Abstract The comitative represents a particular case in the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula. Except for Catalan, the rest of varieties possess a redundant form inherited from the evolution of the Latin postposition plus the preposition con (‘with’). However, some authors point out a tendency that favours subject forms or even stressed object forms in persons in which the norm prohibits them

Abstract The recent publication of EDD Online version 3.0 (March 2019), based on Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905), raises the question of what this last version, again provided by an Innsbruck project team, has added or changed in comparison to the previous ones. This paper describes the main improvements, focusing on five points: (1) the integration of the Supplement, (2) the

Abstract Repetition is a natural phenomenon employed to perform a variety of cognitive, psychological, interactional, stylistic, didactic and pragmatic functions in spoken and written discourse. Adopting the method of discourse analysis, the study attempts to explore the pragmatic functions of repetitions as used in spoken dialect narrative discourse. On a propositional level, only those repetitions

Abstract This article is focused on the analysis of surnames used in the eastern part of Latvia, i.e., Latgale, the history of which to a certain extent differs from other regions of Latvia. This is due to almost 300 years (1629–1917) of isolation from the territory inhabited by other ethnic Latvians, during which this region was under Polish and later Russian rule. During this 300-year-long separation

Abstract Tracing the diffusion of linguistic innovations in space from historical sources is challenging. The complexity of the datasets needed in combination with the noisy reality of historical language data mean that it has not been practical until recently. However, bigger historical corpora with richer spatial and temporal information allow us to attempt it. This paper presents an investigation

Abstract This paper focuses on phonetic variation within the standard German language register of Austria. While the norm status and a high socio-symbolic value are attributed to certain lexical variants of standard language in Austria, the norm and usage status of characteristic phonetic properties remain unclear, due to lack of empirical analyses. By investigating the relation between standard language

Abstract This article analyses sub-dialects of the South-Western Kurzeme region in Latvia. The focus is on the most prominent phonetic, morphological and lexical features of these sub-dialects, and their usage in the 21st century. The sub-dialects of South-Western Kurzeme have many characteristic features found in their phonetics and morphology. In the South-Western Kurzeme sub-dialects, there are

The present article discusses how the combination of structural (qualitative) and algorithmic (quantitative) perspectives provides valuable insights into geolinguistic patterning and variability, and hence testifies to the importance of the integrating approach in addressing geolinguistic complexity. In doing so, it shows how language is constantly modulated in the form of innovations that emerge in

Abstract In this paper, a phase of language divinisation is posited as the deeply-rooted origin of the standard language/variety ideology, which devalues the nonstandard dialects thus causing a permanent sociolinguistic conflict. Present linguistic standardisation is seen as the form divinisation has taken in the course of the history of humankind and it is justified by the search of stability and

Abstract Western Peninsular Spanish possesses a type of causative construction in which an intransitive lexeme is used as transitive. Specifically, the verbs caer (‘to fall’), quedar (‘to stay’) and entrar (‘to enter) can induce a direct object in detriment of the standard verbs tirar (‘to throw’), dejar (‘to leave’) and meter (‘to put in’). This phenomenon (called lability) has not been investigated

Coda-final consonant deletion has been extensively documented in Eastern Andalusian Spanish; however, its effects on neighbouring segments is still unknown. Scholars working on consonant deletion in Eastern Andalusian Spanish have mainly focused on /s/, given the semantic importance of this consonant in Spanish. As a result, other consonants which are often deleted syllable-finally in this geolect

Abstract This article addresses the issue of mother tongue retention in the Slovene Canadian community of Vancouver. A brief social and historical profile of the community is followed by a description of the general linguistic situation, based on the data collected through questionnaires and participant observation. The results show substantial intergenerational variation in terms of the immigrants’

Abstract The semantics of German ‘touch’ verbs include corresponding motor concepts. These seem to result from experiences and learning from subjective bodily actions and interactions with the environment during language acquisition (cf. Bailey 1997). When we learn a new action word, we often do so embedded in a particular motor context (cf. Bailey et al. 1997; Bergen et al. 2004). In this pilot study

Abstract The use of computerized systems for geolinguistic data processing began in the 1970s with the production of maps for linguistic atlas projects. From that moment, dialect studies have continuously benefitted from the innovations that took place in the field of digital technologies. At present, linguistic geography projects are fully integrated within the Digital Humanities and are governed

Abstract In variationist linguistics, the concept of implicational hierarchies, i.e. the idea that feature x implies y but not the reverse, has passed into oblivion the last decades (cf. Rickford 2002: 142). This paper aims at showing the usefulness of implicational scales as an analytical tool, especially when attempting to understand stylistic dynamics and the structure of intermediate variations

German-speaking Switzerland can certainly be regarded as one of the liveliest and at the same time best researched dialect areas in Central Europe. It is all the more surprising that dialectometric analyses in this area have only recently been performed and none of them included an investigation into the level of syntax. In this paper we pursue two goals: First, we present digital data that has been