This study presents results of two experiments using supervised machine-learning models to examine individual Finnish speakers’ dialectal backgrounds. Data come from interviews conducted with heritage speakers of Finnish in northern Wisconsin and are compared to data from the Finnish Dialect Syntax Archive. The models were constructed and then, following successful validation testing, used to identify the dialectal background of five individual American Finnish speakers. Results showed individual variation in dialectal backgrounds and some correlation to speakers’ likely language input. Our approach offers a new methodological tool for examining speakers’ dialectal backgrounds in situations of language contact.

This chapter demonstrates how Warren’s (1978) horizontal structures can be applied to cultural communities dispersed across relatively wide geographic distances. Using Keiser’s (2009; 2012) “strawberry vine” terminology, this chapter examines how Finnish-American communities in northern Wisconsin created and maintained social connections to other Finns via workers’ associations and cooperative networks. These networks acted as “gatekeepers,” allowing Finnish-speaking immigrants to buy and sell goods and attend social events in venues within a geographically dispersed but socially and economically more insular Finnish-American community. This chapter offers a case study showing that the degree of Finnish language preservation in two rural Wisconsin communities was influenced not only by the effects of urbanization, but by the strength of their ties to the Finnish-American socioeconomic network.

Following an introductory chapter that establishes the theoretical framework of the verticalization model, this volume continues with a variety of case studies. One of the limiting factors of these case studies is that they are all based in the US. Although both the theoretical premise and the case studies make appeals to work that has been done globally, the authors invited two leading scholars with different perspectives on language maintenance and shift to engage critically with the verticalization model and examine its applicability beyond our US case studies. This chapter responds to the issues raised in the commentary chapters and makes suggestions for how the verticalization model might be applied to global situations. Further, the chapter suggests areas of further research and refinement of the theoretical framework.

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