Idiolects

Ce travail revisite la question de l’absence de ne en français actuel. Cette absence serait corrélée à des facteurs phonologiques, syntaxiques et pragmatiques selon les nombreuses études qui y sont consacrées. L’étude que nous présentons est fondée sur une approche novatrice qui considère la production de locuteurs particuliers. L’examen des productions de quatre locuteurs du CFPP2000 et leur comparaison permettent de vérifier la pertinence des facteurs allégués. Alors que la dimension phonétique n’intervient pas de façon constante, la nature du sujet de la proposition est significative à travers les idiolectes : par ordre d’importance, un clitique, un relatif et un démonstratif sont liés à l’absence de ne. En outre, la considération des facteurs pragmatique d’emphase et d’atténuation permet d’observer des différences entre locuteurs : dans deux idiolectes, une atténuation du type pas vraiment amène l’absence de ne, l’emphase du type pas du tout ayant le même résultat dans la pratique d’un de ces locuteurs. La discussion des cas inattendus permet d’envisager l’intrication des facteurs syntaxiques et pragmatiques : l’emploi de ne dans des contextes habituellement corrélés à son absence semble être motivé par des dimensions pragmatiques d’emphase au sens large. Enfin, les données de locuteurs de deux tranches d’âge différentes suggèrent que l’absence de ne est bien un changement en cours.

This workshop, conceived and organised by a team of PhD Students in Philology, Literature and Linguistics at the University of Pisa seeks to investigate the meanings and shapes of idiolect phenomena in different genres, such as film, narrative, essay, and poetry according to a wide range of textual approaches including, but not limited to, cross-cultural and translational perspectives. The goal is to explore the many possibilities that the English language offers for creating a distinctive and personal speech style aimed at achieving originality with respect to a standard.

The workshop will be held on Friday 5th December 2014 in the Aula Magna of Palazzo Boilleau (Via Santa Maria 85, Pisa) from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm, with the following contributions:

- Dan McIntyre (University of Huddersfield, UK): Exploring Idiosyncracies in Dramatic Dialogue: A Stylistic Approach
- Debora Ciampi (University of Pisa): Speech Styles in Original and Dubbed Language: the Jargon of Queen Bees
- Martina Sias (University of Pisa): Fighting Oblivion through Poetry: Ofelia Zepeda’s Bilingual Compromise
- Enrico Terrinoni (University for Foreigners, Perugia): Awakening Finnegan.  Multilingualism as ‘Plurivocality’ in the Translation of Joyce’s Book of the Dark
- Paolo Bugliani (University of Pisa): Some Perfect Sympathies: Charles Lamb’s Anachronistic Ventriloquism
- Angelo Monaco (University of Pisa): Conveying Exilic Melancholia Through Natural Imagery in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Narrative

El presente trabajo contempla la posibilidad de estudiar la variación lingüística en una variedad moribunda. Esto se lleva a cabo mediante el análisis del judeoespañol de Sarajevo y Dubrovnik a partir de los datos obtenidos de sus últimos hablantes. Estos informantes en el momento de las entrevistas eran lo que en la bibliografía se suele denominar hablantes oxidados, cuya oxidación es una consecuencia de la desintegración de su comunidad lingüística después de un proceso de muerte radical provocado por los deplorables hechos históricos acaecidos a mediados del siglo pasado. Estos hablantes, sugería nuestra hipótesis inicial, mostrarían tendencias hacia usos cada vez más idiosincrásicos por la falta de práctica del judeoespañol y por procesos ligados al contacto de lenguas. Por la naturaleza de nuestros datos, sonsacados de acuerdo con los postulados de la dialectología tradicional, así como por la escasez de informaciones tanto sobre la variación social en la comunidad como sobre las biografías lingüísticas de los informantes, en ocasiones ha sido muy complicado verificar si determinados casos de variación se debían a usos ya establecidos en la comunidad o eran interferencias idiosincrásicas de ciertos informantes. No obstante, la hipótesis inicial se ha visto a grandes rasgos confirmada, aunque en ciertos aspectos ha tenido que ser matizada.

The aim of the undertaken research is to develop a statistical method that allows to estimate frequency and regularity for the distribution of distinctive dialect features in speakers’ of Serbian non-standardized idioms spontaneous speech, and thus, to discover intrasystem implications between different dialect features creating linguistic profiles of dialect speakers. At a later stage of research, the achievement of this goal would mean obtaining a quantitative tool for assessing intrasystem coherence and degree of dialect preservation for any Slavic or Balkan dialect.
The object of study is Draginja Mikić’s (b. 1906) idiolect. Narrative produced by her was recorded in the village of Berčinovac, situated near Knjaževac in the Zaječar county (Eastern Serbia). This narrative of approximately 5,300 word tokens was published by A. Sobolev in the third volume of his work called “Dialectological Atlas of Eastern Serbia and Western Bulgaria” [1. Vol. III, Ortspunkt 503. Berčinovac. P. 125]. Analyzed data was extracted from the dialect text using the continuous sampling method, and subsequently subjected to etymological, formal and functional semantic analysis. The comparison procedure itself consisted in counting the number of uses of the “correct” (i.e. corresponding to the conventional dialectal reference point) options for dialectal difference implementation. As a result, we could determine as a percentage how close this idiom is to the ideal model of Timok dialect, how “dialectal” it is in general, and how much different it is from the other Serbian dialects and from the standard language.
In order to obtain statistically relevant results based on a sufficient amount of text, we selected twelve most significant dialectal features, which allowed us to oppose all the dialects of the studied region of Eastern Serbia with the Neo-Štokavian dialects underlying the standard language.
We can observe dependence of the experiment results on the frequency of certain lexemes used in the informant’s speech. A dialect Timok word form often comes into opposition with a non-dialect (standard), according to not just one, but to a number of parameters. Thus, the form mačeja ‘stepmother’ corresponds to maćehu-Acc.Sg not only with /ć/, but also with the phoneme /h/, which is not typical of the Timok dialects. Such opposition is quite often implemented not in the same lexical material (cf. mačeja ~ maćeha, dǝn ~ dan ‘day’), but in different groups of tokens (cf. viǯuvali ‘(they)saw’ ~ roʒ́ena ‘(she was) born’); and not in the same word form of the lexeme, but in different segments of its paradigm (the dative forms of pronouns in sg. mene, ńemu against the background of analytical forms pl. na nas). Our data reflects different relative frequency of correlative members pairs of different dialectal features and, therefore, a different degree of regularity of their implementation, regardless of the language level. We hope that applying various modern research methods to sufficiently large amount of material, including linguogeographic, corpus and psycho-linguistic methods, can provide us with the desired result (including in the cases of negative statements concerning features that do not exist in a dialect).