Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• Topics
• Terminology
• Linguistic item and language variety
• Geographical variation
• Language vs. dialect, dialect continuum, isogloss
• Social variation
• Sociolect, slang, jargon
• Contextual variation
• Pronominals, idiolects, registers
• Language policy
Linguistic community
Language
A B C D E F G H
Isoglosses “The Rhenish Fan”
Germ-
Low
an
ich maken dorp dat appel pund
ich machen dorp dat appel pund
German
Middle
ich machen dorf dat appel pund
ich machen dorf das appel pund
ich machen dorf das apfel pund
ich machen dorf das apfel pfund
rm
Ge
Hi
Steve Pepper
Abstand languages and Ausbau languages
• Abstand language
• = “Language by distance”
• Regarded as a language by dint of its linguistic distance from other
languages e.g. Basque, Korean
• Ausbau language
• = “Language by development”
• Regarded as a language by dint of its autonomy with respect to related
languages e.g. (standard) Dutch and German
• Standardized form
• Used in schools
• Written form widely used (including as official national or regional
language)
• Ausbau languages arise out of situations with a dialect continuum
• One dialectal variety standard
• Usually the variety used by educated people in the capital
• Autonomous with respect to other dialects
• Other dialects are heteronomous with respect to the standard
• Status can change over time
• Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian formerly heteronomous dialects of Serbo-
Croatian
• Since 1990s autonomous languages
• Scots, Plattdeutsch (Low German), Provençal once autonomous
• Now heteronomous with respect to English, German and French
(respectively)
Standard languages
• Prototypical properties of a standard language
• Used by educated users, e.g. in the professions, the media, etc.
• Defined in dictionaries, grammars, and usage guides.
• Regarded as more correct and socially acceptable
• Enjoys greater prestige. Non-standard varieties felt to be the province of the
less educated
• Used as a written language
• Used in important functions in the society
• Government, parliament, courts, trade, bureaucracy, education, literature,
industry
• Standard varieties rise and fall
• Reverse of standardization is dialectisation
Not all languages have a standard dialect.
The last word on language vs. dialect?
• אַ שפּראַ ך איז אַ דיאַ לעקט מיט אַ ן אַ רמיי און פֿלאָ ט
• A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot
• A language is a dialect with an army and navy
• Usually attributed to Max Weinreich
Social variation
• Geographic distance leads to
language variation
• Social distance also leads to
language variation
• Topics
• Social organization
• Social networks
• Social stratification
• Sociolect
• Slang
• Jargon
Social networks
• Individual belongs to social
networks • Network strength based on
• Stronger or looser ties with degrees of density and
other individuals multiplex-ity
• Dimensions of solidarity
between individuals in their • Dense network
everyday contacts • Everyone knows everyone
else
• Strong networks
• Language changes more slowly • Multiplex relationship
• Stigmatized and low-status • A interacts with B in more
language items persist than one capacity (e.g. as
workmate and friend)
Social stratification • Rank society
• People born with certain rank,
• Hierarchical structure of a low social mobility
society • Speak language of birth
• Arising from inequalities of throughout life
wealth and power
• Different types of hierarchy • Class society
• Rank society • People born into certain class,
• Class society high social mobility
• Europe after ca. 1800 • Change their language in order
• Change from hierarchy of to improve social status
rank to hierarchy of class
From rank to class
• Traditional European rank society
• People spoke the dialect of their home area
• Only minor variation between the ranks
• Easy to locate someone geographically, but not socially
• Change to class society
• Ca. 1800: industrialization
• New social strata:
• Working class and bourgeoisie (middle class)
• Opportunities to improve economic and social status
The emergence of middle class English
• England, end of 18th century
• Standard written language, no standard spoken language
• Middle class speaking habits changed towards most prestigious variety
• Used at royal court in London
• Upper class (aristocracy) and lower class continue to speak local dialects
• Middle class dialect varied much less from place to place
• Network differences an important factor
• Close-knit solidarity characteristic of lower and higher social groups
• Leads to greater stability
• Weaker among middle sectors of society
• Easier to change
• Network structures result naturally from different life modes
• e.g. self-employed, wage-earners, professionals
Sociolects
• Language varieties used by particular societal strata
• Most language varieties have geographical as well as social
distribution
• Geographical variation now larger among lower classes than middle
and upper classes
Huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’
• The story of English -ing
• Originally two suffixes
• Verbal noun [-ɪŋe], written <-inge> e.g.
‘writinge’ cf. NOR skriving
• Present participle [-ɪnde], written <-inde> e.g.
‘writinde’ cf. NOR skrivende
• Erosion neutralization
• pronounced [-ɪn], written <-ing>
-ɪŋe -ɪŋ
-ɪn
-ɪnde -ɪnd Three in Norway is an account of a “huntin’,
shootin’ and fishin’” trip to Jotunheimen in
• Middle class [-ɪŋ] (conform to standard)
Norway by three English (actually two
• Upper and lower class retained [-ɪn]
English and one Irish) gentlemen in 1882
• Hence the phrase huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’
• Very informal language variety
• Includes new and sometimes not
polite words and meanings.
• Often used among particular groups of
people, e.g. teenagers or professional
groups, musicians
• Not commonly used in serious speech or
writing Slang
• Some expressions contain ordinary Cockney rhyming slang:
words with a special meaning, e.g. kisser 1. “dog” is short for “dog and bone”, and it
(mouth) means the phone (because “bone” rhymes
• New meanings, often based upon with “phone”).
2. “apples” for “apples and pears” is the
fanciful and creative metaphors and stairs.
metonymies 3. “Trouble” is another word for wife, short
• Other expressions contain special words for “trouble and strife”.
with no «non-slang» meanings, e.g. 4. “Plates” are the feet, or “plates of meat”.
kooky
Jargon Jargon of Fulani shepherds…
guddiri ‘bull without a tail’
• A set of vocabulary items used by wudde ‘cow without a tail’
members of particular professions jaabuye ‘cow with a large navel’
i.e. their technical terms lelwaaye ‘cattle with eyes like a gazelle’
gerlaaye ‘cattle that is like a bush-fowl’
• Computer: scroll bar, SCSI, short happuye ‘cow in milk after her calf has died’
cut, spam... mbutuye ‘cow whose calf has been killed so that
• Police: she may be fattened’
• Suspect elliinge ‘cattle with upright horns’
gajje ‘cattle with horns twisted back’ (also called
• 10-4 - Okay or I understand mooro)
• Code Eight - officer needs hippe ‘cattle with horns drooping forward’
help hogole ‘cattle with horns almost meeting’
lettooye ‘cattle with one horn up and the other
• Code Eleven - individual is at drooping’
the scene of the wijaaye ‘cattle with horns drooping towards the
ears’
tolle ‘cow with one horn’
wumale ‘cow without horns’
Legal Jargon
• Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities
now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he
suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty
shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow
might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his
recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this
the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his
fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his
purchases and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair
of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in
this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
• (Hamlet to Horatio in Hamlet by Shakespeare)
Register
• Registers are varieties of language used in different situations, which are
identified by the degrees of formality.
• The addresses on the NPC is a formal register; a talk between friends is an
informal register.
• Registers can vary from vocabulary, phonology, grammar to semantics.
• Lexis (vocabulary)
• Pronunciation
• Grammar
• Social Functions
Lexis
• Drawn from dominant (lexifier) language (English, French, Portuguese,
Dutch)
• Lexis rules for pidgins are simpler than for mature languages
• Concepts encoded in lengthy ways (circumlocutions)
• Yumitripela “we, us”
• Gras bilong pisin “feathers”
(gras bilong fes; gras antap lang ai; mausgras)
• Extensive use of reduplication
• Pikpik “pigs”
• Gutpela liklik “fairly good”
Pronunciation
• Five vowel sounds: / i e (ɛ) a (ɔ) o u /
• “deep” / “dip” -> /dip/ • Superstrate sounds are not retained
• “work” / “walk” -> /wak/ (phoneme inventory can vary)
• Simplification of consonant clusters although the lexical items are from
• /-nd/ -> /-n/ : /paun/ “pound” the superstrate. Larger number of
• /-ks/ -> /-kis/ : /sikis/ “six” homophones
• Conflation of consonant sounds • /tiŋ/ -> “thing” / “think’
• /f/ -> /p/ : /pren/ “friend” • Syllable restructuring
• /š/ -> /s/ : /bus/ “bush” • Portuguese occupar > Principe
kupa and alma > alima
• English sister > Sranan sisa or
dog > Saramaccan dagu
Grammar
• Pidgins
• Variable from speaker to speaker
• Few if any inflections
• Simple negation: “no” + X
• Simple clause structure
• From pidgins to creoles
• Faster speech
• Consistency across speakers
• Assimilation & reduction processes
• Expanded vocabularies
• Tense system
• Greater sentence complexity
Pidgin Morphology and Syntax
• general lack of inflection, specifically loss of agreement e.g. Tok Pisin
• Sikspela man i kom Wanpela man i kom
• ‘Six people are coming’ ‘A man is coming’
• Cameroon • Korea
• Languages: 280 • Languages: 1
The linguistic situation in Cameroon
• A typical African village
• Galim, Adamawa Province
• 5–10 local languages
• approx. 3,000 inhabitants
• A local lingua franca (Fula)
• A national language (French)
• Social-functional classification of these
languages
• LG 1: Fula
• LG 2: Hausa
• LG 3: Nizaa, Vute, Kanuri,
Mbum, Chamba
• Social groups
Patterns of multilingualism • SG 1 – Upper stratum:
merchants
• Fula spoken by everybody • High degree of
• Hausa second lingua franca intermarriage
• The only L2 for the Fulani people • Language(s) of this SG only
• SG 2 – Other villagers
Languages • Own languages and those of
Ethnic groups Fula Hausa Kanuri Other
SG 1
• Often other SG 2 languages
Sedentary Fulani L1 L2
SG1
• SG 3 – Nomadic Fulani
Hausa L2 L1 • On the fringe of village
Kanuri* <L1> L2 <L1> society
SG2
• Own language only; low
Nizaa, Vute,
Mbum, Chamba
L2 L3 L1 status
Nomadic Fulani L1 SG3
Language policy in Cameroon and Africa
• Colonial language French adds a further complication
• Official language since WW1
• Limited use until recently
• Schools, public offices
• Insufficiently understood to function as lingua franca OFFICIAL
(1)
• Only 13% have good grounding
in French from school
• Will probably not replace Fula in Northern Cameroon NATIONAL
• In Africa, the lingua franca tends to be an African (5–10)