The Space of Tuscan Dialectal Variation: A Correlation Study
The Space of Tuscan Dialectal Variation: A Correlation Study
Different types of features contribute to the linguistic distance between any two locations. Yet, the correlation between different feature types in defining patterns of dialectal variation represents an area of research still unexplored. In traditional dialectology, there is no obvious way to approach this matter beyond fairly superficial and impressionistic observations. This chapter summarises the results of a correlation study focusing on linguistic variation in an Italian region, Tuscany. By exploiting a multilevel representation scheme of dialectal data, the study analyses attested patterns of phonetic and morpho-lexical variation with the aim of testing the degree of correlation between phonetic variation and morpho-lexical variation, and between linguistic variation and geographic distance. The correlation analysis was carried out by combining two complementary approaches proposed in dialectometric literature, namely by computing both global and place-specific correlation measures and by inspecting their spatial distribution. The results demonstrate that phonetic and morpho-lexical variations in Tuscany seem to follow a different pattern than encountered in previous studies.
Keywords: Tuscany, linguistic distance, dialectal variation, dialectology, linguistic variation, morpho-lexical variation, geographic distance, phonetic variation
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