Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 13:31:13 -0500

From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM

Subject: Re: mapping dialect spread -Reply



Matthew James Gordon mjgordon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMICH.EDU 0311.1024

I think the article you're almost remembering is "Some patterns of linguistic

diffusion" by Guy Bailey et al., which appeared in Language

Variation and Change, (1993). This presents some interesting results

from the SOD (Survey of Oklahoma Dialects) Project and does investigate

some "apparent time" data.





I have noticed in myself, as I aged and especially as I felt myself aspiring

to cross certain felt boundaries of age/seniority/respectability, a

tendency to emulate the speech of my elders/seniors and set aside some

habits of speech that I felt seemed markers of immaturity. Unfortunately I

can't remember specifics just now, but they may come back to me with

thought. But I wonder (both now and at the time): If this is a common

tendency, would it tend to obscure or blur such "apparent time" studies,

which are dependent on the assumption that, roughly, a person's speech

at the time of survey is the same as it was when she was acquiring

native fluency? How would one ascertain the dimensions of such

"retrogressive development"?



Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com

Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200

320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/

Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/