Synchronic patterns of Tuscan phonetic variation and diachronic change: Evidence from a dialectometric study

Montemagni, Simonetta; Wieling, Martijn; Jonge, Bob de; Nerbonne, John

doi:10.1093/llc/fqs057

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Thanks to new software and different kinds of quantitative analysis (Nerbonne, 2009), dialectometric techniques were applied successfully to different geographical and linguistic contexts (Goebl, 1981(Goebl, , 2007(Goebl, , 2008 with data coming from AIS) and to different levels of analysis of the linguistic system (see, for example, Heeringa, Johnson & Gooskens, 2009 for phonetic data;Elvira-García et al, 2018 for prosodic distance and, for the Tuscan context, Montemagni et al, 2012Montemagni et al, , 2013Montemagni & Wieling, 2016 with evidence of linguistic change).…”

Section: Maps Mapping and Quantitative Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)

Calamai

Piccardi

Nodari

2022

J. of Ling. Geography

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This paper aims to understand the contribution of geographical information in the perception of linguistic variation. A total of 813 mental maps collected among young speakers from different cities in Tuscany have been analyzed via an open-access web dialectometric tool (Gabmap). In particular, the study seeks to verify the role of geographic distance and the place of residence of the respondents in modeling perceived variation. The relationship between dialect grouping as made by linguists and perceived taxonomies of sublinguistic areas is also investigated. Results show that geographical proximity between mapped areas significantly predicts the perception of dialect similarity. Our participants made their decisions looking at (1) a keen sense of spatial contiguity, and (2) the synchronic presence of linguistic differences between the Tuscan subregions. Moreover, classification uncertainty grows when the mapped areas are very close to, or very distant from, the participants’ places of residence. Methodological and linguistic perspectives of mental maps in folk linguistics are finally discussed.

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Section: Maps Mapping and Quantitative Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)

Calamai

Piccardi

Nodari

2022

J. of Ling. Geography

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“…Therefore, dialectometric analyses can offer an insight into unresolved classifications, by largely eliminating the issue of subjective feature selection and enabling the identification of aggregate differences (Nerbonne & Kleiweg, 2007) and 'seemingly hidden structures' (Goebl and Schiltz, 1997: 13) emerging from the combination of individual linguistic variables. Dialectometric measurements in general, and Levenshtein distance in particular, have been successfully applied in the classification of varieties within the Irish Gaelic (Kessler, 1995), Dutch (Heeringa, 2004;Nerbonne, 2005;Nerbonne et al, 1996), and Norwegian (Gooskens & Heeringa, 2004) continua, as well as the Italo-Romance varieties of Tuscany (Montemagni et al, 2013;Wieling et al, 2014). Moreover, the measurement of linguistic distance has been argued to help evaluate the descriptive power of traditional classifications particularly in cases of disagreement (Tang & van Heuven, 2009;Wichmann, Holman, Bakker, & Brown, 2010), as is the case for Gallo-Italic.…”

Section: Classificatory Criteriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Tamburelli

Brasca

2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

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While Gallo-Italic varieties clearly belong to the Romance language family, their subgrouping as either Gallo-Romance or Italo-Romance has been the source of disagreement in the classificatory literature. While earlier analyses tended to classify Gallo-Italic as Gallo-Romance (notably Schmid, 1956; Bec, 1970-1971), later work has either argued for or tacitly assumed a classification of Gallo-Italic as part of the Italo-Romance branch, a view that is both different from as well as irreconcilable with the earlier Gallo-Romance classifications. In this paper we aim to contribute to the development of an empirically-based classification of Gallo-Italic through the use of dialectometry applied to atlas corpora, and specifically through the measurement of Levenshtein distance. Using three wordlists (Swadesh 100, Swadesh 200, Leipzig-Jakarta) and comparing twenty-six linguistic varieties across Italy and southeastern France, we show that Gallo-Italic is best classified as a third subgroup within the Gallo-Romance branch. Our results also clearly identify all the major bundles of isoglosses established through traditional dialectological methods and confirm Gallo-Italic as a relatively homogenous group distinct from Italo-Romance.

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“…It would be vain to try to establish, on the basis of a Swadesh list of 176 terms (24 words were excludedsee Supplementary Materials, Tab S1), the regular connections between languages of the same family. In this section, our purpose is to highlight the phonetical similarity and differences of different Central Asian varieties to suggest that their diversity falls in a range of diversity comparable to the European dialects we have studied so far (Gooskens and Heeringa 2004;Nerbonne and Siedle 2005;Wieling et al 2007;Prokić et al 2009;Wieling et al , 2013;Šimičić et al 2013;Montemagni et al 2013). As a consequence the computational methods we used to measure the linguistic diversity, originally designed to analyze dialect diversity in Europe, can be regarded as appropriate tools for the task at hand.…”

Section: General Sketch Of Phonetical Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Central Asian Language Survey

Mennecier¹,

Nerbonne

Heyer³

et al. 2016

Lang Dyn Change

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We have documented language varieties (either Turkic or Indo-European) spoken in 23 test sites by 88 informants belonging to the major ethnic groups of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Yaghnobis). The recorded linguistic material concerns 176 words of the extended Swadesh list and will be made publically available with the publication of this paper. Phonological diversity is measured by the Levenshtein distance and displayed as a consensus bootstrap tree and as multidimensional scaling plots. Linguistic contact is measured as the number of borrowings, from one linguistic family into the other, according to a precision/recall analysis further validated by expert judgment. Concerning Turkic languages, the results of our sample do not support Kazakh and Karakalpak as distinct languages and indicate the existence of several separate Karakalpak varieties. Kyrgyz and Uzbek, on the other hand, appear quite homogeneous. Among the Indo-Iranian languages, the distinction between Tajik and Yaghnobi varieties is very clear-cut. More generally, the degree of borrowing is higher than average where language families are in contact in one of the many sorts of situations characterizing Central Asia: frequent bilingualism, shifting political boundaries, ethnic groups living outside the “mother” country.

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Synchronic patterns of Tuscan phonetic variation and diachronic change: Evidence from a dialectometric study

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)

Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

A Central Asian Language Survey

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