ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (02/05/85)
John Allen brings up an interesting point: > The larger a speech community is the easier it is to form subgroups that > don't maintain as much contact with other subgroups or even the group as a > whole. These subgroups can then diverge from the main group. Jim Gillogly > mentions the stabilizing influence of television on language. While it is > true that TV will slow down the rate of language change and hinder regional > variation, it will not totally eliminate language change. There is a large body of totally obsolete linguistic literature out there dealing with dialectical divergence. Historically, large language groups split because there was lack of linguistic contact among the speakers. Considering the huge amount of reinforcement supplied by national TV, radio, &c., the traditional tendency for dialects to diverge seems to have been totally wiped out. Children do not learn the language of their parents; they learn the language of their peer group. And today, that peer group is largely an ELECTRONIC one!! That's not to say that language change has stopped. It's simply converging to a single dialect, in which growth is restricted to vocabulary deletions and creations, as heard on the mass media. -michael
doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (02/07/85)
> > ... the stabilizing influence of television on language. While it is > > true that TV will slow down the rate of language change and hinder regional > > variation, it will not totally eliminate language change. > That's not to say that language change has stopped. It's simply converging > to a single dialect, in which growth is restricted to vocabulary deletions > and creations, as heard on the mass media. Creations like the Subject line of these messages? I'd rather have the dialects :-) -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug