LIN-406-Dialectol. UD

LIN 406 "Dialectology"

(Course taught in 2010-2011)

24 hours, Semester A (UDUS) 

Objectives

The main objective of the course is to explore the relationship between the dialects of a language by exploring the types of dialectal variations, how they may arise, and their spatial layout. Students will also have the opportunity to conduct surveys on the practices or attitudes of speakers regarding dialects. At the end of the course, it is hoped that students will themselves eventually adjust their perceptions and attitudes towards the dialects of their language of interest.

Target students

Undergraduate students in linguistics.

Contents

The course reviews the basic notions in dialectology, the difficulties in defining what constitutes a language or a dialect as well as the types of variations handled in dialectology and their correlations with extralinguistic factors. The course also reviews the development of dialectological studies (traditional, dialectometrical, and sociolinguistic approaches) and their importance for linguistics as a whole. Most the course will then deal with the traditional (geography) dialectology, the survey methods and the representations of the variables. The Hausa situation will most often be used as illustration for the key notions. The course will also look at the possible accounts for language change and briefly revisit the social and psychological implications of dialectal differences.

Tasks and evaluation

Students must participate in all class sessions, unless they have a valid excuse. As part of their evaluation, students, in groups of no more than 10 people, will collect and analyze dialectal data (comparing dialects based on some recorded text), or conduct questionnaire-based surveys in the Sokoto area on dialectal variables and the attitude of speakers towards dialects. There will also be the regular assessments and the final exam.

Selected bibliography

Bisang, Walter (2004). Dialectology and typology: An integrative perspective. In: Kortmann, Bernd. ed. Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a crosslinguistic perspective, 11 – 45. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Campbell, Lyle (1999). Historical linguistics: An introduction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Chambers, J.K. & Peter Trudgill (2004). Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clua, Esteve & Maria-Rosa Lloret (2006). New tendencies in geographical dialectology: The Catalan Corpus Oral Dialectal (COD). In: New perspectives on Romance linguistics: Vol. II: Phonetics, phonology and dialectology, Ed. by Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil, 31–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Trudgill, Peter (1999). Dialect contact, dialectology and sociolinguistics. Cuadernos de Filologia Inglesa 8:1-8.

Zaria, Bello A. (1982). Issues in Hausa dialectology. UMI Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington.