Die aard van dialektiese verskeidenheid in afrikaans

Abstract

The claim has oftell been made that Afrikaans has no dialects. The general implication is that the range of variation of language usage in Afrikaans is relatively limited. This study does not deal with the range of dialectal variation but is concerned solely with the nature of the variations. The study is based on a corpus in which the material has been derived from the following sources: the Afrikaanse Taalatlas; tape recordings and unpublished material collected fer the ATA; unpublished naterial collected in the early forties by Prof. SA Louw through questionnaires; several hundred letters from listeners to a language programme organised on the SABC. Chapter I is a statement on principles and methodology. The concepts, SYSTEM, DIASYSTEM, AB (Algemeen Beskaafd) and DIALECT are discussed in terms of Weinreich's model for dialect description. The problem of criteria for distinguishing between LANGUAGE, AB and DIALECT is then examined. It is assumed that variations in language usage can be discussed without reference to a geographical context by making use of the all-or-nothing principle regarding the identity of systems. The assumption is made that polyglots participate in different language communities. In terms of this, certain distinctinns are drawn which restrict our interpretation nf tie concept "Afrikaans". In CHAPTER II the status of Afrikaans as a language is discussed. The rise of AB-Afrikaans is discussed in its relation to AB-Dutch and to English. It is claimed that there is no strong socio-cultural pressure from an AB norm in Afrikaans on geographically restricted forms of language usage. The norm of AB-Afrikaans is rather a norm of generality. The problem of cartographic patterns in the Afrikaans language region is then discussed. Language usage variations in Afrikaans criss-cross geographically to a tremendous extent. An arbitrary and technical classification based on the principle of generality or frequency of occnrrence is applied to the AT.A. On this basis it is possible to distinguish certain language landscapes. Finally, the nature of these isoglosses in language landscapes is disr.ussed. CHAPTER III is devoted to a discussion of dialectal variations in phonology. Ls we have no proof of dialectal variations in the phoneme inventory, only variations in the phonemic content cf word form variations are noted. Phonemic alternants are the most frequent phenomena at this level. Indiviiual vowels form especially large paradigmatic series. Sub-phonemic variations are discussed by noting, among other things, the correspondence with optional phonic variations in one dialect. In CHAPTER IV word form variations are treated on the morphological level. horphological variations occur in various lexical items although without anywhere forming a fully structured. category. In addition, the question of morphological compaction and status variations between components in separate dialect systems is discussed. CHAPTER V surveys syntactic 9 logotactic and idiomatic variations. Syntactic variations are limited exclusively to isolated instances and individual minor categories, particularly in the verbal groupe Logotactic and idiomatic variations are non-grammatical and thus of necessity restricted to cases which do not occur in series. CHAPTER VI discusses variations within the lexicon. The most striking and extensive variations in Lfrikaans are formed at the lexical level. In this chapter attention is given to words with a geographically restricted usage, older lexical strata, semantic and formal variations. The pattern of loanword landscapes and the syntactic transparency of composita are briefly considered.