marco@work - Abstract TIN-dag 2006

Dit is het abstract voor mijn presentatie op de eerstvolgende Taalkunde In Nederland (TIN)-dag: Syntactic variation in verbal clusters and negation in the aggregate.

This talk presents the first results of the application of dialectometric methods to data from the second part of the Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND2, Barbiers et al., to appear). SAND2 extensively describes syntactic variation in 267 Dutch dialects with respect to verbal clusters and negation. This work explores the unique data collection from a quantitative perspective.
A measure of syntactic distance based on binary comparisons (Spruit 2005) is used to calculate a matrix of syntactic distances between dialect locations.
Multidimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis are applied to the distance matrix to interpret and visualise the dialect relationships with respect to syntactic variation in verbal clusters and negation.
To conclude, the SAND MDS map of the Dutch dialects is presented. This map visualises all SAND1 and SAND2 data in the aggregate and reveals a continuum of gradually changing dialect areas.