From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Subject: Re: Dialects (was Re: Confusions...)
Organization: OSF Research Institute
	<MACRAKIS.92Sep14115248@lakatos.osf.org>
	<Sep14.165319.83388@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
Date: 14 Sep 92 15:12:50

In article <Sep14.015231.21242@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
cc433336@LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Constantinos A. Caroutas) proposed a
definition of 'dialect' as opposed to 'language':

     That there are rules that can convert from one dialect to another of a
     language. Of cource, the rules won't be absolute as there will be
     exceptions. Also, each dialect might have words that are particular to
     it, or words that are considered archaic by the other dialect.

In article <MACRAKIS.92Sep14115248@lakatos.osf.org>, I replied:

   >Nice try, but unfortunately this definition won't work in most of the
   >world.  It _does_ more or less work for Modern Greek dialects because

In article <Sep14.165319.83388@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
cc433336@LANCE.ColoState.Edu, he answers:

   I forgot to mention that said rules should not be too extensive....

   >In other parts of the world, you will discover that there is a
   >continuum of 'dialects' across wide areas where there are many
   >'languages'.  For instance, from Austria to the Netherlands, there are
   >no sharp dividing lines among the local Germanic dialects, although

   This is also true between standard Greek and its dialects, or between
   the dialects in Cyprus (in Paphos, the sigma of the tense infix is omitted
   if preceeded by an "e" sound; ekaqia (I sat) instead of ekaqisa).

My point is that the dialect continuum encompasses several 'languages'
in the Germanic case (and many other cases around the world).  This is
not true of Greek, since there is only one Greek language.
Conversely, there are cases where the 'dialects' are extremely diverse
and hard to relate among themselves or the standard language.
Examples of this are the Italian dialects and the Chinese dialects.

   >There are no 'rules' for converting among these dialects in general,
   >although there are some 'rules' for determining sound changes from the
   >(usually reconstructed) parent language to the daughter languages and

   Indeed, and as long as these rules are apparent and not many, the
   languages in question are dialects of the same language.

Your model is that there is a many-to-one relationship of dialects to
languages, whereas in fact, there is no such clear relationship in
general.  For instance, many of the various dialects spoken in
northwest Germany could equally well be considered as dialects of
German, of Dutch, or of Frisian.

You also assume that the distinction between 'language' and 'dialect'
is a linguistic distinction.  Linguists are generally more cynical: an
often-quoted definition is "A language is a dialect with an army'.
There are many examples of this: Serbian and Croatian are the most
tragic one in the news, but there are many others: Portuguese and
Galician, Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, etc.

   >dialects.  Note in particular in your example of Cypriot that doubled
   >consonants do not exist in the other dialects, so there can be no
   >'rule' converting the other dialects to Cypriot.  Of course, there

   But we do write those double consonants. So, the rule is that in other
   dialects they write them too but don't pronounce them...

As I pointed out, the orthography reflects ancient pronunciation, not
Modern.  So it is not surprising that you can derive dialects from it.
This does not mean you can derive them from each other; information
has been lost.

   The definition of a dialect that I gave is not complete, but this is no
   reason to reject it. One should try to build on it.

You may be interested in reading The Generative Interpretation of
Dialect, by Brian Newton.  He derives various Greek dialects from a
single underlying form.  In the case of Greek, this looks an awful lot
like standard written Greek (modulo the vowel system, which is the
modern, not the ancient one).

	-s