Dialect Grammar Research Articles

Between (anti-)grammar and identity: a quantitative and qualitative study of hyperdialectisms in Brabantish

Abstract Incomplete mastery of dialect grammar engenders ‘hyperdialectisms’ which may be unconscious errors, but which may also be the result of indexical resourcefulness, viz. the profiling of a regional identity. Fifty younger and older speakers from the Brabantish city of Eindhoven (Netherlands) were first administered an acceptability judgment task containing correct forms and three types of hyperdialectisms featuring gender and number constraints. Following the survey, the same respondents participated in a focus group discussion. Regression analysis on the scaled ratings revealed that all three types of hyperdialectisms were rejected, although it was especially the older respondents (almost all L1 dialect speakers) who were weary of the incorrect forms. Analysis of the focus group data demonstrated that older respondents are consciously aware of the rules of their dialect grammar, and hate it when these rules are violated. Younger respondents showed almost no meta-grammatical awareness, and admitted to ‘allowing’ the incorrect forms in some contexts because they ‘sound Brabantish’. Identity construction, in other words, is at the heart of hyperdialectal usage. Methodologically, this paper makes a plea for the confrontation of quantitative data – which provide the backbone of analysis – with qualitative data that offer access to motives for, and constraints on grammatical variation.

“A lot of them write how they speak”: policy, pedagogy and the policing of ‘nonstandard’ English

AbstractInternational studies of talk‐intensive (or ‘dialogic’) pedagogies have demonstrated that children who experience academically challenging classroom discussion (‘dialogue’) make greater progress than their peers who have not had this experience. In England, gains in achievement have been greatest for pupils from less privileged socio‐economic backgrounds, thus underlining the importance of dialogue to social mobility. However, policy prescriptions on ‘standard English’ run counter to the principles of dialogic teaching by privileging ‘correct’ forms of expression over emerging ideas. In this article, we argue that schools can be coerced by macro‐level policy into creating meso‐level policies which police nonstandardised forms in the classroom with the assumption that this will improve literacy rates. We draw upon a corpus of Ofsted reports as well as data collected in primary schools – pupil writing and focus groups, video‐recorded literacy lessons and teacher interviews – to demonstrate that features of spoken dialect grammar occur infrequently in pupil writing, yet the narrative that spoken dialect is a ‘problem’ within education is driving policy/practice that is detrimental to classroom talk and pupil learning. We argue that this must be addressed urgently if we are to exploit the full potential of talk for learning and for addressing educational inequities.

De dynamiek van geslachtsmarkering in de Noord-Brabantse dialecten

Abstract The present paper discusses gender marking, i.e. the morphological marking of masculine, feminine and neuter lexical gender in the adnominal domain, in Brabantish dialects spoken in the southern Dutch province North-Brabant. Gender markers belong to the most salient features of North-Brabantish, but with a process of dialect levelling well on its way for at least fifty years, knowledge of lexical gender is fading away. This study delves into these variation patterns. The results of a quantitative analysis of written questionnaires (mainly filled out by elderly dialect speakers, N=700) triggered us to conduct a small in-depth study of speech data from adolescents in the Eindhoven region (N=15). Based on these data, we argue that there is a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to adnominal gender marking. In this paper, we aim at describing and categorizing the various types of variation. The data includes omissions of the traditional Brabantish masculine gender marking, indicating that speakers are converging towards Standard Dutch. However, the data also reveals that in 30% of all utterances speakers apply gender marking in multiple ways. We find three types of variation: 1) masculine gender marking is only partly applied in comparison to the traditional rules of dialect grammar (compromise-constructions), 2) masculine gender markers appear in noun groups where they should not appear according to the dialect grammar (e.g. feminine, neuter, plural), so-called hyperdialectisms, and 3) speakers use innovative gender marking constructions: accumulate forms with two masculine suffixes, so-called hypermarkings. Based on previous research, we argue that typical dialect features, such as gender markers, are part of a regional speech style and play an important role in identity formation. As shibboleths of such a speech style, gender markers are over-generalized by speakers who want to profile themselves as ‘genuinely’ Brabantish. Also, individual patterns of gender marking indicate that salience in non-canonical sentence structures (e.g. focus) might be an important factor when it comes to emphasizing a deviation from the standard language, in line with (regional) identity construction through the use of shibboleths. Future research is necessary to validate these initial findings.

The participatory vernacular web and regional dialect grammar

English dialects demonstrate considerable variation in their pronominal systems (see for example Trudgill & Chambers, 1991 and Hernández, 2011). In England, pronouns in the north east of the country – the urban areas of Tyne and Wear and Teesside and the counties of Durham and Northumberland (hereafter NEE) – are often different from those found in Standard English (SE). The most extensive modern accounts of NEE pronouns are Beal (1993) and Beal, Burbano–Elizondo and Llamas (2012), but because they appear in chapters dealing with a wide range of morphosyntactic topics, the coverage is necessarily brief. This article is able to offer a more detailed overview of the morphology of NEE pronouns, based on a sizeable naturalistic corpus of vernacular writing.

Areal-typological complexity of Lithuanian dialects

This article deals with one of the most promising stages in Lithuanian dialectology discussed in the article “Seven stages of Lithuanian dialectology” published in the 2016 issue of the scientific electronic journal “Lietuvių kalba” (‘The Lithuanian Language’) (see Kardelis 2016). I referred to this stage as typological; however, now I think that the best term for this stage is the term areal-typological complexity (arealtypologische Komplexität) which originates from works by Alfred Lameli (2013). The concept of complexity is not associated with the attempt to classify dialects according to different “distinctive features” but rather with an idea, clearly supported by empirical facts that diatopical variation in language is highly complex. A closer look at the context of Lithuanian dialectology research reveals that the concept of complexity is still not discussed thoroughly; while specific studies are practically non-existent. The most general methodological principle which should be applied in carrying out an areal-typological study of the complexity of Lithuanian dialects could be referred to as the principle of offside. This means that studies of Lithuanian dialectology should offside from the conventionally applied research tradition and from: a) the aim to classify dialects typologically; b) all classifications of Lithuanian dialects published up to date; c) distinctive features described in the contemporary classification (as well as earlier classifications); d) the goal to specify the boundaries of dialects and subdialects. The second general theoretical criterion is related to the approach to the linguistic system. Here I rely on the concept of a diasystem introduced into the field of dialectology by Uriel Weinreich (1954; 1974). The whole area of the Lithuanian language together with its diatopical variants may be interpreted as a diasystem of Lithuanian which consists of separate systems. The most suitable, convenient and universal criteria for the analysis of empirical data established by the long-standing theory and practice of research into phonology are the following: 1) the quality of the elements of a vocalism system; 2) the quantity of the elements of a vocalism system; 3) the interrelationship between the quality and quantity of a vocalism system. Since here we are dealing with the Lithuanian language which features a complex prosodic system, we must introduce an additional criterion, i.e. 4) stress. Empirical data for the present study were collected from modern, phonological “grammars of dialects”. This article does not encompass the whole diasystem of the Lithuanian language since it only tackles the area covered by the Aukštaičiai dialect. The main phonological qualities according to which the basic vocalism model of the diasystem of the Aukštaičiai dialect can be described are the following: 1) the system of long vowels in the stressed position; 2) the shift in the level of rise of low vowels; 3) the system of short vowels in the stressed position; 4) automatic qualitative shifts; 5) vowel reduction (three degrees). The basic vocalism model described in accordance with the above criteria rather clearly indicates that the great differentiation of Lithuanian dialects postulated in the works on Lithuanian dialectology only has a phonetic and not a phonological basis and it can only be based on the differences of phonetic features. A phonological approach to the diasystem of the Aukštaičiai dialect of Lithuanian does not reveal any radical or extreme differentiation. In addition, the model also shows another significant regularity. The more features are taken into account, the lower the occurrence of individual, less significant dialectal elements distinguished on the basis of one feature (in comparison to the classification by A. Girdenis and Z. Zinkevičius). This approach thus allows solving the complexity of the puzzle of Lithuanian dialects (or, rather the complexity of the diasystem of the Aukštaičiai dialect of Lithuanian) which is summarised in Figure 10. As the matrix in Figure 9 illustrates, the diasystem of the Aukštaičiai dialect of Lithuanian so far consists of three zones represented in the matrix by three different colours.

여성결혼이민자를 위한 한국어 방언 문법 교육 기초 연구: 안동 방언의 ‘해라’체 의문형 어미를 중심으로

여성결혼이민자를 위한 한국어 방언 문법 교육 기초 연구: 안동 방언의 ‘해라’체 의문형 어미를 중심으로

The Viking Hypothesis from a Dialectologist’s Perspective

The Viking Hypothesis neglects (i) the significant degree of stability from Old to Middle (and even Modern) English grammar and (ii) parallel, but independent, developments not induced by North Germanic in the grammars of continental West Germanic dialects.

The Practice and Question of Dialect Grammar

이 글은 1950년대 이후 방언문법론의 흐름을 전반적으로 살펴본 후 2000년 이후(2000～2008) 발표된 개별방언문법의 연구 현황을 주제별로 나누어서 논의했다. 즉 조사(격조사, 보조사), 조어법(파생어, 합성어), 문법화, 보조용언, 어말어미(연결어미, 종결어미), 시제·상·양태, 대우법, 피동·사동법, 부정법 등이 전국방언권과 중국방언(북한지역 포함)에서 골고루 논의되었다. 특히 제주방언과 경상도방언의 연구물이 많았는데, 이는 두 방언의 독자성이 일찍부터 인식되었기 때문이다. 방언문법론의 과제로는 방언연구방법, 방언자료 구축, 연구자 양성 등 문법연구를 위한 토대마련을 들었다.

Learning context-free grammar rules from a set of program

The grammar of a programming language is important because it is used in developing program analysis and modification tools. Sometimes programs are written in dialects-minor variations of standard languages. Normally, grammars of standard languages are available but grammars of dialects may not be available. A technique for reverse engineering context-free grammar rules is presented. The proposed technique infers rules from a given set of programs and an approximate grammar is generated using an iterative approach with backtracking. The correctness of the approach, is explained and a set of optimisations proposed to make the approach more efficient. The approach and the optimisations are experimentally verified on a set of programming languages.

A construction grammar account of possessive constructions in Lancashire dialect: some advantages and challenges

This study investigates reduction of 1SG possessives in possessive–noun constructions in Lancashire dialect. On the basis of a corpus of twenty-six interviews we show that reduction patterns according to (in)alienability. This dialectal evidence runs counter to the normal assumption about English, i.e. that there is no such effect. Following work by Haspelmath (2006b) that reinterprets iconicity effects in terms of frequency, we proceed to show that frequency may indeed underlie alienability/iconicity in our data as well. Relative frequency seems more useful in capturing the correlation with reduction than absolute frequency. For a few [1SGPOSS-N] combinations the reduction facts are problematic for the frequency-based account we offer. These difficulties might seem to disappear in the light of the construction grammar notion of schemas, but we point out that this notion itself has serious theoretical problems associated with it. Future theory-driven work on dialect grammar may help resolve these issues.

Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective (review)

Reviewed by: Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective ed. by Bernd Kortmann Robert Albon Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective. Ed. by Bernd Kortmann. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 153.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp. vi, 541. ISBN 3110179490. $137.20 (Hb). Bernd Kortmann laid the groundwork for Dialectology meets typology (DMT) at the 1997 World Congress of Linguists, handpicked authors (half of whom attended his dialectology and typology workshop at METHODS XI), and edited this work meticulously (I found only three minor typos). His labors have resulted in an exceptionally cohesive, eminently readable volume. DMT showcases the benefits of dialectology-typology integration. This common theme dominates each paper: Yaron Matras (‘Typology, dialectology and the structure of complementation in Romani’, 277–304) writes ‘Typology would benefit from including … spoken varieties unaffected by prescriptivist-induced changes’ (277); Raphael Berthele (‘Typology of motion and posture verbs’, 93–128) declares dialectology must address universal issues of typology to advance from the ‘hunter-gatherer’ stage. Dialectology-typology integration is DMT’s overarching theme, but integration of creolistics and sociolinguistics are close seconds. Creoles, like dialects, are largely oral varieties unaffected by the prescriptivist influences that affect written standards and are excellent typology exemplars in K’s metric. DMT, however, juxtaposes English creoles with (other) Germanic varieties, a comparison seldom seen in creolistics papers. Bernd Kortmann (‘Do as a tense and aspect marker in varieties of English’, 245–76) doubts English creoles can be considered a special type of language based on typology alone and suggests they are better labeled as Germanic varieties. Peter Siemund (‘Substrate, superstrate and universals: Perfect constructions in Irish English’, 401–34) acknowledges typology’s usefulness in the substrate-superstrate debate, but questions the debate’s crosslinguistic relevance, since typologically interesting parts of contact languages are those items not belonging to substrate or superstrate. Critiques of sociolinguistics continue in similar vein: J. K. Chambers (‘Dynamic typology and vernacular universals’, 127–45) calls for sociolinguists to move beyond preoccupation with individual communities and search for crosslinguistic, typological generalizations with universal application. DMT issues an ‘invitation’ to typologists but throws down the gauntlet to dialectologists, creolists, and sociolinguists. K regards emphasis on Germanic dialects (fourteen papers out of nineteen) as beneficial, since dialectology has its longest tradition in study of Germanic dialects. While DMT seldom ventures far from Indo-European (IE), it does address several typologically unique European languages: Matras covers Romani, one of few languages without an accepted standard or prestige dialect; Chambers discusses contact English spoken on Tristan da Cunha, an isolated island society with negligible social stratification. DMT should be a good supplementary reader for general, socio-, and historical linguistics courses at graduate and undergraduate levels. Students will appreciate the frequent use of illustrative examples from varieties of English and other familiar IE languages. There are also easily understood examples of the application of theory, such as markedness reversal in Lieselotte Anderwald’s ‘Local markedness as a heuristic tool in dialectology: The case of amn’t’ (47–68), optimality theory in Guido Seiler’s ‘On three types of dialect variation’ (365–99), and implicational hierarchies in Chambers’s paper. There is insufficient space to laud each paper individually, but I unreservedly recommend this volume. [End Page 953] Robert Albon Springfield, VA Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America

Corpora and (the Need for) Other Methods in a Study of Lancashire Dialect

Abstract This paper is based on a nascent project on Lancashire dialect grammar, which aims to describe the relevant features of this dialect and to engage with related theoretical and methodological debates. We show how corpora allow one to arrive at more precise descriptions of the data than was previously possible. But we also draw attention to the need for other methods, in particular modern elicitation tasks and attitude questionnaires developed in perceptual dialectology. Combining these methods promises to provide more insight into both more general theoretical issues and the exact nature of the object of study, namely Lancashire dialect.

The Were -Subjunctive in British Rural Dialects: Marrying Corpus and Questionnaire Data

This paper examines the were-subjunctive in British rural dialects in the light of data from two sources: the Survey of English Dialects (SED) questionnaire, and the Leeds Corpus of English Dialect (LCED), consisting of transcribed recordings made at the same time as the data was gathered for the questionnaire. We begin by surveying previous work on the subjunctive in general, and the were-subjunctive in dialect grammar in particular (section 1), culminating in a discussion of the SED data on the were-subjunctive. We then move on in section 2 to pose two hypotheses: firstly that the SED does not provide a complete picture of this phenomenon and thus corpus data may be of use enriching it; secondly a "null" hypothesis that no were-subjunctive is consistently marked in the dialects in question. We then look at the methodology and data used (section 3), describing the source of our data, the LCED. We also note some potential difficulties (3.1) before moving on to discuss the choice of an area of England to examine (3.2) and of texts to analyse (3.3). In section 3.4 we describe the mark-up scheme used in the analysis of the texts, and in 3.5 the process of annotation and extraction of results form the texts. These results are presented in section 4. We consider the corpus data in relation to the questionnaire data (4.1), and to our two hypotheses (4.2 and 4.3). In our Conclusion (section 5) we summarise the implications of this study and consider some possible future routes of enquiry into the were-subjunctive in the rural dialects of England.

Ethical principles for ageing and Alzheimer's disease in mount athos

The Bavarian J. A. Schmeller hoped that the Swiss educational reformer Pestalozzi would appoint him as a teacher. When this failed, he joined the Swiss military in Spanish services carrying out Pestalozzi's principles at military schools by teaching languages in Tarragona and Madrid, and, finally, at a private teaching institute in Basle. He was inspired by the Swiss dialect dictionary when he decided to make a Bavarian dialect dictionary and, based on this, a Bavarian dialect grammar. This was the beginning of German scientific dialectology. He was appointed member of the Bavarian Academy of Science and professor at Munich university. As curator of the Royal Court and State Library (1829) he was to systematize about 25 000 handwritten documents confiscated when 150 monasteries were secularized in 1803. Along with the Grimm brothers and Karl Lachmann, Schmeller was a famous editor of medieval texts.

To Purify the Dialect of the Tribe: children's use of non-standard dialect grammar in writing

Summary Teachers of children of all ages are enjoined by the National Curriculum for English to develop their pupils’ ability to write in standard English. This study explores the implications of these injunctions by examining the use of non-standard dialect grammar in the writing of 362 texts written by pupils of 11 an 15 years of age. It is established that most of the forms used are found in all four of the geographical regions sampled. The grammatical features of these non-standard dialects and the frequency with which they occur are itemised and compared with a study of spoken English based on the same corpus. There is found to be considerable overlap between these and other recent studies of non-standard dialects in schools, although non-standard dialects are used more widely in speech than in writing.

Schoolchildren as sociolinguistic researchers

This paper discusses a recent British research project that aimed to incorporate sociolinguistic research into classroom procedures. One of the goals of the project was to enlist teachers and their students as researchers, in order to obtain systematic information on local dialect grammar. A further aim was to encourage students to explore their own reactions to linguistic diversity and to investigate for themselves different aspects of linguistic variation in their local community. The paper reports the results of work carried out by students on their personal reactions to linguistic diversity (including the correction of nonstandard forms, attitudes toward regional variation, linguistic variation as an expression of social identity) and of some empirical research that they carried out in the community. It is argued that collaboration of this kind can be of value to the sociolinguistic research community, who can obtain useful research material in this way. It is also of interest to teachers in that it challenges conventional classroom procedures by giving students the status of experts. Most importantly of all, the incorporation of sociolinguistic research in classroom procedures has an educational value for students. In the British context it can provide a range of pedagogically valid activities that can be actively promoted within the framework of the severe educational changes that are currently taking place.

Dialect and Education: Some European Perspectives

Part 1 Dialect in education - some national perspectives: dialect and education in Belgium dialect and education in Denmark dialect Frisian and education in the Netherlands dialect and education in West Germany dialect and education in the United Kingdom. Part 2 Research 1970-1987: aspects of dialect and school in the Federal Republic of Germany the Kerkrade project background, main findings and an evolution dialect and standard Dutch in the first year of secondary school language attitudes in education dialect in school written work the survey of British dialect grammar. Part 3 Classroom initiatives: the development phase of the Kerkrade project teaching materials for dialect speakers in the Federal Republic of West Germany the contrastive booklets language in the classroom the Amsterdam and Groningen projects language awareness in British schools. Part 4 Language planning and policy: Frisian in schools problems in planning education and the vernacular language variation and mother tongue education in the Netherlands reflections on some old disputes about language and education dialect and education in Europe

A Century of Research in Franco-Provençal and Poitevin

Summary Within the Gallo-Romance domain, Franco-Provençal and its western correlate Poitevin have been variously labeled ‘independent languages’, ‘dialects of French’, or ‘dialects of oc’. At least one attempt has been made to link these two lateral entities against both the north and the south. A historical survey of these conflicting claims encompasses non-partisan methodologies such as dialect geography and linguistic atlases as well as theoretical developments affecting Romance studies during the last one hundred years. Late 19th century research had not yet resolved antinomies between speech and script or between dialect study and historical grammar. Recent research into time and direction of Romanization, significantly clarifying the bi-(or tri-)partitioning of Gaul, has complemented increasingly sophisticated work in all these fields. Yet frequent overemphasis on segmentation, coupled with a failure to distinguish shared linguistic fate from ‘language’ in its general Romance acception, cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that both FP and Poitevin belong to Gallo-Romance; the successful investigation of either must continue to mesh grammar, lexis, scripta, and geohistory.

Literal Translation, Sacred Scripture and Kitab Malay

The study of Malay dialects was a specialist concern during the period of Dutch colonization of Indonesia and British colonization of the Malay peninsular. In recent times, the Malaysian National Language Council, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, and its Indonesian counterpart, the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa (PPPB), have devoted considerable resources to the study of Malay dialectology. Such dialect studies have necessarily had a geographical focus, by way of descriptive grammars of Malay dialects spoken in particular areas. Examples are the studies of Pontianak Malay (Kamal et. al' 1986) and Palembang Malay (Aliana et. al. 1987) published by the PPPB.DOI: 10.15408/sdi.v9i1.672

A Dialect Grammar of Japanese

Introductory Notes 1. In the subsequent paper, refer to the map on the free-leaf whenever sample dialect items are quoted. The map is accompanied by a table of dialect branches and subdivisions and numbered accordingly. The number following the sample refers to the dialect branch to which it belongs and to the dialect regions on the map. When I designate a dialect branch and the region for a sample phenomenon, it implies that the phenomenon is found in that branch of dialect covering that area of the country. 2. The samples quoted were almost all collected by me at each locality. Since the course of study has been orientated toward a comprehensive view of the dialectal situation of Japanese, by collecting and accumulating material, what is described in the present paper is, therefore, a synchronic account of the various subjects. The information supplied draws from the sources covering the entire period of my survey, which was begun in 1938.