[Lingtyp] Suggestion: “Lect” instead of “language/dialect”

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Dear Ian,
you might find the following paper interesting:

Good, Jeff & Cysouw, Michael. 2013.Languoid, Doculect, and Glossonym:
Formalizing the Notion 'Language'.  JLDC 7.

https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/4606
Best wishes
Sebastian

On 11/19/21 4:48 PM, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
> Dear all:
> 
> I have a suggestion:
> Let’s stop using “language” or “dialect” to refer to specific language varieties. Let’s call them “lects”.
> Reason:
> When conducting typological research, we oftne have to choose whether to call a language variety a “language” or “dialect”.
> For example, when a researcher encounters in the field two language varieties that are mutually intelligible to some degree, are they dialects of the same language, or two different languages?
> In such cases, there is no clear-cut answer. This is because the distinction between language and dialect is inherently sociocultural.
> We can bring up several reasons to call a variety either a language or a dialect, such as mutual intelligibility and genealogical distance. But in the end, intelligibility and genealogical distance have little to do with language/dialect dichotomy. There are many mutually unintelligible varieties socially labelled dialects, and vice versa.
> We often set European languages as standards to argue for the languagehood of distinct varieties. For example, a researcher could say that “the intelligibility between A and B are lower than the intelligibility between German and Dutch. Because German and Dutch are separate languages, A and B should also be considered separate languages."
> But such usage of European languages as standards is essentially Eurocentric. There’s no reason why the scale of dialecthood in Europe should apply to non-European languages.
> In the end, because the dialect/language distinction is sociocultural, we should not employ sociocultural terms to refer to genealogical divisions.
> As an alternative, I suggest abandoning this dichotomy altogether and referring to any language variety as a lect.
> If we want to refer to two related lects as a whole, we can refer to them as a supralect.
> If we want to refer to the different varieties of a single lect, we can refer to them as sublects.
> For example:
> Swiss German is a dialect of the German language. -> Swiss German is a sublect of the German supralect.
> The Chinese language consists of many dialects, such as Mandarin and Cantonese. -> The Chinese supralect consists of many sublects, such as Mandarin and Cantonese.
> The main difference is that this is not a binary distinction, but multi-layered distinction.
> For example, the Chinese supralect has Cantonese as a sublect, which also has Guangzhou Cantonese, Hong Kong Cantonese, etc. as sublects, and so on.
> Logically speaking, a family could be the highest layer of a lect (“Indo-European lect”, “Sino-Tibetan lect”), although there would be little practical need to employ the term “lect” in those contexts.
> As for the term “language”, I suggest only using it to refer to the language as a phenomenon (langage in French), not specific varieties (langue in French), such as in “the human language.”
> I suggest that this could save us from the typologically meaningless debate over what is a language or a dialect (which could still be meaningful in sociolinguistics, just not in typology).
> Please let me know what you think about this suggestion. I, for one, have decided to use the term “lect” instead of “language/dialect” throughout my doctoral thesis.
> 
> From Hong Kong,
> Ian
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