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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Dear Christian – The thing is, every language has multiple norms. Traditionally, these are what we call ‘registers’, and in reality, they often are continua. Speakers choose more complex and longer
utterances and less frequent words when they evaluate the occasion as more prestigious, and shorter, simpler, and often elliptical utterances with higher-frequency words when they consider the situation to be of low prestige. These registers are typically
partially conventionalized and partially are better thought of as strategies that can be used productively to make utterances more/less formal = prestigious.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">On top of that, you have individual variation – what contemporary sociolinguists talk about in terms of stylistic repertoires. An ideal descriptive linguist would be able to incorporate all those sociolinguistic
variables into their description. Of course, in practice, you have to be exposed to any variation for a sufficiently long time to be able to notice it, so much of this is unfortunately lost to most field researchers.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">What’s my point? I think I’d like to attach a note of caution to the idea of a unitary norm that documentary/descriptive linguists should aim to discover. If the norm exists, it does so in the form
of a system of sociolinguistic variables. It’s a bit of a moving target.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">This is not to say that we’re unable to detect errors. We are. A speaker says something we didn’t expect. We check with them the next day and they say “Oh no, that’s not right, I should have said X.”
The problem here is of course that it’s our expectation that allowed us to detect the error. In other words, our ability to detect errors, at least apart from spontaneous self-corrections, is unfortunately driven by confirmation bias.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Disclaimer: If I’m making our work sound hopeless, it’s not because I don’t believe that it can succeed – it obviously does succeed all the time. It’s because I’m trying to understand how that really
happens </span><span style="font-family:"Apple Color Emoji"">😊</span><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Best – Juergen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127 <br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0078D4">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0563C1">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh) </span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">-- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="color:black">From: </span></b><span style="color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Monday, July 7, 2025 at 02:38<br>
<b>To: </b>lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Traditional view of language and grammar in indigenous societies<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">In principle, we may distinguish two types of deviation from the norm in a text:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="mso-list:Ignore">1.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><![endif]>utterances containing slips of the tongue/pen<o:p></o:p></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="mso-list:Ignore">2.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><![endif]>utterances which follow a pattern which is not part of the norm.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">(And here the specific status of the 'norm' does not seem to be relevant: it may be a prescriptive norm that not everybody observes, or may be the system which has been traditional for a relevant portion of the
speech community.)<br>
<br>
In theory, the difference between #1 and #2 is clear. Moreover, many of us have an interest to make it in our analysis of corpora. Deviations of type #1 are of interest for psycholinguistics, but generally not for grammatical analysis. Deviations of type #2
may cast some light on what is currently going on in the language.<br>
<br>
Given this, it is an interesting methodological problem in our empirical work with corpora to make the distinction in practical cases. Sometimes it has helped me to ask the speaker: 'Is that what you intended to say?' This kind of question will help to purge
the text from occurrences of #1 (if one wants this [I do]). However, it would not seem to be excluded that some speakers who are conscious of a norm would react to such a question by additionally changing utterances of type #2.<br>
<br>
I would be interested to learn whether you have other methods to make the above distinction.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">-- <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">Tel.:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">+49/361/2113417<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">E-Post:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt"><a href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">Web:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt"><a href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu/">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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