War on Grammar

Rufio, I agree with everything you wrote 100%.

However, what I wrote (poorly!) in my post wasn't contradictory to anything you said.

Rather, on top of being an abstract noun as part of the language, the word "noun" (among other labels) serves a dual purpose, which is as meta-language used to talk about language. The concept "noun" may be clear to us based on our knowledge of how we categorize words consciously (based on grammar class, etc.), but it doesn't mean those categories are actually how words are categorized by the brain subconsciously. That remains to be studied further.

Hope that makes more sense!

As for Spanglish, any time you have a group of speakers that have developed regular rules (subconsciously learned rules!!) for language use differing from other groups, you have a dialect.

If, in fact, the substitution of English words for Spanish ones that they don't know is haphazard, totally unpredictable and irregular, then I would concur that it's not a dialect.

Obviously rigorous experimentation would have to be undertaken to determine regularities. I don't know of any work on Spanglish, but I do know of some on New York 2nd generation Hispanic kids' variety of English, which does qualify as a dialect in scholarship.

I thought "Spanglish" was a cutesy term that someone made up for the haphazard substituting of English words into Spanish or vice versa. I grew up with a lot of Mexican kids too - not in New York, but I didn't know there were hispanic kids in New York.

So you're saying that "noun" is a label for a category that may or may not even exist?

In a sense.

The grammatical categories that we hold near and dear (noun, verb, adjective) are convenient categories for most purposes, but as soon as you start looking deeper into how languages really work, you quickly find that they are vastly inadequate.

So on the one hand, yes, we have a clear idea of what we feel a "noun" is,

1. there is a huge grey area between categories, and languages differ wildly as to how nouns behave, and

2. there is no conclusive evidence that our brain stores words in such categories.

Not sure if I'm being totally clear... Maybe I should go look for a decent reference that explains this idea more eloquently than I can!

Ahhh, you mean like verbal nouns, and gerunds, and proper nouns that act as modifiers (the Condon Report, the Lewinski case, etc), like that? Or, where some languages use other types of words to replace nouns or verbs, like with english helping verbs?

Yup, that's the idea. So when we use classifiers such as "noun" to divide up language in order to talk about it, whether or not the category exists (as a mental construct, because, really, that's why we're categorizing in the first place, to enable us to understand how language works) independently of the fact that we happen to have a word for it is unclear.

And yes, that parenthetical comment in the middle there really messes up the flow of an already shakily-constructed sentence....

Well, there are some characteristics that all nouns share, even if some of them share characteristics with verbs and modifiers. Otherwise, I don't think we'd be able to consciously disguish nouns as a group in the first place.

If you could pinpoint what those characteristics are and show it formally, you'd have a very successful PhD dissertation...

Sweet, that sounds like an interesting research project. That probably would require psych courses though - ouch.

To regress momentarily to your point about 'Spanglish' or 'espanglés' as some people refer to it, on most occasions, Spanglish is a bona fide dialect. A good friend of mine, Rosa Comer, is doing research into Spanglish as part of her research into the history of Castillian. There seem to be no real studies of Spanglish as of yet, but she has found, from being on the streets of three US cities, that Spanglish does have a set of rules. Primarilly, it does have strong grammar rules. Secondly, there are 'unspoken' rules of what words one can and cannot use to convey your ideas. For instance, most technological words would include English phrases. I know above many that Castillian has phrases to convey these, but people removed from the Iberian Americas feel more comfortable using English words, just as the most educated French speaker may decide to use an English or a German word, it being more widely comprehended. (I thought that one could not judge intelligence on the basis of language?)

They will use words that will get the message across more easily: internet instead of 'la red,' for example. If one has been away from one's Spanish speaking country for ten years, and people all around you say 'internet,' is one likely to say 'la red?' No; it all comes down to immigration and cultural inrichment. With moves come change.

Is an English speaker, who uses French or Italian words often to convey what he cannot put across in English, any dumber than one who can use straight Anglo-Saxon words? No. Then why should it be so for Hispanics?

P.S. Yes, I took out three sociolinguistics books yesterday

Excellent post drom! Great information, and I'm glad to hear about your library visit. What sociolinguistics books did you take out?

One thing that I can't let pass without commenting...

I thought that one could not judge intelligence on the basis of language?

Well, based on your example alone, I would strongly conjecture that this is NOT a reflection of intelligence at all; rather a reflection of education. And of course, intelligence does not equate with education.

Thanks Mezzie! I regretted somewhat the fact that I took the opportunity to do 'the French Novel tradition' rather than 'Introduction to linguistics;' it seems like an interesting minefield. I got a few introductory texts that some friends doing the more linguistic side of languages recommended to me- Wardhaugh's Introduction and Trudgill's Introduction (Language and Society)- and a few based on a certain topic (which I haven't really got around to yet, because of the bane of my life, the Social History essays, which I got out of the way today.) Out of the topical ones, I chose 'Spanish in the United States'- the author's name escapes me now- and I'm waiting for something to come back about Japanese, as the variation between regions is amazing (though I assume that most people have some knowledge of the 'dominant' dialect, like Mandarin or Castillian; is this right?)

Despite the fact that I dislike laziness in a language, I would have to agree with you; it's all about the education of the real world, and conditioning. Someone can be a great scholar and speak in Ebonics or Spanglish; it reflects on the chosen dialect that he/she feels more comfortable in, not on his/her ability to pick up on the rules of a 'standard' dialect. Nonetheless, I continue to think that people should have some grounding in other appropriate 'standard' dialects, if in a position where this is neccesary.

Practically every langauge (except the ones like French and Russian, where they are fanatically purging English words from the laymen's speech) uses English words in technological contexts, it's just a borrowing. I've read Latin American literature that has a lot of English borrowings, including English words transcribed into Spanish phonemics, and the outright use of English words unaltered (in Puerto Rico - "Beautiful People" and "Super Adorable People" used to denote upper classes), and less obvious English borrowings like "carro" (the Spanish is "coche" but the borrowing is from the English word "car"). I don't think that counts as a different dialect, anymore than it counts when English borrows words for food, or things like "deja vu" from other languages.

Although, when a certain isolated group of people borrows enough words from an outside language, dialects develop... When the borrowings are widespread, however, they just get added to the Standard, which, in a sense, changes the standard...these are all fine lines!

Well, to change into a dialect, I think it would have to have some major changes, not just word borrowing. Like, grammatical ones, such as the changes in ebonics. But there are cultural differences between, say, Britain and America or Mexico and Spain that are vocabulary- or pronunciation- or style-related, but not grammatical or structural in a way that actually changes the language. Hell, not even everyone in America speaks the same way, but just because people in the Midwest say "pop" and "sack" and call lunch "dinner" and no one else does doesn't mean they speak a different dialect of English.

Sociolinguists would disagree with you rufio, although I can sympathize. I agree that a few vocabulary items do not a new dialect make.

On the other hand, if only one group of speakers uses certain vocabulary items while another group does not, it is quite likely that there will be other salient features in grammatical structure and pronunciation that also differ between the groups. In other words, 2 dialects.

There are several midwest dialects of English.

The following is a fascinating link to some ongoing research being done at my school by the most prominent sociolinguist in the world, Bill Labov (by the way, I am NOT a sociolinguist nor do I know very much about it!):

Phonological Atlas of North America

Oh, I know there are tons of different versions of pronunciations across the US. But I wouldn't call them dialects, and most sociolinguists agree that ebonics is further from Standard English than other "dialects".

http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/aave.htm

Right?

So if Ebonics is a "borderline dialect" as it seems to be, I would expect that other variations that are less pronounced would certainly not be.

Back to my niece's street language. First of all, a lot of it is editable for expletives. It is fast spoken in your face shortcutted part ebonic part sophisticated always sucking in new words and spewing them out very very lively. Rhythm has as much to do with it as word choice, I think. Really, I only hear it when she is on the phone to her friends.

I think rules have to do with more than grammar, as I was noticing just now, also rhythm, pulse, agression, and other moods. Whether mood constitutes a dialect sphere, I have no idea. I am the one whose mfa husband kept correcting when I noted that someone had an ..... accent. He would always straighten me out that it was a dialect. I would always lose since he was the mfa and had taken the class. But I distinguish ways of speaking a given word, with such a lilt or sway, from word connections.

Or am I contradicting myself. Is street a multiple of dialects and someone from Savannah saying (whatever) an accent?

I don't know, I was taught that dialects have structure or grammar differences. That's not just something I made up either.

Rufio:

Ebonics is definitely further from what we consider Standard English to be, than, say, Pittsburgh (Yinzer) English, but that doesn't make Pittsburgh English any less of a dialect.

It all depends on how you define dialect. I happen to think the way it's defined by sociolinguists, based on statistical analysis of a large amount of collected data, indicating salient phonological features, as a decent point of departure.

Unless you're clear yourself how you'd like to formally define what it means to be a dialect, it's tough to make judgements one way or the other, no?

Ah, I just read your last post here; I missed it the first time around! Yes, dialects have structure or grammar differences, but that is a very vague definition. And until we can agree on a precise definition of the term "dialect", it's tough to have a meaningful conversation.

Try this link (from the Phonological Atlas of North America website I linked previously) for some details about how sociolinguists set about examining what makes dialects distinct. Especially take a look at section 11.0.1 (you have to scroll down a touch), "Criteria for defining Dialect Regions".:

The Dialects of North American English - Chapter 11

[colpr=darkblue]Spanglish DOES have grammar and structural differences. For example, if I wanted to say, 'millions of people cannot obtain jobs' in Castillian, I would say, no pueden obtener trabajos millones de gente. In Spanglish, one would say, 'millones de gente no pueden obtener jobos (even though jobos are cedar trees.) That's one set difference. We use the personal 'A'. Se detuvo a un narcotraficante. In Spanglish, they use 'fuera detuvo un narcotraficante.' Almost always! They also often use 'yo tiene' instead of 'yo tengo,' just as ebonics used 'he be' rather than 'he is.' Why can one consider the latter dialectical and the former like English people using French? Sure, there are some 'Spanglish' speakers who use English words haphazardly when they can't get the message across with Spanish (and, if you think about it, if you were put in a foreign country, say Germany, for all your life, with only your parents and a few friends as people who spoke your language, you would find it hard to use English words when all you've ever heard in your life are German ones.), but this is like people who use déjà vu instead of... however one would term it in English, already seen, I suppose. The fact remains that there ARE rules amongst the majority of speakers, it isn't just some random pidgin, and its rules are sufficiently different from the Castillian norm to call it a dialect. I don't like it, and carro will always be carriage to me, but that's the way that languages develop.

Regarding your niece's street language, it sounds fascinating. It sounds like teenagespeak over here, which everyone had to learn years ago to understand 80% of people. It is sophisticated; the way that people choose words is amazing. When one day, 'sound' might be the word for good, it could change the next. It's funny how people can get used to this, but not to the comparatively easy rules of Standard English....[/color]