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Definition of Dialect

Dialect is defined as a version of a language that varies in grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary from other forms of the same language. Dialect includes terms that together define its meaning. Dialectology, dialect geography, and linguistic geography are three related components that provide context for dialect. Dialect can indicate where a speaker is from, ranging broadly from a country to a specific city or town within a country. Dialects convey geographical information about speakers but can also describe the language being studied.

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2K views

Definition of Dialect

Dialect is defined as a version of a language that varies in grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary from other forms of the same language. Dialect includes terms that together define its meaning. Dialectology, dialect geography, and linguistic geography are three related components that provide context for dialect. Dialect can indicate where a speaker is from, ranging broadly from a country to a specific city or town within a country. Dialects convey geographical information about speakers but can also describe the language being studied.

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1.

1 DEFINITION OF DIALECT
Dialect is defined, by Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, as a version of language differing
in some aspects of grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary from other forms of the same
language." Dialect includes various terms that as a whole define the meaning. Dialectology,
dialect geography and linguistic geography are three components that correlate with dialect.
The traditional study of dialectology has focused on regional dialects but has evolved to include
social and geographical placement.
Dialect often answers the question, Where are they from? Because of the different areas
and locales, the answer could begin as broad as "America" and filter down to be as specific as
"The United States," the "South," "Georgia," and "Macon." Dialects can convey geographical
information about the speaker, but can go further when describing what language is being
studied.( Jamie Burney, Jennifer Pittman, Rebekah Revels, Marisa Suggs, Jared West, Andrea
Wright, Students, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke)

1.2 DEFINITION OF ACCENT


According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), accent came from Latin Ad to +
cantus singing, which came from Greek, which literally meant, song added to. This indicates
that the Greeks saw accent as a distinct difference of musical pitch in pronouncing the syllables
of a word (Dion. Hal., n.d. as cited in Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). This term's meaning has
split two ways since then: One can understand it in terms of (1) stress or (2) a mode of
utterance (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, 2nd and 3rd definitions). Accent gained its stress
meaning due to language change. As Greek evolved it lost its "musical accent" and the stress
accent has remained as a substitute for [it] (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). The same
language change took place in Italian, Spanish, German, and English (Oxford English
Dictionary, 1989). Swedish and Norwegian however have maintained musical accent in their
languages (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).
The mode of utterance definition came because as the Oxford English Dictionary
(1989) explains, a varied utterance might consis[t] mainly in a prevailing quality of tone, [a]
peculiar alteration of pitch, but may [also] include mispronunciation of vowels or consonants,
misplacing the stress, and misinflection [sic] of a sentence. Such systematic variances can
identify where a person is from (e.g. a German accent) (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).

TASK 1

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