Linguistic Circle of Oxford
Michaelmas Term 2011

All Linguistic Circle meetings take place in New College, Lecture Room 6 on Tuesdays at 5.15p

Tuesday 18th October
Dr. Huw Lewis, Aberystwyth University

Language Rights for Whom?
Abstract: In recent years, political theorists have begun to grapple
with the issue of language rights. Several of those who have contributed
to this new literature have argued that a moral case can be made in
favour of establishing rights to use certain minority languages within
the public domain, alongside the state's majority language.
Significantly, those who have advocated in favour of such 'official
language rights' have generally assumed that they are rights that can
only be claimed in relation to one's mother tongue. However, to what
extent is it correct to make such an assumption? Is it only those
individuals who speak language X as a mother tongue who can claim a
right to use it in various public domains? This is what will be under
consideration in this paper. Drawing on insights garnered from debates
regarding language rights in Wales, it will be asked whether it is
appropriate to view official language rights as rights that can only be
claimed in relation to one's mother tongue?


Tuesday 22nd November
Professor Martin Durrell, Manchester University

Language Standardization, Variation and Change.
German in the 17th and 18th centuries
A new corpus of Early Modern German (‘GerManC’) for the period 1650-1800 which has recently been completed at the University of Manchester enables us to explore linguistic variation in German during this period in much more detail than has previously been possible. This corpus was based on comparable English corpora covering part or all of the same period, in order to facilitate comparative studies, and is intended to provide a sample of written German during the crucial period of standardization. It is thus differentiated by genre, with eight genres represented, from drama and narrative fiction to scientific and legal texts, by period, with subdivisions of fifty years, and by region, with the speech area being divided into five large regions. Three extracts of some 2000 words each are taken from texts for each genre, sub-period and region, and in this way the corpus aimed to be as representative as possible of the attested language use during the period.
One of the aims of the corpus was to give a more differentiated view than has previously been possible of the process of standardization in German during a period where, in essence, modern High German was given final shape. Examples will be given of features where variants from the prestige literary language of Saxony and Silesia became dominant and accepted as standard, this being the prevalent current view of how the modern standard language was formed. However, it will also be shown how variants were adopted from less prestigious genres or regions, and which were initially rejected by the leading prescriptive grammarians of the 18th century, such as Gottsched. The examples discussed will cover orthography, morphology and syntax, including the rules for the ordering of verbal elements in the subordinate clause, which were still more subject to variation in the early part of this period than has previously been established.

For more information, contact: Rosalind.temple@new.ox.ac.uk
johanneke.systsema@bodleian.ox.ac.uk