[Corpora-List] Can corpora help to distinguish a dialect and a language?

[Angus Grieve-Smith]

Seth, how do you expect us to take a pronouncement like that, with no supporting documentation?

Diana, I think the one-army thing is a minimum. The Catalan exception shows that it's actually political power, not military power, that matters.

Seth Grimes <grimes at altaplana.com> wrote:

>Clever notion but not correct, not even figuratively.
>
>Assaf, "A halber emes iz a gantse lign."
>
>                                 Seth
>
>
>
>On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, Assaf Urieli wrote:
>
>> You took the words right out of my mouth Angus. Anybody who wants a scan 
>> of the text containing the original quote from Max Weinreich (for those 
>> of you who can read Yiddish!) may contact me.
>>
>> The context is - Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich was giving a lecture 
>> about problems in the history of the Yiddish language, when a 
>> high-school teacher asked him "What is the difference between a dialect 
>> and a language?" Max Weinreich tried to give an intellectual answer, but 
>> the teacher interrupted him, "All of this I know already, but I'll give 
>> you a better definition: a language is a dialect with an army and a 
>> navy." (a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot)
>>
>> Rgds,
>> Assaf Urieli
>>
>> Angus Grieve-Smith wrote:
>>> On 2/13/2010 4:35 PM, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote:
>>>> Dear Corpora colleagues, how can corpora help to differentiate between a 
>>>> dialect and a language? Looking forward to hearing from you directly to 
>>>> yutamb at mail.ru <mailto:yutamb at mail.ru>  Yours sincerely as ever Yuri 
>>>> Tambovtsev
>>>>
>>>     They can't, because they can't detect whether the variety in 
>>> question has an army or a navy.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>>> 				grvsmth at panix.com
>
>-- 
>Seth Grimes     Alta Plana Corp, analytics strategy consulting
>@sethgrimes     Intelligent Enterprise (TechWeb), Contributing Editor
>grimes at altaplana.com      http://altaplana.com      +1 301-270-0795
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