Quantitative Social Dialectology: Explaining Linguistic Variation Geographically and Socially

Quantitative Social Dialectology: Explaining Linguistic Variation Geographically and Socially

In this study we examine linguistic variation and its dependence on both social and geographic factors. We follow dialectometry in applying a quantitative methodology and focusing on dialect distances, and social dialectology in the choice of factors we examine in building a model to predict word pronunciation distances from the standard Dutch language to 424 Dutch dialects. We combine linear m...

RUNNING HEAD: Socially Meaningful Variation Producing Socially Meaningful Linguistic Variation

It is axiomatic that spoken language is highly variable, and that variability can be observed at nearly every level of linguistic structure, from the acoustic instantiation of speech sounds to the the information structure of long stretches of spoken discourse. Many of the chapters in this volume discuss empirical and theoretical studies of the production of linguistic structures. A challenge t...

Perception of geographically conditioned linguistic variation

Acquiring variation in an artificial language: Children and adults are sensitive to socially conditioned linguistic variation

Languages exhibit sociolinguistic variation, such that adult native speakers condition the usage of linguistic variants on social context, gender, and ethnicity, among other cues. While the existence of this kind of socially conditioned variation is well-established, less is known about how it is acquired. Studies of naturalistic language use by children provide various examples where children'...

Social, Cultural and Linguistic Factors Affecting EFL Learners’ Language Proficiency: A Quantitative Analysis

Many factors may be involved in determining why some students are more and some are less proficient in language. This study tried to explore the factors affecting Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency. 221 students at second, third and fourth year of university, including 50 male and 171 female were selected randomly to participate in the study. A researcher-made questionnaire and a proficiency tes...