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

[Paula Newman]

Hi,
This is a funny discussion.  Why?  Because it indicates that the Weinreich
quote was originally given in Yiddish, definitely a language, not a dialect
of German, but never having an army or navy, or much political power.

That Yiddish is a separate language that amalgamates German syntax (albeit
dialect syntax) with many borrowings is directly indicated by the included
quote 
>Assaf, "A halber emes iz a gantse lign."
(A half truth is a whole lie).

The sentence is not intelligible to a monolingual German speaker except by
guessing--some examples: "emes" is the Hebrew word for truth, and "lign"
seems to be a Germanization of the English ambiguity between lie
(n-untruth, v-tell an untruth) and lay (v-place, v-locate).

Also, Yiddish is normatively written in Hebrew script rather than Latin
script.

Possibly a better definition of the distinction between a dialect and a
language would focus on the amount of difference between the purported base
language and the dialect, possibly indicated by mutual intelligibility.

Paula


> [Original Message]
> From: Angus Grieve-Smith <grvsmth at panix.com>
> To: Corpora list <corpora at uib.no>
> Date: 2/15/2010 11:16:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Can corpora help to distinguish a dialect and
alanguage?
>
> 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
> 


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