Linking Linguistic and Geographic Distance in Four Semantic Domains: Computational Geo-Analyses of Internal and External Factors in a Dialect Continuum.

John L A Huisman,Roeland Van Hout,Karlien Franco

doi:10.3389/frai.2021.668035

Abstract

Dialectometry studies patterns of linguistic variation through correlations between geographic and aggregate measures of linguistic distance. However, aggregating smooths out the role of semantic characteristics, which have been shown to affect the distribution of lexical variants across dialects. Furthermore, although dialectologists have always been well-aware of other variables like population size, isolation and socio-demographic features, these characteristics are generally only included in dialectometric analyses afterwards for further interpretation of the results rather than as explanatory variables. This study showcases linear mixed-effects modelling as a method that is able to incorporate both language-external and language-internal factors as explanatory variables of linguistic variation in the Limburgish dialect continuum in Belgium and the Netherlands. Covering four semantic domains that vary in their degree of basic vs. cultural vocabulary and their degree of standardization, the study models linguistic distances using a combination of external (e.g., geographic distance, separation by water, population size) and internal (semantic density, salience) sources of variation. The results show that both external and internal factors contribute to variation, but that the exact role of each individual factor differs across semantic domains. These findings highlight the need to incorporate language-internal factors in studies on variation, as well as a need for more comprehensive analysis tools to help better understand its patterns.

Highlights

Dialect geography deals with the spatial components of human communicative processes or, on a more abstract level, with the relationship between space and social behavior
Linguistic distances were higher when locations are from different dialect areas, highlighting the role of smaller coherent subunits within an overall dialect area
Both techniques approximately use the same sources of variation, but in the linear mixed-effects regression (LMER) the random part is defined separately and excluded from the marginal R2

Summary

Introduction

Dialect geography deals with the spatial components of human communicative processes or, on a more abstract level, with the relationship between space and social behavior. Social behavior results in spatial patterns of language variation and change. Languages change as speakers accommodate their speech patterns during interactions with their most common conversational partners—their speech community (Bloomfield, 1933)—and for logistical reasons, these interactions occur more frequently and intensely between people that are geographically close to each other. Accommodation occurs to a lesser degree, resulting in communities whose linguistic varieties resemble each other less and less the farther apart they are (Heeringa and Nerbonne, 2001). Linguists often call this gradual pattern a dialect continuum, and many have been studied. Nerbonne (2010) investigated six areas (variation across the Bantu languages, in Bulgaria, Germany, across the United States East Coast, and in the Netherlands and Norway) and found that linguistic distance continuously increases over geographic distance, but that the magnitude of this increase diminishes as geographic distances become larger

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