Reduction of Survey Sites in Dialectology: A New Methodology Based on Clustering

Jeszenszky, Péter; Steiner, Carina; Leemann, Adrian

doi:10.3389/frai.2021.642505

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…2 Note, however, that only a few items in Klein and Kopf's (2019) study could take the -ene plural, and large between-item variation was observed. 3 See Jeszenszky, Steiner, and Leemann (2021) for details on the survey site selection. 4 Note that the sample size in both models varies slightly due to missing data of six speakers (n unadjused model = 999; n fully adjusted model = 994).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraverted innovators and conscientious laggards? Investigating effects of personality traits on language change

Steiner,

Jeszenszky,

Stebler

et al. 2023

Lang Var Change

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Although personality-related factors play a crucial role in sociolinguistics as conceivable sources of language variation and change, there is insufficient quantitative evidence on such relationships. Using a large and balanced sample (n = 1000), this study investigated effects of personality traits on the use of a Swiss German plural marker in its early stages of diffusion. Besides age and region, conscientiousness and extraversion emerged as the most important predictors: less conscientious and, to a certain extent, more extraverted speakers were more likely to contribute to the diffusion of the morphological innovations under investigation. Based on our results, we argue that less conscientious speakers might monitor their own speech and that of others less closely, thus adopting innovations earlier, whereas extraverted speakers may act as successful brokers in transmitting innovations from one social group to another.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraverted innovators and conscientious laggards? Investigating effects of personality traits on language change

Steiner,

Jeszenszky,

Stebler

et al. 2023

Lang Var Change

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“…Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space (SDATS). The SDATS survey was conducted in 2020-2021 across 125 localities in German-speaking Switzerland, which form a subset of the 625 SDS survey localities [42]. SDS [37] is the largest complete dialectal survey of Swiss German and served as the basis for linguistic distance calculations, as detailed below.…”

Section: Implementing the Lmi Approach On Swiss German Dialect Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of mobility on dialect change: Introducing the linguistic mobility index

Jeszenszky,

Steiner,

Leemann

2024

PLoS ONE

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Increased geographical mobility prompts dialectologists to factor in survey participants’ exposure to linguistic variation in their research. Changing mobility patterns (e.g. longer-distance commuting; easier relocation to distant places for work, study or marriage) have caused linguistic connections to become much more diverse, potentially contributing to the acceleration of dialect change. In this methodological work we propose the Linguistic Mobility Index (LMI) to estimate long-term exposure to dialectal variation and thereby to provide a reference of “localness” about survey participants. Based on data about a survey participant’s linguistic biography, an LMI may comprise combinations of influential agents and environments, such as the dialects of parents and long-term partners, the places where participants have lived and worked, and the participants’ level of education. We encapsulate the linguistic effects of these agents based on linguistic differences, the intensity and importance of the relationship. We quantify the linguistic effects in three steps. 1) The linguistic effect of an agent is represented by a linguistic distance, 2) This linguistic distance is weighted based on the intensity of the participant’s exposure to the agent, and 3) Further weighted according to the relationship embodied by the agent. LMI is conceptualised and evaluated based on 500 speakers from 125 localities in the Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space (SDATS) corpus, and guidance is provided for establishing LMI in other linguistic studies. For the assessment of LMI’s applicability to other studies, four LMI prototypes are constructed based on the SDATS corpus, employing different theoretical considerations and combinations of influential agents and environments to simulate the availability of biographical data in other studies. Using mixed-effects modelling, we evaluate the utility of the LMI prototypes as predictors of dialect change between historic and contemporary linguistic data of Swiss German. The LMI prototypes successfully show that higher exposure to dialectal variation contributes to more dialect change and that its effect is stronger than some sociodemographic variables that are often tested for affecting dialect change (e.g. sex and educational background).

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“…The LMI framework was implemented using information elicited in the SDATS metadata about various long-term linguistic influences. SDATS speakers were recorded in 2020-2021 across 125 localities in German-speaking Switzerland, which form a subset of the SDS survey localities [40]. From each of these reference localities, we used data from four participants: two older (65+ years old) and two younger speakers (20-35 years old), with one male and one female speaker in both age cohorts.…”

Section: Implementing the Lmi Framework On Swiss German Dialect Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of mobility on dialect change: Introducing the Linguistic Mobility Index

Jeszenszky¹,

Steiner²,

Leemann³

2022

Preprint

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The more we are exposed to other speakers’ dialects, the larger their potential effect on our own dialect. This paper introduces a method which quantifies individuals’ linguistic exposure to other dialects through mobility, thus contributing a tool to the study of language variation and change. Throughout the last century, increasing mobility of society (e.g. longer-distance commuting; relocating to distant locations for work, study or marriage) has caused linguistic connections to become much more diverse, contributing to an acceleration of dialect change. To assess the impact of individual mobility on this change, we propose the Linguistic Mobility Index (LMI), which estimates long-term exposure to dialectal variation based on episodes of linguistic biography that can be extracted from dialect survey metadata. The LMI was conceptualised based on the Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space (SDATS) corpus. Four LMI variants were constructed, comprising combinations of influencing factors, such as parents’ dialects, long-term partners, places lived in German-speaking regions, place of work and ongoing education. The factors are combined in a weighted manner, according to the relation with and exposure to the factor. The LMI variants employ different theoretical considerations and the combinations of influencing factors included in them simulate the availability of metadata in other studies. Using mixed-effects modelling, we evaluate the utility of the LMI variants as predictors of dialect change between historic and contemporary speech data of Swiss German. All of the LMI variants successfully show that higher exposure to dialectal variation (typically due to geographical mobility) contributes to more dialect change. This success in establishing LMI variants with different compositions as meaningful predictors allows us to claim that similar indices could be constructed for other language variation and change studies.

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Reduction of Survey Sites in Dialectology: A New Methodology Based on Clustering

Cited by 7 publications

References 72 publications

Extraverted innovators and conscientious laggards? Investigating effects of personality traits on language change

Extraverted innovators and conscientious laggards? Investigating effects of personality traits on language change

Effects of mobility on dialect change: Introducing the linguistic mobility index

Effects of mobility on dialect change: Introducing the Linguistic Mobility Index

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