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

[Dominic Widdows]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Paula Newman <paulan at earthlink.net> wrote:

>
> 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.
>
>
If one tries to define the difference by measuring continuously variable
amounts of difference, and setting cutoff thresholds for these numbers, one
will be sure to find that no simple decision boundary "does the right
thing", and people will continue to tweak, make exceptions, add new rules,
etc. At least that's what I'd expect to happen and I'd bet good money on it.


One reason I'd bet that it can't be answered in any "objective" fashion is
that the problem is also (to my knowledge considered to be pretty
intractable in biology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem).
Darwin never (to my knowledge) attempts to categorically distinguish species
from variety, but does point out that there are many more species in the eye
of the expert than in the eye of the layman. As soon as you admit that
evolution happens, if you want a quantized distinction between species and
variety, you need to postulate a "splitting moment", where, for example, two
dialects of the same language become two languages, a moment which I'll bet
is imperceptible to the native speakers at any time.

Mutual intelligibility is a good indicator, but it's complicated by trade
and travel - there are many examples of traders learning to communicate, not
in a common "natural" language, but in a somewhat constrained language. I've
haggled with people I can't communicate just by writing Arabic numerals down
on pieces of paper, but this doesn't mean we have a shared language or that
Arabic numerals are really a "dialect" (though perhaps it is not altogether
preposterous to describe numerals as such).

Best wishes,
Dominic



> 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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