1st Edition

Taming the Vernacular From dialect to written standard language

By Jenny Cheshire, Dieter Stein Copyright 1998
    270 Pages
    by Routledge

    270 Pages
    by Routledge

    Taming the Vernacular: From Dialect to Written Standard Language examines the differences between 'standard' and 'nonstandard' varieties of several different languages. Not only are some of the best-known languages of Europe represented here, but also some that have been less well-researched in the past.
    The chapters address the syntax of Dutch, English, French, Finnish, Galician, German and Spanish. For these languages, and many others, it is the standard varieties on which the most extensive syntactic research has been carried out, with the result that very little is known about the syntax of their dialects or the spoken colloquial varieties.

    The editors of this volume seek to redress the balance by taking a cross-linguistic perspective on the historical development of the standardised varieties. This allows them to identify some common characteristics of spoken language. It also helps the reader to understand the kinds of filtering processes that are involved in standardization, which result in the syntax of spoken colloquial language being different from the syntax of the standard varieties.

    Taming the Vernacular: From Dialect to Written Standard Language is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, particularly those taking courses in sociolinguistics, dialectology, and historical linguistics. The focus on a variety of languages also makes this text suitable for students studying courses which cover the linguistic aspects of European languages.

    1. The syntax of spoken language
    Jenny Cheshire and Dieter Stein
    2. Dialect versus standard language: nature versus culture
    Jaap van Marle
    3. Syntax and varieties
    Dieter Stein
    4. Into and out of the standard language: the particle ni in Finnish
    Maria Vilkuna
    5. Involvement in 'standard' and 'nonstandard' English
    Jenny Cheshire
    6. This, that, yon: on 'three-dimensional' systems
    Gunnel Melchers
    7. Grammatical variation and the avoidance of stress clashes in Northern Low German
    Günter Rohdenburg
    8. Norms made easy: case marking with modal verbs in Finnish
    Lea Laitinen
    9. Articles and number in oral or close-to-oral varieties
    Brigitte Schlieben-Lange
    10. Proscribed collocations with shall and will: the eighteenth century (non-) standard reassessed
    Leslie K. Arnovick
    11. The genitives of the relative pronouns in present-day English
    Aimo Sepp™nen
    12. 'Ah'm going for to give youse a story today': remarks on second plural pronouns in Englishes
    Susan Wright
    13. Strengthening identity: differentiation and change in contemporary Galacian
    Johannes Kabatek
    14. Left dislocation in French: varieties, norm and usage
    Alain Berrendonner and Marie-José Reichler-Béguelin
    15. Dialect variation as a consequence of standardization
    Dieter Wanner
    16. The atternings of nonstandard syntax in German
    Beate Henn-Memmesheimer
    Contributors

    Biography

    Jenny Cheshire is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language variation and coversational narrative. Dieter Stein is Professor at Heinrich Heine University, Germany. His research interests include language development, language and communication in the internet, andthe linguistics of Hypertext.