Hallucinating distinctions (was New Jersey Dialects)

[Dennis R. Preston]

Nancy Niedzielski and I have a nice of example of this in Folk
Linguistics (now in paper from Mouton de Gruyter, so you have no
reason not to own it) in which a native speaker of English labors
with the distinction between 'gift' and 'present' in trying to
explain the meanings to a nonnative speaker. He comes up with the
very interesting suggestion that "technically" (linguistically,
lexicographically?) there is no difference between the two, but there
is, he says, "in the way we use it."

dInIs



>I don't have a label to offer but I do have some data on the
>construction of distinction between homophones. In a written survey
>of around 2100 people, some 18% claimed to have a difference between
>"hole" and "whole". In discussing this with students, I have had
>some claim to make a distinction but when they're asked to
>demonstrate it out loud, they usually concede that the pair is
>homophonous. Still, some hold to their perceived difference and say
>"they're different, I just can't pronounce them that way right now
>b/c I'm thinking about it too much" or something like that.
>
>The couch/sofa example is different, I think. It's true that there
>are many ways of framing the semantic (or at least pragmatic)
>difference between "couch" and "sofa" (e.g. a sofa seats 4 and a
>couch 3), but I sense a consensus is emerging at least around here
>(the Midwest) in which "sofa" is defined as a nicer/fancier "couch."
>This is easily confirmed by the fact that furniture stores only
>advertise sofas. I've never seen a "couch" advertised (except in the
>classifieds) even by the low-end furniture retailers. Of course,
>it's likely the case that this semantic distinction was contrived
>originally in the way that Arnold suggests; i.e. by people forcing a
>distinction when presented with synonyms.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky
>Sent: Wed 10/20/2004 11:56 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject:      Re: New Jersey Dialects
>
>while i'm asking about labels for common phenomena, how about what
>happens when people (often, linguists as well as normals) compare two
>items side by side and go on laboring to tease out some difference
>(phonetic, semantic, social, contextual, whatever) between them, to the
>point of inventing -- i'm sometimes inclined to say "hallucinating" --
>such differences.  (i'm soon going to post about this phenomenon in
>more detail.)  ask people about  the words "sofa" and "couch", and soon
>they'll be all over the map with subtle distinctions.  let usageists
>fix on "partly" and "partially", and they'll tease out all sorts of
>distinctions, different ones for different analysts, many of which have
>no basis in actual usage.  get people focused on small phonetic details
>distinguishing dialects, and let them think about their pronunciations
>of homophones (especially those with different spellings, like
>"read"/"reed" or "sea"/"see"), and they're likely to start hearing
>differences.  or, from our recent ADS discussions: compare "sort of"
>and "kind of"; or compare the noticeable (to you) idiom "in harm's way"
>with "in danger".
>
>the side-by-side comparison invites people to seek out differences.
>is there a name for this effect?
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736