Talk:Diasystem

message: I've overhauled the article to reflect the only meaning of diasystem that I've seen in structural dialectology.  Even if diasystem can be used to mean a language with multiple standards, our article on pluricentric language covers the phenomenon sufficiently.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 07:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sourced meaning

message: AEsos made a censoring, pussyfooting change to my insertion in his first edit of 3 March 2012. In doing so, he clearly misquoted and misrepresented the source. I had written, "Weinreich further lamented that there was hostility between linguists and dialectologists: linguists found the current practice of dialectology "impressionistic" whereas dialectologists found linguistic theory "metaphysical"." AEsos made the silly tonedown: "In addition, there was some perceived incommensurability between dialectology and linguistics; linguists found . . . ." Not only is his tone inappropriate, but "incommensurable" is not even close to what Weinreich (1954) said. W said in his very first two paragraphs: "The stauncher adherents of each discipline claim priority for their own method and charge the others with 'impressionism' and 'metaphysics,' as the case may be; the more pliant are prepared to concede that they are simply studying different aspects of the same reality. This meight seem like a welcome truce in an old controversy, but is it an honorable truce? A compromise induced by fatigue cannot in the long run be satisfactory to either party." Catching the pointless edit five days late, I have reverted it. Dale Chock (talk) 14:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Censoring edit 

message: The discussion page is quiet, though I feel it is warranted that I make fuller justifications for the removals I mentioned above, should Dale or a third party be interested.  These removals are based on failed verification
Claim: generative linguistics "rejects the positing of structural units of a higher order of abstraction than the phoneme" 
:This harkens to claims Dale has made here and elsewhere that it is the shift from structuralist to generativist phonology that is responsible for the rejection of diasystems and diaphonemes, rather than the issue of how representative they are of speaker-hearer competence.  In the article, Dale cited Wells (1982) for this claim.  In the relevant section on panlectal and polylectal phonology (or in the page range Dale identified, seemingly by mistake), Wells does not make broad claims about generative phonology rejecting diasystems/diaphonemes.  
:Wells quotes Luelsdorff (1975) in rejecting grammatical descriptions that are not "'representations of the linguistic competence of individual speaker-hearers...'"  Wells also makes the case that panlectal and broad polylectal grammars should be rejected because they don’t represent speaker-hearer competence.  However, he explicitly states "It does not follow that a degree of polylectalism is to be rejected" since there are speech communities where command of sociolinguistic variation is important.  
:Because even Wells acknowledges that there must be speakers with internal polylectal grammars that allow for style shifting or comprehension between varieties, Wells (1982) not only fails to back up the claim that generative phonology rejects diaphonemes/diasystems but explicitly shows this claim to be false. 
:Moreover, Wells's rejection of broad polylectal grammars is not to be taken as a neutral or uncontested stance of generative linguists.  There is scholarly dispute amongst generativists over that very matter, something that I'm familiar with from editing the diaphoneme article and which is detailed in its cognitive reality section.
Claim: diasystem is now used just "as a convenient expression for multiple related dialects." 
:The first citation Dale used to back this up is Weinreich et al. (1968), specifically section 3.21.  The term is used twice in this section.  Neither time is this definition given:
: The multilayer conception can also be used for purely analytic purposes to represent a language as a “dia-system” composed of member dialects (Weinreich 1954). For the theory to be of significance to historical linguistics, on the other hand, we have specified that the layers which it encompasses, while functionally distinct, be nevertheless functionally available to a group of speakers. 
:Any pair of dialects can be brought under the heading of a single "diasystem"; the operation may be carried out even on areally noncontiguous dialects, and may serve a useful purpose in reconstruction. But it is only when a pair of dialects are jointly available to a group that switches back and forth between them — even if some members of the group only hear one of the styles and never speak it — that the multilayer formulation is relevant to an understanding of language change. 
:Usage of diasystem here is amid discussion of a "multilayer" conception of sociolinguistic variation where multiple systems coexist in a linguistic community.  As can be seen here, diasystems represent an analytic process that unites multiple varieties.
:Even if we were to twist what Weinreich et al. say to infer that they believe diasystem means merely multiple related dialects, it would only serve as an example of usage (and an old one at that), not a broad claim about usage.  Especially considering that this definition is absent in linguistic dictionaries, an example would be insufficient to verify a broader claim about usage like this.
:The next source used, explicitly cited as an example, is (Clouthiade 1997).  Dale's edit described it as covering European Romani dialects, reporting "only an isogloss and a set of interdialectal sound correspondences, not first steps toward a common phonology of all European Romani dialects."  I had trusted Dale's assessment on this summary but the failed verifications above prompted me to take a closer look.  In the first page alone, Dale's claim about usage is blown out of the water:
:Dans cet article, nous nous attacherons à décrire le mécanisme phonologique qui a conduit à la constitution du système dialectal rromani. En effet...il est évident que c'est dans la phonologie et la morphophonologie qu'il convient de rechercher la structure réelle du diasystème rromani car ces deux domaines sont bien plus indépendants des influences externes que ne le sont la phonétique et le lexique. [In this article, we shall describe the phonological mechanism leading to the formation of the Romani dialectal system. Indeed...it is clear that that the real structure of a Romani diasystem should be sought in phonology and morphophonology because these areas are much more independent of external influences than are phonetics and vocabulary.] (p. 113)
:One does not talk of a "structure" of related dialects if they aren't attempting to unite them under one system.  Indeed, Clouthiade even acknowledges Dale's position on the next page, making it clear that the article in question is deliberately contributing to the construction of such a diasystem:
:Nous comparons au contraire ici des systèmes constitués — ignorant donc la réserve de plusieurs linguistes qui affirment que les systèmes phonologiques sont clos sur eux-mêmes et échappent donc à toute comparaison. [On the contrary, we compare here the constituent systems—thus ignoring the reservations of several linguists who claim that phonological systems are closed in on themselves and would thus eschew any comparison.] (p. 114)
:If this isn't enough, the conclusion should vaporize any doubt with its discussion of a common orthography:
:La presque identité phonologique des parlers de départ et de ceux de l'arrivée—en tant que systèmes, constitue sans doute une singularité de la langue rromani et la comparaison mécanique des deux pourrait inciter à bâtir une graphie commune sur ces systèmes formellement semblables... l'écriture diasystématique, dite 'de rassemblement', exprime le dénominateur commun de ces diverses réalisations et permet donc une communication aisée entre eux, chacun lisant selon les règles de réalisation (lecture) spécifiques à son parler, sans porter atteinte aux spécificités de chacun des divers autres parlers. [The close phonological similarity of these original varieties and later ones—as systems—is probably a peculiarity of Romani and a mechanical comparison of the two could lead to basing a common orthography on such formally similar systems...so-called "unifying" diasystemic writing expresses the common denominator of all these realizations and therefore allows easy communication between them, with each reading according to the rules of realization (in reading) specific to their variety, without prejudice to specificities of any other varieties.] (p. 119)
:I could go on.  Once again, the source Dale has used to back up a claim actually says the exact opposite.  Moreover, the article's usage is so blatant that, given Dale's proficiency in linguistics, he could not have read the article and honestly misunderstood it.  It's clear that Dale either did not read the article or deliberately misrepresented it.  Both are untoward scholarly practices. — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 17:33, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Three cases of failed verification

message: this needs to be included68.148.186.93 (talk) 15:39, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Regarding the following passage "/θ/ and /s/, whereas most Western Hemisphere dialects of Spanish have just the latter," the word "all" should replace the word "most" because no variety of Western Hemispheric Spanish has /θ/.S. Valkemirer (talk) 10:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. I just took out "most." — Æµ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 22:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change from "most" to "all"