- ‘Dialectological’ is used by Uriel Weinreich, “as the adjective corresponding to ‘diasystem.’” (”Is a Structural Dialectology Possible?” Word, X(1954), 390.) ‘Diasystem’ is the placement of “discrete varieties in a kind of continuum determined by their partial similarities” (ibid., pp. 395). ‘Variety’ is a term, likewise, proposed by Weinreich, to replace ‘dialect’ for “the [latter] concept does not seem to fit into narrowly structural linguistics because it is endowed with spatial or temporal attributes which do not properly belong to a linguistic system as such” (ibid., p. 389). Henceforth, ‘variety’ will be used in this sense.
- Ibid., pp. 395 and 399.
- One interpretation may be suggested which is strictly historical: “Borrowing from different [Old Arabic] dialects was proffered as an explanation for the ‘aḍdad [semantic dipolarity in Classical Arabic], the words with two (real or imaginary) opposite meanings…. These words were employed by one tribe with one meaning and by another with the second. Later on, the tribes became acquainted with each other's usage, and mutual borrowing ensued.” (Chaim Rabin, Ancient West Arabian [London, 1951], p. 9.) The Beiruti-Jiddan phenomenon may be a continuation of an earlier relationship that existed among the tribes.
- See Karl V. Teeter, “Lexicostatistics and Genetic Relationship,” Language, XXXIX (1963), 640–642. It should be pointed out that the two terms cognate and noncontrastive compatible item are not identical, for the former is a historical (etymological) term, while the latter is synchronic; e.g., the words assist (English) and assister (French: ‘to attend’) are termed cognates but not noncontrastive compatible items. In fact, the label non question contrastive compatible item is inapplicable here since two different languages are now under consideration.
- Weinreich, p. 395.
- Ibid., p. 394.
- G. R. Cochrane, “The Australian English Vowels as a Diasystem,” Word, XV (1959)
- William G. Moulton, “The Short Vowel Systems of Northern Switzerland,” Word, XVI (1960), 176.
- Weinreich, p. 392.
- Glenna Ruth Pickford, “American Linguistic Geography: A Sociological Appraisal,” Word, XII (1956), 212.
- See Weinreich, pp. 399–400.
- The varieties used in this example belong to Syro-Lebanese Arabic: Tyre (Ty), Sidon (Sd), Beirut (Br-Ras Beirut, Bm—Mousaytbeh, Ba—Ashrafiyyah), Zahle (Z), Tripoli (Tp), Latakia (L), Damascus (D), Homs (Ho), Hama (Ha), Aleppo (A), and Deir ez-Zor (Dz). The symbol 'used in the data below represents a voiceless glottal stop.
- Unless confusion is to be eliminated, it is not expected that a lexical item (‘orange’ or ‘lemon’) would be borrowed into a variety without some shuffling and adjustment in the lexical system at large. However, on the basis of the above system, it would not be presumptuous to suggest that perhaps a lexical system (the ‘lemon-orange’ system) is borrowed in toto into a variety rather than a simple lexical item in order to avoid utter confusion.
- Václav Polák, “Contributions à l'étude de la notion de langue et de dialecte,” Orbis, III (1954), 89–98, cited in Weinreich, p. 396, n. 13.
- Edward Stankiewicz maintains that “they [lexical differences] reflect ethnic, social and geographic conditions of different areas and lend themselves least to systematization.” See “On Discreteness and Continuity in Structural Dialectology,” Word, XIII (1957), 46. This view does not seem to be sound, since phonological differences likewise may reflect ethnic, social, and geographic conditions. Cf., for example, Haim Blanc, Communal Dialects in Baghdad (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 1–56. It would be more judicious, perhaps, to attribute the difficulty inherent in lexical structural systematization to the very large and highly unmanipulative inventories of lexical systems.
- Stankiewicz, p. 47.
- For further explanation, see Weinreich, p. 397.
- These contrastive compatible sets are yielded by an analytical list which constitutes a representative selection or sample of lexical items.
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