A History of English Language

The english language in america
377
Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, publication of which began in 1939.
Although conceived as a single enterprise, the various regional projects have evolved into
a series of independent but closely associated investigations. In this undertaking America
has followed the lead of Europe. In the latter part of the nineteenth century there began to
grow up an interest in linguistic geography, the study of the geographic distribution of
linguistic phenomena. Apart from the value of such study in ensuring the preservation of
accurate records of dialects and even languages that were in process of dying out, it was
seen that it might play an important role in linguistic science. The best way to study the
phenomena of linguistic evolution and change is in the living speech of communities
whose origin, cultural development, and relation to other communities can still be traced.
Accordingly there have been published, or are in course of preparation, linguistic atlases
for more than a dozen European speech areas, notably French, German, and Italian. 64 The
proposal for an American atlas was made in 1928 at a meeting of the Modern Language
Association and, independently, at a session of the Linguistic Society. With the support
of the American Council of Learned Societies, work was begun in 1931 under the
direction of Professor Hans Kurath of the University of Michigan. The portion of the
Atlas covering the New England states was published during the first twelve years of the
project, the data being presented graphically in a series of 730 maps. 65 Records of the
speech of some 200 communities were made. “In each community at least two informants
(subjects) are selected: (1) An elderly representative of the long established families
whose speech is felt to be old fashioned. (2) A representative of the middle-aged group
who has not had too much schooling and has preserved, in the main, the local type of
speech.” The history of the settlement is traced and generally a fairly full history of the
individual informant is obtained before he or she is approached. The material collected
covers pronunciation, grammatical forms, syntactical usages, and vocabulary and is
obtained
64
For an account of the various surveys then being made see J.Schrijnen, Essai de bibliographie de
géographie linguistique générale (Nimègue, 1933). Later information may be found in the issues of
Orbis: Bulletin internationale de documentation linguistique (Louvain, 1952–). For a survey of
earlier work and a general treatment of the province of linguistic geography, see Albert Dauzat, La
Géographie linguistique (Paris, 1922), and the exhaustive work of Sever Pop, La Dialectologie:
Aperçu historique et méthodes d’enquêtes linguistiques (2 vols., Louvain, 1950). William
A.Kretzschmar, Jr., traces the relation of the older European work to current studies in
“Dialectology and Sociolinguistics: Same Coin, Different Currency, Language Sciences, 17 (1995),
271–82.
65
Linguistic Atlas of New England, ed. Hans Kurath et al. (3 vols., in 6 parts, Providence, 1939–
1943), with a Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England, by Kurath et al. (Providence,
1939), discussing the dialect areas distinguished, the selection of communities and informants, the
settlement of New England, the work sheets, and various procedural matters.