Diasystem

In dialectology, the term diasystem [Greek dia-, 'cross-', 'across', 'through', 'between'] now denotes multiple related dialects. It is thus a generic term, in the way that 'language' is a generic term and 'English', 'Chinese', 'French' are the names of particular languages. Some scholars use "related" in a far broader sense than other scholars.

The term "diasystem" originally had a different meaning. It was coined by linguist and dialectologist Uriel Weinreich in a 1954 paper as part of an initiative in theorizing aimed at exploring how to extend advances in linguistic theory (which in that period was structuralist) to dialectology. The basic issue was to explain linguistic variation across dialects. In his vision, a particular phenomenon of dialectal divergence would be explained by constructing a "diasystem" which is "a system of a higher level out of the discrete and homogeneous systems that are derived from description". "System" here has the sense as in Saussurian linguistic philosophy, and the scope of a "system" could be the entire grammar or a portion of it (e.g., the inventory of vowel phonemes). A diasystem being a higher order system, its component units of analysis would accordingly be abstractions of a higher order than the units of analysis of the individual systems. For example, just as allophones constitute a phoneme within a dialect, in the "intersystem", as it were, phonemes would constitute a diaphoneme.

Weinreich's paper inspired research to test the proposal. However, the investigations soon proved it to be generally untenable, at least under structuralist theory. With the advent of generative theory circa 1960, researchers tried developing diasystemic explanations applying the generative approach instead. However, this also failed theoretically. The followup to Weinreich (1954) 14 years later used the term just once (not counting footnotes). Since the 1970s, therefore, the use of the term diasystem has not implied a unifying level or order of grammatical structure. Neither the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2003 edition) nor the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, (second edition, 2006) mention the terms diasystem or diaphoneme in their indexes.

According to some leading sociolinguists, the diasystem idea for incorporating variation into linguistic theory has been superseded by the Labovian innovation of the linguistic variable.

Research into Weinreich's diasystem concept

The starting point

Weinreich (1954) addressed the problem for linguistic theory of describing and explaining variation between dialects. Linguists up to that time chose to declare variation as outside of the scope of the linguist's task of constructing a grammar of the dialect or language. Weinreich further lamented that there was hostility between linguists and dialectologists: linguists found the current practice of dialectology "impressionistic" whereas dialectologists found linguistic theory "metaphysical". Weinreich's suggestion was to extend the structuralist theory of the grammar of a single vernacular, with such concepts as complementary distribution, to the description of regular correspondences between different dialects. Different dialects would be described by a supergrammar, as it were, consistent with the individual grammars of all the member dialects. Weinreich coined the term "diasystem" (in effect, intersystem or cross-system) for the proposed higher level analysis. He immediately added that if a reader didn't like that coinage, they could call it a "supersystem" instead. In accordance with structural linguistics theory, since a diasystem is at a higher level of abstraction that its member systems (grammars or grammar portions), the units of a diasystemic analysis correspondingly have to be at a higher level of abstraction than the units of analysis for a system. In fact, the term diaphoneme had already been introduced into linguistic theory. Weinreich exemplified the diasystemic approach by an arrangement of phoneme correspondences in three dialects of Yiddish.

In this short paper Weinreich did not elaborate the diasystemic approach. He did consider in detail the theoretical pitfalls to be avoided. He identified two distinct aspects of describing the phonemes of a single dialect: listing the inventory, and listing the "distribution" of each phoneme. (Other researchers correct this bipartite breakdown of the task to a tripartite breakdown of inventory, distribution, and incidence; see below.) By "distribution", he meant phonotactics. (An example of phonotactics from English that in some dialects of English, the phoneme /r/ can occur at the end of a syllable (colloquially known as "postvocalic r"), i.e., either before a consonant or at the end of a word, while in other dialects ("r-less dialects") this is not allowed.) He repeated the structuralist tenet that in regard to an individual unit of analysis (e.g., a phoneme), we must not look only at the mere fact of its existence in the grammar, but also its systemic roles, as defined by its "oppositions" (contrasts) to fellow units. He recognized that when successive events of phonetic or phonemic merging and splitting have dissimilar results across dialects, this would pose a big problem for the attempt to arrive at a diasystem. Finally, he cautioned against positing a diasystem (e.g., a set of diaphonemes) when the work of creating all the member systems (e.g., the work of phonemicization) was yet incomplete.

Critiques

Trubetzkoy in 1931 had proposed the following types of sound difference: differences in phoneme inventory; differences in "distribution" (i.e., phonotactics), differences in the phonetic realization of phonemes; and differences in the incidence of phonemes. "Incidence" refers to distribution of phonemes across the vocabulary (in particular, which phonemes occur in which member words of a interdialectal lexical correspondence set).

A few linguists (in particular Cochrane (1959) and Moulton (1960)) took up the challenge of Weinreich (1954), and "as was very soon pointed out, the inadequacy of the diasystem as used by Weinreich is in its neglect of all phonological aspects except phonemic inventory". Some of the failures had been anticipated by Weinreich himself, as described above. Moulton (1960) found an extreme example of divergent incidence in a study of two dialects of Swiss German, Luzerner and Appenzeller, which evolved independently of each other. He reported that phonetically speaking, although each dialect seems to have the same set of eleven short vowel phonemes, only one pair of phonetically identical vowels, /i/ ~ /i/, is in lexical correspondence, i.e., are diachronically equal, have a common parent vowel in earlier stages of German. The remaining phonetic similarities between the Luzerner and Appenzeller phoneme sets are fortuitous results of multiple mergers and splits that each dialect underwent.

Pulgram (1964), examining Cochrane (1959) and Moulton (1960), noted not only the need for refinements in the original proposal, but that perhaps different researchers had not agreed on definitions, disciplines of study, and objects of inquiry. For extensive theoretical discussion of the implications of Cochrane and Moulton for the original diasystem idea, see Pulgram (1964), and Francis (1983).

Subsequent use

Trudgill (1974), in a book length sociolinguistic study of the dialect of one medium sized English city, his hometown of Norwich, called it the "Norwich diasystem". But as a critic of Weinreich's original suggestion, he was using "diasystem" in a different sense. Norwich is in fact dialectally homogeneous. However, Trudgill concluded from his investigations that this single "variety" (as he termed it) of English embraces a great diversity and variability of sociologically conditioned linguistic variables. Most speakers of this dialect can vary their pronunciation of each variable depending on the circumstances in which they are speaking. This scholar chose to summarize this variability and versatility with the term "diasystem".

Nowadays "diasystem" is used as a convenient expression for multiple related dialects. For example, a 1996 paper on the "diasystem of Romani", whose scope is European dialects of Romani, reports only an isogloss and a set of interdialectal sound correspondences.

Works consulted

• Auer, Peter; Di Luzio, Aldo (1988). "Introduction. Variation and convergence as a topic in dialectology and sociolinguistics". In Auer, Peter; Di Luzio, Aldo. Variation and convergence: studies in social dialectology. Sociolinguistics and language contact. 4. pp. 1-10. 
• Chambers, J. K.; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Clouthiade, Marcel (1997). "Quelques aspects du diasystème phonologique de la langue rromani". Faits de langue 5 (10): 113-120. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/flang_1244-5460_1997_num_5_10_1175.  (This author uses the Albanian language spelling, Rromani.)
• De Schutter, Georges (2010). "Dialectology". In Fried, Mirjam; Östman, Jan-Ola; Verscheuren, Jef. Variation and change: pragmatic perspectives. Handbook of pragmatics highlights. 6. John Benjamins. pp. 73-80. 
• Francis, W. N. [Winthrop Nelson] (1983). Dialectology: an introduction. Longman linguistics library. 29. Longman. 
• Petyt, K. M. (1980). The study of dialect : an introduction to dialectology. The language library. A. Deutsch.  Published simultaneously in Boulder, Colorado by Westview Press. The chapter, "Other recent approaches", which discusses generative explanations and the lect theory of Bickerton, was anthologized in Harold B. Allen, Michael D. Linn, eds., 1986, Dialect and language variation, Academic Press.
• Pulgram, Ernst (1964). "Structural comparison, diasystems, and dialectology". Linguistics 2 (4): 66-82. 
• Trudgill, Peter (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge studies in linguistics. 13. Cambridge University Press. 
• Weinreich, Uriel (1954). "Is a structural dialectology possible?". Word 10: 388-400. http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~ddurian/AWAC/weinreich%201954.pdf. 
• Weinreich, Uriel; Labov, William; Herzog, Marvin (1968). "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change". In Lehmann, Winfred P.; Malkiel, Yakov. Directions for historical linguistics: a symposium. University of Texas Press. pp. 97-195. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/hist05.html. 

Further reading

• Cochrane, G. R. (1959). "The Australian English vowels as a diasystem". Word 15: 69-88. 
• Francescato, Giuseppe (1965a). "Structural comparison, diasystems, and dialectology". Zeitschrift für romanische philologie 81: 484-491. 
• Francescato, Giuseppe (1965b). "Struttura linguistica e dialetto". In Straka, G.. Actes du Xe congrès international de linguistique et philologie. Klincksieck. pp. 1011-1017. 
• Moulton, William G. (1960). "The short vowel systems of Northern Switzerland: a study in structural dialectology". Word 37: 155-182. 
• Moulton, William G. (1968). "Structural dialectology". Language 44: 451-466.