Diasystem

In the field of structural dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar^[1] is an analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties.^[2] Overwhelmingly, diasystems focus on sounds between varieties, though morphological and syntactic diasystems are possible.^[3]

The term diasystem was popularized by Uriel Weinreich, who advocated considering discrete varieties^[4] as members of a linguistic continuum, and uniting related varieties into a single description; such systems, he argued, can represent a higher level of abstraction than phonemic systems.^[5]

Related to this was efforts in American dialectology and generative phonology to construct an "overall system" that represented the underlying representation for all dialects of English. An example of this was the diaphonemic analysis,^[6][7] made by Trager & Smith (1951),^[8] that presumably all American varieties could fit.^[9]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low	æ	a	ɔ

Six of the nine simple vowels in this diasystem are common across most dialects: /i/ occurs in pit, /e/ in pet, /æ/ in pat, /ə/ in putt, /u/ in put, and /ɔ/ in pot. The other three are found in specific dialects or dialect groups: /o/ represents the vowel of rod in Scottish English and road in New England varieties; /ɨ/ represents both an unstressed schwa as well as a vowel that appears in stressed syllables in words like just (when it means 'only'); and /a/ represents the vowel of pot in American dialects.^[10]

These nine simple vowels can then be combined with any of three offglides (/j h w/^[11]) to make 36 possible complex nuclei. This system was popular amongst American linguists (despite criticism, particularly from Hans Kurath^[12]) until Sledd (1966) demonstrated its inadequacy.^[13] It nevertheless triggered a surge of academic work that used it in applied linguistics (e.g. for ESL education materials, composition texts for native speakers, basic linguistics texts, and in the application of linguistics to literary criticism).^[14]

Diasystems are also possible in dictionaries. For example, the Macquarie Dictionary reflects the pronunciation of four phonetically distinct sociolects of Australian English. Since these sociolects are the same phonemically, readers (at least, those from Australia) can interpret the system as representing their own accent.^[15]

While a useful tool in dialectology, the phenomenon may also represent speakers' actual linguistic repertoire in certain sociolinguistic circumstances. For example, Cadora (1970:15) argues that Modern Literary Arabic is a diasystem of various interference phenomena occurring when speakers of different Arabic varieties attempt to speak or read Literary Arabic.

Cognitively real diasystems are not limited to humans. Crows are able to distinguish between different calls that prompt others to disperse, assemble, or rescue; these calls show regional variation so that French crows do not understand recorded American calls. While captive birds show difficulty understanding the calls of birds from nearby regions, those allowed to migrate are able to understand calls from both, suggesting that they have mentally constructed a diasystem that enables them to understand both call systems.^[16]

See also

• Dialect continuum
• Einar Haugen
• Generative linguistics

Notes

1. ^ Hill & Hill (1980:346), attributing the term "polylectal grammar" to Bailey (1973) and Bickerton (1976).
2. ^ Trask (1996:112)
3. ^ Nagara (1972:49), citing Pulgram (1964:78)
4. ^ Weinreich also proposed the use of variety to replace dialect as it was commonly used at the time. Cadora (1976:404)
5. ^ Weinreich (1954:390), cited in Nagara (1972:50, 56) and Cadora (1976:404)
6. ^ McDavid (1952:383)
7. ^ Stockwell (1959:265–6), citing Weinreich (1954:395), argues that Trager & Smith (1951) do not present a truly diaphonemic inventory of sounds because it includes oppositions without considering the effects of phonetic context; in a diaphonemic inventory, a set of general rules should suffice to recover phonetic data so that there is a modicum of phonetic integrity. Few scholars make this distinction.
8. ^ Allen (1977:224) points to earlier works by these authors as approaching the same goal but in less detail
9. ^ Trager & Smith (1951:9)
10. ^ Swadesh (1947:142)
11. ^ Whorf (1943) proposed that centering diphthongs and vowel length were contextual variants of syllable-final /r/ rather than /h/ (Swadesh (1947:146)).
12. ^ e.g. Kurath (1957)
13. ^ cited in Allen (1977:224–225)
14. ^ Stockwell (1959:259)
15. ^ Algeo (1988:162)
16. ^ Frings & Frings (1959), cited in Sebeok (1963:456)

References

• Algeo, John (1988), "[Untitled review of The Macquarie Dictionary]", American Speech 63 (2): 159–163 
• Allen, Harold B. (1977), "Regional dialects, 1945-1974", American Speech 52 (3/4): 163–261 
• Bailey, Charles-James N. (1973), Variation and Linguistic Theory, Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics 
• Bickerton, Derek (1976), Dynamics of a Creole System, New York: Cambridge University Press 
• Cadora, Frederic J. (1970), "Some linguistic concomitants of contactual factors of urbanization", Anthropological Linguistics 12 (1): 10–19 
• Cadora, Frederic J. (1976), "Contrastive compatibility in some Arabic dialects and their classification", Anthropological Linguistics 18 (9): 393–407 
• Frings, H.; Frings, M. (1959), "The language of crows", Scientific American 201 (5): 119–131 
• Hill, Jane H.; Hill, Kenneth C. (1980), "Mixed grammar, purist grammar, and language attitudes in modern Nahuatl", Language in Society 9 (3): 321–348 
• Kurath, Hans (1957), "The binary interpretation of English vowels: A critique", Language 33 (2): 111–122 
• McDavid, Raven, Jr. (1952), "[untitled review of The Phoneme: Its Nature and Use by Daniel Jones]", Language 28 (3): 377–386 
• Nagara, Susumu (1972), "Japanese Pidgin English in Hawaii: A Bilingual description", Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications (University of Hawaii Press) 9: i, iii-v, vii-xvi, 1, 3–322 
• Pulgram, Ernst (1964), "Structural comparison, diasystems, and dialectology", Linguistics 2 (4): 66–82 
• Sebeok, Thomas (1963), "[untitled review]", Language 39 (3): 448–466 
• Sledd, James H. (1966), "Breaking, umlaut, and the southern drawl", Language 42 (1): 18–41 
• Stockwell, Robert (1959), "Structural dialectology: A proposal", American Speech 34 (4): 258–268 
• Swadesh, Morris (1947), "On the analysis of English syllabics", Language 23 (2): 137–150 
• Trager, George L.; Smith, Henry L, Jr. (1951), An outline of English structure, Studies in Linguistics occasional papers, 3, Norman, OK: Battenberg Press 
• Trask, Robert L. (1996), A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology, London: Routledge 
• Weinreich, Uriel (1954), "Is a structural dialectology possible?", Word 10: 388–400 
• Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1943), "Phonemic analysis of the English of Eastern Massachusetts", SIL 2: 1–40