The Geography And History Of Cortland County

Who uses "skeeter hawk," "snake doctor," and "dragonfly" to refer to the same insect? Who says "gum band" instead of "rubber band"? The answers can be found in the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS), the largest single survey of regional and social differences in spoken American English. It covers the region from New York state to northern Florida and from the coastline to the borders of Ohio and Kentucky. Through interviews with nearly twelve hundred people conducted during the 1930s and 1940s, the LAMSAS mapped regional variations in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation at a time when population movements were more limited than they are today, thus providing a unique look at the correspondence of language and settlement patterns. This handbook is an essential guide to the LAMSAS project, laying out its history and describing its scope and methodology. In addition, the handbook reveals biographical information about the informants and social histories of the communities in which they lived, including primary settlement areas of the original colonies. Dialectologists will rely on it for understanding the LAMSAS, and historians will find it valuable for its original historical research. Since much of the LAMSAS questionnaire concerns rural terms, the data collected from the interviews can pinpoint such language differences as those between areas of plantation and small-farm agriculture. For example, LAMSAS reveals that two waves of settlement through the Appalachians created two distinct speech types. Settlers coming into Georgia and other parts of the Upper South through the Shenandoah Valley and on to the western side of the mountain range had a Pennsylvania-influenced dialect, and were typically small farmers. Those who settled the Deep South in the rich lowlands and plateaus tended to be plantation farmers from Virginia and the Carolinas who retained the vocabulary and speech patterns of coastal areas. With these revealing findings, the LAMSAS represents a benchmark study of the English language, and this handbook is an indispensable guide to its riches.

Bibliographies of local history are essential research tools for historians, genealogists, and book collectors. This volume is an attempt to bring together citations to all the books and pamphlets dealing with New York State history at the local or community level, which were published between 1900 and 1987; also included are some of the more important local history publications published prior to 1900, as well as a few works published as recently as 1989. It is not an attempt to compile a complete bibliography of the state which would undoubtedly require several large volumes, but rather, is directed more specifically to the needs of the local history and genealogy researcher. Material pertaining to the history of the major cities of the state has generally been excluded. Periodical articles and manuscript materials have also been excluded. About 2,500 publications are described in the listings which are arranged by county and town. This revised and enlarged edition updates the 1988 work with numerous additional citations, well-annotated for informative and entertaining reading, covering the following new subjects: Hudson Valley, Indians, maps, northern and western New York, reference books which include a substantial amount of New York material, Revolutionary War, Shakers and books with statewide coverage.