Dynamical Network Analysis of the South Korean Dialects Compared to Traditional Dialect Classification

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the network properties of the South Korean dialects. Among 153 words in “The Linguistic Atlas of Korea”, 33 words satisfying our criteria were surveyed. We set 138 basic administrative districts that make up South Korea as nodes and construct a language network by using a defined procedure. The network shows neither a small-world (small-world coefficient < 5) nor a scale-free (degree distribution forms like a unimodal Poisson) property in the general complex network. Also, the assortativity is seen to show transition from negative to positive at about the threshold value of 15. The number of Korean linguistic groups, which is the most import result in this study, is constantly four with s-curved Newman modularity in the threshold range 13 ∼ 22. The Korean dialect division by using a network modularity method is almost identical to the classification of traditional linguists (Central, Southwest, Southeast, and Jeju). Furthermore, subgroups can be obtained by performing a hierarchical dialect division. As a result, South Korean dialects are classified into seven minor groups, and some regions (e.g., Southern Gang-won) belong to groups different from those of the traditional classification method.