Dialectology Meets Typology: Dialect Grammar from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective (review)

Bernd Kortmann laid the groundwork for Dialectology meets typology (DMT) at the 1997 World Congress of Linguists, handpicked authors (half of whom attended his dialectology and typology workshop at METHODS XI), and edited this work meticulously (I found only three minor typos). His labors have resulted in an exceptionally cohesive, eminently readable volume.

DMT showcases the benefits of dialectology-typology integration. This common theme dominates each paper: Yaron Matras (‘Typology, dialectology and the structure of complementation in Romani’, 277–304) writes ‘Typology would benefit from including … spoken varieties unaffected by prescriptivist-induced changes’ (277); Raphael Berthele (‘Typology of motion and posture verbs’, 93–128) declares dialectology must address universal issues of typology to advance from the ‘hunter-gatherer’ stage.

Dialectology-typology integration is DMT’s overarching theme, but integration of creolistics and sociolinguistics are close seconds. Creoles, like dialects, are largely oral varieties unaffected by the prescriptivist influences that affect written standards and are excellent typology exemplars in K’s metric. DMT, however, juxtaposes English creoles with (other) Germanic varieties, a comparison seldom seen in creolistics papers. Bernd Kortmann (‘Do as a tense and aspect marker in varieties of English’, 245–76) doubts English creoles can be considered a special type of language based on typology alone and suggests they are better labeled as Germanic varieties. Peter Siemund (‘Substrate, superstrate and universals: Perfect constructions in Irish English’, 401–34) acknowledges typology’s usefulness in the substrate-superstrate debate, but questions the debate’s crosslinguistic relevance, since typologically interesting parts of contact languages are those items not belonging to substrate or superstrate. Critiques of sociolinguistics continue in similar vein: J. K. Chambers (‘Dynamic typology and vernacular universals’, 127–45) calls for sociolinguists to move beyond preoccupation with individual communities and search for crosslinguistic, typological generalizations with universal application. DMT issues an ‘invitation’ to typologists but throws down the gauntlet to dialectologists, creolists, and sociolinguists.

K regards emphasis on Germanic dialects (fourteen papers out of nineteen) as beneficial, since dialectology has its longest tradition in study of Germanic dialects. While DMT seldom ventures far from Indo-European (IE), it does address several typologically unique European languages: Matras covers Romani, one of few languages without an accepted standard or prestige dialect; Chambers discusses contact English spoken on Tristan da Cunha, an isolated island society with negligible social stratification.

DMT should be a good supplementary reader for general, socio-, and historical linguistics courses at graduate and undergraduate levels. Students will appreciate the frequent use of illustrative examples from varieties of English and other familiar IE languages. There are also easily understood examples of the application of theory, such as markedness reversal in Lieselotte Anderwald’s ‘Local markedness as a heuristic tool in dialectology: The case of amn’t’ (47–68), optimality theory in Guido Seiler’s ‘On three types of dialect variation’ (365–99), and implicational hierarchies in Chambers’s paper. There is insufficient space to laud each paper individually, but I unreservedly recommend this volume.