Re: [tied] Re: Franco-Provençal

2009/2/19 Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...>:

>
>> There exists objective reasons to describe varieties as dialects or
>> separate
>> languages.
>>
>> A.
>
> Those reasons, however, largely depend on the purpose/motivation of
> "classification". So, please, define what language/dialect is/isn't.
> Everyone will find both examples and counter-examples. ;-)
>
> Best,
>
> Petr
>
> ==============
>
> I believe there are objective criteria.
>
> For example, in the case of Sicilian versus standard Italian,

Precisely. "IN THE CASE" of "SICILIAN" versus "STANDARD ITALIAN".

You need to invent new rules from language to language. And that's
whence the problems arise.

> If we ask basic phonological questions about Sicilian :
> Q1 Does this variety of Latin-based language have geminate consonants ?
> Q2 Does this " " " accept word-final consonants ?
> Q3 Does this " " " accept consonant clusters ?
> These basic questions can be asked about any language.
> They are not prefabricated to show Sicilian should be considered Italian.
>
> Then we can see that Sicilian is the same as Italian and that no other
> Romance language behaves like Sicilian and Standard Italian when it comes to
> any of these questions.
>
> Q1 both have phonological geminates for most consonants.
> This exists only for r and rr elsewhere.
> Q2 both do not accept word-final consonants,
> elision after -r- and -n- in fast speech is the only exception
> Q3 both accept (heavy) word-initial clusters
> #sb- etc
> In fact, Sicilian has reinforced feature 3 and accepts #mp and #nd-, which
> std Italian does not have.
>
> In other words, Sicilian is a typical Italian dialect.
> And I suppose Corsican would pass this test in the same way.
>
> Now let's take Northern French, supposedly a "separate" language.
> The Swadesh list indicates that nearly 100% of the basic vocabulary is
> shared.
> This can be compared with English / German 72% and French / Italian 79%
> I wonder how much is shared between std Italian and Corsican / Sicilian.

Are Croatian and Serbian separate languages or mere dialects of the
same language???
Are Czech and Slovak separate languages or mere dialects of the same language???

> I'm afraid those people who misuse the word "language" just forget how much
> is _shared_ by dialects of the same language and take secondary features as
> reasons to dismember these dialects into separate "languages". In fact, in
> that kind of approach, the word "dialect" no longer exists : it has been
> replaced by the word "language".
> I disagree with this misuse of the words "language" and "dialect".

This is no misuse. The heart of the problem lies in the definitions
themselves and swadesh lists are not of much help here.

> A dialect is a particular variety of a language that displays a certain
> number of specific features, but nevertheless shares most other features
> with other dialects.

So, which specific features do you have on mind?

I mean, construct a definition that would be applicable to ALL
languages/dialects. Something we can test, really.

Best,

Petr