Dialectology

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Dialectology is a sub-field of linguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution (as opposed to variations based on social factors, which are studied in sociolinguistics, or variations based on time, which are studied in historical linguistics) and the features associated with it. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation. William Labov is one of the most prominent researchers in this field.

Dialectologists are ultimately concerned with grammatical and syntactical features which correspond to regional areas. Thus they are usually dealing with populations living in their areas for generations without moving, but also with immigrant groups bringing their languages to new settlements.

[edit] History

Dialect studies began in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The idea of dialect studies began in 1876, by Georg Wenker, who sent postal questionnaires out over Northern Germany. These postal questionnaires contained a list of sentences written in Standard German. These sentences were then transcribed into the local dialect, reflecting dialectal differences. Many studies proceeded from this, and over the next century dialect studies were carried out all over the world.

Traditional studies in Dialectology were generally aimed at producing dialect maps, whereby imaginary lines were drawn over a map to indicate different dialect areas. The move away from traditional methods of language study however caused linguists to become more concerned with social factors. Dialectologists therefore began to study social, as well as regional variation. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States (1930s) was amongst the first dialect studies to take social factors into account.

This shift in interest consequently saw the birth of Sociolinguistics, which is a mixture of Dialectology and Social Sciences.