[Corpora-List] A difference between a dialect and a language on phonetical level

[John F. Sowa]

Dear Yuri,

Those are interesting observations:

 > For instance, in Mansi (Vogul) there are several dialects.
 > However, the total of the speech sound chains are really two
 > different linguistic objects. In fact, they are far away from
 > each other than Russian and Ukrainian, or Russian and Belorussian,
 > which are considered separate languages. The same was with some
 > Turkic dialects, e.g. Dolgan and Jakut or Altai-Kizhi and
 > Altai-Teleut.

The problem with the words 'dialect' and 'language' is that they are
naturally occurring terms, which have acquired conflicting patterns of
usage over many centuries.  As philosophers from Kant to Wittgenstein
have noted, there is no way to define such terms by necessary and
sufficient conditions.

Perhaps a better approach would be to adopt a technical term,
such as 'speech community'.  That term could be defined according
to various criteria, such as the speech community of people in some
geographical area that are grouped by ethnicity, age, sex, religion,
place of birth, education, social class, occupation, political party,
etc.

For each such group, you could measure the patterns of sound, syntax,
and vocabulary.  Then you could compare them to other groups in the
same geographical area or other areas of different sizes.  It would
also be interesting to compare the variability of speech communities
in cities, rural areas, and indigenous societies with different
degrees of contact with other societies.

John Sowa






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