This paper examines the dialectology of eastern New York State. Data are considered from twelve cities and villages bridging the gap between the Inland North dialect region (home to the Northern Cities Shift [NCS]) and the Western New England region. Communities are classified as belonging to the Inland North “core,” the Inland North “fringe,” or a non–Inland North region. The settlement history of these communities is used to explain the boundaries between the dialect regions; presence of the NCS is found to correlate well with heavy migration from southwestern New England early in a community's history. Looking in detail at the different distributions of the individual sound changes involved in the NCS across the dialect regions established in this paper makes it possible to posit a reconstructed early history for the NCS and make hypotheses about the phonological character of the different sound changes.

The aims of this paper are twofold. First, we locate the most effective human geographical methods for sampling across space in large-scale dialectological projects. We propose two geographical concepts as a basis for sampling decisions: Geo-demographic classification, which is a multidimensional method used for the socio-economic grouping of areas; we also develop an updated version of functional regions that can be used in sociolinguistic research. We then report on the results of a pilot project that applies these models to collect data regarding the acceptability of vernacular morphosyntactic forms in the North East of England. Following the method of natural breaks advocated for dialectology by Horvath & Horvath (2002), we interpret breaks in the probabilistic patterns as areas of dialect transitions. This study contributes to the debate about the role and limitations of spatiality in linguistic analysis. It intends to broaden our knowledge about the interfaces between human geography and dialectology.

This paper uses dialect data to disentangle the contributions of phonology and morphology to the emergence of gender syncretism in the Dutch determiner paradigm. Quantitative and spatio-statistical analyses are used to identify an inverse relationship between phonological erosion and adoption of the innovative syncretic system, counter to expectation. That inverse relationship is shown to obscure the parallel development of the determiners in masculine and feminine contexts, leading to the suggestion that the syncretism results from a single morphological change triggered by phonological variability.

This paper presents the results of a multivariate spatial analysis of thirty-eight vowel formant variables measured in 236 cities from across the contiguous United States, based on the acoustic data from the Atlas of North American English. The results of the analysis both confirm and challenge the results of the Atlas. Most notably, while the analysis identifies similar patterns as the Atlas in the West and the Southeast, the analysis finds that the Midwest and the Northeast are distinct dialect regions that are considerably stronger than the traditional Midland dialect region identified in the Atlas. The analysis also finds evidence that a vowel shift is actively shaping the language of the Western United States.

This article presents a new method for processing data gathered using the “draw-a-map” task in perceptual dialectology (PD) studies. Such tasks produce large numbers of maps containing many lines indicating nonlinguists’ perceptions of the location and extent of dialect areas. Although individual maps are interesting, and numerical data relating to the relative prominence of dialect areas can be extracted, an important value of the draw-a-map task is in aggregating data. This was always an aim of the contemporary PD method, although the nature of the data has meant that this has not always been possible. Here, we argue for the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in order to aggregate, process, and display PD data. Using case studies from the United Kingdom and Germany, we present examples of data processed using GIS and illustrate the future possibilities for the use of GIS in PD research.

This paper identifies the main dialects within Nyamwezi, a Bantu language of Tanzania, and clarifies the historical relationship between these Nyamwezi (F.22) dialects and Sukuma (F.21). I claim, contrary to the conventional wisdom regarding these languages, that a rough linguistic border exists, which separates the Nyamwezi varieties from Sukuma. By implication, Sukuma and Nyamwezi do not exist in a dialect continuum with one another, and the Ndala lect described in Maganga and Schadeberg (1992) should be considered Sukuma. These claims are supported by primarily lexical and phonological evidence gathered during recent surveys conducted by SIL International. Furthermore, Batibo's (2000) relative chronology of the main innovations considered in this present study (*c/*j fricativization, Bantu spirantization, Dahl's Law, and *p-lenition) is re-examined in light of this new evidence. This paper demonstrates how diachronic dialectology can shed light on the dualistic processes of divergence and convergence in Bantu, and the resulting spread of linguistic innovation.