multiple dialects when only one speaker provided all the stimuli (e.g., Garrett, Coupland, & Williams 2003: 59). Dialectologists, however, have not been uniquely concerned with production. For example, the evaluation and/or identification and the comprehension of variety differences have played an important role in more recent work (e.g., Graff, Labov, & Harris 1986; Labov & Ash 1997). Similarly, the development of accommodation theory in the social psychological tradition has emphasized the production repercussions of perception (i.e., that hearers adjust their variety towards that of their interlocutors, e.g., Giles & Powesland 1975). We have now reached a point where a sociolinguistic-cum-social psychological approach to speech production and perception is being articulated, perhaps under the label of “sociophonetics,” although that label might for some include much more or much less than I intend to discuss here. By sociophonetics, I mean to cover at least the following territory: 1. Studies of the correlation between pronunciation and the demographic, personal, social identity, and interactional facts about speakers. 2. Studies of the perceptual abilities of hearers, not only to comprehend varieties in general and to discriminate among specific elements within them but also to identify regional and social varieties. 3. Studies of the entire range of attitudes and ideologies factors that influence both the correlations suggested in 1) and the abilities suggested in 2). One might argue, and I certainly would, that a meaningful folk linguistic (or attitudinal and ideological) component could be added to any linguistic enterprise, not just that of sociophonetics. I hope it is clear that the enterprise I outline here, including 3) just as much as 1) and 2) above, has as one of its goals the account of language variation and change in speech communities. In
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short, one of the goals of 3) is to shed further light on why certain choices are made in 1) and why some perceptions in 2) are promoted while others are sidetracked (e.g., Preston 1999: xxiv; Niedzielski & Preston 1999). In previous justifications of folk linguistics, perhaps the emphasis on the necessity of folk linguistics to a complete ethnographic record of a speech community and on the usefulness of such findings to applied linguists has overshadowed the importance of the role of language ideologies and folk beliefs as important considerations in the general study of language variation and change. I hope here to show that dialect boundaries, in the very broad social as well as geographical sense, are products of much more than Bloomfieldian speech-similarity networks (1933) or the long-term accommodation principles suggested in Trudgill (1986). I will review recent work on the influence of ideologies and attitudes on language perception, and, therefore, on the development of new production standards. It is only an accident that sociophonetics is the key element here, for, in one sense, sociophonetics is simply a sub-branch of sociolinguistics in general. One might also investigate recent findings in morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and conversation or discourse analysis, but the availability of multiple tokens for investigation in the phonological world has always made this level the darling of sociolinguists. I will survey several examples of such sociophonetic work carried out by me, my colleagues, and students at Michigan State University over the last decade or so. I do so not to ignore or belittle other important contributions; I simply know these best. 2.
Production I begin in the familiar territory of the sociolinguistic influence on production, a well-established area, at least since Labov’s seminal work on Martha’s Vineyard, in which island-oriented residents were shown to prefer a more local variety of the /aw/ and /ay/ diphthongs. 2.1
Local loyalty The well-known Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS) is a vowel rotation in the urban north of the United States that has come later to rural areas and minorities (if at all). Figure 1 shows 1) the position of these vowels in so-called General American English (the base of each arrow, and, as acoustic research on recordings of older respondents has shown, the likely jumping off place for many Michigan speakers before the influence of the NCCS) and 2) the direction and eventual site after the NCCS rotation (the point of each arrow).
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Figure 1: The Northern Cities Chain Shift (see Labov 1994).
In several investigations of the acquisition of this shift, particularly the tensing or raising and fronting of (æ), step #1 in Figure 1, the role of ideology has been shown to be important. In some cases it outweighs the demographic factors of class, age, sex, and network; in others it supplements one or more of them. Ito (1999) and Ito and Preston (1998) have looked at the difference in the acquisition of NCCS (æ) in rural mid-Michigan. Three middle class women (in their 40s and 50s) and their high school age children are reported on here. The respondents are all European-Americans who were brought up and have lived in the area most of their lives. Data collection included a recorded informal interview and the reading of a word list. The means scores of F1 and F2 (determined by LPC extraction of formants) for all tokens of each vowel are shown in Figures 2–7. All these respondents are participating in the NCCS, although the degree of participation differs considerably from one to another. The low-front vowel /æ/ has begun the typical NCCS upward and forward movement for all six speakers, but the remaining four vowels (of the five more which could be involved) appear to have been little affected by the NCCS. The differences in advancement, however, are strongly correlated to individual and social identity.
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Figures 2–7: The mean scores of F1 and F2 for all tokens of each vowel of six rural midMichigan informants.
Mary’s vowel system (Figure 3) shows an /æ/ that is raised and fronted: her mean score value for it is much higher than that for her // and very close to //. Cathy’s system (Figure 2) is more conservative, despite the fact that there is only a six-year age difference between her and Mary. Her /æ/ is fronted, but the degree of raising is minimal, with a mean score lower than that for her //. Candy’s system (Figure 4) is more similar to Mary’s than to Cathy’s; her /æ/ is fronted and raised to a position much higher than //. In the older generation, then, the first step of the NCCS (/æ/ fronting and raising) is in progress, and, not surprisingly, Cathy, the oldest, has the most conservative system. Ron (Figure 5) is Mary’s sixteen-year old son. The comparison between his system and his mother’s shows that his /æ/ is raised about as much as hers,
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but it is not unusual for a male speaker to be no more or even less advanced than his mother in on-going phonological change. Tammy (Figure 6) is Cathy’s seventeen year-old daughter. Her /æ/ is higher than her // although lower than her //; she is more advanced than her mother, Cathy, and than Ron. The last vowel system is Sherry’s (Figure 7), Candy’s seventeen year-old daughter. Hers is clearly the most advanced of the six, with an /æ/ extremely fronted and raised. The second step of the shift involves the fronting of //. If // has not fronted, then it should be much further from // than it is from // on the F2 dimension. Since // is expected to move toward the empty position vacated by /æ/ in the NCCS, however, the more it is fronted, the closer it will be to //. Using this criterion, Ron’s // appears not to have moved; it is considerably back of //, much closer to his //, and the same relation can be observed in Cathy’s and Candy’s systems; however, // fronting seems to be in progress in Mary’s system since her // is equidistant between // and //. // fronting is even more advanced in Tammy’s system, since her // is much closer to // than it is to //. Finally, Sherry’s // is also fronted even though it is closer to // than //, but this may be due to the fact that Sherry appears to be involved in the third step of the chain shift, i.e., // lowering and fronting. As far as // fronting is concerned, only three people seem to be participating — Mary, Tammy, and Sherry, although Mary seems to be least advanced. The third step of the NCCS is the lowering and fronting of //, toward the position of //. The degree of this shift also can be assessed by comparing the relative positions of //, //, and //. If // has been lowered and fronted, then it should be moving to the height of // and closer to //. This is exactly what is found in Sherry’s system. Her // and // are very close, and their height is about the same. Additionally, since Sherry’s // is only slightly higher than her // and //, one might even claim that the fourth step, i.e., lowering and/or backing of //, has started in her system. These data clearly show that Northern, non-urban Michiganders are participating in the NCCS. The general results are as follows: 1. Everyone seems to be involved in the first stage, /æ/ raising, although Ron and Cathy’s participation is minimal. 2. In the second stage, // fronting, Sherry, Tammy, and Mary seem to be involved, but Mary’s participation is less obvious than the other two. 3. Only Sherry seems to be participating in the third stage, // lowering and fronting. 4. Only Sherry shows any sign of // lowering and/or backing, an advanced step in the NCCS not focused on in this study.
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These results may be correlated with several characteristics of linguistic change common to many variationist studies, which show that the leaders of the NCCS are likely to be young, well-educated, upper working or lower middle class, European-American women (e.g., Labov 1994). Since all these respondents are well-educated middle class European-Americans, apparently only age and sex remain as relevant variables. The oldest respondent, Cathy, is the least influenced by the NCCS among the six; her vowel system is dramatically different from the two other mothers, who are in their forties. In addition, the vowel systems of the teenage children are more advanced than those of their mothers, except for Ron, the only male studied here. In addition to these predictable patterns of age and sex, the NCCS is also characterized as an urban phenomenon. Labov (1994: 178) notes that a modified wave model accounts for less advanced NCCS change in smaller places, such as Chili, New York (outside Rochester). Thus, the model predicts for Michigan that 1) the farther north, and 2) the smaller the place, the less advanced the change. However, these hypotheses were not confirmed in this study. Distance from major cities did not uniformly have the expected influence on the data. The most advanced speaker among the six was Sherry, who lives in the smallest and the most northern place. How can this apparently deviant result be explained? During the interviews it was revealed that both Tammy and Sherry are involved in various kinds of extra-curricular activities and both appeared to be very popular at school. In general, however, Tammy appeared to enjoy living in the country. The following excerpts illustrate her loyalty to and preference for local, rural or small-town culture. For example, when Tammy talks about hobbies, she notes that TV is “the big thing” but that during the summer, she likes outdoor activities such as biking (“R” is the interviewer): R: T: R: T: R: T: R:
So y- you sounds y- yo- you really like an outdoor - activities. Uh huh. ((pause)) I don’t really like the winter as much as the summer though, but, But at least you can do skii:ng and snowmobile, and stuff. [ [ Uh huh. That’s why I like Michigan. It’s got a variety. That’s true. So - u- u- when uh the summer comes, do you usually go: uh wh- what kind of thing do you usually do. In the summertime, hm. Ummm [ Go to the- the lakes or
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T:
[ Uh huh. I go to the beaches, we go camping: ... Me and Jessie - used to ride our bikes everywhere. ... Just as long as we’re outside, we have a good time.
Although many rural and small-town Michigan young people elect to go to the larger more urban institutions of higher education in the state (e.g., The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor or Michigan State University in East Lansing), Tammy notes that she is going to attend Central Michigan University (in Mt. Pleasant, where she lives and where her mother works as a secretary) to become a local kindergarten teacher. Her loyalty to the local culture is most distinctively expressed when she was asked the ideal place to live and advantages and disadvantages to living in that area. R: T:
R:
T:
R: T: R:
T:
Have you ever wished to live somewhere ELSE? Um:. I’ve thought about it, but - I don’t really want to go anywhere else, cause if - if I go to Florida or somewhere, it’s summer all the time. Which I don’t mind, but but I miss the - Huh [ [ (It’s too) humid. Too humid over there. [ Yeah, and I’d miss the winter and if I were to go somewhere where its snow (-y, -ing) all the time I’d miss the summer. And I like the fall too and it’s [ Yeah It’s beautiful. [ Uh huh. And that’s why I like Michigan. I don’t want to - go anywhere. I see. Uh. So::. Well you mentioned a little bit, but what is the best thing or the advantage or the worst thing or disadvantage to: live somewhere around here? To living somewhere around here? (pause) Um::. I don’t know as there’s disadvantages. Some of the advantages - I look at is - iwhen I- ever I have a family I would rather be up here because - I would be less apt to run into the crime and the gangs and all that stuff. And if you’re out in=
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R:
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[ Uh huh. =the country it doesn’t happen as often, and - then I wouldn’t have to be= [ (whispered) That’s true. =so worried about when my kids go out at night and things like that. So I’d rather live here. Where I know my territory more or less.
Her preference to remain in her home area is direct: “I don’t want to go anywhere.” The repetition of this comment and “That’s why I like Michigan” demonstrate her attachment to the local area. There are no “disadvantages” to living there as far as she is concerned. She prefers to live in small places because “there are no gangs and crimes.” Sherry, on the other hand, displays very different interests. She likes traveling because she likes seeing new places and wants to move to the West coast. R: S: R: S:
Do you like to travel around? Yeah, I LOVE to travel. Yeah. Oh yeah, you just mentioned um going to uh Mexico. Yeah. That’s probably one of my favorite things to do aside from running. We’ve- every summer my family and I take a vacation. And we’ve- my favorite has been California. We’ve went there a couple of times. And I hope to live out there when I get out of college. But yeah, I love to travel. I hope to ... travel around the world, by the time I’m, done with life. I- IR&S: (laugh) S: Yeah, I’m like excited. I just- ... Yeah.
In contrast to her preference for the West coast, Sherry does not have any attachment to the place where she grew up; she simply wants to get out of there. R: S:
Have you ever wished to live somewhere else— Oh: I wouldn’t mind living on the la:ke. Higgins Lake, it’s like real close to here, and I usually waitress at restaurants out by the lake. So, ... I’ve often thought that it would be neat to live on the lake,
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but ... I’d just as soon get out of Roscommon. So it doesn’t really, I haven’t really been (laughs) something I’ve given much thought to. Her preference for life elsewhere can also be observed in the following: R: S:
I see. Um. So, what is the advantage to live ... here? Well, I don’t know. Living in California I just- I liked the climate, I liked the place, it’s something new. It’s just seems to suit to my personality. I like seeing new places. So, ... I guess it would be more ... close to things, than — I don’t know, it just clicks with me, so — R: So what would be the ... worst thing or the disadvantage living here? S: Living here? Ah- well, being far from everything. R&S: (laugh) S: Living kind of ... sheltered away from, uh —
Sherry was easily able to list the things she likes in California (“climate,” “the place,” and “something new”), and she feels that it suits her personality. Contrary to this, one phrase was enough for her to describe her town: “far from everything.” This discoursal evidence confirms that Sherry is not interested in local, small-town or rural life, and the same preference was mentioned by her mother, Candy. She commented that she feels “isolated.” Other respondents, such as Cathy and Ron, indicated, however, that they enjoy their small-town or country life. Cathy is planning to remain in Mt. Pleasant after her retirement. Ron likes small towns because they are “quiet,” and “everyone knows everyone.” Cathy is the oldest and most loyal to the local area, and she participates least in the NCCS. Ron is male and similarly locally oriented, and he is the next strongest non-participant, despite his youth. Mary and Candy are older respondents, but they are somewhat less oriented to their home area and are more advanced in the NCCS than Cathy and Ron. Of the two teenage girls, Sherry is more advanced than Tammy. This crucial difference is accounted for by their difference in orientation: Sherry is much less loyal to the local area than Tammy, and her advanced position in the NCCS symbolizes her wish to dissociate herself from the local rural environment. Individual positions in the NCCS strongly correlate not only with such traditional independent variables as age, sex, size of city, and distance from major metropolitan area but also with individual orientation, i.e., one’s preference for the local small town or rural lifestyle.
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Including personal orientation as an important variable is not ad hoc, at least not in the history of the field. The finding in this study, that an unconscious choice of vowels reflects the identity or orientation of the individual, is similar to many previous studies. Perhaps more importantly for general sociolinguistic theory, since the two young women most advanced in the NCCS (Tammy and Sherry) are popular in their schools and well-integrated into their local communities, one might focus on their roles as current (and potential) leaders of local linguistic change rather than on Sherry’s attraction to non-local norms. They may be precisely the sorts of respondents whose open networks make them not only most susceptible to change but also more likely to be capable of spreading it among their peers (e.g., Milroy 1992). 2.2
Ethnicity In work on the acquisition of the NCCS, we have also focused on local African-American (in Lansing, MI) and South Midland immigrant (in Ypsilanti, MI) populations (Evans, 2001; Evans, Ito, Jones & Preston, 2000; Evans, Ito, Jones & Preston, to appear; Jones 2003; Preston & Jones, in progress). I survey here the unusual finding of how network score was not a predictor for one of these groups. Age
Sex
Status
Network correlation to F1/F2 .02 .01 n.s.
Mean Index Score
F2 Mid-Michigan X Female Working 2.64 Appalachian Young Female Middle 1.82 African-American X X X 2.33 F1 Mid-Michigan X X X n.s. 2.14 Appalachian Young Female Middle .01 1.32 African-American Young Female Middle n.s. 1.52 Table 1: F1, F2 and various demographic characteristics among three Michigan groups for the raising and fronting of (æ). (NB: “X” indicates no significant difference among the groups in that category.)
Look first in Table 1 at the Column labeled “Mean Index Score.” The higher the score (on a 5-point scale), the more advanced (æ) is in fronting (F2) and raising (F1). The Mid-Michigan speakers (of the sorts just discussed above) are clearly the most advanced, but I focus here on the Appalachian and African-American groups. We also determined for each speaker a network score based on both a neighborhood evaluation (e.g., Milroy 1980) as well as a friends and associates preference scale. One would expect a correlation
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between a low network score, in which a respondent group reports fewer associations with friends, co-workers, and family in a local area and fewer associations with persons ethnically similar, and a higher “Mean Index Score” if a less locally-oriented group is more likely to acquire the more general norm of the wider speech community. As Table 1 shows, in “Network correlation to F1/F2,” however, that does not occur in every case. Network is not correlated to African-American respondents’ F2 and F1 scores, but age, gender, and status are important to F1 (raising) in the African-American speech community. This is all the more puzzling when we note that the Appalachian F1 and F2 scores, important (although not always statistically significant) in every demographic category for both fronting and raising, are correlated with network position. The Appalachian pattern of change shows the middle rather than working class in the lead, with women and younger speakers also out in front. These immigrants live in urban, southeastern Michigan, the area where the NCCS is most advanced. It appears to them, therefore, to be the local norm, and their age, class, gender, and network scores reflect the rather rapid adoption of that prestige form, a case of change involving a “marker” rather than an “indicator.” Labov notes the following concerning such a variable at the stage the Appalachian group has begun to acquire it. As the sound change with its associated values reached the limits of its expansion, the linguistic variable became one of the norms of the speech community, and all members of the speech community reacted in a uniform manner to its use (without necessarily being aware of it). The variable is now a “marker” and begins to show stylistic variation. (1972: 179)
In spite of the fact that this feature of the NCCS is different from the traditional Appalachian pattern the older speakers in this group would have brought with them, there is no indication that they are aware of its emerging status in the local area, and it is not, therefore, a case of “change from above” nor a candidate for a “stereotype.” Putting aside the lack of any change in F2 for the African-American group (since fronting is perhaps an original feature of their dialect), they would appear to parallel the Appalachian group, since young, female, and middle class speakers lead in raising (F1). For Lansing African-Americans, therefore, the pattern of acquisition of raising also indicates the adoption of a local, prestige norm, but the lack of any network correlation is in need of further explanation. If a lack of Appalachian network density predicts participation in the NCCS for Appalachians, why doesn’t it for African-Americans? The answer almost certainly lies in the racial difference between the two groups. The Appalachian speakers, particularly those in the locally-raised
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second generation, are allowed full participation in the new majority speech community; there is no visual barrier to that participation, and they may fully integrate; the less dense network scores of those who make that adjustment make that clear. African-Americans, however, who have encountered racial barriers to full participation in the larger society, have apparently chosen to adopt parts of the NCCS (and other norms of the wider speech community) for instrumental rather than integrative purposes. That is, younger, female, middleclass speakers in particular have found a need to copy the norms of the majority speech community for educational and economic advancement. Those who have made that choice, however, apparently have not done so on the basis of weaker network ties to their home speech community. Experience with these (and many other African-American respondents) suggests that, unlike their Appalachian peers, they are not linguistically assimilating to the majority, surrounding speech norm. Instead, they borrow parts of it as they are seen necessary to social advancement and perhaps to a regionally local (but not white) identity. This borrowing is made a part of a larger linguistic repertoire that contains an ability to perform within the narrower, network dense community. In short, even the younger, female, middle class group of AfricanAmerican speakers can code-switch, and, although that identity in itself may have some future influence over their ability to control their more vernacular system, their continuing identity as African-Americans (as regards language as well as other cultural facts) seems intact, a claim I would not like to make for the younger Appalachian respondents. In summary, the NCCS is establishing itself very slowly in mid-Michigan nonurban areas. It is being led by working-class groups and women with unusually low-density network relations, although they come from a background which would have supported such networks only one generation past. Although they are acquiring this new system very slowly, I do not believe there is a strong caricature of the NCCS system (an anti-urban mentality) as might have been suggested in Ito and Preston (1998); instead, there may be considerable variation in local loyalty and urban favor or disfavor. For example, although young women often focus on the fact that urban areas are more fashionable, they also note how they are bad places to raise families due to crime, drugs, and other big-city woes. Young men, although they may have been displaced from local agricultural work, are still very much a part of the local hunting or outdoors culture (whether they are participants or not) and deride the urban weekend hunters, who are fancy dressers, don’t spend enough time in the woods, and shoot small deer (Ito 1999). Appalachians in Ypsilanti and African-Americans in Lansing are both originally speakers of stigmatized dialects. The Appalachian group is adopting
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local pronunciation and, due to racial similarity with the surrounding majority, the degree to which that adoption is taking place is reflected in lower density network scores with the home Appalachian population. African-Americans, on the other hand, have, at least in certain groups, found it important to acquire some aspects of the surrounding majority speech norm, but they do not do it in connection with a loss of network density. Their acquisition of the NCCS reflects an instrumental rather than integrative motivation, and they retain ability in the home variety, which allows them to maintain local network strength. 2.3
Imitation Next, I provide evidence from a study by Evans (2002) that finely tuned characteristics of pronunciation are, in fact, replicable by nonnatives. Linguists have generally assumed that it is not possible for a speaker to modify speech systematically (e.g., Labov 1972: 215): Although one can achieve a certain amount of insight working with bilingual informants, it is doubtful if as much can be said for bidialectal informants, if indeed such speakers exist. We have not encountered any nonstandard speakers who gained good control of a standard language, and still retained control of the nonstandard vernacular. Dialect differences depend upon low-level rules which appear as minor adjustments and extensions of contextual conditions, etc. It appears that such conditions inevitably interact, and although the speaker may indeed appear to be speaking the vernacular, close examination of his speech shows that his grammar has been heavily influenced by the standard. He may succeed in convincing his listeners that he is speaking the vernacular, but this impression seems to depend upon a number of unsystematic and heavily marked signals.
More recent work suggests the same: “Ash...did a test survey of individuals who were asked to disguise their voices over the telephone. The subjects modified tempo, voice quality, and intonation, but none modified the segmental features specific to their geographical dialect” (Labov 1994: 111). Imitation would seem to be ineffective even when it is long-term and unconscious. When children with even one nonnative parent in the Philadelphia area were tested for their acquisition of the local complex short-a raising rule, they were found to be lacking (Payne 1980). The failure of imitation in second and foreign language learning (especially for pronunciation by adults) is well known. There is, however, recent contrary evidence. In Schilling-Estes’ (1998) study of the Okracoke “brogue” (the traditional speech of Okracoke Island, NC), she found regular patterning in the performance and normal speech of
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several respondents. She examined the first and second formants of the diphthong /ay/ in these two styles and found systematic patterning in various phonological environments in relation to both the height and backness of /ay/. Her findings “suggest that the patterns of linguistic variation observed in selfconscious speech are not necessarily different from, or less regular than, those observed in non-self-conscious speech” (1998: 64). Are imitations the use of only a few stereotypical features, either easily adapted from lexical or morphological caricatures, or, if at a phonological level, are they simply inaccurate (at least at the level of acoustic realization and/or detailed contextual specification)? In this study, imitation refers to the conscious use of a variety not the speaker’s vernacular. This study samples only a single respondent, “Noah,” a 29-year-old male born in Morgantown, West Virginia who lived there until age 23. His parents are natives of Detroit, speakers of northern US English. Because the respondent has had adequate input of both relatively more southern (native Morgantown) and nonsouthern (or northern) speech, there is good reason to believe that he could have control over both varieties. However, his usual vernacular reflects a conservative northern system, which is expected, given the stigmatized status of southern speech in Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University. The question addressed here is how accurate his command of those elements of southern speech that do not appear in his usual speech is. The respondent read a word list and a reading passage with items deliberately selected to reflect differences between northern and southern speech. Later, he was asked to re-read the word list and reading passage in the West Virginia style of the people from his hometown. Noah’s performances were compared first to a conservative northern vowel system, presumably not unlike his parents’ (and not unlike one he would have learned as a university-oriented child in Morgantown, in spite of the local variety). His Detroit parents might even have shown some tendency towards the Northern Cities Chain Shift (Figure 1). Noah’s vowels were then compared to the configuration of the so-called “Southern Vowel Shift” (Figure 8). If the vowels in both his normal and imitation systems correspond to the conservative system, there is little low-level skill in imitation (apparently the claim in most earlier research). If, however, his normal performance conforms to the conservative system and the imitation system conforms (at least in part) to the Southern Vowel Shift system in acoustic detail, his imitative or performance ability is rather more precise than expected.
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Figure 8: The Southern Vowel Shift (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 1997).
A comparison of various subsystems of Noah’s normal and imitation speech reveals systematic differences between them. Figures 9 and 10 display the mean scores for the front vowels of Noah’s two systems. The highest and most front vowel in the normal system is /iy/; /ey/ is more front than //, and // is the lowest, most back of the high and mid-front vowels. This is the system we would expect in a conservative, northern US speaker. The imitation front system (Figure 10) is quite different. The highest, most front vowel in this system is //; /iy/ is lower than //, and /ey/ is the lowest most back high-front vowel. The // tokens are split into two groups. The nasalized tokens are quite high, but the others aren’t. This is almost certainly due to Noah’s imitation of the typical southern / merger before nasals; he has grouped pen with the // tokens (which, as indicated above, are raised), although that would not explain the position of neck. Nevertheless, even the non-nasalized /e/ tokens are higher than the /ey/ tokens. The positions of // and /ey/ and /e/ and /ey/ have flipflopped when compared to his normal system, exactly the characteristics one finds in the Southern Vowel Shift system seen in Figure 8. I will not detail the rest of Noah’s vowel system, but it shows fronting of nearly all back vowels, fronting and monophthongization of /ay/, and monophthongization of /w/, all southern characteristics. Briefly, Noah’s imitative ability was acoustically very accurate. To test the perceptual as well as acoustic accuracy of Noah’s imitations, a matched guise tape was created with Noah’s normal and West Virginian speech and five other male speakers; three from West Virginia, one from a
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Figure 9: Noah’s normal front vowel system.
Figure 10: Noah’s imitation front vowel system.
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South Midlands area, and one from the Inland North. Each speech sample was the same excerpt from a reading passage. 69 West Virginia University student respondents listened to the tape and were asked to indicate whether they believed each speaker was from West Virginia or not, using a five-point scale. The voices were played again so that they could indicate why they rated each speaker the way they did. Respondent differences of region, age, and sex were important for only one or two sample voices and so are conflated for all the results reported here. Mean scores for respondent’s ratings of speakers are based on the following five-point scale: 1 you are sure that the speaker grew up in West Virginia 2 you think the speaker grew up in West Virginia 3 you don’t know if the speaker grew up in West Virginia 4 you think that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia 5 you are sure that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia
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Figure 11: Ratings of 6 speakers and Noah’s imitation of the likelihood that the speaker is from West Virginia (1 = sure the speaker is from West Virginia; 5 = sure the speaker is not from West Virginia).
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Figure 11 shows the mean scores for all speakers. The mean score for the Charleston speaker (1.67) indicates that respondents felt surest that he grew up in West Virginia, but the mean score for Noah’s imitation (1.93) shows that the respondents also believed that the imitation was also the speech of a native West Virginian. The difference between the mean scores for the imitation and Charleston speaker are not significant (.08). Thus it seems that the respondents perceived the imitation just as likely to be from West Virginia as the Charleston speaker. The mean score even for the West Virginia speaker from Parkersburg (2.69) shows that respondents were unsure about his West Virginian status. Mean scores for the other speakers on the tape also show that the respondents weren’t sure or perceived those speakers to be from elsewhere, even the Keyser speaker, who is also from West Virginia, but from the eastern panhandle of the state. Comments from respondents who rated the imitation as native show that their judgments were based on general impressions (“southern twang,” “I know people who talk like this,” “sounds like Uncle Jesse”) as well as specific details (“‘u’ sound,” “sounds like its mixed with the ‘a’ in ‘cat’,” “the pronunciation of ‘hand and spilled’”). “Has a definite southern twang of a West Virginian” “I know people who talk like this from WV: accent, speed” “Man sounds like Uncle Jesse. Likely to be from this region. Yee haw.” “strong drawl, especially his ‘u’ sound” “A heavy southern dialect. The pronunciation of ‘hand & spilled’” “The way he says slices. His words are drawn out and his speech is not rapid” Data from those who rated the imitation a 3, 4, or 5 (14/69) reveal that many felt the imitation was from another southern region, but only two perceived it as inauthentic: “drawl is tricky-maybe more southern” “has a southern accent but I don’t recognize it”
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“Southern drawl maybe from Texas” “he has a very strong southern accent-too strong to be from WV” Given the acoustic accuracy of the imitation, it was not expected that many respondents would perceive it as false. The two respondents who did said: “sounds too much like a hick to be one” (native West Virginia respondent) “Tries to sound southern but does not keep tone consistent” (non-native West Virginia respondent) Finally, an acoustic analysis of the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers was conducted in order to compare the imitation system to other native West Virginia speakers (no acoustic analysis was conducted for the Keyser speaker as respondents overwhelmingly found him to not be from West Virginia). Mean scores of F1 and F2 for the Charleston speaker show some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/, /ow/ and /aw/ but no reversal of /iy/ and /i/ nor of /ey/ and /e/. Mean scores for F1 and F2 for the Parkersburg speaker also show some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/ and /ow/ but again no reversal of /iy/ and /i/ nor of /ey/ and /e/. Noah’s imitation demonstrates more features of the southern shift than the native speakers and can be said to be more ‘southern’ than the West Virginia natives. This could explain the difference in ratings for the imitation and the Charleston speaker. Twelve of the fourteen respondents who gave the imitation a 3, 4, or 5 felt that it was too southern to be West Virginian. Perhaps these respondents reacted to very minute details of the imitation (perhaps even the reversal of /iy/ and /i/ and /ey/ and /e/, the major difference between Noah’s imitation and the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers). Yet the majority of the respondents were convinced by Noah’s imitation, and it must be that their perception of West Virginia speech is that it is very southern, perhaps even more southern than it really is. This perception must have been the same one that Noah drew from when he did the imitation and perhaps lead him to create speech with perhaps too many southern features to be authentically local. Acoustic analysis of the vowel formants of Noah’s normal and imitation speech styles shows consistent patterning in both. The analysis of Noah’s normal and imitation systems, like Schilling-Estes’ Okracoke study of Rex, demonstrates that at least some speakers have considerable imitation ability.
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Perhaps the motivation for Noah’s ability was his childhood and adolescent awareness of some covert prestige value of the variety. Additional research must be conducted in order to more clearly understand both the levels of accuracy of such imitations and the social contexts and motivations for both acquisition and performance. This study should make it clear, however, that imitation speech is not just the ability to evidence a few gross caricatures or stereotypes, for at least some speakers have the ability to modify their speech, at fairly detailed levels, even when the modification is done fairly selfconsciously. It is also obvious that speakers adjust their speech not only in the direction of emerging norms and practices but also according to their own ideologies and identities when those factors can be correlated to speech practices, even when the adjustment is in the direction of stigmatized speech. I turn now, however, more directly to the question of perception, and I begin in the area of the possible dialect influence of both speaker and hearer on phoneme perception. 3. 3.1
Perception Region Plichta and Rakerd (2002) investigate the degree to which respondent dialects may influence phoneme perception. If respondents are involved in a shift themselves, they might have greater tolerance for a shifted vowel’s identity; if they are not, they might have a greater tendency to identify a shifted vowel as belonging to another phoneme class. The NCCS provides just such an opportunity with // fronting. As // moves forward into the territory vacated by /æ/, which has already fronted and raised (see Figure 1), participants in the shift may tolerate a more dramatically fronted vowel and yet retain an // interpretation. That is, NCCS affected speakers might continue to hear words such as hot and sock in positions which non-shifted speakers might identify as hat and sack. To test this hypothesis, Plichta and Rakerd first determined mean F2 values for // for a group of shifted speakers (southeastern lower Michigan, hereafter LM) and a group of nonshifted speakers (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, hereafter UP, a group even further from the newly established urban norm of the NCCS in southeastern Michigan than the mid-Michiganders discussed in 2.1 above). These differences were considerable; the mean F2 score for LM speakers was 1525 Hz while the UP speakers showed a conservative (backer) mean of 1159 Hz. They next used the HLsyn parametric synthesizer to produce 11 hVt and sVk tokens at 33hz intervals along the trajectory from 1210 to 1540, the lower arrow in Figure 12. (F0, F1, and F3 were kept relatively stable with the exception of some formant transition
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adjustments in F3 and a 120 to 100 Hz fall in F0, matching the UP and LM performances). The hVt tokens could be interpreted as “hot” or “hat,” and the sVk tokens could be interpreted as “sock” or “sack.” After a pilot study revealed no variation in identification of the vowels at the extremes of the continuum (everything back of 1243 was heard as // and everything front of 1441 was heard as /æ/), the continuum was reduced to a seven-step scale with those edges, the upper arrow in Figure 12.
Figure 12: 11-step (lower arrow) and 7-step (upper arrow) continua of synthesized // tokens (adapted from Plichta and Rakerd 2002).
Two young male speakers, one from the UP the other from LM, matched for age, vocal tract size, and voice quality then recorded phrases into which these synthesized words were placed. These carrier phrases offered no cue to the identity of the word (e.g., “The key to winning the game of Boggle, is to know lots of short words like _____” and “Bob was certain that he heard his wife Shannon say _____”). The respondents were five young men and women from Detroit (ages 19–30, all heavily influenced by the NCCS) and five men and four women (ages 19–34) from Ishpeming, MI (in the UP), none influenced by the NCCS. Each respondent first heard the single synthesized words (one hVt and one sVk) repeated four times in each of the seven positions on the F2 continuum for a total of 56 trials. Each respondent then heard each of the two synthesized words in four carrier phrases from the two different speakers (one LM, one MP), each repeated four times, again in each of the seven steps of the F2 continuum for a total of 448 trials. This sophisticated acoustic approach allows us to begin answering classic questions at the interface of sociolinguistics and speech perception. As long ago as 1957, Ladefoged and Broadbent, in conducting an experiment on phoneme perception, speculated that there was “...tentative evidence that
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subjects belonging to different sociolinguistic groups gave different responses to some of the test materials.” On the other hand, there is also evidence for uniformity in perception, based on vowel-intrinsic features (e.g., Miller 1989, Syrdal and Gopal 1986). Plichta and Rakerd’s results suggest that both these interpretations may be plausible, the first in the carrier-phrase context, the second in the singleword context. I examine the latter first. Figure 13 shows that there is very little difference in the UP and LM perceptions of these tokens as /æ/ or //, although the LM respondents continue to hear // more robustly at step 5 (only). Predictably, the backest (i.e., lowest F2) tokens (step 1) are nearly all recognized as // (i.e., as “hot” or “sock”), and the frontest tokens (step 7) are nearly all recognized as /æ/ (i.e., as “hat” or “sack”). It is worth noting, however, that unlike classic phoneme perception tests of consonants, in which gradient acoustic characteristics are modified, a sharp (or categorical) boundary does not exist between one phoneme and the other. The similarity of identifications regardless of dialect background of the hearer suggests that some intrinsic factor of vowel quality or perhaps a stereotype of typical vowels is the primary input into perception. 100 90 80 70 60 LM-SW UP-SW
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Figure 13: UP and LM respondent classifications of single-word hVt and sVk tones along a seven-step continuum (shown as percentage of // identifications).
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Figure 14: UP and LM respondent classifications of hVt and sVk tokens along a seven-step continuum in UP carrier phrases (shown as percentage of // identifications).
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Figure 15: UP and LM respondent classifications of hVt and sVk tokens along a seven-step continuum in LM carrier phrases (shown as percentage of // identifications).
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The submissions of the same sample with carrier phrases, however, show significantly different results. The respondents from the two dialect areas again are in substantial agreement when the carrier phrases are from the UP, the area not influenced by the NCCS (Figure 14), but when the words are embedded in LM (i.e., NCCS-influenced) carrier phrases (Figure 15), the LM respondents show a decided tendency to interpret much fronter tokens as //. Figure 15 shows no reduction at all from step 1 to step 3 for LM respondents (who show the characteristic drop in // for these same tokens in both single-word and UP carrier-phrase environments). Even more dramatically, by step 4, LM respondents still hear // nearly eighty percent of the time; at the same step 4 in UP carrier phrases, they hear // only fifty percent of the time. It is clear, therefore, that, whatever intrinsic characteristic vowels have, those features may be overcome by sociolinguistic identity of the hearer in connection with additional information about the system of the speaker. UP respondents are not familiar enough with the LM (i.e., NCCS-influenced) system for carrier phrases to have any influence on their recalibrating the phonological space of a speaker; they calculate phonemes on the basis of their own experiences, ones not significantly different from the evidence given by individual word tokens. When LM hearers are given carrier phrase evidence of a modified vowel system which is very familiar to them, they adjust their hearing to match the divergent phonetic facts of that system. Some may be disappointed, however, to see so much attention paid to regional differences alone in a sociolinguistic setting. After all, the LM and UP speakers are, at least as far as the NCCS is concerned, speakers of different varieties and have different linguistic systems, at least as regards the phonetic values of the similar phonemic systems. Isn’t it possible to find perceptual strategies which are dramatically influenced by such traditional sociolinguistic identities as age, gender, or status? I believe such different strategies can be detected, and I believe they run in the direction of the perception of the linguistic reality as well as in the direction of person or group caricature, the latter a fact established at least as long ago as the work of Frederic Williams and his colleagues, in which standard English voices were rated lower on various scales when respondents believed the speakers were African American or Mexican American (Williams 1976: 103–107). Gender In Plichta and Preston (2003), the southern US speech stereotype of monophthongized /ay/ is investigated to determine the following: 3.2
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a. What is the smallest modification in the monophthongization of /ay/ which can be perceived? b. Will gradient versions of monophthongized /ay/ be perceived gradiently or will there be some (or several) categorical break-points? c. Will speaker characteristics (age, sex, etc…) affect perception? d. Will hearer characteristics (age, sex, region, etc…) affect perception? There is no doubt that southern US English is the most salient dialect of the US. When I asked southeastern Michigan and southern Indiana respondents to draw boundaries around significantly different US speech areas (on a blank map), ninety-four percent of the Michigan respondents and eighty-six percent of the Indiana respondents identified an area which could be characterized as southern. The Michigan respondents identified their local area (a Great Lakes region) at only the sixty-one percent level, and Indiana respondents identified a northeastern US region focused on New York City at only the fifty-one percent level, the second most frequently outlined areas for each group, respectively (Preston 1996).
Figure 16: The fifty states, New York City and Washington, D.C rated for language correctness on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 =- least correct) by southeastern Michigan respondents (Preston 1996).
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It is also clear that southern distinctiveness is not related to purely linguistic differences. When I asked Michigan respondents to rate the fifty states and New York City and Washington, D.C. for language correctness, the results were as shown in Figure 16. Except for New Jersey and New York City, the other locus of perceived nonstandard English in the US, the south is the only region which consistently gets ratings in the 3.00 to 4.00 range. Ethnographic characterizations also reveal negative caricatures of southern speech. Figure 17 shows a hand-drawn map of US regional speech by a young, male Chicago resident. For him, the south is where there is “Southern talk the worst English in American [sic].” (His own Chicago speech, by the way, is “Normal talk for the average person.”) Speakers of US English are also aware that /ay/ monophthongization is a — perhaps the — principal phonetic caricature of southern speech. In American Tongues, a documentary dealing with variation in US English, a southerner tells a story in which he tolerates northerners’ imitations of his monophthongal pronunciation of “ice” until he exasperatedly calls his tormentors “ice holes.”
Figure 17: A young, male Chicago respondent’s hand-drawn map of US dialect areas (Preston 1996).
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Figure 18: Home sites of the nine voices played in the identification task (Preston 1996).
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In earlier research on the sensitivity to the north-south dimension in US English, I asked respondents to listen to nine voices reaching from Saginaw, Michigan in the north to Dothan, Alabama in the south (Figure 18). The speech samples from male, European American, middle age, middleclass speakers from these nine sites were devoid of all dialect-specific features except pronunciation. The respondents, from southernmost Indiana and southeastern Michigan, were asked to match these voices (played in scrambled order) with their sites. A simple account of their guesses was tallied; if respondents identified the voice from site #1 as being from site #1, a “1” was tallied for voice #1; if they identified the voice from site #3 as being from site #1, a “1” was counted for voice #3, and so on. The scores were averaged and arranged in order. The respondents did very well on the basis of means scores rankings. The Michigan respondents misplaced only the Dothan, AL voice, putting it between Bowling Green, KY (site #6) and Nashville, TN (site #7), rather than identifying it as the southernmost one (Figure 19).
Figure 19: Southern Indiana (left) and southeastern Michigan (right) voice identification placements (Preston 1996).
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Groupings of these scores by a statistical analysis (Wilcoxon) are shown in the circles around the sites in Figure 19. For the southern Indiana speakers, once south of the home site (New Albany, IN, site #5), southern areas are distinct, with the exception of their being no statistically significant difference between Florence, AL (site #8) and Dothan, AL (site #9). To the north, however, they link themselves and all other areas together in a chain of combinations — the home site is not different from Muncie, IN (site #4), but Muncie is also not different from the next two sites to the north, and the three northernmost sites are also indistinct. For the Michiganders, all areas are more distinct except for the short chain of northern pairs formed by linking Saginaw, MI (site #1) and Coldwater, MI (site #2) then Coldwater and South Bend, IN (site #3) and the southern linkage of Nashville, TN (site #7) and Florence AL (site #8). Although this test reveals that US respondents hear a continuum of northern and southern voices, we do not know, since each sample was about a 30-second stretch of speech, what phonetic characteristic(s) was/were most responsible for the relatively northern or southern selection of a site. Assured that /ay/ was one such clue (and that it occurred at least once in all the samples played), we proceeded to test increasingly monophthongal variants of /ay/ to test the questions a. – d. asked above. In a web-based experiment, we presented male and female seven-step resynthesized pronunciations of the word “guide” and asked respondents to indicate which of the nine sites in Figure 18 they thought each token was from. We determined the gender, age, profession, ethnicity, and region of the respondents, each of whom heard each resynthesized token of “guide” three times (42 tokens). The LPC analysis/resynthesis was done from samples in which target F1 (maximum change 150 Hz) and F2 (maximum change 550 Hz) values at each 20ms frame were calculated to obtain the seven-step continuum of monophthongization and fronting. Fronting of the onset was added since, at least in the part of the US studied here, fronting as well as reduction of the glide is common. Regional, professional (i.e., status), and ethnic distributions among the respondents were not large enough for statistical tests to be run, but both age and sex were calculated (61 female, 35 male; 19 under 20, 15 from 21 to 30, 23 from 31 to 40, 19 from 41 to 50, 16 from 51 to 60, and 4 over 60); however, neither sex nor age of the respondents showed any difference in the pattern of responses. Respondents were, however, very outspoken concerning the appropriateness of the task, most complaining that they could not hear the fine
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distinctions and/or that they did not have experience in hearing the speech of the nine sites. The following are typical responses: I don’t do surveys ordinarily. … Unfortunately, after doing the sample. [sic] I realized that I am clueless. My ignorance could only compromise your findings. Had I a printed version of the word before it was sounded, I might have had more of a snowball’s chance. I’ve just done the web linguistic survey and I kept going even though I was quite clueless. How should anyone other than travelling salesmen have any familiarity with these regional dialects? Who’s a "good respondent" as opposed to one like me who’s mostly guessed in a tripartite way: north, middle, south? I had one stop in Indianapolis once during which I was so struck by a sixteen year waitress’s accent that I’ve always remembered the difficulty of understanding her, but I sure haven’t remembered her voice. I hope your survey produces something of value, but I’m curious how you might get there if other respondents are as clueless as I am! In spite of such claims (similar to ones made even by linguists who have heard the seven-step continuum), the respondents did very well in placing the seven tokens along the nine-step north-south continuum (Figure 20). In fact, only steps one and two (the most diphthongal) were not significantly different from one another; an ANOVA with a Tukey post-hoc test shows every other step, whether for male or female voices, to be significantly different from the adjacent (and all other) values. The complaint by respondents, therefore, that they could not discriminate among these small differences in degree of monophthongization was realized only for steps 1 and 2. I conclude, therefore, that at least one element which guided respondents in placing the nine voices in the older test was degree of monophthongization. More importantly, although not discussed here at any great length, is the fact that minimal degrees of phonetic difference can be perceived in such tasks and that they are perceived gradiently, not categorically. What is most important here, however, is the fact that a sociolinguistic element, namely, sex of speaker, resulted in a significant difference, as determined by independent t-tests, in the ranking for each step between the male and female voice. As Figure 20 shows, the male voice was always rated
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Male & Female voice ratings 9 7.61
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Figure 20: Assignment of seven-step monophthongized male and female samples of “guide” to the nine sites of Figure 18 (Plichta and Preston 2003).
as more southern (i.e., assigned a site farther south among the nine choices given in Figure 18). Since the resynthesized signals offered no phonetic clue to this, I conclude that two well-established caricatures have come together to force this perception. First, as I have shown above and elsewhere (e.g., Preston 1996), southern speech in the US is not only salient to US English speakers but is salient because of its perceived nonstandardness. Second, perhaps beginning with Fischer (1958) but elaborated on in Trudgill (1972) and confirmed in considerable further sociolinguistic work, women are much more likely to be users of more standard or overtly prestigious forms than men. It follows that if female usage is generally more standard that both men and women perceive female speakers as more standard and males as less so and that respondents would be much less inclined to rate a female voice, regardless of the phonetic reality, as one from farther south, a region caricatured as nonstandard. Of course we hope that as we gather more data, we may be able to show that characteristics of the hearer (age, sex, region, ethnicity, etc…) may also be important to the perception of degree of monophthongization and placement on the north-south dimension. What we have shown already, however, is that the perceived gender of the speaker
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causes a radical alteration in the assignment of monophthongized steps to a regional site. 4.
Conclusion In conclusion, I hope to have shown that newer trends in sociophonetics are important to perceptual as well as production matters and that even production itself may be a more delicately tuned matter than some have previously assumed. Most importantly, however, I hope to have shown that, whatever the approach to variable data, ideological, attitudinal, or folk linguistic factors play a central role in the study of language variation and change. References Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt. Bucholtz, Mary. 2001. “From ‘sex difference’ to gender variation in sociolinguistics”. A paper presented as part of Symposium III: Variation studies in context at NWAV 30. North Carolina State University. Evans, Betsy E. 2001. Dialect Contact and the Northern Cities Shift in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Doctoral dissertation. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. ----------. 2002. “An acoustic and perceptual analysis of imitation”. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume 2 ed. by Daniel Long and Dennis R. Preston, 95–112. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Evans, Betsy E., Rika Ito, Jamila Jones, and Dennis R. Preston. 2000. “Change on top of change: Social and regional accommodation to the Northern Cities Chain Shift”. De Toekomst van de Variatielinguitiek (a special issue of Taal en Tongval to honor Dr. Jo Daan on her ninetieth birthday) ed. by H. Bennis, H. Ryckeboer, & J. Stroop, 61–86. Evans, Betsy E., Rika Ito, Jamila Jones, and Dennis R. Preston. To appear. “Accommodation to the Northern Cities Chain Shift”. Language Variation and Change in the American Midland ed. by T. Murray and B. L. Simon. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fischer, John L. 1958. “Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant”. Word 14.47–56. Garrett, Peter, Nikolas Coupland, and Angie Williams. 2003. Investigating Language Attitudes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Giles, Howard and Peter F. Powesland. 1975. Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press. Graff, David, William Labov, and Wendell A. Harris. 1986. “Testing listeners’ reactions to phonological markers of ethnic identity: A new method for
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sociolinguistic research”. Diversity and Diachrony (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 53) ed. by David Sankoff, 45–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ito, Rika. 1999. Diffusion of Urban Sound Change in Rural Michigan. Doctoral dissertation. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Ito, Rika and Dennis R. Preston. 1998. “Identity, discourse, and language variation”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 17:4.465–483. Jones, Jamila. 2003. African Americans in Lansing and the Northern Cities Vowel Shift: Language Contact and Accommodation. Doctoral dissertation. Michigan State University: East Lansing, MI. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ----------. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, William and Sharon Ash. 1997. “Understanding Birmingham”. Language and Variety in the South Revisited ed. by Cynthia Bernstein, Thomas Nunnally, and Robin Sabino, 508–573. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 1997. A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English. Retrieved from University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Website: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. Forthcoming. Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ladefoged P. and Broadbent D.E. 1957. “Information conveyed by vowels”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 29.98–104. Miller. J. D. 1989. “Auditory-perceptual interpretation of the vowel”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 85:2.114–134. Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, Lesley. 1980. Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, Lesley and Dennis R. Preston, eds. 1999. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18:1 (Special Issue: Attitudes, perception, and linguistic features). Niedzielski, Nancy and Dennis R. Preston. 1999. Folk Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Payne, Arvilla. 1980. “Factors controlling the acquisition of the Philadelphia dialect by out-of-state children”. Locating Language in Time and Space ed. by William Labov, 143–178. New York: Academic Press.
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Plichta, Bartek and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. “The /ay/s have it. Stereotype, perception, and region”. A paper presented to NWAV 32. Philadelphia, October. Plichta, Bartek and Brad Rakerd. 2002. “Perceptions of /a/-fronting across two Michigan dialects”. A paper presented to NWAV 31. Stanford University, October. Preston, Dennis. 1996. “Where the worst English is spoken”. Focus on the USA ed. by Edgar Schneider, 297–360. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ----------, ed. 1999. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Preston, Dennis R. and Jones, Jamila. In progress. The language varieties of African-Americans in Lansing, MI. Ryan, Ellen Bouchard and Howard Giles, eds. 1982. Attitudes Towards Language Variation. London: Edward Arnold. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. “Investigating ‘self-conscious’ speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English”. Language in Society 27.53– 83. Syrdal, A. K. and H. S. Gopal. 1986. “A perceptual model of vowel recognition based auditory representation of American English vowels”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 79.1086–1100. Thomas, Erik. 2001. An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Variation in New World Englishes. (= Publication of the American Dialect Society, 85). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 1972. “Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich”. Language in Society 1:2.179–195. ----------. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Tucker, G. Richard and Wallace E. Lambert. 1969. “White and Negro listeners’ reactions to various American-English dialects”. Social Forces 47.463–468. Williams, Frederick. 1976. Explorations of the Linguistic Attitudes of Teachers. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
ON ‘DATIVE SICKNESS’ AND OTHER LINGUISTIC DISEASES IN MODERN ICELANDIC FINNUR FRIÐRIKSSON University of Akureyri 1.
Diagnosis of illness Judging by the public debate in Iceland, the Icelandic language is currently undergoing a number of changes which are commonly feared to disrupt the image of stability that the language has both in the eyes of the Icelanders themselves (see, e.g. Gíslason et al. 1988) as well as in international sociolinguistics circles (see, e.g. Milroy & Milroy 1985). Furthermore it is often claimed that these changes might disrupt or even break the direct links there are believed to exist between the Iceland of today and its historical past, which is preserved primarily in the sagas and other medieval literature. Unsurprisingly, English influences are amongst the main culprits in this respect, especially as far as the Icelandic vocabulary is concerned, as various loanwords are now quite well established at the same time as much of the everyday slang stems from English. However, there are also a few types of changes which are normally not “blamed” on English and affect the morphology and syntax of Icelandic rather than its vocabulary. These changes are the focus of this paper. Three types of change not attributable to English have attracted most of the attention: a) ‘dative sickness’; b) ‘new passive’; and c) ‘genitive avoidance’. As for the first of these, i.e. ‘dative sickness’, there are a number of so-called impersonal verbs in Icelandic which allow their subjects to be in oblique case. 1 For most of these verbs the case in question is dative, as in mér finnst (‘I-DAT think/feel’ [when expressing an opinion]), but there is also a smaller number of verbs that take the accusative, as in mig langar (‘I-ACC want’), and a handful of verbs that take the genitive, as in mín nýtur við (‘IGEN am present’). Lately, a tendency for the verbs that normally take accusative to take dative instead is believed to have emerged, resulting in constructions such as mér langar and the term ‘dative sickness’, or 1
The existence of this phenomenon in Icelandic was first established by Andrews (1976), and his analysis appears to be generally accepted.
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þágufallssýki, as it is called in Icelandic. Also, some personal verbs, particularly hlakka (= ‘look forward to’) and kvíða (= ‘be anxious’) apparently tend to appear in impersonal forms with either accusative or dative subjects instead of nominative. The second example of this type of change, i.e. ‘new passive’ is, as the term implies, a change in how passive sentences are constructed in modern Icelandic. The standard passive can be divided into three types (Sigurjónsdóttir & Maling 1997): a) Nominative Passive – Ég var laminn (‘I-NOM was hit’); b) Oblique Passive – Honum var hrint (‘He-DAT was pushed’); and c) Impersonal Passive – Það var sungið (‘It/there was sung’). For a) and b) new variants have begun to emerge and thus Ég var laminn becomes Það var lamið mig (‘There/It was hit me-ACC’), whereas Honum var hrint becomes Það var hrint honum (‘There/It was pushed him-DAT’). As can be seen, the ‘new passive’ is thus constructed by inserting a dummy subject rather than moving the object of the corresponding active sentence into subject position. Furthermore, the object from the active sentence keeps its case in these passive constructions. The third type to be described here, i.e. ‘genitive avoidance’ gets its label from a tendency that many Icelanders think they see in modern Icelandic, namely, that the position of the genitive case is weakening. What appears to be happening is either that some genitive case endings are disappearing to be replaced by accusative/dative endings or simply that the accusative/dative case is used where genitive is the standard case (Kjartansson 1979; Svavarsdóttir 1994). Suggestions have also been made that this phenomenon is restricted to certain nouns, especially feminine ones which in the nominative case end in -ing, such as breyting (‘change’). The accusative and the dative ending is -u, and the standard genitive ending is -ar, which some now believe to be under threat from the -u-ending. It might also be the case that ‘genitive avoidance’ is an instance of a more major change or problem, rather, as many Icelanders would probably have it, as many — especially teachers of Icelandic in elementary schools and high schools — claim that the entire case-inflectional system of Icelandic is under threat, or at least showing signs of general instability. According to these teachers this emerges either in their students’ using an incorrect case, e.g. accusative where there should be dative, or in a tendency not to inflect at all, leaving nominative as the only productive case. 2 Of the alleged changes described above, ‘dative sickness’ is probably the most strongly stigmatized and actively fought against in Icelandic schools. 2
Personal communication with Kristín S. Árnadóttir, a teacher of Icelandic at Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri (a high school).
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However, the stigmatization attached to the ‘new passive’ is also quite strong, and deviant case inflections are generally frowned upon at the same time as the correct usage of case inflections is by tradition heavily emphasized in the teaching of Icelandic. Despite the claims of ongoing change and the public debate, very little work has been carried out on these alleged new features. Thus no work exists on the supposed general instability of the inflectional system, and ‘genitive avoidance’ has only been identified and described without any real attempt at finding out how firmly established it is in the language (Kjartansson 1979, 1999; Svavarsdóttir 1994). As for the remaining two features, i.e. ‘dative sickness’ and the ‘new passive’, some work has been carried out which indicates that the claims made about their progress may have some footing. Thus, in a study on ‘dative sickness’, Svavarsdóttir (1982) found, e.g. that more than 30% of her subjects — all of whom were 11-year-old children — used the dative form of the pronoun hún (‘she’), i.e. henni, rather than the ‘correct’ accusative form hana, when asked to fill in blanks for the subjects of the verbs langa (‘want’) and vanta (‘need/lack’). These are probably the two most commonly used verbs that in standard Icelandic take accusative subjects and also the two verbs most often pointed out as problematic as regards ‘dative sickness’. Interestingly, Svavarsdóttir also found signs of a reverse ‘dative sickness’ or even ‘accusative sickness’, as her study included a handful of verbs which in the standard language take dative subjects, and are generally not regarded as problematic in any way, but here frequently showed up with accusative subjects instead. This, however, Svavarsdóttir interprets primarily as a sign of hypercorrection. As for the ‘new passive’, recent research (Sigurjónsdóttir & Maling 2001) has been taken as a sign of this feature having become quite frequent amongst Icelandic teenagers. For this research, which was carried out in 1999– 2000, 1731 tenth-grade pupils (born in 1984; 45% of the total cohort in Iceland) and 205 adults from all over Iceland were presented with a number of test sentences and asked to indicate whether or not they were acceptable. The general results were that the majority, or 51–75%, of the younger subjects living outside Reykjavík and in its suburbs accepted the ‘new passive’ constructions, while the acceptance rates amongst teenagers in inner Reykjavík dropped to about 30% and did not exceed 9% amongst adults anywhere in the country. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between the teenagers’ acceptance rates and their parents’ education; the higher the educational level the lower the acceptance rates. Gender, however, did not seem to be a significant factor. To this it should be added that the pattern seen in these results resembles that in Svavarsdóttir’s (1982) research mentioned above and the pattern seen in a follow-up study aimed at using Svavarsdóttir’s original
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data to look more closely at the connection between ‘dative sickness’ and a number of social factors (Svavarsdóttir et al. 1984). Here it emerged that ‘dative sickness’ was less frequent in Reykjavík than in other parts of the country and that children from the lower classes tended to be afflicted by this ‘disease’ more often than children of a higher social standing. While the work just described undoubtedly makes valuable contributions to the description of the features in question and can probably be said to confirm their existence, it is in many ways less than satisfactory from a sociolinguistic point of view. The major problem with this work is that it is based on different kinds of tests rather than any kind of authentic data, written or spoken, which means that it is less than clear how widely spread these features have actually become in everyday language, even though the results discussed earlier have been used to draw conclusions on this matter. Also, the greater part of this work deals only with either written or spoken language, but when discussing their results researchers tend not to make any distinction between the two and simply apply their findings to Icelandic in general. Finally, there appears to exist a strong tendency in Iceland to regard the new features in question as restricted to children and teenagers, and thus only Sigurjónsdóttir’s and Maling’s (2001) research includes adult subjects. To get a clear picture of how common these features have become all age groups need to be included, not the least since the clear difference between adults and teenagers as regards the acceptance rates for the ‘new passive’ might just be seen as a sign of children and teenagers not having mastered the rather complex construction of passives rather than as an indication of an emerging change. As we only have results for children on ‘dative sickness’ and no results at all on the other features mentioned above, similar questions arise here about just how far these so-called changes really have proceeded. 2. 2.1
The present study Methods As we can see, the picture regarding the occurrences of ‘dative sickness’, ‘new passive’, and ‘genitive avoidance” and other deviant case inflections in everyday language is quite unclear. In order to clarify this picture somewhat I have embarked on a project which aims at collecting authentic written and spoken data from selected locations in each of the eight regions generally recognized in Iceland for various official and semi-official purposes. The choice of locations is intended to reflect the general societal structures of each region and to include as representative a sample as possible of the various kinds of urban centres and rural areas there can be said to exist in Iceland. What is to be presented here are the results from the first steps taken within this framework. So far data have been collected from a total of 18
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subjects; 6 from each of the three towns Neskaupstaður in the Eastern Fjords, Akureyri in the northern part and Patreksfjörður in the Western Fjords. Neskaupstaður and Patreksfjörður can both be described as typical Icelandic fishing villages, with about 1,400 and 750 inhabitants respectively. Akureyri, however, is, with its nearly 16,000 inhabitants, the largest town outside the Reykjavík area, and its economical foundations are more mixed than those of Neskaupstaður and Patreksfjörður, as besides the local fishing industry one can in Akureyri find several other industrial branches as well as a small university and a reasonably large hospital. The characteristics of the three towns are reflected in the choice of subjects, all of whom had lived most — if not all — of their lives there. In each of the three locations there are two subjects from each of the three age groups included; teenagers (aged 17–20), adults/middle-aged (aged 21–64) and seniors (aged 65 and above). Each age group in each location consists of one male and one female subject. The results presented below are based on a total of about 5 ½ hours of free conversation, recorded without the presence of the researcher at the participants’ homes, or — in the case of two of the teenagers — at school; and a total of 116 pages (ca. 6,5/subject) of written material of a very varied nature (school papers, personal letters/e-mails, meeting notes, personal homepages etc.), none of which were written specifically for the purpose of this project. 2.2
Results The most striking general finding so far is that, contrary to what could be expected based on previous research and regardless of whether we are talking about written or spoken language, none of the new features occur often enough to justify any claims about them being established in any way. Obviously, the limited data presently available do not justify any strong claims to the contrary either, but it can nonetheless be seen as an indication of what might be expected when all the data have been collected. This is especially surprising, as the results reported here are based on fieldwork outside of Reykjavík, where the new features were expected to be more prevalent than in the capital district. Another striking finding, which also contradicts what was expected, is that there are no clear differences between spoken and written language as regards the frequency of any of the new features; they are just about as rare in spoken language as they are in written language. Some differences emerge, however, in how non-standard forms appear, especially as regards case inflections. We will come to this shortly.
2.2.1 ‘Dative sickness’. If we now look more closely at each of the different features in question we can see (Table 1) that verbs normally taking accusative-
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case subjects are quite rarely used in general, both in written and spoken language. Thus only 5 such verbs occurred a total of 21 times in the written material and 29 times in the spoken material. As for non-standard forms of the subjects of these verbs, only 1 occurred in written language and 2 in spoken language, which gives us an ‘error’ percentage of 4.8 and 6.9 respectively. Spoken language Written language Standard forms 27 20 Non-standard; ‘dative sickness’ 1 0 Non-standard; nominative 1 1 % Non-standard forms 6.9 4.76 Table 1: Frequencies of standard and non-standard cases used for subjects of impersonal verbs standardly taking accusative subjects.
More interestingly, however, only one of these three non-standard forms is an example of ‘dative sickness’; on the other two occasions nominative was used rather than the standard accusative, thus, in a sense, making the v