Diasystem

Abstract: Urban dialectology and research into vernacular varieties, sociolects, and related phenomena have been developing in recent years within European sociolinguistics, through a very ineresting combination of American fieldwork methods (Labov et alii) with others developed by social anthropologists and well tested in the area of linguistics (Gumperz, Milroy et alii). The further differences between national trends in European urban vernacular research come from each country's own traditions in linguistic and social studies (functionalism, historical dialectology, educational sociology, marxism, and so forth). The aim of this paper is to carry out a critical revision of the European (and, especially, Spanish) methodological and theoretical foundations of studies of urban sociolinguistics variation and change, inasmuch as the said foundations are considered a framework for the analysis of the Vernacular Varieties System of Malaga (V.U.M.-Project). A brief report of its limits and perspectives is presented, with special emphasis placed on the linguistic and sociolinguistic features of Andalusian Spanish (as far as they are known the unsystematic previous observations). Andalusian varieties of Spanish can be defined, from an outer point of view, as taking part in a polynomic system (Marcellesi); from an inner point of view, the could be classified as a diasystem of gradata (Stehl), with two well defined extremes consisting of highly-focussed varieties (Standard Spanish and Cross-regional and Urban Educated Regional Standards /versus/ Low Varieties of Andalusian Spanish), and an intermediate part where a vast range of variation occurs (diffusion).

Abstract: A long /aː/ in pre-fricative and pre-nasal contexts in words such as fast, answer or after is one of the most distinctive phonological features of British RP and, to a certain extent, of Southern Hemisphere varieties of English (Trudgill 2010). The lengthening of /a/ has been particularly gaining ground from the eighteenth century onwards (Beal 1999; Jones 2006). The pronouncing dictionaries published between the eighteenth century and the present day allow us to trace its lexical diffusion (Labov 1994) across the whole lexicon. Drawing on the statistics of the ARCHER corpus, the lexical sets of the ECEP database, the full electronic edition of Walker's dictionary (1791), Wells’ Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2008) and the Macquarie Dictionary (2015), this article examines the role played by the phonetic environment, word frequency, phonetic analogy and isolated lead words like draught or master in the spread of the lengthening of /a/. The results show that word frequency per se has no clear effect on /a/ lengthening in either pre-fricative or pre-nasal environments in eighteenth-century sources. The article also offers a possible relative chronology of the spread of that phenomenon to each phonetic environment within the bath set.

Abstract: Dialectology is to some extent an autonomous discipline, with its own goals and methods. In the previous chapter, we reviewed the most distinctive aspects of dialect geography. But we also noted its common ground with other branches of linguistic science, especially phonetics, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. In this chapter, we look more closely at the relationship between dialectology and general linguistics. Modern dialectologists are usually trained as linguists, and many of them contribute to the literature on phonology or syntax or other branches as well as to dialect studies. Obviously, detailed descriptions of peripheral and secondary dialects are directly relevant to theories of phonology and grammar. It is perhaps surprising, then, to discover that interchanges between dialectologists and theoretical linguists are not as common as they might be, though in recent years both groups have come to realise that the rich variability of linguistic systems can illuminate and challenge universal claims about grammar and phonology. Dialectology took its impetus partly out of the desire to illuminate and challenge Neogrammarian principles in the nineteenth century, as we noted in 2.1 above. We begin this chapter with a closer look at the relationship between dialectology and philology, and then move on to discuss its relationship with some other important theoretical frameworks. Dialectology and philology Wenker's original work on German dialects was motivated in part by the claim, new at the time, made by scholars working on the history of languages, that sound change was regular.

Abstract: SUMMARY In this short paper a number of examples were taken from the Afrikaans Linguistic Atlas (Afrikaanse Taalatlas) and discussed in terms of Weinreich's concept of the diasystem. It is argued that certain linguistic features can only be treated adequately by making use of this model of description.