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Dialect areas and dialect continua

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Wilbert Heeringa at University of Groningen
Wilbert Heeringa
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Abstract

The organizing concept behind dialect variation is still seen predominantly as the areas within which similar varieties are spoken. The opposing view—that dialects are organized in a continuum without sharp boundaries—is likewise popular. This article introduces a new element into the discussion, which is the opportunity to view dialectal differences in the aggregate. We employ a dialectometric technique that provides an additive measure of pronunciation difference: the (aggregate) pronunciation distance. This allows us to determine how much of the linguistic variation is accounted for by geography. In our sample of 27 Dutch towns and villages, the variation ranges between 65% and 81%, which lends credence to the continuum view. The borders of well-established dialect areas nonetheless show large deviations from the expected aggregate pronunciation distance. We pay particular attention to a puzzle concerning the subjective perception of continua introduced by Chambers and Trudgill (1998): a traveller walking in a straight line from village to village notices successive small changes, but seldom, if ever, observes large differences. This sounds like a justification of the continuum view, but there is an added twist. Might the traveller be misled by the perspective of most recent memory? We use the Chambers–Trudgill puzzle to organize our argument at several points.
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Vianen
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Franconian
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Flemish
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Zalk Oldebroek
Nunspeet
Putten
Amersfoort
Beilen
Ruinen
Ossendrecht
Clinge
Moerbeke
Lochristi
Vianen
Hardinxveld Zevenbergen
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... The introduction of the edit distance (or Levenshtein distance) in dialectometry was an essential innovation, first used by Kessler in 1995(in Wieling et al., 2015. Heeringa's (2004) dissertation dealt with edit distances in dialectometry, enabling the analysis of large amounts of data collected while compiling dialect atlases without manually characterizing and classifying them. Therefore, computational methods are valuable in dialectometry since they efficiently analyze large amounts of data. ...
Subdialect Classification of Manggarai Language Using Dialectometry Calculation and Gabmap
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... One of the classical debates in the history of dialectology is whether there are dialect areas (with abrupt boundaries) or a continuum of dialects. The existence of dialect boundaries has been questioned before modern dialect geography (Meyer 1877;Paris 1888), and dialectologists have found evidence for the latter (Chambers and Trudgill 1998;Heeringa and Nerbonne 2001). While comparisons of different linguistic levels, namely lexis, morphology, phonetics, and syntax, have been investigated before on a few European languages (Spruit et al. 2009 for Dutch; Montemagni 2008 for Tuscan dialects; Scherrer and Stoeckle 2016 for Swiss German), tone as a separate linguistic level has not been investigated before in dialectometric studies. ...
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... Dialect evolution is very slow, which has a geographical and historical path. First, geographical information such as the locations and shapes of mountains and rivers has significant impacts on the evolution of dialects in specific regions [23,24], and many mountains or rivers were an important historic basis of administrative boundaries in China [25]. It is natural that people living in the same administrative region have more frequent connections and share more similarities in living habits, which can make local culture, customs, and dialect gradually consolidate and develop their own regional features [26,27]. ...
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Article
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