Intro to Geography of Language

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VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES

• What do you fry your eggs in?• creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan, skillet, or spider

• What do you call a soft drink?• pop, soda, soda pop, or tonic?

• What do you call a long sandwich containing salami etc.?• hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy

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• What do you drink water out of?• drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser

• How do you get something from one place to another?

• take, carry, or tote

• What do you carry things in?• a bag, a sack, or a poke

• How do you speculate?• reckon, guess, figgure, figger, suspect, imagine

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BRITISH-AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION DIFFERENCES

• calf, bath, pass, aunt

• learn, fork, core, brother

• carry, very

• secretary, stationery, territory, dictionary, laboratory, necessary, missionary

• either, neither, potato, tomato

• clerk, schedule

• captain, bottle (glottals [in Cockney])

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BRITISH-AMERICAN VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES

• girl, cop, hood (of a car), trunk (of a car), suspenders, apartment, bathroom, elevator, truck, wig, gasoline, bar, line, monkey wrench, television, flashlight, subway

• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, braces, flat, loo, lift, lorry, peruque, petrol, pub, queue, spanner, tele, torch, tube

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BRITISH-AMERICAN STRESS DIFFERENCES

• Aluminum

• Applicable

• Cigarette

• Formidable

• Kilometer

• Laboratory

• secretary(Fromkin Rodman Hyams 413)

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BRITISH-AMERICAN SPELLING DIFFERENCES

• Cheque

• centre, theatre

• colour, honour

• defence, offence

• labelled, travelled

• Pyjamas

• tyre

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BRITISH EXPRESSIONS TO WATCH OUT FOR

• fag or faggot (wood for the fireplace, or cigarette)

• solicitor (lawyer)

• to knock someone up (wake someone up in the morning, or visit someone)

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COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG

• apples and pears (stairs)

• Aristotle (bottle)

• pig’s ear (beer)

• Mother Hubbard (cupboard)

• plates and dishes (Mrs.)

Questions about proximate cause of bird song variation:

1. What genes/proteins/hormones are involved in song production? 2. What are the brain structures involved in song production and how do they develop? 3. What are the developmental differences between males and females that produces male singers? 4. How do within species dialects develop what are the characteristic differences in song pattern? 5. Are there regional preferences among females for local dialects?

Questions about ultimate cause of bird song variation:

1. Why do birds appear to have to learn the details of their songs as juveniles? 2. Why do dialects exist in nature? 1. Do dialects provide an adaptive advantage? 2. Are they a product of local genetic differences?

Transmission of an effective dialect in that habitat? (travel farther?) (less degradation?)

See Great Tit! (sound interference problems)

See Fig 2.21

2.21 Songs match habitats

Figure 2.22 The songs sung by great tits differ in cities versus forests

Second Hypothesis:

Young males match their song to their neighbor.

Better able to communicate with territory neighbors and demonstrate his ability to learn.

Males should be able to fine-tune their song even after settling on an initial version.

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EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard 280)

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NORTHERN, MIDLAND & SOUTHERN EXPANSION WESTWARD (Shuy 294)

Problems (cont’d)

• Asymmetries in intelligibility, e.g., – Danish speakers understand Swedish, but not vice

versa– Brazilian Portuguese speakers understand Spanish,

but not vice versa

Problems (cont’d)

• Nonlinguistic criteria (political, historical, geographic etc.) may play a role– Mandarin, Cantonese are mutually unintelligible,

but are referred to as ‘dialects’ of Chinese– Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, but

are referred to as separate languages • Czech vs. Slovak• Norwegian vs. Swedish

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Diagnosing Dialect Differences

Region Phonological Lexical Morpho-syntactic

New England

(oh)

(r)-deletion

“Boston” “car”

“gumband” vs.

“rubberband”

Upper North

Northern Vowel Shift

e.g., (oh)

(ae)-tensing

“coffee”

“bad”

“pop” vs. “soda”

Lower North

Southern Vowel Shift

e.g., short-(e) short-(i)

(s)-vocalization

Diphthongiza-tion, e.g. “bed”, “bid”; ”greasy”

“I heard it whenever that I was watching

TV.”

Upper South

(ay)-monophthon

gization

“bright” “veranda” vs.

“porch”

“The car needs ø washed.”

Lower South

(ay)-monophthon

gization

“bright”

Northwest (r)-insertion “warsh”

Southwest (a~oh) merger

“cot” = “caught”

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Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)

i˘

e˘

I

E

Q

a

ç

√

o˘U

u˘

• key characteristics: fronting of (a), tensing and raising of (ae), backing of short (e,i), lowering of (oh) in W New England, N PA, N OH, IN, IL, MI, WI (Buffalo, Chicago)

• traditionally tense (long) vowels and /U/ are unaffected• lax subsystem is moving• ordering of elements via “push” and “drag” chains somewhat controversial

(iy) beat

(i) bit

(ey) beat

(e) bet

(ae) bat

(o) bottle, father

(uw) boot

(u) book

(ow) boat

(uh) but

(oh) ball, caught

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Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts (Labov, 1991)

i˘

e˘

I

E

Q

a

ç

√

o˘U

u˘

• key characteristics: fronting of long back vowels (uw), (ow), upward rotation and development of inglides in short (e,i) while long (ey,iy) rotate back and downward in all of the US South

• both shifts are viewed as related (and separate from a third pattern, associated with the merger of (oh-a) ).

(iy) beat

(i) bit

(ey) beat

(e) bet

(ae) bat

(o) bottle, father

(uw) boot

(u) book

(ow) boat

(uh) but

(oh) ball, caught

A Working Definition of Standard English

• A particular dialect of English• the only non-localized dialect• of global currency without significant variation• universally accepted as appropriate

educational target in teaching English

Dialects, Standards, Vernaculars Wolfram & Schiling-Estes

we usually make judgments about people by the kind of language they use regional background social status ethnicity education

language differences may serve as most reliable indicator of social position in society: live a certain way expected to match that lifestyle

with our talk don’t meet people’s expectations to match that

lifestyle with our talk (e.g., a teacher talking like a punk) mismatch is a topic for conversation

Power and language?Racism and language?

Bilingual sign