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Variation and Change in Language Norm
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Variation and Change in Language Norm

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 21283

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Joan Costa-Carreras

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, 138. 08018 Barcelona, Spain
Interests: comparative standardology; language change; language corpus planning; language corpus planning evaluation; language variation; language norm; prescriptive grammar
Dr. Carla Amorós Negre

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Spanish Language, University of Salamanca, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
Interests: acquisition and learning; language teaching and curriculum design; language policy and planning; sociolinguistics; language prescription and standardization; anthropological linguistics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a call for papers on the Issue of variation and change in language norm. By “variation” we mean geographical, sociocultural, historical, functional, or stylistic diversity; “change” refers to the evolution by adding, transforming, or losing features; “language” covers all the linguistic varieties regardless of their degree of codification and standardization in general; and “norm” includes both objective implicit social habits and prescriptive explicit codifications.

All theoretical and methodological frames are welcome. Comparative analyses (of how different theoretical or methodological approaches address variation or change, comparative analyses of languages, etc.) will be especially appreciated.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution to the Guest Editors ([email protected]; [email protected]) or to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 31 May 2021
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 30 June 2021
  • Full manuscript deadline: 30 November 2021

References

Amorós Negre, Carla (2019). “Los procesos de restandarización lingüística en la hispanofonía: prescripción y norma mediática de la CNN en español”. En: Greuβlich, Sebastian / Lebsanft, Franz (Eds.): El pluricentrismo de la cultura lingüística hispánica. Reflejos en los medios de comunicación masiva. Editorial: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht unipress

Ayres-Bennett (2019). “From Haugen’s codifcation to Thomas’s purism: assessing the role of description and prescription, prescriptivism and purism in linguistic standardisation”. A: Language Policy , s. num., doi.org/10.1007/s10993-019-09521-4.

Cerruti, Massimo; Crocco, Claudia et al. (2017) Towards a New Standard: Theoretical and Empirical Studies on the Restandardization of Italian. London /New York: De Gruyter.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2019). “És la “variació lingüística social” una categoria operativa per a la planificació lingüística de corpus?” [‘Is social linguistic variation a useful category for language corpus planning?’]. Caplletra, 67 (Tardor 2019), p. 93-113.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2020). “La relació entre l’estàndard i els dialectes en català: una visió des de l’equitat” ['The relationship between the standard and the dialects in Catalan: the equity viewpoint']. A: Boix, Emili; Perea, Maria Pilar (ed.). Llengua i dialectes: esperances per al català, gallec i basc, Barcelona, Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, p. 75-103.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2020). “La gestión de la variación lingüística en vasco y en A Fala del Valle de Jálama: “policéntrica” o “composicional”?”. Études romanes de Brno, 41, 1, p. 85-98.

Costa-Carreras, J. (2020/2021?). “Compositionality, Pluricentricity, and Pluri-areality in the Catalan Standardisation”. In: Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio; Martines, Vicent ed. (2020/2021?) History of Catalonia and Its Implications for Contemporary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict. Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA: IGI Global, p. 182-197.

Dollinger, Stephan (2019). The Pluricentricity Debate. On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties. Vancouver: Routledge.

Joseph, J. E. (1987). Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard

Koch, Peter; Oesterreicher, Wulf (2007). Lengua hablada en la Romania: español, francés, italiano. Madrid: Gredos. [Spanish translation from the original Gesprochene Sprache in der Romania: Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch, 1990.]

Kristiansen, Tore/Coupland, Nikolas (Eds.) (2011). Standard languages and language standards in a changing Europe. Oslo: Novus.

Lebsanft, Franz/ Tacke, Felix (eds.) (2020): Manual of Standardization in the Romance Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Lenz, Alexandra N.; Plewnia, Albrecht (Eds.) (2010). Grammar between Norm and Variation. Varolingua. Nonstandard- Standard- Substandard, 40. Frankfurt am Main/ Berlin/ New York: Peter Lang.

Pradilla, Miquel Àngel (2015). La catalanofonia: Una comunitat del segle XXI a la recerca de la normalitat lingüística. [‘The Catalanophonie: a XXIst century community looking for linguistic normality’] Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Pradilla Cardona, Miquel Àngel (2020). “Social and Functional Variation in Catalan”. In: Argenter, Joan A.; Lüdtke; Jens. Manual of Catalan Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 397-420.

Walsh, Olivia (2016). Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dr. Joan Costa-Carreras
Dr. Carla Amorós Negre
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • change
  • chronodialects
  • codification
  • comparison
  • compositionality
  • dialects
  • geolects
  • pluri-arealism
  • pluricentricity
  • registers
  • social norms
  • sociolects
  • standards
  • styles
  • variation
  • varieties

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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6 pages, 360 KiB  
Editorial
PRESENTATION of SPECIAL ISSUE: Variation and Change in Language Norms in Languages
by Carla Amorós-Negre and Joan Costa-Carreras
Languages 2022, 7(2), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020145 - 6 Jun 2022
Viewed by 1960
Abstract
This Special Issue (SI) sheds light on the relationship between geographical, sociocultural, historical, functional, or stylistic variation and language norms, understanding by these both objective implicit social habits and prescriptive explicit codifications [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

17 pages, 465 KiB  
Article
The Transgression of Word-Formation Rules as a Sign of Linguistic Change in Catalan: The Case of -isme, -itis, and -metre
by Elisabet Llopart-Saumell
Languages 2022, 7(2), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020127 - 19 May 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3618
Abstract
In Catalan, -isme ‘-ism’, -itis, and -metre ‘-meter’ create new words that do not follow the WFRs described in grammar books and dictionaries. As a result, these lexical innovations, such as panxacontentisme (panxacontent ‘carefree’ + -ism ‘-ism’), [...] Read more.
In Catalan, -isme ‘-ism’, -itis, and -metre ‘-meter’ create new words that do not follow the WFRs described in grammar books and dictionaries. As a result, these lexical innovations, such as panxacontentisme (panxacontent ‘carefree’ + -ism ‘-ism’), titulitis (títol ‘certificate’ + ‘-itis’), and emocionòmetre (emoció ‘emotion’ + -metre ‘-meter’), tend to be considered transgressive. The main aim of this paper is to provide a close review of grammar books and dictionaries among other sources to compare the rules described in the literature and the data provided by the bank of neologisms of the Observatori de Neologia. Since language changes and variations are inherent phenomena of any living language, the deviation experienced by these bound morphemes could be conceived as an example of linguistic change and not only as a one-time transgression. In addition, in order to check whether these linguistic changes are specific to the Catalan language, I reviewed some English, French, and Spanish literature. Finally, a set of diachronic corpora, that covers the time span from the 11th century until the present day, is used to study the first examples of these phenomena in the Catalan language. The results point out that in Catalan, these changes can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, and that they cannot be considered language-specific, since they affect the different languages under study. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)
33 pages, 3810 KiB  
Article
In Between Description and Prescription: Analysing Metalanguage in Normative Works on Dutch 1550–1650
by Machteld de Vos
Languages 2022, 7(2), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020089 - 6 Apr 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3564
Abstract
This paper is the first to perform a systematic quantitative analysis of the arguments used to motivate selections in grammatical entries from normative works on Standard Dutch written between ca. 1550 and 1650. Thus, it aims to obtain insight into what language ideologies [...] Read more.
This paper is the first to perform a systematic quantitative analysis of the arguments used to motivate selections in grammatical entries from normative works on Standard Dutch written between ca. 1550 and 1650. Thus, it aims to obtain insight into what language ideologies were characteristic of this early modern period, what these reveal about how Standard Dutch took shape in its initiating phase, and what the differences are between the codification of Dutch in the early modern period (16th/17th century) and the (post)modern period (20th/21st century; analysed in earlier studies). Although certain issues within the annotation method need to be addressed in future research, the results indicate that the following principles were particularly characteristic of the early modern period: for Dutch to be a good language in terms of its grammar, it ought to differentiate, display consistency, mirror Latin and Greek, and reflect the use of certain authorities. These linguistic principles form the roots of the part of the Dutch standard language ideology (SLI; which, as previous research has shown, came into existence in the decades around 1800) that connects ‘language’ with ‘norm’ and that bestows value on the language’s regularity. However, the additional connection to social identity, that forms a second and crucial part of the SLI, played no major part in the arguments used in this time period yet. Moreover, two important differences between the early modern period and the (post)modern period were found: (1) the latter period showed a higher degree of consensus and therefore of canonisation of the normative discourse than the former period; (2) the nature of the metalanguage used in normative publications was explicitly prescriptive in the later period but mostly ostensibly descriptive/implicitly prescriptive in the earlier period. This indicates that, in terms of the metalanguage used, the normative discourse in the formative period of Standard Dutch was in between description and prescription. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)
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26 pages, 1882 KiB  
Article
Language Norm and Usage Change in Catalan Discourse Markers: The Case of Contrastive Connectives
by Maria-Josep Cuenca
Languages 2022, 7(1), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010066 - 14 Mar 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2807
Abstract
Language norms are dynamic conventions that change over time. In the case of Catalan, the 20th century represents a critical codification period. In this paper, the author discusses the influence of internal and external factors on the evolution of four connectives mainly used [...] Read more.
Language norms are dynamic conventions that change over time. In the case of Catalan, the 20th century represents a critical codification period. In this paper, the author discusses the influence of internal and external factors on the evolution of four connectives mainly used in formal (written) communication (nogensmenys ‘nonetheless’, emperò ‘but’, no obstant (això) ‘nevertheless’ and tanmateix ‘however’), which have experienced remarkable change during the 20th century. Three sources of information are considered: dictionaries, grammars, and corpus examples (from Corpus Textual Informatitzat de la Llengua Catalana) in the period 1904–2013. The review of dictionaries and grammars shows that descriptions and norms change over time. The corpus reveals the impact of prescription on the use of the connectives in formal registers. The basic research question asks: to what extent do linguistic and socio-cultural factors have an influence on change in the field of connectives and how do norms and formal use interact? The analysis shows that external factors (i.e., bilingual context and codification processes) in correlation with internal ones (i.e., paradigmatic relations) affect both linguistic change and norm change. The evolution of the four connectives analyzed is the result of a changing language norm forbidding or encouraging the use of certain forms, almost always triggered by an intent to compensate for the influence of the dominant language, Spanish. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)
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12 pages, 6701 KiB  
Article
Hypercorrection as a Symptom of Language Change: Majorcan Catalan Standard Pronunciation
by Nicolau Dols
Languages 2022, 7(1), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010057 - 3 Mar 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3206
Abstract
The mutual influence between dialects and standard language in terms of upward or downward convergence, the creation of a diaglossic repertoire, and a typology of relations dialects/standard is of utmost importance for the analysis of language evolution. Majorcan Catalan is an eastern Catalan [...] Read more.
The mutual influence between dialects and standard language in terms of upward or downward convergence, the creation of a diaglossic repertoire, and a typology of relations dialects/standard is of utmost importance for the analysis of language evolution. Majorcan Catalan is an eastern Catalan dialect, traditionally considered as archaic. Data from television programs show a tendency to adapt pronunciation to a standard mainly based on central Catalan dialects, even disregarding concessions granted by the prescriptive grammar. This article is focused on the causes of this centripetal movement and on the function either accelerating or decelerating of (para)prescriptive works in the process. Data from an annotated oral corpus (Corpus Oral de la Llengua Catalana) are used. The results are consistent with a centripetal movement in the construction of the standard Catalan as used in formal registers in the Balearic Islands. A proposal is made for the interpretation of the relevant data as evidence of an evolution from a gliding access to standard to a shifting access. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)
18 pages, 398 KiB  
Article
Are We Indeed So Illuded? Recency and Frequency Illusions in Dutch Prescriptivism
by Marten van der Meulen
Languages 2022, 7(1), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010042 - 22 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3688
Abstract
In 2005, Arnold Zwicky posited two misapprehensions about language: the Recency Illusion, or the false idea that certain language variation is new, and the Frequency Illusion, the erroneous belief that a particular word or phrase occurs often. Since their conception, these concepts have [...] Read more.
In 2005, Arnold Zwicky posited two misapprehensions about language: the Recency Illusion, or the false idea that certain language variation is new, and the Frequency Illusion, the erroneous belief that a particular word or phrase occurs often. Since their conception, these concepts have received widespread attention in popular scientific linguistics, but quantitative research investigating their application is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical investigation of Zwicky’s proposed illusions. It does so by collecting statements about recency (‘this word is new’) and frequency (‘this construction occurs often’) from a database of Dutch prescriptive publications (1900–2018). I assessed their accuracy by comparing them to linguistic sources, including dictionaries, and usage corpora and other data. Our research showed that recency statements were rare, but that frequency statements, especially using high frequency terms such as vaak (‘often’), were commonplace. Compared to usage, most prescriptive recency and frequency statements for both lexis and grammar indeed constituted Zwickian illusions. This seems partly due to genuine erroneous or unsupported beliefs by authors, but also partly to prescriptive genre conventions and rhetorical choices. Our explorative research highlights the complex usage–prescriptivism interface, and argues for more research into this aspect of language perceptions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Variation and Change in Language Norm)
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