>When differences between two "languages" are only explainable
by slight vocabulary and pronunciation differences and not by
grammar differences, I think that one can speak about dialects
of the same language. When grammar (I'm not talking about
individual mistakes but about systematic variations) or
vocabulary are totally different, I believe that one can talk
about different languages, whether or not there is a specific
army attached to the "dialect". But I am not a linguist, so
don't trust me, it's just my personal understanding of the
notion of "language".
Linguistically, there is no sharp boundary between a language
and a dialect.
In reality, there are always continua of variation in how
people speak. Anecdotally, I've heard that one can walk from
Paris to Rome, and that in each pair of villages along the way,
people in one will understand those in the other, but obviously
the people in Paris don't speak the same language as those in
Rome.
There are also some marked jumps in variation, such that
someone can say, "the people here speak the same as the people
in the next village; the people in the next village speak a
little differently, but we can all understand one another".
I.e. within the first village and also between the first and
second, there are minor variations that are either unobserved
or considered insignificant, while there is a noticeable jump
in the third that causes people to say that speech is
different, even though it's still understood. So, there are
noticeable differences in the way my wife and I speak English,
but we still understand one another 99.9% of the time. There
are even greater difference between my Texan neighbor and me,
but we still understand each other. Then there are the really
big jumps in variation, like that between Paris and Rome.
As long as people still understand one another, the different
forms of speech would be considered dialects. (Again, I'm
talking in terms of pure linguistics; armies are irrelevant
here, but become a factor when we shift to sociolinguistics.)
The problem is, there are degrees of understanding. My wife and
I understand each other 99.9% of the time; my Scottish
colleague (who has also been living in Dallas for a few years
now) and I understand each other 98% of the time. If I were to
speak with his Glaswegian parents, we'd probably understand
each other 96% of the time. If I were to speak to an Auzzie,
depending on the topic, I might only understand 90% depending
on the choice of vocabulary they're using. (The level to which
two parties understand each other are not necessarily equal, by
the way; they might understand more or less of my speech than I
do of theirs.) If I spoke with someone from Inverness, I might
only understand 60% at first, but as they adjusted their speech
to avoid certain lexical items and as I adjusted to the
different phonology, I might be able to understand 95%, but I'd
be having to work hard. Are these all merely dialectal
distinctions?
As has been mentioned, there can be many areas of variation:
syntax, morphology, phonology, lexicon. It doesn't necessarily
take grammatical differences to signify a language distinction
rather than a dialect distinction, though. There can be a lot
of lexical and phonological differences that merit saying that
there is a language distinction. For example, my Eastern
Canadian speech is probably different enough from Inverness
speech that there is potential justification to say that these
are different languages. The criterion being applied is that of
intelligibility, and we simply have to make an arbitrary
decision about what level of intelligibility to use as the
cutoff. In this particular example, though, not many will
actually say that there is a language distinction because in
practice the Scot is clever enough to understand my speech well
enough to get along, and is clever enough that they also master
other varieties of English and can accommodate their lexicon to
something I can understand much better. I still struggle with
the accent, by with my counterparts help, I can get by. In
other words, there are other complicating factors that affect
our decision. And this is where sociolinguistics becomes
relevant.
I won't get into a long discussion of that topic. I'll
summarize by saying that the primary (socio)linguistic
criterion to be applied in saying that there is language
distinction is that of intelligibility, but there are a lot of
other factors that affect whether or not people recognise two
varieties of speech as being distinct languages.
Peter
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