Dialect areas and dialect continua

Abstract

W i l b e r t H e e r i n g a a n d J o h n N e r b o n n e University of GronigenThe 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.

Associations among linguistic levels

“…This is a reasonable measure of the degree to which the three linguistic levels are associated. However, it would be a mistake to interpret any such correlation as influence without checking for the influence of a third factor, especially since geography has already independently been shown to strongly correlate with each of the linguistic levels under investigation (Heeringa and Nerbonne 2001;Cavalli-Sforza and Wang 1986;Spruit 2006). Therefore, it is quite plausible that geography could influence each of the levels separately, leading to the impression of structural influence between them.…”

“…Heeringa and Nerbonne (2001) examined the degrees of association between geographical and pronunciational distances in Dutch dialects. CavalliSforza and Wang (1986) related geographical distances with lexical similarities in a chain of Micronesian islands.…”

The Educational Consequences of Language Proficiency for Young Children

“…A lot of the variation between dialects may have to do with geographical distance as shown by some studies using Levenshtein distance measures. Heeringa and Nerbonne (2001) use 125 words to compare 21 Dutch dialect that are spoken in cities and villages that roughly form a straight line from northeast Netherlands to southwest Netherlands. They find a strong correlation between geographic distance and average Levenshtein distances between two dialects.…”

Area formation in morphosyntax

“…Dialect regions, which are never homogeneous, are defined both by speakers and linguists on the basis of certain features, and it is of course interesting to study the extent to which the two concepts of regions, those defined by speakers themselves and those defined by linguists, overlap. However, while it is clear that dialect groupings constitute a major topic both in traditional dialectology and in modern dialectometry (see Heeringa and Nerbonne 2001;Kelle 2001), a more detailed discussion of these concepts is beyond the scope of the present contribution. 8…”