LECTOMETRY PANEL

International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE|9)

June 6–9, 2017, Málaga

Update June 16, 2017: slides available (under “Abstracts and Programme”)

Panel organisers

The panel on lectometry is organised by: Jocelyne Daems, Karlien Franco, Laura Rosseel* & Melanie Röthlisberger from the Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL) research group at University of Leuven, Belgium and *the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Panel description

This panel aims to showcase research in the field of lectometry. In this field, quantitative measures are employed to aggregate over linguistic variables in order to establish the relative similarity (or distance) between different lects. These lects are collections of linguistic features that can vary along any extra-linguistic contextual dimension in the broadest sense possible (Geeraerts, Grondelaers and Bakema 1994: 4). Given the definition above, several fields of linguistic research fall within the scope of lectometry. Specifically, in dialectometry, stylometry, sociolectometry and language perception research, distances between lects are studied along the geographical, discursive, social and subjective axis respectively. In this panel, we aim to highlight the range of research questions that can be addressed against the background of lectometry.

Firstly, the geographical axis of lectometry is developed in dialectometry. In traditional dialectometric research, the relative (dis)similarity between dialects is established by aggregating over a large set of dialectal features (e.g. Goebl 2006, Heeringa 2004, Nerbonne and Kleiweg 2003, Séguy 1971, Szmrecsanyi 2013). Recently, however, the field of dialectometry is witnessing a trend of widening its scope from dialects to sociolects (e.g. Hansen 2012, Wieling, Nerbonne and Baayen 2011).

Secondly, stylometry and register analysis are situated along the discursive axis of lectometry. In stylometric studies, the distribution of linguistic features in texts provides insight into the ways in which authors have individual and thus distinguishable styles (e.g. Grieve 2007, Luyckx and Daelemans 2011). Also related to the discursive axis are studies like Biber (1995), which looks into how text types/genres vary, positioning them, for instance, along functional dimensions such as ‘involvedness’ or ‘narration’.

The third field of study related to lectometry, sociolectometry, considers language variation in relation to traditional factors such as age, gender or region. A prime example of a sociolectometric study is Geeraerts, Grondelaers and Speelman (1999), which examines lexical variables in order to measure the relation between the two main national varieties of Dutch. Expanding on this early work in sociolectometry, Speelman, Grondelaers and Geeraerts (2003) and Ruette et al. (2014) introduce more elaborate quantitative techniques such as cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling. Advanced methodological techniques, like Semantic Vector Space models in Ruette, Ehret and Szmrecsanyi (2016), have recently been employed in sociolectometry as well.

The fourth field of study that falls within the scope of lectometry, language perception research, is situated along the subjective axis. So far, lectometry has mainly focused on measuring distances between varieties based on language production data. However, measuring subjective distances on the basis of language perception and attitudes would offer a valuable addition. This avenue is still relatively unexplored compared to the three fields above, but studies like Gooskens and Heeringa (2004) or Van Bezooijen and Heeringa (2006) certainly offer a steppingstone to further developing this aspect of lectometry.

To sum up, lectometry offers an interesting umbrella perspective for the aforementioned fields measuring distances between language varieties along different axes. The aim of this panel is to catalogue the range of different lectometric approaches and the ways in which they can reinforce each other. More specifically, research questions include but are not restricted to the following ones:

How can insights from different linguistic fields (e.g. Cognitive Linguistics) inform lectometric research?
Do text types in contact situations exhibit the same dimensional patterns as in more traditional settings?
How does sociolinguistic variation (in the narrow sense) influence dialectometric results?
Which methods and datasets are available that can be used to combine different approaches to language variation (e.g. geographical, stylistic and social variation) into one comprehensive framework?
Can social psychological attitude measures recently adopted in linguistic perception research (e.g. Speelman et al. 2013, Pantos and Perkins 2012) provide interesting tools to measure subjective distances between languages/language varieties?

This panel is divided in two parts according to how the contributions expand and innovate current research lines in lectometry. The first and present part brings together papers that expand the scope of lectometry from the more traditional dialects to global varieties. The second part of the panel focuses on lectometric research that introduces new methods and linguistic features into the field. The first part is preceded by a short introduction by the organizers and the panel’s keynote speaker, Martijn Wieling (Winner of the 2016 European Young Research Award), who will be talking about “Generalized additive modeling as a useful tool for dialectometry”. Both talks will emphasize how the papers in the two parts of the panel are interconnected and invite discussion and interaction between the various strands of research represented by our participants. Our panel concludes with a discussion slot, led by Dirk Geeraerts and Dirk Speelman, which will bring together ideas put forward in both parts of the panel. In addition, there will be a focus on perception research, the subfield of lectometry underrepresented in this panel, and how we can encourage scholars in this field to enter into dialogue with lectometric work.

References

Biber, Douglas. 1995. Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambrigde: Cambrigde University Press.

Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers & Dirk Speelman. 1999. Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat: een onderzoek naar kleding- en voetbaltermen. Amsterdam: P.J. Meertens-Instituut.

Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers & Peter Bakema. 1994. The Structure of Lexical Variation. Meaning, Naming, and Context. (Cognitive Linguistics Research 5). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Goebl, Hans. 2006. Recent advances in Salzburg dialectometry. Literary and Linguistic Computing 21(4):411–435.

Gooskens, Charlotte & Wilbert Heeringa. 2004. Perceptive evaluation of Levenshtein dialect distance measurements using Norwegian dialect data. Language Variation and Change 16(3): 189–207.

Grieve, Jack. 2007. Quantitative Authorship Attribution: An Evaluation of Techniques. Literary and Linguistic Computing 22(3): 251–270.

Hansen, Sandra. 2012. Dialektalität, Dialektwissen und Hyperdialektalität aus soziolinguistischer Perspektive. In Sandra Hansen, Christian Schwarz, Philipp Stöckle & Tobias Streck (eds.), Dialectological and Folk Dialectological Concepts of Space Current Methods and Perspectives in Sociolinguistic Research on Dialect Change, 48–74. (linguae & litterae 17). Berlin: de Gruyter.

Heeringa, Wilbert. 2004. Measuring Dialect Pronunciation Differences using Levenshtein Distance. PhD thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Luyckx, Kim & Walter Daelemans. 2011. The Effect of Author Set Size and Data Size in Authorship Attribution. Literary and Linguistic Computing 26(1): 35–55.

Nerbonne, John & Peter Kleiweg. 2003. Lexical distance in LAMSAS. Computers and the Humanities 37(3): 339–357.

Pantos, Andrew J., & Andrew W. Perkins. 2012. Measuring Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Foreign Accented Speech. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 32(1): 3–20.

Ruette, Tom, Katharina Ehret & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 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.

Ruette, Tom, Dirk Geeraerts, Yves Peirsman & Dirk Speelman. 2014. Semantic weighting mechanisms in scalable lexical sociolectometry. In Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.), Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis: Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech, 205–230. (linguae & litterae 28). Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

Séguy, Jean. 1971. La relation entre la distance spatiale et la distance lexicale. Revue de Linguistique Romane 35(138):335–357.

Speelman, Dirk, Spruyt, Adriaan, Impe, Leen, & Geeraerts, Dirk. 2013. Language attitudes revisited: auditory affective priming. Journal of Pragmatics 52: 83–92.

Speelman, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers & Dirk Geeraerts. 2003. Profile-based linguistic uniformity as a generic method for comparing language varieties. Computers and the Humanities 37(3): 317–337.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2013. Grammatical Variation in British English Dialects: A Study in Corpus-Based Dialectometry. (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Bezooijen, Renée & Wilbert Heeringa 2006. Intuitions on linguistic distance: geographically or linguistically based? In Tom Koole, Jacomine Nortier & Bert Tahitu (eds.), Artikelen van de Vijfde Sociolinguïstische Conferentie, 77–87. Delft: Eburon.

Wieling, Martijn, John Nerbonne & R. Harald Baayen. 2011. Quantitative social dialectology: Explaining linguistic variation geographically and socially. PLoS ONE 6(9). e23613.

Abstracts and programme

The panel description, abstracts and the programme can be downloaded here.

Final programme and slides
Tuesday, June 6, 2017: Extending the scope of lectometry I. From dialects to global varieties

Daems, Franco, Rosseel & Röthlisberger – Introduction
Wieling – Keynote: Generalized additive modeling as a useful tool for dialectometry
Scherrer & Stöckle – A Quantitative Approach to Swiss German Dialect Syntax
Ghyselen – Mapping the structure of dialect/standard repertoires: on the use of sociolectometric methods
Sousa – Measuring language contact in geographical space
Soares da Silva & Palú – SE constructions in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese and the clitic loss, maintenance and insertion: a corpus-based sociolectometric and socio-cognitive analysis
Bohmann – Investigating geographic and register variation in world Englishes

Wednesday, June 7, 2017: Extending the scope of lectometry II. New methods and features

Soares da Silva – A corpus- and profile-based lectometric analysis of emotion concepts in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese
Grieve – Applied lectometry: Using a multivariate spatial analysis to identify cultural regions
Hilte, Vandekerckhove & Daelemans – The sociolectometry of Flemish online teenage talk: Social and medium-related variation in the use of expressive markers
Plevoets – Lectometry and latent variables
Aurrekoetxea, Clua, Iglesias, Usobiaga & Salicrú – Characterizing dialect groups: correlation and informativeness associated with linguistic forms
Geeraerts – Discussion. The multivariate nature of lectometry

Deadlines

May 20, 2016	Opening submission of panels proposals, papers, and posters (ICLaVE)
August 29, 2016	Deadline for abstracts for Sociolectometry panel
September 10, 2016	Deadline for panel proposal submission (ICLaVE)
October 10, 2016	Notification of acceptance of panels (ICLaVE)
October 25, 2016	Deadline for papers and posters submission (ICLaVE)
January 25, 2017	Notification of acceptance of papers and posters (ICLaVE)
February 1, 2017	Opening registration(ICLaVE)
March 29, 2017	Deadline early-bird registration (ICLaVE)
April 30, 2017	Deadline registration (ICLaVE)
June 6–9, 2017	ICLaVE Conference in Málaga

ICLaVE (official website)

On the official website of the conference, you can find more information on abstract submission, registration, practical information (getting to Málaga & about Málaga), the scientific committee, sponsors & contact.