Profile-Based Linguistic Uniformity as a Generic Method for Comparing Language Varieties

In this text we present “profile-based linguistic uniformity”, a method designed to compare language varieties on the basis of a wide range of potentially heterogeneous linguistic variables. In many respects a parallel can be drawn with current methods in dialectometry (for an overview, see Nerbonne and Heeringa, 2001; Heeringa, Nerbonne and Kleiweg, 2002): in both cases dissimilarities between varieties on the basis of individual variables are summarized in global dissimilarities, and a series of language varieties are subsequently clustered or charted using multivariate techniques such as cluster analysis or multidimensional scaling. This global similarity between the methods makes it possible to compare them and to investigate the implications of notable differences. In this text we specifically focus on, and defend one characteristic of our methodology, its profile-based nature.