Progress in Dialectometry: Toward Explanation

Dialectometric techniques analyze linguistic variation quantitatively, allowing one to aggregate over what are frequently rebarbative geographic patterns of individual linguistic variants, such as which word is used for a particular concept in a language area, or which sounds are used in particular words. This leads to general formulations of the relation between linguistic variation and explanatory factors. Dialectometric techniques are maturing continuously, paving the way to genuinely new opportunities for the explanation of linguistic variation. These include, most prominently, techniques for analyzing syntactic variation, techniques for comparing the relative importance of different individual linguistic variables, techniques for comparing the relative importance of linguistic levels such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and/or prosody, and many more. This article serves as an introduction to a special issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing devoted to presenting a new work constituting Progress in Dialectometry: Toward Explanation.

[1]  Hans Goebl,et al.  Dialektometrische Studien. anhand italoromanischer, rätoromanischer und galloromanischer Sprachmaterialien aus AIS und ALF. 3 Bände , 1984 .

[2]  William A. Kretzschmar,et al.  Introducing Computational Methods in Dialectometry , 2003 .

[3]  William S-Y. Wang,et al.  Spatial distance and lexical replacement , 1986 .

[4]  April M. S. McMahon,et al.  Language classification by numbers , 2005 .

[5]  J. Dufrénoy.  La relation entre la distance spatiale et la distance lexicale , 1972 .

[6]  Paul Black,et al.  Multidimensional Scaling Applied to Linguistic Relationships. , 1973 .

[7]  S. Levinson,et al.  Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History , 2005, Science.

[8]  William Croft,et al.  Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective , 2001 .

[9]  Hermann Niebaum,et al.  Einführung in die Dialektologie des Deutschen , 2006 .

[10]  W. Labov.  Principles Of Linguistic Change , 1994 .

[11]  R. Shackleton,et al.  English-American Speech Relationships , 2005 .

[12]  Giuseppe Longobardi,et al.  Methods in parametric linguistics and cognitive history , 2003 .

[13]  Paul Black,et al.  SOME RESULTS FROM THE VOCABULARY METHOD OF RECONSTRUCTING LANGUAGE TREES , 1973 .

[14]  W. Heeringa,et al.  Perceptive evaluation of Levenshtein dialect distance measurements using Norwegian dialect data , 2004, Language Variation and Change.

[15]  William Labov,et al.  The atlas of North American English : phonetics, phonology and sound change : a multimedia reference tool , 2006 .

[16]  L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza.  Gènes, peuples et langues , 1996 .

[17]  W. Labov.  Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors , 1994 .

[18]  M. Gordon,et al.  Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation , 2003 .

[19]  Hans Goebl,et al.  Dialektometrie: Prinzipien und Methoden des Einsatzes der Numerischen Taxonomie im Bereich der Dialektgeographie , 1984 .

[20]  Bernard Comrie,et al.  Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology , 1981 .

[21]  Colin Renfrew,et al.  ARCHAEOLOGY, GENETICS AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY* , 1992 .