Re: My version

> This is very likely, yet I notice that you and other participants in
> this discussion keep on emphasizing the differences in regional
> varieties of US English as rightful differences of 'dialect' whereas
> they are, in case, differences of 'accent'.

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The problem is English has very little morphology left
and most dialectal variation will first appear in phonology and lexical
items.
And the same is true with Chinese.

A.
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The latter term "refers

> to the way in which a speaker pronounces, and therefore refers to a
> variety which is phonetically and/or phonologically different from
> other varieties. 'Dialect', on the other hand, refers to varieties
> which are grammatically (and perhaps lexically) as well as
> phonologically different from other varieties" (J.K. Chambers & P.
> Trudgill, _Dialectology_, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980, p. 5).
>
> In other words, a difference of 'accent' is a difference between
> varieties of a language (e.g., General English) which involves only
> pronunciation; on the contrary, a difference of 'dialect' may
> involve any or all of syntax, morphology, lexicon, AND
> pronunciation.

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Your approach is phoney.
Differences in "accent" (I don't like this word) most often entail other
differences.

A.
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>
> Do regional varieties of US (or Canadian, Australian etc.) English
> show the GRAMMATICAL variations that are the necessary requisite of
> any genuine 'dialect' as defined by Chambers and Trudgill? I don't
> think so.

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Well,
I suppose that :
I've got => Have you got ?
and
I have => do you have ?

are typically British and American respectively.
At least, this is what I've been taught.
A.
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Lexical variations, which undoubtedly exist in regional

> varieties of US, Canadian, Australian English (etc.), are not so
> significant as the required (but, in our case, lacking)
> morphological and syntactical variations for assigning a 'dialectal'
> status to any such variety of English.
>
> By contrast, most of 'dialects' of Italian (which was the original
> topic of this discussion) show variations not only in pronunciation
> and lexicon, but also in GRAMMAR.

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So what ?

Most dialects of French also have consistent differences in grammar.
Subjunctive in Northern French is built with -çh


Anyway you still have not explained why we should consider something a
dialect or a language.

A.
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>
> Just to give a couple of examples (I hope you realize there is many
> more of them):
>
> 1) In many southern Italian dialects, the direct object is
> introduced by the preposition "a" (Engl. "to") when the object is
> animate. Example: Neapolitan <aggiu visto a Giuseppe> (vs. standard
> Italian <ho visto Giuseppe> and the similar northern and central
> Italian dialectal usages ), 'I have seen Giuseppe'. This grammatical
> feature is generally traced back by dialectologists to some ancient
> southern Italian variety of spoken (Vulgar) Latin. Do instances of
> similar relevant grammatical variations (of the type 'I have seen
> *to* Joseph'), concerning the use of prepositions, exist in, e.g.,
> US English?
>
> 2) Another example, again from the Italian South: Sicilian
> <sicilianu sugnu> 'I am Sicilian' (vs. standard Italian <sono
> siciliano> and the similar northern and central Italian dialectal
> usages), i.e., an inversion of the relative positions of the copula
> and the predicate. Anything similar in US English varieties (I mean,
> of the type 'American I am')?
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>