Descriptive studies

The patternings exhibited in a language as spoken within speech communities which are geographically contiguous may often show imparity. The particular 'variety' of language that occurs in any community has its own structural patterning. In the phonological encoding of a language, varieties usually have a number of speech sounds in common, but in some regions sounds of distinctive quality occur which immediately identify a speaker from those areas. Furthermore, speech sounds may not all occur in the same positions in a linguistic structure in the varieties of two separate communities. Trubetzkoy distinguished these variations thus: 'A phonological difference based on inventory exists when a dialect possesses a phoneme that is not known in another dialect. A difference in phonological function is present when a phoneme in one dialect occurs in a phonological position in which it is not found in another dialect. 8

Again at another level in the language pattern, differences may occur. 'In many languages words play an important grammatical role, in that they are built out of smaller elements by certain patterns, but are put together into sentences by rather different patterns. 9 Word-forms and word arrangement in sentences in the variations of two areas showing incongruences exhibit, therefore, dissimilar morphological and syntactical patterning.

Synchronic descriptive studies aim to give an account of the linguistic encoding for a particular region. Within a chosen area homogeneous samples of speech are identified and the relationship patterns exhibited by them are analysed and described. The uniformity of the samples often determines the size of the area chosen for investigation. Conversely the study may describe the range of variation in linguistic patterning in one area taking into account the sociocultural factors that have conditioned speech and the variation related to age groups within communities. Such descriptive studies may deal with the data comprehensively or confirm themselves to selected aspects. As Leonard Bloomfield remarked ‘The modern demand would be rather for a description such as one might make of any language: phonology, syntax, and morphology, together with copious texts'.10
 


  1. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 'Phonology and linguistic geography' in Baltaxe, C.A.M. (Ed.) Principles of Phonology; University of California Press; 1969; p.298
  2. Hockett, C.F. A Course in Modern Linguistics; New York: The Macmillan Company; 1965; p.l?7
  3. Bloomfield, L. Language; London: George Allen and Unwin; 1950; p.323