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Dialectology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dialectology
(from
Greek
διάλεκτος
,
dialektos
, "talk, dialect"; and
-
λογία
,
-
logia
) is the scientific studyof linguisticdialect, a sub
-
field of
sociolinguistics. It studies variations in
language
based primarily ongeographic distribution and their associated features. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence oftwo local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation.Dialectologists are ultimately concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond toregional areas. Thus they usually deal with populations that have lived in certain areas for generations,but also withmigrant groupsthat bring their languages to new areas (seelanguage contact).
William Labovis one of the most prominent researchers in this field.
History
Dialect studies began in the latter half of the 19th century. The idea of dialect studies began in 1876, byGeorg Wenker, who sent postal questionnaires out over Northern Germany. These postal questionnairescontained a list of sentences written in Standard German. These sentences were then transcribed intothe local dialect, reflecting dialectal differences. Many studies proceeded from this, and over the nextcentury dialect studies were carried out all over the world.Joseph Wrightproduced the six
-
volume
English Dialect Dictionaryin 1905.Traditional studies in Dialectology were generally aimed at producing dialect maps, whereby imaginary
lines were drawn over a map to indicate different dialect areas. Themove away from traditional methods
of language study however caused linguists to become more concerned with social factors.Dialectologists therefore began to study social, as well as regional variation. The
Linguistic Atlas of the United States
(1930s) was amongst the first dialect studies to take social factors into account.In the 1950s, the
University of Leeds
undertooktheSurvey of English Dialects, which focused mostly on
rural speech in England and the eastern areas of Wales.This shift in interest consequently saw the birth ofSociolinguistics, which is a mixture of dialectology
and
social sciences.
Dialect researchers typically use questionnaires to gather data on the dialect they are researching.There are two main types of questionnaires, direct and indirect.Researchers using direct questionnaires will present the subject witha set of questions that demand aspecific answer and are designed to gather either lexical or phonological information. For example, thelinguist may ask the subject the name for various items, or ask him or her to repeat certain words.Indirect questionnaires are typically more open
-
ended and take longer to complete than directquestionnaires. Researchers using this method will sit down with a subject and begins a conversationon a specific topic. For example, he may question the subject about farm work, food and cooking, orsome other subject, and gather lexical and phonological information from the information provided by thesubject. The researcher may also begin a sentence, but allow the subject to finish it for him, or ask aquestion that does not demand a specific answer, such as
“
What are the most common plants and
”
[1]
It has been suggested that
Dialect#Concepts in dialectology
bemerged
into this article or section. (Discuss
)
Contents
1 History 2 Methods of data collection 3 See also 4 References
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