Aggregating Dialectology Typology And Register Analysis

This volume aims to overcome sub-disciplinary boundaries in the study of linguistic variation - be it language-internal or cross-linguistic. Even though dialectologists, register analysts, typologists, and quantitative linguists all deal with linguistic variation, there is astonishingly little interaction across these fields. But the fourteen contributions in this volume show that these subdisciplines actually share many interests and methodological concerns in common. The chapters specifically converge in the following ways: First, they all seek to explore linguistic variation, within or across languages. Second, they are based on usage data, that is, on corpora of (more or less) authentic text or speech of different languages or language varieties. Third, all chapters are concerned with the joint analysis (also sometimes known as “aggregation” or “data synthesis”) of multiple phenomena, features, or measurements of some sort. And lastly, the contributors all marshal quantitative analysis techniques to analyse the data. In short, the volume explores the text-feature-aggregation pipeline in variation studies, demonstrating that there is much mutual inspiration to be had by thinking outside the disciplinary box.

This volume aims to overcome sub-disciplinary boundaries in the study of linguistic variation - be it language-internal or cross-linguistic. Even though dialectologists, register analysts, typologists, and quantitative linguists all deal with linguistic variation, there is astonishingly little interaction across these fields. But the fourteen contributions in this volume show that these subdisciplines actually share many interests and methodological concerns in common. The chapters specifically converge in the following ways: First, they all seek to explore linguistic variation, within or across languages. Second, they are based on usage data, that is, on corpora of (more or less) authentic text or speech of different languages or language varieties. Third, all chapters are concerned with the joint analysis (also sometimes known as “aggregation” or “data synthesis”) of multiple phenomena, features, or measurements of some sort. And lastly, the contributors all marshal quantitative analysis techniques to analyse the data. In short, the volume explores the text-feature-aggregation pipeline in variation studies, demonstrating that there is much mutual inspiration to be had by thinking outside the disciplinary box.

Owing to the ever-increasing possibilities of communication, especially with the advent of modern communication technologies, register analysis offers a constantly widening range of research opportunities. Still, research has mainly concentrated on well-established and frequent registers such as newspaper articles, while many descriptive and theoretical issues have not yet been sufficiently investigated. This volume gives a state-of-the-art insight into register studies and points out emerging trends as well as new directions for future research. Furthermore, it provides a forum for the description and discussion of registers which have not received an appropriate amount of attention so far. In particular, it deals with specialized offline and online registers, cross-register comparison as well as regional, contrastive, and diachronic register variation. In parallel to the new discipline of variational pragmatics, this volume aims to foster the discipline of ‘variational text linguistics’ and to initiate fundamental investigations in this area. This field of research provides new insights into the concept of register, since it covers both functional and regional types of textual variation.

The Handbook of Dialectology provides an authoritative, up-to-date and unusually broad account of the study of dialect, in one volume. Each chapter reviews essential research, and offers a critical discussion of the past, present and future development of the area. The volume is based on state-of-the-art research in dialectology around the world, providing the most current work available with an unusually broad scope of topics Provides a practical guide to the many methodological and statistical issues surrounding the collection and analysis of dialect data Offers summaries of dialect variation in the world’s most widely spoken and commonly studied languages, including several non-European languages that have traditionally received less attention in general discussions of dialectology Reviews the intellectual development of the field, including its main theoretical schools of thought and research traditions, both academic and applied The editors are well known and highly respected, with a deep knowledge of this vast field of inquiry

This book aims at providing a cross-section of current developments in English linguistics, by tracing recent approaches to corpus linguistics and statistical methodology, by introducing new inter- and multidisciplinary refinements to empirical methodology, and by documenting the on-going emphasis shift within the discipline of English linguistics from the study of dominant language varieties to that of post-colonial, minority, non-standardised, learner and L2 varieties. Among the key focus areas that define research in the field of English linguistics today, this selection concentrates on four: corpus linguistics, English as a global language, cognitive linguistics, and second language acquisition. Most of the articles in this volume concentrate on at least two of these areas and at the same time bring in their own suggestions towards building bridges within and across sub-disciples of linguistics and beyond.

Language Variation - European Perspectives VI showcases a selection of papers from the 8th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe which was held in Leipzig in 2015. The volume includes plenaries by Miriam Meyerhoff and Steffen Klaere (“The large and the small of it: Big issues with smaller samples in the study of language variation”), Martin Haspelmath and Susanne Maria Michaelis (“Analytic and synthetic: Typological change in varieties of European languages”) and Jürgen Erich Schmidt (“Dynamics, variation and the brain“). In addition, the editors have selected 11 papers which exemplify the breadth of research on European languages. The contributions to this volume encompass languages as varied as Swedish, Greek, Galician, Dutch, German, Swedish, English (including English-lexified contact varieties), French, Spanish, Croatian, Luxembourgish and Romani. The variety of theoretical frameworks and methodological perspectives and particularly the combination of different methods attests to the scope of research currently being conducted on language variation and change in European languages.

In many European languages the National Standard Variety is converging with spoken, informal, and socially marked varieties. In Italian this process is giving rise to a new standard variety called Neo-standard Italian, which partly consists of regional features. This book contributes to current research on standardization in Europe by offering a comprehensive overview of the re-standardization dynamics in Italian. Each chapter investigates a specific dynamic shaping the emergence of Neo-standard Italian and Regional Standard Varieties, such as the acceptance of previously non-standard features, the reception of Old Italian features excluded from the standard variety, the changing standard language ideology, the retention of features from Italo-Romance dialects, the standardization of patterns borrowed from English, and the developmental tendencies of standard Italian in Switzerland. The contributions investigate phonetic/phonological, prosodic, morphosyntactic, and lexical phenomena, addressed by several empirical methodologies and theoretical vantage points. This work is of interest to scholars and students working on language variation and change, especially those focusing on standard languages and standardization dynamics.

As the most widely documented language in human history, English holds a unique key to unlocking some of the mysteries of the uniquely human endowment of language. Yet the field of World Englishes has remained somewhat marginal in linguistic theory. This collection heralds a more direct and mutually constructive engagement with current linguistic theories, questions, and methodologies. It achieves this through areal overviews, theoretical chapters, and case studies. The 36 articles are divided between four themes: Foundations, World Englishes and Linguistic Theory, Areal Profiles, and Case Studies. Part I sets out the complex history of the global spread of English. This is followed, in Part II, by chapters addressing the mutual relevance and importance of World Englishes and numerous theoretical subfields of Linguistics. Part III offers detailed accounts of the structure and social histories of specific varieties of English spoken across the globe, highlighting points of theoretical interest. The collection closes with a set of case studies that exemplify the type of analysis encouraged by the volume. As attention is focused on innovative work at the interface of dialect description and theoretical explanation, the book is more succinct in its treatment of applied themes, which are given complementary coverage in other works.