Date:  Fri, 29 Mar 1996 22:49:31 -0500

From:  dennisr <dennisr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MGL.CA>

Subject: Re: dialect areas and the latest American Speech



May we know the article source you are referencing?





Dennis



>On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, Baden Hughes wrote:

>

>> Noted your AS message. Is there any way of getting hold of a copy of What

>> determines a dialect area? by Lawrence M. Davis and Charles L. Houck as

>> appearing in this issue ?

>>

>I just read this article and it's very provocative. Larry and Charles

>raise some serious questions about whether or not we can truly draw

>dialect boundaries in any way that is statistically valid. I'd like to

>throw several corollary questions out to this list.

>

>First, granting for the sake of discussion that Larry and Charles are right,

>which I can't judge, not being a math person, their article

>talks about boundaries in the USA based upon LInguistic Atlas type data.

>Are there dialect boundaries ANYWHERE that would be valid by these same

>tests? In other words, if dialect boundaries are indeed more the

>product of subjective perception than a relfelection of objective

>realities, is this simply a something that is true for USA English, or is

>it true everywhere?

>

>Second, much of the discussion in this article is based on lexicon.

>Instances of "dialect mixture" involve people who manifest two

>regionalisms for the same object, like "frying pan" and "skillet."

>Are these problems confined entirely to lexical geographies, or can we

>make the same generalizations about pronunciation and morphology or syntax?

>Sociolinguists in the Labovian tradition identify northern and southern

>vowels shifts, along with a Midland area which participates in neither.

>What is the relationship between "dialect mixture" and these phonological

>events?

>

>Third, I would think if Larry and Charles' conclusions were valid, they

>would apply to other forms of human geography besides dialectology. Is

>it just as tricky--or downright impossible--when we try to map other

>kinds of behavior? I'd be interested to see some geography department

>types get into this debate.

>

>Fourth, a comment rather than a question. Certainly Davis and Houck have

>a point about regional differences -- at least, those of the sort we

>measure in things like Kurath 1949 -- being harder to demonstrate west of

>the Missississippi. Wolfram's 1991 map (based on Labov's work) show a

>narrow Midland band in the east spreading everywhere as we approaches the

>Rockies (from the east, that is). I suspect one reason for this as that

>the the two non-Midland cultural hearths, the North and South, didn't

>keep their identity farther west. Cotton farming--well, there was some

>in Texas, but not in Oklahoma or New Mexico, so plantation culture and

>"plantation southern" kinda peter out as you go west. (And you don't get

>the concentrations of AFrican Americans whose dialect might contribute a

>lot to the distincition between Plantation Southern and "South Midalnd").

>In the north, Yankee culture gets more and more diluted as you go west.

>You still find those little villages that look like they were transplanted

>from New England in southereastern Wisconsin, but I suspect not so much

>in North Dakota (although they turn up again in n. California and

>farther NW).  And Larry and Charles are right when they point out that

>Inland Northern is not exactly uniform, although I think it probably has

>a common set of features.

>

>Fifth--if we give up on "dialect areas" or "dialect boundaries"--not that

>I am going to, but if--does that still mean that there are not certain

>features whose variation is at least in part regional?

>

>Well, enough rambling for now.

>

>Tim Frazer

>

>