Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-2dmjx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T22:12:33.839Z Has data issue: true hasContentIssue true
  • English
  • Français

Exploring global and local patterns in the correlation of geographic distances and morphosyntactic variation in Swiss German

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2017

Péter Jeszenszky ,
Philipp Stoeckle ,
Elvira Glaser  and
Robert Weibel
Péter Jeszenszky
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Zurich (UZH), Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zurich
Philipp Stoeckle
Affiliation:
German Department, University of Zurich (UZH), Schönberggasse 2, CH-8001, Zurich
Elvira Glaser
Affiliation:
German Department, University of Zurich (UZH), Schönberggasse 2, CH-8001, Zurich
Robert Weibel
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Zurich (UZH), Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zurich
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

Using data from a Swiss German dialect syntax survey, this study aims to explore, in a spatially differentiated manner, the correlation between dialectal variation and geographic distances. A linguistic distance was expressed by a measure aggregated from 60 survey questions. To operationalize the possibility of language contact, Euclidean distance, as well as travel times in 2000, 1950 and 1850 between survey sites were used. Going beyond previous work by others, we also explore the covariation of geographic and linguistic distances at the local level, focusing on spatial subsets and individual survey sites, thus being able to paint a more differentiated picture. With the diverse physical landscape of Switzerland making an impact on potential language contact, we find that travel times are a better predictor than Euclidean distance for the syntactic variation in Swiss German dialects. However, on the local scale the difference is not always significant, depending on prevalent topography.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistic Geography , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , October 2017 , pp. 86 - 108
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

References

Barbiers, Sjef, Bennis, Hans J., De Vogelaer, Gunther, Devos, Magda & van der Ham, Margreet H.. 2005. Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten/Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects Volume I. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Bucheli, Claudia & Glaser, Elvira. 2002. The Syntactic Atlas of Swiss German dialects: Empirical and methodological problems. In Sjef Barbiers, Leonie Cornips & Susanne van der Kleij (eds.), Syntactic microvariation, Vol. 2. 41-73. Amsterdam: Meertens Institute Electronic Publications in Linguistics.Google Scholar
Bucheli Berger, Claudia. 2010. Dativ für Akkusativ im Senslerischen (Kanton Freiburg). In Helen Christen, Sibylle Germann, Walter Haas, Nadia Montefiori & Hans Ruef (eds.), Alemannische Dialektologie: Wege in die Zukunft. Beiträge zur 16. Arbeitstagung für alemannische Dialektologie in Freiburg/Fribourg vom 07.-10.09.2008. 71-83. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. & Trudgill, Peter. 1998. Dialectology. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Christen, Helen. 1998. Convergence and divergence in the Swiss German dialects. Folia Linguistica, 32(1–2). 53-68. doi: 10.1515/flin.1998.32.1-2.53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fröhlich, Philipp, Frey, Thomas, Reubi, Serge & Schiedt, Hans Ulrich. 2004. Entwicklung des Transitverkehrs-Systems und deren Auswirkung auf die Raumnutzung in der Schweiz (COST 340): Verkehrsnetz-Datenbank. (COST). Zürich. http://www.ivt.ethz.ch/vpl/publications/reports.Google Scholar
Goebl, Hans. 1982. Dialektometrie. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 157. Band). Wien.Google Scholar
Goebl, Hans. 1983. “Stammbaum” und “Welle”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 2(1). 3-44.Google Scholar
Goebl, Hans. 2010. Dialectometry and quantitative mapping. In Alfred Lameli, Roland Kehrein & Stefan Rabanus (eds.), Language and space. Vol. 2: Language mapping., 433-457. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Gooskens, Charlotte. 2004. Norwegian dialect distances geographically explained. In Britt-Louise Gunnarson, Lena Bergström, Gerd Eklund, Staffan Fridella, Lise H. Hansen, Angela Karstadt, Bengt Nordberg, Eva Sundgren & Mats Thelander (eds.), Language variation in Europe. Papers from the Second International Conference on Language Variation in Europe ICLAVE Vol. 2. 2004, 195–206. Uppsala.Google Scholar
Grieve, Jack. 2014. A comparison of statistical methods for the aggregation of regional linguistic variation. In Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.), Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis: Linguistic variation in text and speech, 1-34. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110317558.53.Google Scholar
Griffith, Donald Atkins. 1987. Spatial autocorrelation: A primer. Regional Science and Urban Economics. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, doi: 10.1016/0166-0462(92)90032-V.Google Scholar
Haynie, Hannah Jane. 2012. Studies in the history and geography of California languages. University of California Berkeley.Google Scholar
Heeringa, Wilbert & Nerbonne, John. 2001. Dialect areas and dialect continua. Language Variation and Change 13(3). 375-400.Google Scholar
Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf. 1986. Dialektstrukturen im Wandel. Aarau.Google Scholar
Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf, Schläpfer, Reuel, Trüb, Peter & Zinsli, Giuseppe (eds.). 1962–1998. Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz. I–VIII. Tübingen: Francke.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Guardiano, Cristina. 2009. Evidence for syntax as a signal of historical relatedness. Lingua 119(11). 1679-1706. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2008.09.012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowry, Richard. 2000. VassarStats: Website for statistical computation. http://vassarstats.net/rdiff.html? (20 September, 2016.)Google Scholar
Mantel, Nathan. 1967. The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Research, 27(2). 209-220. doi: 10.1038/212665a0. Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John. 2009. Data-driven dialectology. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1). 175-198 doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00114.x. Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John. 2010. Measuring the diffusion of linguistic change. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 365(1559). 3821-3828 doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0048.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nerbonne, John & Kleiweg, Peter. 2007. Toward a dialectological yardstick. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 14(2). 148-167.Google Scholar
Pickl, Simon, Spettl, Aaron, Pröll, Simon, Elspaß, Stephan, König, Werner & Schmidt, Volker. 2014. Linguistic distances in dialectometric intensity estimation. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 2(1). 25-40. doi: 10.1017/jlg.2014.3.Google Scholar
SADS = Glaser, Elvira (ed.) ( forthcoming) Syntaktischer Atlas der Deutschen Schweiz. University of Zurich.Google Scholar
Scherrer, Yves. 2012. Generating Swiss German sentences from Standard German: A multi-dialectal approach. Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Scherrer, Yves & Stoeckle, Philipp. 2016. A quantitative approach to Swiss German – Dialectometric analyses and comparisons of linguistic levels. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, 24. 92-125. doi: 10.1515/dialect-2016-0006.Google Scholar
Séguy, Jean. 1971. La relation entre la distance spatiale et la distance lexicale. Revue de Linguistique Romane, 35(138). 335-357.Google Scholar
Shackleton, Robert G. Jr. 2007. Phonetic variation in the traditional English dialects: A computational analysis. Journal of English Linguistics, 35(1). 30-102 doi: 10.1177/0075424206297857. Google Scholar
Speelman, Dirk, Grondelaers, Stefan & Geeraerts, Dirk. 2003. Profile-based linguistic uniformity as a generic method for comparing language varieties. Computers and the Humanities, 37. 317-337. doi: 10.1023/A:1025019216574.Google Scholar
Spruit, Marco René. 2006. Measuring syntactic variation in Dutch dialects. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 21(4). 493-506.Google Scholar
Spruit, Marco René. 2008. Quantitative perspectives on syntactic variation. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Spruit, René, Marco, Heeringa, Wilbert & Nerbonne, John. 2009. Associations among linguistic levels. Lingua, 119(11). 1624-1642. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2009.02.001. CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanford, James N. 2012. One size fits all? Dialectometry in a small clan-based indigenous society. Language Variation and Change, 24(2). 247-278. doi: 10.1017/S0954394512000087. Google Scholar
Stoeckle, Philipp. 2014. Subjektive Dialekträume im alemannischen Dreiländereck. Hildesheim: Olms.Google Scholar
Stoeckle, Philipp. 2016. Horizontal and vertical variation in Swiss German morphosyntax. In Marie-Hélène Côté, Remco Knooihuizen & John Nerbonne (eds.), The future of dialects: Selected papers from Methods in Dialectology XV (Language Variation 1), 195-215. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Sui, Daniel Z. 2004. Tobler’s first law of geography: A big idea for a small world? Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(2). 269-277. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.09402003.x.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Geography is overrated. In Sandra Hansen, Christian Schwarz, Philipp Stoeckle & Tobias Streck (eds.), Dialectological and folk dialectological concepts of space: Current methods and perspectives in sociolinguistic research on dialect change, 215-231. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2014. Methods and objectives in contemporary dialectology. In Ilja A. Seržant & Björn Wiemer (eds.), Contemporary approaches to dialectology: The area of North, Northwest Russian and Belarusian vernaculars / Современные методы в диалектологии. Ареал северных, северо-западных русских и белорусских говоров, 81-92. Bergen: Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Tobler, Waldo R. 1970. A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography, 46(2). 234-240.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society, 2. 215-246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, William S.-Y. & Cavalli-Sforza, Luca L.. 1986. Spatial distance and lexical replacement. Language, 62. 38-55.Google Scholar
Warner, Rebecca M. 2013. Applied statistics: From bivariate through multivariate techniques. 2nd edn. Los Angeles / London / New Delhi / Singapore / Washington D.C.: SAGE.Google Scholar