~ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Randy Alexander]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:01 PM, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net> wrote:
> You're making a logical error here. There are certainly nonstandard
> (though i prefer nonstandardized) varieties of English. This does not,
> however, mean that there is a single standard (i prefer standardized)
> variety of English. In fact, it doesn't mean that there is a standard
> variety of English that actually exists in real life.

Why would it have to be a single variety?  It could contain many
varieties, and even parts of varieties.  One variety could say "ow" a
little more like "oh" and end their sentences this way, eh?  Aside
from those (and maybe a few other) nonstandard(ized) features, that
variety would be standard(ized).  And "standard(ized)" could change
and shift over time.

This standard would be simply a representation of what is most
popular; an "actual standard".  But:

> The way i see it, each speaker has some mental representation of what
> standard English is. (Perhaps it's a finer distinction: standard
> American English, or standard job-interview American English, of
> standard hanging out with friends American English, or whatever.) This
> does *not* mean, however, that that speaker actually uses any of those
> standardized varieties, nor does it mean that anybody else does--nor, in
> fact, does it mean that that speaker's mental conceptions of what the
> standardized varieties are like actually matches up perfectly with
> anybody else's mental representations of standard Englishes.

"Perceived standard" is another thing entirely.

>> You mentioned "loosely enough to be useless".  Why couldn't the
>> boundaries around this "standard" pronunciation be wide enough to
>> include a certain amount of variation?  For example, there could be a
>> considerable amount of variation in ash-tensing within the standard
>> (even in an individual speaker).
>
> The problem is that the difference between standardized and
> nonstandardized varieties is likely to be less than the variation within
> any particular variety (standardized or nonstandardized) once you allow
> this. Remember that the overlap between any (perhaps nearly
> any--naturally or consciously very different nonstandardized varieties
> such as Jamaican English or Cockney rhyming slang, respectively, could
> be remarkable exceptions) two varieties of the same language is pretty
> huge, and the differences between varieties, though of great interest to
> the people on this board, are really amazingly small.

I'm bearing that in mind.  That overlap could be the standard.

>> I've been a little curious in the time I've been on this list as to
>> why so much effort is being spent in separating dialects, but not in
>> looking at what unifies these dialects.  Through corpus studies we
>> have seen that there is a standard grammar defined by frequency of
>> use.  There hasn't been so much study yet though looking at
>> pronunciation this way.
>
> That's not the point of sociolinguistics or dialectology. You want the
> theoretical linguists--down the hall, room 12B.

Is that it?  Right next to etymology and antedating?  :)

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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