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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2024.18

Inferring the Origin of Linguistic Features from an Atlas: A Case Study of Swiss-German Dialects. (Short Paper)

Authors: Takuya Takahashi, Elvira Glaser, and Peter Ranacher

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 315, 16th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2024)

Abstract

A linguistic atlas is a set of maps which visualize the geographical variation of linguistic features in a single language. We present a novel model for Bayesian statistics which infers when and where the variants of a linguistic feature were invented based on the geographical distribution shown in a linguistic atlas. Based on a spatial network representing the rate of diffusion between locations, our model evaluates the probability (likelihood) that the observed geographical pattern is realized by considering the genealogical relationship between variants at different locations. We apply our model to a linguistic atlas of Swiss-German dialects and infer the origin of three forms of the High-German word "nein" meaning "no".

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Takuya Takahashi, Elvira Glaser, and Peter Ranacher. Inferring the Origin of Linguistic Features from an Atlas: A Case Study of Swiss-German Dialects. (Short Paper). In 16th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 315, pp. 18:1-18:9, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{takahashi_et_al:LIPIcs.COSIT.2024.18,
  author =	{Takahashi, Takuya and Glaser, Elvira and Ranacher, Peter},
  title =	{{Inferring the Origin of Linguistic Features from an Atlas: A Case Study of Swiss-German Dialects.}},
  booktitle =	{16th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2024)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:9},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-330-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{315},
  editor =	{Adams, Benjamin and Griffin, Amy L. and Scheider, Simon and McKenzie, Grant},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2024.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-208331},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2024.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Dialectology, Linguistic geography, Geographic information science, Bayesian inference}
}

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Documents authored by Glaser, Elvira

Inferring the Origin of Linguistic Features from an Atlas: A Case Study of Swiss-German Dialects. (Short Paper)

Abstract

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