Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:53:02.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Uncovering the Big Picture

Measuring the Typological Relatedness of Varieties of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2021

By
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Edited by
Danae Perez ,
Marianne Hundt ,
Johannes Kabatek  and
Daniel Schreier
Danae Perez
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Marianne Hundt
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Johannes Kabatek
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Daniel Schreier
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Get access

Summary

This contribution surveys various large-scale quantitative techniques that have been utilized in the literature on varieties and dialects of English to determine their typological relatedness: (a) aggregative measures of distance or similarity, based on atlas or survey data; (b) typological profiling, a technique that draws on naturalistic text corpora to calculate usage- and frequency-based measures of grammatical analyticity and syntheticity; (c) a corpus-based method, inspired by work in information theory, that is designed to map out varieties based on how they differ in terms of language/dialect complexity: and (d) an approach to calculate distances between varieties as a function of the extent to which grammatical variation patterns in usage data are dissimilar.

Keywords

Dialecttypologyrelatednesssimilarityaggregationanalyticitysyntheticitycomplexityvariation
Type
Chapter
Information
English and Spanish
World Languages in Interaction
 , pp. 184 - 208
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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

Bayley, Robert and Ana, Otto Santa. 2004. Chicano English: Morphology and Syntax. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., and Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 374–390. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Beckner, Clay, Blythe, Richard, Bybee, Joan, Christiansen, Morten H., Croft, William, Ellis, Nick C., Holland, John, Ke, Jinyun, Larsen-Freeman, Diane, and Schoenemann, Tom. 2009. Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper. Language Learning 59. 1–26. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00533.x.Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1909. Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen 25. 110–142.Google Scholar
Bentz, Christian and Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs. 2016. Learning pressures reduce morphological complexity: Linking corpus, computational and experimental evidence. Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC), 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2016). Osaka, Japan.Google Scholar
Bentz, Christian and Winter, Bodo. 2013. Languages with More Second Language Learners Tend to Lose Nominal Case. Language Dynamics and Change 3. 1–27. doi:10.1163/22105832-13030105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Gray, Bethany, and Poonpon, Kornwipa. 2011. Should We Use Characteristics of Conversation to Measure Grammatical Complexity in L2 Writing Development? TESOL Quarterly 45(1). 5–35. doi:10.5054/tq.2011.244483.Google Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar. 2017. Areas and Universals. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics, 40–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781107279872.004. www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781107279872%23CN-bp-3/type/book_part (19 October, 2018).Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Cueni, Anna, Nikitina, Tatiana, and Baayen, Harald. 2007. Predicting the Dative Alternation. In Boume, Gerlof, Krämer, Irene, and Zwarts, Joost (eds.), Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Bryant, Davis and Moulton, Vincent. 2004. Neighbor-Net: An Agglomerative Method for the Construction of Phylogenetic Networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21(2). 255–265. doi:10.1093/molbev/msh018.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2006. From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition. Language 82(4). 711–733.Google Scholar
Cysouw, Michael. 2013. Disentangling Geography from Genealogy. In Auer, Peter, Hilpert, Martin, Stukenbrock, Anja, and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt (eds.), Space in Language and Linguistics, 21–37. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110312027/9783110312027.21/9783110312027.21.xml (3 June 2016).Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Order of Subject, Object and Verb. In Dryer, Matthew S. and Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info/chapter/81.Google Scholar
Ehret, Katharina. 2016. An information-theoretic approach to language complexity: variation in naturalistic corpora. PhD thesis, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.Google Scholar
Ehret, Katharina and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2016. An Information-Theoretic Approach to Assess Linguistic Complexity. In Baechler, Raffaela and Seiler, Guido (eds.), Complexity, Isolation, and Variation, 71–94. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110348965/9783110348965-004/9783110348965-004.xml (2 August 2016).Google Scholar
Gil, David. 2003. English goes Asian: Number and (In)definiteness in the Singlish Noun Phrase. In Plank, Frans (ed.), Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe, 467–514. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Grafmiller, Jason and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2019. Mapping out particle Placement in Englishes around the World: A Case Study in Comparative Sociolinguistic Analysis. Language Variation and Change. 30(3). 385–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grandel, Saskia. 2017. Morphosyntaktische Komplexität, Normativität und Sprachkontakt: Eine Projektskizze. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 84(2–3). 152–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1960. A Quantitative Approach to the Morphological Typology of Language. International Journal of American Linguistics 26(3). 178–194.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin and Michaelis, Susanne Maria. 2017. Analytic and Synthetic: Typological Change in Varieties of European Languages. In Buchstaller, Isabelle and Siebenhaar, Beat (eds.), Studies in Language Variation, vol. 19, 3–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/silv.19.01has. https://benjamins.com/catalog/silv.19.01has (4 October, 2018).Google Scholar
Heller, Benedikt. 2018. Stability and Fluidity in Syntactic Variation World-Wide: The Genitive Alternation Across Varieties of English. Leuven: KU Leuven PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Hosali, Priya. 2004. Butler English: Morphology and Syntax. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., and Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 1031–1044. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hout, Roeland van and Muysken, Pieter. 2016. Taming Chaos: Chance and Variability in the Language Sciences. In Landsman, Klaas and van Wolde, Ellen (eds.), The Challenge of Chance, 249–266. Cham: Springer International Publishing. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-26300-7_14 (13 December 2016).Google Scholar
Juola, Patrick. 1998. Measuring Linguistic Complexity: The Morphological Tier. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 5(3). 206–213.Google Scholar
Juola, Patrick. 2008. Assessing Linguistic Complexity. In Miestamo, Matti, Sinnemäki, Kaius, and Karlsson, Fred (eds.), Language Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change, 89–108. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasevič, Vadim and Jachontov, Sergej E. (eds.). 1982. Kvantitativnaja tipologija jazykov Azii i Afriki [A Quantitative Typology of Asian and African Languages]. Leningrad: University of Leningrad.Google Scholar
Kelemen, J. 1970. Sprachtypologie und Sprachstatistik. In Dezső, László and Hajdú, Peter (eds.), Theoretical Problems of Typology and the Northern Eurasian Languages, 53–63. Amsterdam: Gruener.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, Cheshire, Jenny, Fox, Susan, and Torgersen, Eivind. 2013. English as a Contact Language: The Role of Children and Adolescents. In Schreier, Daniel and Hundt, Marianne (eds.), English as a Contact Language, 258–282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2004. Global Synopsis: Morphological and Syntactic Variation in English. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., and Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 1142–1202. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2011. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Variation in World Englishes: Prospects and Limitations of Searching for Universals. In Siemund, Peter (ed.), Linguistic Universals and Language Variation, 264–290. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, Kate, Mesthrie, Raj, and Upton, Clive (eds.). 2004. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd and Lunkenheimer, Kerstin (eds.). 2013. eWAVE. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://ewave-atlas.org/.Google Scholar
Kruskal, Joseph B and Wish, Myron. 1978. Multidimensional Scaling (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences). Newbury Park/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1969. Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula. Language 45. 715–762.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1982. Building on Empirical Foundations. In Lehmann, Winfred and Malkiel, Yakov (eds.), Perspectives on Historical Linguistics, 17–92. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laitinen, Mikko. 2018. Placing ELF among the Varieties of English: Some Observation from Typological Profiling. In Deshors, Sandra (ed.), Modeling World Englishes in the 21st Century: Assessing the Interplay of Emancipation and Globalization of ESL Varieties. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz. 1978. Where Does the Sociolinguistic Variable Stop? Language in Society 7. 171–183.Google Scholar
Maitz, Péter and Németh, Attila. 2014. Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 26(1). 1–29. doi:10.1017/S1470542713000184.Google Scholar
McMahon, April, Heggarty, Paul, McMahon, Robert, and Maguire, Warren. 2007. The sound patterns of Englishes: representing phonetic similarity. English Language and Linguistics 11(1). 113–142.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John. 2001. The World’s Simplest Grammars Are Creole Grammars. Linguistic Typology 6. 125–166.Google Scholar
Melchers, Gunnel. 2004. English Spoken in Orkney and Shetland: Morphology and Syntax. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., and Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 34–46. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 2013. The Vertical Archipelago: Adding the Third Dimension to Linguistic Geography. In Auer, Peter, Hilpert, Martin, Stukenbrock, Anja, and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt (eds.), Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives, 38–60. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Preston, Dennis Richard. 1999. Folk Linguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ogden, C. K. 1934. The System of Basic English. New York: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana (ed.). 2000. The English History of African American English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Röthlisberger, Melanie. 2018. Regional variation in probabilistic grammars: A multifactorial study of the English dative alternation. Leuven: KU Leuven PhD dissertation. https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/602938.Google Scholar
Röthlisberger, Melanie, Grafmiller, Jason, and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2017. Cognitive Indigenization Effects in the English Dative Alternation. Cognitive Linguistics 28(4). 673–710.Google Scholar
Ruette, Tom, Ehret, Katharina, and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2016. A Lectometric Analysis of Aggregated Lexical Variation in Written Standard English with Semantic Vector Space Models. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21(1). 48–79. doi:10.1075/ijcl.21.1.03rue.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von. 1818. Observations sur la language et la littérature provençales. Paris.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E. 1948. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal 27. 379–423.Google Scholar
Siegel, Jeff, Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, and Kortmann, Bernd. 2014. Measuring Analyticity and Syntheticity in Creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 29(1). 49–85. doi:10.1075/jpcl.29.1.02sie.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. Typological Parameters of Intralingual Variability: Grammatical Analyticity versus Syntheticity in Varieties of English. Language Variation and Change 21(3). 319–353. doi:10.1017/S0954394509990123.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2009a. The Morphosyntax of Varieties of English Worldwide: A Quantitative Perspective. Lingua 119(11). 1643–1663.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2009b. Between Simplification and Complexification: Non-Standard Varieties of English around the World. In Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David, and Trudgill, Peter (eds.), Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable, 64–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt and Kortmann, Bernd. 2011. Typological Profiling: Learner Englishes versus Iindigenized L2 Varieties of English. In Mukherjee, Joybrato and Hundt, Marianne (eds.), Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap, 167–187. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Grafmiller, Jason, and Rosseel, Laura. 2019. Variation-Based Distance and Similarity Modeling: A Case Study in World Englishes. Frontiers 2(23).Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2001. Comparative Sociolinguistics. In Chambers, Jack, Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 729–763. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 1997. Remarks on Grammatical Weight. Language Variation and Change 9. 81–105.Google Scholar
Wee, Lionel. 2004. Singapore English: Morphology and Syntax. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar, Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., and Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, vol. 2, 1058–1072. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wolk, Christoph. 2009. Classifying Geographic Variation: Morphosyntax and Phonology. Freiburg: University of Freiburg MA Thesis.Google Scholar
Wray, Alison and Grace, George W.. 2007. The Consequences of Talking to Strangers: Evolutionary Corollaries of Socio-Cultural Influences on Linguistic Form. Lingua 117(3). 543–578. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.005.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×