Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:26:28.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

One size fits all? Dialectometry in a small clan-based indigenous society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2012

James N. Stanford
James N. Stanford
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In many societies, dialectometry has revealed strong correlations between geographic distances and dialect differences (e.g., Gooskens, 2005; Heeringa & Nerbonne, 2001; Nerbonne, 2009, 2010). But what happens when dialectometry is applied to a small, clan-based society such as the indigenous Sui people of rural southwest China? The Sui results show a strong correlation between dialect difference and geographic distance, thus supporting Nerbonne and Kleiweg's (2007) Fundamental Dialectological Postulate. A new culturally specific computation, “rice paddy distance,” also provides a strong correlation with dialect differences. However, the study finds that some dialectometry patterns of larger societies are not “compressible” into small societies such as Sui. Clan exogamy also poses challenges for dialectometry. Nonetheless, the overall results show that basic principles of dialect variation in space can be generalized cross-culturally, even across very different cultures. This paper also suggests a “lower limit” for dialectology, that is, the smallest distance where regional dialectology may be relevant, all other things being equal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 247 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Becker, Kara. (2009). /r/ and the construction of place identity on New York City's Lower East Side. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13(5):634–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beijering, Karin, Gooskens, Charlotte, & Heeringa, Wilbert. (2008). Predicting intelligibility and perceived linguistic distance by means of the Levenshtein algorithm. In van Koppen, M. & Botma, B. (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2008. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 13–24.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. (1933). Language. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Bradley, David. (2007). East and Southeast Asia. In R. Asher, E. & Moseley, C. (eds.), Atlas of the world's languages. 2nd ed.London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Britain, David. (2002). Space and spatial diffusion. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 603–637.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3):398–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, & Alvanides, Seraphim. (2010). Applying geographical sampling methods to regional dialectology in North East England. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 39, University of Texas—San Antonio, November 6.Google Scholar
Burusphat, Somsonge, Wei, Xuechun, & Edmondson, Jerold. (2003). Sui (Shui) Chinese-Thai dictionary. Bangkok: Mahidol University.Google Scholar
Castro, Andy. (2011). Southern Sui: a fourth Sui dialect. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 4(2):1–31.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1992). Dialect acquisition. Language 68(4):673–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1994). An introduction to dialect topography. English World-Wide 15:35–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, Peter. (1998). Dialectology. 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chao, Y. R. (1930). A system of tone letters. La Maitre Phonetique 45:24–27.Google Scholar
Cheng, Chin-Chuan. (1997). Measuring relationship among dialects: DOC and related resources. Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing 2(1):41–72.Google Scholar
China National Bureau of Statistics, Office of Population and Social Science Statistics and the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, Office of Economic Development [Guojia tongjiju renkouheshehuikejitongjisi, Guojia minzushiwu weiyuanhui jingjifazhansi] (ed). (2003). 2000 Nian renkou pucha Zhongguo minzu renkou ziliao, shang ce [Year 2000 population census data for China's ethnic groups. Vol. 1]. Beijing: Nationalities Publishing.Google Scholar
Clarke, Sandra. (2009). Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? In Stanford, J. & Preston, D. (eds.), Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 109–128.Google Scholar
Darling, David (2004). The universal book of mathematics. Hoboken: Wiley.Google Scholar
Diller, Anthony, Edmondson, Jerold, & Luo, Yongxian. (2008). The Tai-Kadai languages. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dorian, Nancy C. (2010). Investigating variation: The effects of social organization and social setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2004). Variation and a sense of place. In Fought, C. (ed.), Sociolinguistic variation: Critical reflections. New York: Oxford University Press. 107–120.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2005). Variation, convention, and social meaning. Plenary address at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Oakland, California. January 7, 2005.Google Scholar
Edmondson, Jerold A., Esling, John H., Harris, Jimmy G., & Wei, James. (2004). A phonetic study of Sui consonants and tones. Mon-Khmer Studies 34:47–66.Google Scholar
Edmondson, Jerold A., & Solnit, David B. (eds.). (1988). Comparative Kadai: Linguistic studies beyond Tai. Dallas: SIL.Google Scholar
Fortin, M. J., & Gurevitch, J.. (1993). Mantel tests: Spatial structure in field experiments. In Scheiner, S. & Gurevitch, J. (eds.), Design and analysis of ecological experiments. New York: Chapman & Hall. 342–359.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. (1979[1971]). Dialectal variation in Tarascan phonology. In Friedrich, P. (ed.), Language, context and the imagination. Essays by Paul Friedrich. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 299–339.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. (1984). Tarascan: From meaning to sound. In Munro Edmonson, S. (ed.), Supplement to the handbook of Middle American Indians. Vol. 2. Austin: University of Texas Press. 56–82.Google Scholar
Gooskens, Charlotte. (2005). Traveling time as a predictor of linguistic distance. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 13:38–62.Google Scholar
Gooskens, Charlotte, & Heeringa, Wilbert. (2004). Perceptive evaluation of Levenshtein dialect distance measurements using Norwegian dialect data. Language Variation and Change 16:189–207.Google Scholar
Heeringa, Wilbert. (2004). Measuring dialect pronunciation differences using Levenshtein distance. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Heeringa, Wilbert, & Nerbonne, John. (2001). Dialect areas and dialect continua. Language Variation and Change 13:375–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane. (2001). Languages on the land: Toward an anthropological dialectology. In Terrell, J. (ed.), Language, archaeology, and history. Westport: Bergin and Garvey. 257–282.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. (2004). Place, globalization, and linguistic variation. In Fought, C. (ed.), Sociolinguistic variation: Critical reflections. New York: Oxford University Press. 65–83.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. (2011). Language and place. In Mesthrie, R. (ed.), Cambridge handbook of sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 203–217.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, & Kiesling, Scott. (2008). Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(1):5–33.Google Scholar
Kurath, Hans. (1939). Handbook of the linguistic geography of New England. Providence: Brown.Google Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr. (2009). The linguistics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr., Nerbonne, John, Opas-Hanninen, Lisa Lena, & Bounds, Paulina. (2010). Geolinguistics. Workshop presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 39. University of Texas-San Antonio. November 10.Google Scholar
Kruskal, Joseph. (1999[1983]). An overview of sequence comparison. In Sankoff, D. & Kruskal, J. (eds.), Time warps, string edits, and macromolecules: The theory and practice of string comparison. 2nd ed.Stanford: CSLI. 1–44.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19:273–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1974). Language change as a form of communication. In Silverstein, A. (ed.), Human communication. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. 221–256.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 2: Social factors. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2008). The mysterious uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift. Presented at Methods in Dialectology XIII, University of Leeds, England. August 8, 2008.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2010). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 3: Cognitive and cultural factors. Malden: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (2006). The atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert & Tabouret-Keller, Andree. (1985). Acts of identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levenshtein, V. I. (1966). Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals. Cybernetics and Control Theory 10(8):707–710.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul. (ed.). (2009). Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 16th edition. Dallas: SIL.Google Scholar
Li, Fang Kuei. (1948). The distribution of initials and tones in the Sui language. Language 24:160–167.Google Scholar
Li, Fang Kuei. (1965). The Tai and Kam-Sui languages. Lingua 14:148–179.Google Scholar
Liu, Daichun, Bangjia, Cheng, & Yingfang, Chen. (2002). Qiannan Buyizu Miaozu Zizhizhou 2000 nian renkou pucha ziliao huibian [Compilation of the 2000 census results of Qiannan Autonomous Prefecture of Buyi and Miao Nationalities]. Guiyang: Guizhou Province 5th Census Office.Google Scholar
Livio, Mario. (2002). The Golden Ratio: The story of phi, the world's most astonishing number. New York: Broadway Books.Google Scholar
Luo, Shiwu. (ed.). (1992). Sandu Shuizu Zizhixian zhi (Sandu Sui Autonomous County journal). Guizhou: Guizhou People's Publishing.Google Scholar
Mantel, Nathan. (1967). The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Research 27:209–220.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. (2002). Language and identity. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 475–499.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. (2002). Communities of practice. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 526–548.Google Scholar
Nagy, Naomi, & Meyerhoff, Miriam. (2008). The social lives of language. In Meyerhoff, M. & Nagy, N. (eds.), Social lives of language: Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1–17.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John. (2009). Data-driven dialectology. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1):175–198.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John. (2010). Measuring the diffusion of linguistic change. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365:3821–3828.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John, & Heeringa, Wilbert. (2007). Geographic distributions of linguistic variation reflect dynamics of differentiation. In Featherston, S. & Sternefeld, W. (eds.), Roots: Linguistics in search of its evidential base. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 267–297.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John & Heeringa, Wilbert. (2010). Measuring dialect differences. In Auer, & Schmidt, (eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation: Theories and methods. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. 550–567.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John & Kleiweg, Peter. (2007). Toward a dialectological yardstick. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 14:148–166.Google Scholar
Pan, Chaoyang, Wang, Pinkui, Luo, Shiwu & Shi, Guoyi. (1984). Sandu Shuizu Zizhixian gaikuang ziliao huibian [Sandu Sui Autonomous County report: Information collection]. Unpublished report.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Joel. (2001). Code for conducting the Mantel test in S-Plus or R. Available at: http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/archives. Accessed September 28, 2011.Google Scholar
Sandu Shuizu Zizhixian Gaikuang [Sandu Sui Autonomous County Report]. (1986). Guiyang: Guiyang People's Publishing.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. (1980). The social life of language. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seguy, Jean. (1971). La relation entre la distance spatiale et la distance lexicale. Revue de Linguistique 35:335–357.Google Scholar
Seguy, Jean. (1973). Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Gascogne. Vol. 1. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique.Google Scholar
Smouse, Peter, Long, Jeffrey, & Sokal, Robert. (1986). Multiple regression and correlation extensions of the Mantel test of matrix correspondence. Systematic Zoology 35(4):627–632.Google Scholar
Shuiyu Diaocha Baogao (SDB) [Sui Language Research Report]. (1956). Unpublished manuscript. Guiyang, Guizhou: Zhongguo Shaoshu Minzu Yuyan Diaocha Diyi Gongzuodui [Chinese Minority Language Research Working Group]. Acquired from Jerold Edmondson, University of Texas-Arlington.Google Scholar
Spruit, Marco, Heeringa, Wilbert, & Nerbonne, John. (2009). Associations among linguistic levels. Lingua 119(11):1624–1642.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2007a). Sui adjective reduplication as poetic morpho-phonology. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 16(2):87–111.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2007b). Lexicon and description of Sui adjective intensifiers. Linguistic Discovery 5(1):1–27.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2007c). The road less traveled: Indigenous minority languages and variationist sociolinguistics. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 36, University of Pennsylvania. October 12.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2007d). Dialect contact and identity: A case study of exogamous Sui clans. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2008a). A sociotonetic analysis of Sui dialect contact. Language Variation and Change 20(3):409–450.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2008b). Child dialect acquisition: New perspectives on parent/peer influence. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(5):567–596.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2009a). “Eating the food of our place”: Sociolinguistic loyalties in multidialectal Sui villages. Language in Society 38(3):287–309.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2009b). Clan as a sociolinguistic variable. In Stanford, J. & Preston, D. (eds.), Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2010). The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation: Two Hmong dialects in Texas. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(1):89–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanford, James N. (2011). A 50-year comparison of regional dialect variation in the Sui language. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 4(2):120–143.Google Scholar
Stanford, James N., & Evans, Jonathan P. (2012). The influence of Mandarin Chinese on minority languages in rural southwest China: A sociolinguistic study of tones in contact. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 215:79–100Google Scholar
Stanford, James, & Preston, Dennis. (eds.). (2009). Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Tang, Chaoju, & van Hueven, Vincent J. (2009). Mutual intelligibility of Chinese dialects experimentally tested. Lingua 119:709–732.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 2:215–246.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (2008). Colonial dialect contact in the history of European languages: On the irrelevance of identity to new-dialect formation. Language in Society 37(2):241–254.Google Scholar
Van Gemert, Ilse. (2002). Het geografisch verklaren van dialectafstanden met een geografisch informatiesysteem (gis) [The geographical explanation of dialect distances with a geographic information system (GIS)]. Master's thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Wei, Shifang. (2007). Shuishu changyong zidian [Dictionary of common words in Shui writing]. Guiyang: Guizhou Nationalities Publishing.Google Scholar
Wei, Xuechun. (2011). Shuiyu Miaoxie Yanjiu [Sui language descriptive research]. Ph.D. dissertation, Shanghai Normal University.Google Scholar
Wei, Xuechun, & Edmondson, Jerold. (2008). Sui. In Diller, A., Edmondson, J. & Luo, Y. (eds.), The Tai-Kadai languages. London: Routledge. 585–595.Google Scholar
Yang, Cathryn. (2011). Lalo regional varieties: Phylogeny, dialectometry, and intelligibility. Paper presented at NWAV-Asia/Pacific-1, University of Delhi, India. February 26.Google Scholar
Yang, Cathryn, & Castro, Andy. (2008). Representing tone in Levenshtein distance. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 2(1–2):205–229.Google Scholar
Zeng, Xiaoyu. (2004). Hanyu Shuiyu guanxi lun [Discussion of the relationship between Chinese and Sui]. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.Google Scholar
Zeng, Xiaoyu, & Yao, Fuxiang. (1996). Han-Shui cidian [Chinese-Sui dictionary]. Chengdu: Sichuan Minorities Publishing.Google Scholar
Zhang, Junru. (1980). Shuiyu jianzhi [A sketch of the Sui language]. Beijing: Minorities Press.Google Scholar
Zhou, Minglang. (2003). Multilingualism in China: The politics of writing reforms for minority languages 1949–2002. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar