Fwd from Linguist List

[Laurence Horn]

I'll beat Mark Mandel to the punch this time, and cross-post this inquiry
from Linguist List (11.465, Sunday, March 5).  As always, responses should
go to the poster, whether or not you a copy is also sent to ads-l.

larry
=====================================

Date:  Sat, 04 Mar 2000 15:11:58 -0800
From:  Robin Belvin <rsbelvin at hrl.com>
Subject:  North American dialect regions

This query really consists of three specific questions, and I would welcome
either
direct answers or references to relevant literature:

First, is there a consensus among dialectologists on what the major dialect
areas
are for North American English?  I have a NIST spoken language corpus which
identifies eight (New England, Northern, North Midland, South Midland,
Southern, NYC,
Western and 'Army Brat' (i.e. transient)), and I would be interested in
knowing how
widely held this rough division of areas is.

Second, which if any of the Canadian (English) dialect regions can be
lumped into
one of  the US regions?

Third, is Canadian French relatively uniform, or are there distinct dialect
regions
comparable to those which exist among North American English speakers?

Thanks in advance for your help.  I'll post a summary later.

Robert Belvin