Language or Dialect?Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0020
R. V. Rooy
{"title":"Mutual intelligibility","authors":"R. V. Rooy","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 20 treats the success of the criterion of mutual intelligibility since the 1950s, when American linguists interested in Amerindian tongues started to actively test this feature. Pioneers were Carl Voegelin and Zellig Harris, who suggested four methods for answering language / dialect questions, including mutual intelligibility testing. Even though scholars immediately faced numerous problems, the method enjoyed considerable success and is the primary criterion used by language catalogues such as Ethnologue and Glottolog. The criterion was criticized by, among others, Frederick Agard, who proposed nine postulates for determining language / dialect status. Others followed Morris Swadesh’s lexicostatistic lead and tried to quantify the distances between speech forms. According to one of the most recent representatives of this strand, linguistic distance is bimodally distributed, and the language / dialect distinction is, by consequence, backed by the majority of the linguistic evidence. Rather artificially, a strict cut-off point is proposed in this recent contribution.","PeriodicalId":335064,"journal":{"name":"Language or Dialect?","volume":"6 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123685532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language or Dialect?Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0008
Raf Van Rooy
{"title":"Aristotle’s legacy","authors":"Raf Van Rooy","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 8 treats two interpretations of the language / dialect distinction which early modern scholars considered useful diagnostic criteria. Firstly, in the seventeenth century, an interpretation of the conceptual pair emerged according to which related dialects showed only accidental differences, whereas distinct languages varied substantially. This analysis was grounded in two traditional categories of Aristotelian ontology and implied a binary opposition; numerous scholars realized, however, that linguistic distance comes in degrees or layers. Secondly, the criterion of mutual intelligibility, often bracketed together with the Aristotelian criterion, had its origin in the Renaissance. The eccentric humanist Johannes Goropius Becanus played a key role in its emergence and specified it further as immediate mutual intelligibility. This criterion, too, was conceptualized in predominantly binary terms. Contradictorily, numerous scholars complained about the lack of mutual intelligibility among speakers of related dialects, pointing out the wider communicative reach of a language.","PeriodicalId":335064,"journal":{"name":"Language or Dialect?","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126269448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language or Dialect?Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0021
R. V. Rooy
{"title":"Between two extremes","authors":"R. V. Rooy","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0021","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 21 confronts two opposite perspectives on language and the language / dialect pair with roots in the 1950s and 1960s. On the one hand, it treats generative approaches to linguistic diversity. In general, generative linguists have assumed that dialect-level variation is produced by minor differences in rules, parameters, or constraints and their ordering or ranking, depending on the generative framework which they follow, whereas distinct languages are characterized by major divergences in the same. On the other hand, sociolinguists have focused on linguistic variables rather than systems. As they correlate linguistic phenomena to language-external attributes, their conceptions of the language / dialect distinction tend to be rather hybrid, being shaped by linguistic as well as sociopolitical parameters. This externalist approach has been fiercely criticized by Noam Chomsky. Other linguists have adopted more constructive attitudes, either by supplementing the language / dialect distinction or by supplanting it with an entirely new conception of language.","PeriodicalId":335064,"journal":{"name":"Language or Dialect?","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114307057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language or Dialect?Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0003
R. V. Rooy
{"title":"The exception to the rule","authors":"R. V. Rooy","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198845713.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 offers a case study of the thirteenth-century scholar Roger Bacon, who contrasted the terms lingua and idioma in a way prefiguring the later language/dialect distinction. Bacon was able to do so because of his exceptionally broad intellectual and linguistic horizon; he was familiar with English, French, Latin, Greek, and other tongues, as well as the regional variation within some of them. His mastery of Greek in particular was unique in his times. His linguistic outlook was a central precondition and a triggering circumstance for his lingua / idioma distinction. Bacon was in good company, since the renowned philosopher Thomas Aquinas presupposed a similar metalinguistic contrast in his exegetical works; yet Thomas was much less explicit about it. Chapter 3 finishes with a brief exposé on biblical exegesis as an overlooked source for ancient and medieval ideas on regional variation.","PeriodicalId":335064,"journal":{"name":"Language or Dialect?","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122583913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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