~ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Tom Zurinskas]

> 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 thetheoretical linguists--down the hall, room 12B.



The above spoken like true academic boorishness.  Detention is room 12C. The best possible outcome of this forum in my opinion would be unification of dialects into one best possible for mass communication.

We may have many visitors here looking for best USA dialect advice.  And I hope we're prepared to give it to them.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com













----------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:01:21 -0500
> From: db.list at PMPKN.NET
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: David Bowie
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Randy Alexander
>> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> Randy Alexander(?) wrote:
>
>>>> I'm not sure that a statement like that is so incredible. If one took
>>>> the stance that there is no such thing as a "standard" American
>>>> English, then wouldn't that preclude the existence of any
>>>> "substandard" forms?
>
>>> In fact, that's not a term generally used by scientists in this field.
>
>> Sorry. I should have said "non-standard", which is certainly common
>> enough. For example, in Huddleston & Pullum's _A Student's
>> Introduction to English Grammar_ (p2): "Alongside Standard English
>> there are many robust local, regional, and social dialects of English
>> that are clearly and uncontroversially *non-standard*." This
>> quotation is mainly talking about syntax, but doesn't exclude
>> pronunciation.
>
>> If there were no such thing as "standard", then the OED would not have
>> to mark some words as "dial.". I don't think that one can so easily
>> say that there is no standard. The difficulty lies in drawing
>> boundaries around that standard.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>> 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'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.
>
>
>
> --
> David Bowie University of Central Florida
> Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
> house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
> chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>
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