Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

548 Pages·2003·3.064 MB·English

by  Bernd Kortmann

Dialectology meets Typology:
Dialectic Grammar from a
Cross-Linguistic Perspective
Edited by
Bernd Kortmann
Mouton de Gruyter
Dialectology meets Typology
≥
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs 153
Editors
Walter Bisang
Hans Henrich Hock
Werner Winter
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Dialectology meets Typology
Dialect Grammar
from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective
Edited by
Bernd Kortmann
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
MoutondeGruyter(formerlyMouton,TheHague)
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Contents
Introduction 1
Bernd Kortmann
Dialectology and typology – An integrative perspective 11
Walter Bisang
Local markedness as a heuristic tool in dialectology: The case of amn’t 47
Lieselotte Anderwald
Non-standard evidence in syntactic typology – Methodological remarks 69
on the use of dialect data vs spoken language data
Peter Auer
The typology of motion and posture verbs: A variationist account 93
Raphael Berthele
Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 127
J.K. Chambers
Definite articles in Scandinavian: Competing grammaticalization 147
processes in standard and non-standard varieties
Östen Dahl
Person marking in Dutch dialects 181
Gunther de Vogelaer
A typology of relative clauses in German dialects 211
Jürg Fleischer
Do as a tense and aspect marker in varieties of English 245
Bernd Kortmann
Typology, dialectology and the structure of complementation in Romani 277
Yaron Matras
vi Contents
Problems for typology: Perfects and resultatives in spoken and 305
non-standard English and Russian
Jim Miller
Comparing grammatical variation phenomena in non-standard English 335
and Low German dialects from a typological perspective
Günter Rohdenburg
On three types of dialect variation and their implications for linguistic 367
theory. Evidence from verb clusters in Swiss German dialects
Guido Seiler
Substrate, superstrate and universals: Perfect constructions in Irish 401
English
Peter Siemund
The impact of language contact and social structure on linguistic 435
structure: Focus on the dialects of modern Greek
Peter Trudgill
Jespersen’s cycle and the interaction of predicate and quantifier negation 453
in Flemish
Johan van der Auwera and Annemie Neuckermans
“Gendered” pronouns in English dialects – A typological perspective 479
Susanne Wagner
Population linguistics on a micro-scale. Lessons to be learnt from Baltic 497
and Slavic dialects in contact
Björn Wiemer
Addresses of authors 527
Language and dialect index 529
Subject index 535
Introduction
Bernd Kortmann
1. Background
1.1. Aims of the volume
In the first place, this volume is an invitation! It is an invitation issued to
those interested in structural variation within languages, on the one hand,
and to those interested in structural variation across languages, on the other
hand. The purpose of this invitation is to bring together for the first time
two research traditions in the study of language variation (and change)
which so far have largely worked independently of each other, to make
them enrich and provide new vistas for each other.
It is a fascinating additional perspective for anyone interested in the
study of dialect morphology and dialect syntax to judge the observable
patterns of cross-dialectal variation for individual grammatical phenomena
against generalizations, hierarchies and explanations which have grown out
of the study of cross-linguistic variation. Dialect data can thus be looked at
in a fresh light and new questions can be asked.
At the same time, dialectology has very interesting things to offer to
language typology, which here is to be understood as functional typology
in the Greenbergian tradition. In many domains of grammar, regional and
social non-standard varieties conform to cross-linguistic tendencies where
the relevant standard varieties do not. Moreover, quite a number of
grammatical features and patterns of variation found in non-standard
varieties are not part of the relevant standard varieties. A sizable subset of
these has not even been observed in the typological literature before,
whether only for the relevant language family or linguistic area, or on a
world scale. Dialect data, besides serving as a rich additional data source
and making a significant contribution to areal typology, are bound to help
establish more fine-grained typological parameters and formulate
generalizations and hierarchies which are at the same time more fine-
grained and more robust. Another point of fundamental importance is the
following: typologists need to be careful not to neglect the differences
2 Bernd Kortmann
between the grammars of written and spontaneous spoken varieties of
languages. In fact, non-standard dialects (as varieties which are almost
exclusively spoken) may well serve as a crucial corrective for typological
research, which is typically, especially for languages with a literary
tradition, concerned with the (fairly homogeneous) written standard
varieties of languages. If this spoken-written difference is not given due
consideration, typologists run the risk of comparing what is comparable
only within limits, and certainly only with great caution, namely ‘exotic’
languages for which they only have spoken data as opposed to typically
well-described (e.g. European) languages for which they make the written
standard varieties the basis of their generalizations.
In sum, this volume aims to show how much dialectologists and
typologists can learn from each other and that, ultimately, both typology
and dialectology are bound to profit from a (functional-) typological
approach to the study of dialects. To a certain extent, this volume can thus
be seen as a major step in the direction of a unified account of intra- and
cross-linguistic variation from a functionalist angle. To these two
dimensions of variation, we must indeed add the historical dimension. It is
in the study of spoken varieties, in particular, that the strict division
between synchrony and diachrony becomes increasingly blurred. It is here
that conservative features characteristic of previous language periods exist
alongside with ongoing language change indicating, for example, new
grammaticalization processes or a higher degree of grammaticalization of
individual forms and constructions than in the relevant standard varieties.
Such a unified research paradigm has been advocated for more than a
decade by Croft (1995, 2000, 20032) under the headings of integrative
functionalism and the dynamic paradigm in the study of linguistic
variation. In the present volume, this paradigm is most forcefully argued for
in the papers by Chambers and, above all, Bisang.
1.2. Contributors and wider context of current dialectological research
The research programme underlying this volume was first advertised at the
World Congress of Linguists in Paris 1997 (cf. Kortmann 1999) and
subsequently implemented in a research project at the University of
Freiburg (Germany) on comparative English dialect grammar in the British
Isles from a typological perspective (cf. Kortmann 2002, 2003; Kortmann
et al., forthcoming). It had always been intended, however, to broaden the
Introduction 3
scope of the envisaged collaboration between dialectologists and
typologists beyond the study of variation in a single language. I was thus
very glad when asked by the organizers of the METHODS XI conference at
Joensuu, Finland (5–9 August, 2002) to organize a workshop of my own
choosing. It is out of this international workshop on “Dialectology and
Typology” that the current volume has grown. Ten out of the 19
contributors were invited speakers at the workshop, the remaining nine
were invited to contribute to this collection as like-minded distinguished
dialectologists or typologists. All authors share a pronounced interest in
looking across the fence which still separates dialectology and typology
and which for a long time, it seems, has been deemed too high or simply
uninteresting to explore the other side of.
With regard to the contributors to this volume, something else is worth
noting. This volume is published at a time when we are witnessing on a
broad scale an increasing interest in dialect grammar leading, above all, to
the systematic collection of new material stored in large databases and
computerized corpora, and to the inclusion of language-internal
grammatical variation into modern syntactic theories, be they formalist
(microparametric syntax) or, as in this volume, functionalist. Another fact
that bears witness to the burgeoning field of dialect grammar is that,
independently of each other, five major research projects on the study of
dialect grammar sprang up in six European countries, all roughly beginning
in the year 2000 (cf. Barbiers, Cornips and van der Kleij 2002 for a
selection of work done within four of these projects). Besides the Freiburg
project on English dialects mentioned above, these are projects on the
syntax of Dutch and Flemish dialects (the SAND project in Amsterdam,
Antwerp and Gent), Swiss German dialects (Zurich), Italian dialects
(Padua), and Romani dialects (Manchester). These five projects are
currently joining forces, spearheading an initiative for an international
research network on European dialect syntax. It is worth noting that nine
contributors to this volume belong to, or are closely associated with, four of
these projects. Besides Matras (Manchester project on Romani), these are
members or associates of the three projects on West Germanic dialects: de
Vogelaer, Neuckermans and van der Auwera (SAND project), Fleischer
and Seiler (Zurich project), as well as Anderwald, Kortmann and Wagner
(Freiburg project).
It is not by accident that all of these share a strong functionalist
orientation. Except for the Padua project on Italian dialect syntax and the
majority of the Amsterdam team of the SAND project, the relevant dialect