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world, as proposed by Dell Hymes in 1962 (1968:101), has
started a regeneration in sociolinguistic directions. William
Labov’s mighty treatise, The Social Stratification of English in
New Tork City (1966), is the most distinguished manifestation
of this trend so far. The well-known battle about the problem
of the stability or mobility of language systems and of transi-
tion zones between dialectal systems which I pointed out at
the Eighth International Congress of Linguists in 1957,11 may
be suspended, since—as Moulton states (p. 155 above)—‘varia-
tion is itselfjust as systematic as are other aspects of language.’
There are at least four dimensions in this so-called non-
distinctive variation of language: space, social level, style,
and time. I omit here the idiolectal variations and the purely
biological variations due to age or sex. Even if we accept the
instability of dialect systems and the possibility of recognizing
the direction of their alterations, the clearcut distinction be-
tween synchrony and diachrony ought, in my opinion, to be
maintained for epistemological reasons (cf. Labov 1966:9-10),
although such is often not the case either in structural or in
generative dialectology (see, e.g., Moulton above, Goossens-
Stevens 1964, Ivic 1968). Thus, the dimension of time will be
left aside for the rest of this paper.
Obviously there is a risk that under the pressure of current
trends dialectology will end up in a new dependence, this time
upon sociology. An autonomous dialectology, i.e., a dialect-
ology in its own right, which aims at its own theory based on
hypothetical deduction, should not conceive of and handle
the spatial and social aspects of language as extralinguistic
but ought to incorporate the socio-dialectal dimensions in the
language system itself. The famous Swiss dialectologist Karl
Jaberg was aware of the fact that the dialect speakers them-
nSee Dahlstedt 1958; cf. on this subject also, e.g., Rusu 1958:138: ‘In any
dialect two or even more phonological systems exist. These systems succeed
each other historically, but in the moment in view they exist together.... Anyone
of us uses several systems, functioning in the situation where we are’ (transl.
by Dahlstedt). See also McDavid Jr 1961:42 and 45 passim.