Quantitative methods in dialect geography (Schneider)

Dialectology operates mainly via collecting huge amounts of individual data for linguistic atlases. While traditional analyses of such atlases have focused on investigating selected data considered as representative (isoglosses), it has increasingly been recognized that the sheer amount of details and data calls for a comprehensive quantitative analysis, employing statistical techniques. Based on my earlier training in dialect geography, and strongly resulting from my research stay at the University of Georgia and collaboration with Bill Kretzschmar in 1988/89, for a number of years I continued to investigate and describe the application of quantitative techniques in the analysis of dialect data.

Obviously, this project activity ties in with work on language variability in general and my interest in chaos and complex systems theories in particular.

Publications

Schneider, Edgar W. 1990. "Qualitative vs. quantitative methods of area delimitation in dialectology: The example of lexical data from Georgia and Alabama", in Journal of English Linguistics 21 (1988 [1990]), 175-212

Schneider, Edgar W., with William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., & Ellen Johnson, eds. 1990. Computer Methods in Dialectology. Journal of English Linguistics. (Special Issue 22.1 1989).

Kretzschmar, William R., & Edgar W. Schneider. 1996. Introduction to Quantitative Analysis of Linguistic Survey Data: An Atlas by the Numbers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schneider, Edgar W. 2002. "Quantitative techniques in the analysis of dialect data", in Dieter Kastovsky, Gunther Kaltenböck & Susanne Reichl, eds. Anglistentag 2001 Wien. Trier: WVT, 75-87.

Nagy, Naomi, Edgar W. Schneider, Xiaoli Zhang, and George Nagy. 2005. "A quantitative categorization of phonemic dialect features in context" In Anind Dey, Boicho Kokinov, David Leake, et al., eds. Modeling and Using Context. Proceedings of Context '05 (Fifth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context), Paris 2005. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 3554) New York: Springer, 326-338. Electronic publication at:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11508373_25.

Nagy, Naomi, Edgar W. Schneider, Xiaoli Zhang, and George Nagy. 2006. "Clustering dialects automatically -- A Mutual Information approach." Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 12.2 (): Papers from NWAV 34, 145-158.

Schneider, Edgar W. 2008. "Clustering global Englishes automatically: neutral input, meaningful results." In Hans-Georg Wolf, Lothar Peter and Frank Polzenhagen, eds. Focus on English. Linguistic Structure, Language Variation and Discursive Use. Studies in Honour of Peter Lucko. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 51-63.