New study to distinguish between languages and dialects
Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:08 pm
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-languages-and ... nt-animals
Danish linguist Søren Wichmann evaluated different approaches to distinguishing languages from dialects, and proposed a new method based on Levenshtein distance between words in two speech varieties. Here's the last part of his article (the conclusions are in the parentheses):
"Some pairs of speech varieties that are considered national languages, such as Bosnian and Croatian, fall way below the cut-off of LDN = 0.48 (the same language, regardless of Yugoslavia’s existence). Some fall not far below it, such as Hindi and Urdu (different languages, barely). And varieties of Arabic and Chinese, both of which are often thought of as single languages, soar above LDN = 0.48 (the varieties are themselves different languages). Indeed, there are a few pairs of varieties that are normally considered distinct languages but which are on the borderline: Danish and Swedish, for instance, score LDN = 0.4921.
...
the amount of time it takes for dialects to drift far enough apart to qualify as separate languages ... is 1,059 years."
One of the research articles he published is at
https://www.academia.edu/37621464/How_t ... er_review_
Danish linguist Søren Wichmann evaluated different approaches to distinguishing languages from dialects, and proposed a new method based on Levenshtein distance between words in two speech varieties. Here's the last part of his article (the conclusions are in the parentheses):
"Some pairs of speech varieties that are considered national languages, such as Bosnian and Croatian, fall way below the cut-off of LDN = 0.48 (the same language, regardless of Yugoslavia’s existence). Some fall not far below it, such as Hindi and Urdu (different languages, barely). And varieties of Arabic and Chinese, both of which are often thought of as single languages, soar above LDN = 0.48 (the varieties are themselves different languages). Indeed, there are a few pairs of varieties that are normally considered distinct languages but which are on the borderline: Danish and Swedish, for instance, score LDN = 0.4921.
...
the amount of time it takes for dialects to drift far enough apart to qualify as separate languages ... is 1,059 years."
One of the research articles he published is at
https://www.academia.edu/37621464/How_t ... er_review_