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

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

Jim Fidelholtz wrote:
> Likewise, Midwestern American speakers are understood by speakers of 
> nearly all other varieties of English much more readily than they 
> understand speakers of other dialects. In both cases, aside from 
> undoubted cultural reasons, the basic reason is that the 
> readily-understood variety or language is similar in some sense to the 
> 'underlying forms' of the less-readily-understood varieties. (This is, 
> of course, way oversimplified.)
    Indeed.  And I'm not convinced that you can't explain it all with 
these undoubted cultural reasons.  Have you actually listened to 
Midwestern American English?  Between Canadian raising, 
mid-nucleus-fronting, the pin/pen merger and devoiced glides, can you 
still tell me with a straight face that this variety is similar to the 
underlying forms in my own variety?

    When I was growing up, I heard John Mellencamp a lot on the radio 
and MTV.  Although his slower songs, like "Jack and Diane," were pretty 
easy, there were others like "The Authority Song" that completely 
mystified me.  I'm sure that Midwesterners had no trouble with them.  
Now that I've lived in the Midwest and talked to enough Midwesterners, I 
understand Midwestern much better, so I can figure out some of the forms 
that I missed.  And as a linguist, I can point to specific phonological 
features - like the [o] and schwa-deletion in the word "authority" - 
that reduced his intelligibility to me.  Just as familiarity helped me 
to understand the "dialects" of the Beatles and the B-52s, it helped me 
to understand those of Midwesterners like Mellencamp and Bob Dylan.

    Similarly, I doubt that Portuguese speakers who haven't had regular 
exposure to neutralized postvocalic nasals, merged voiced labials, 
spirantized intervocalic stops and lenited postvocalic liquids would 
find Spanish very easy to understand.  You can't separate 
"intelligibility" from familiarity and from the power issues involved in 
allocating the burden of communication.  I still don't understand why 
anyone would want to.

-- 
				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
				grvsmth at panix.com


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