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Different types of features contribute to the linguistic distance between any two locations. Yet, the correlation between different feature types in defining patterns of dialectal variation represents an area of research still unexplored. In traditional dialectology, there is no obvious way to approach this matter beyond fairly superficial and impressionistic observations. This chapter summarises the results of a correlation study focusing on linguistic variation in an Italian region, Tuscany. By exploiting a multilevel representation scheme of dialectal data, the study analyses attested patterns of phonetic and morpho-lexical variation with the aim of testing the degree of correlation between phonetic variation and morpho-lexical variation, and between linguistic variation and geographic distance. The correlation analysis was carried out by combining two complementary approaches proposed in dialectometric literature, namely by computing both global and place-specific correlation measures and by inspecting their spatial distribution. The results demonstrate that phonetic and morpho-lexical variations in Tuscany seem to follow a different pattern than encountered in previous studies.

This chapter discusses the role played by the kings of the Kuru Dynasty in facilitating, if not sponsoring, the process of preparation of the Saṁhitās of the Vedic texts. This process may have stabilized the oral texts of the Vedas, essentially in a north-central dialect of Sanskrit, partly effacing the previous dialectal variation, and leading to the standardization of some sort, at least in phonetic terms. Such linguistic and textual standardization may have political correlates in stable and uniform administration over a reasonably large territory. Very little is known of the historical facts of the Kuru polity beyond the cursory references in the Vedic texts and the legendary material in the Mahābhārata. The chapter also discusses that the globalized view of Sanskrit presupposed by Pāṇini and his successors in the tradition of Sanskrit grammar includes all temporal varieties from the Vedic texts to the current dialects.

The study presented here analysed 91 local Swedish dialects based on vowel pronunciation. Acoustic measurements of vowel quality were made for 18 vowels of 1,014 speakers by means of principal component analysis (PCA) of vowel spectra. Two principal components were extracted explaining more than 34 of the total variance in the vowel spectra. Plotting vowels in the PC1–PC2 plane showed a solution with strong resemblance to vowels in a formant plane. Per location averages of all speakers were calculated and factor analysis was run with the 91 locations as data cases and the two acoustic component of the 18 words as variables. Nine factors were extracted corresponding to distinct geographic distribution patterns. The results from the PCA of the acoustic data were used as input for analysing dialectal variation. The factor scores of the analysis revealed co-occurrence of a number of linguistic features.

This chapter assesses the particular language quirks of Beowulf’s transmission. The failure of the scribes to comprehend the language of Beowulf would not be relevant to the transmission of the text if the task of the scribe were to reproduce the letters encountered in the exemplar without modification. However, for the Anglo-Saxon scribe, the task of the mechanical reproduction of the text was complicated by the imperative to modify its superficial, nonstructural features. Language change frequently induced the scribes to make minor alterations to the text that inadvertently deprived it of sense, grammar, alliteration, or meter. These alterations offer valuable insights into the history of the English language—particularly, into some specific ways that the language had changed between the period when Beowulf was composed and the period when its extant manuscript was produced.

This chapter investigates a novel syntactic contrast regarding the placement of clitics in negative root infinitival sentences with imperative illocutionary force in two varieties of Iberian Spanish, (Lower) Andalusian and (Central) Asturian Spanish. Data reveals a stark difference in clitic directionality in second person plural imperatives with infinitives: whereas positive imperatives involve postverbal clitics in both dialects, negative imperatives involve enclisis in AndSp but proclisis in AsturSp, a phenomenon reminiscent of Italian negative singular imperatives. Under a PF-merger+copy-and-delete approach, imperatives involve an affixal null F head that must merge with a PF-adjacent host. This analysis allows for a uniform syntactic treatment of the relevant construction in the two dialects, the difference between the two varieties reducing to PF considerations. This approach also makes use of the same machinery employed to account for the infamous ban on negative imperatives operative in languages like Greek and Spanish, which provides novel crosslinguistic support for the analysis The evidence adduced here also has consequences for verb height and word order as well as for the architecture of the clausal left edge.

The chapter focuses on the loss of distinctions observed in the past participle paradigms across Romance. Different instances of loss of distinctions are classified into syncretism, neutralization, and uninflectedness, following Baerman et al. (2005). From inspection of Romance dialect variation, it comes out that the feminine singular is the most syncretism‐resistant form, which results from combination of the tendencies for number to be syncretic in the masculine, and gender in the plural. The Romance data further show that syncretism is best analysed as operating globally over the paradigm, rather than over each specific feature. Under that view, implicational relations obtaining among different syncretic patterns can be captured in a way similar to morphomic partition classes in verb inflection (Maiden 1992; 2003; Pirrelli & Battista 2000).

This work analyzes the syntactic properties of three constructions in Peruvian Spanish: existential sentences, double possession, and doubled clitic climbing. It considers the interaction between feature bundling and the operation Agree, providing evidence in favor of a microparametric approach to language and dialectal variation. It explains the apparent agreement between the existential verb and its accusative object by postulating a T with a valued [person] feature and a Small v with only [number] but not [person], and also for the doubling of the possessor if Small n has a [genitive] feature transferred from the contact language, which incorporates into the D head, inflecting it as a possessive determiner. In addition, it accounts for the doubled clitic climbing constructions by claiming that the clitic in these cases has a referentiality feature, which gives it an affixal nature. Therefore it blocks the c-command relation with its lower copy, forcing it to be pronounced.

This chapter places Clitic Doubling in Argentinean Spanish into the broad perspective of pronominal doubling phenomena. A series of diagnostics is presented based on the interaction of Clitic Doubling with its PF/pragmatic effects, on the one hand, and its syntactic/LF effects, on the other. An important conclusion is that Clitic Doubling must be kept apart from Clitic Right Dislocation and Clitic Left Dislocation. Clitic Doubling is thus conceived of the morphological reflex of the abstract composition of object DPs; concretely, it is an A-dependency triggered whenever the object possesses a [person]-feature, an observation called the Person Feature Condition. So, under the minimal assumption that [3P] features can be optionally encoded on lexical DPs in Argentinean Spanish, but that it is only specified for pronouns in other Spanish dialects, variation facts associated with this phenomenon are explained. By the same token, the different behavior of doubled and nondoubled objects in several syntactic/LF configurations also follows.