Holistic corpus-based dialectology

This paper is concerned with sketching future directions for corpus-based dialectology. We advocate a holistic approach to the study of geographically conditioned linguistic variability, and we present a suitable methodology, 'corpusbased dialectometry', in exactly this spirit. Specifically, we argue that in order to live up to the potential of the corpus-based method, practitioners need to (i) abandon their exclusive focus on individual linguistic features in favor of the study of feature aggregates, (ii) draw on computationally advanced multivariate analysis techniques (such as multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and principal component analysis), and (iii) aid interpretation of empirical results by marshalling state-of-the-art data visualization techniques. To exemplify this line of analysis, we present a case study which explores joint frequency variability of 57 morphosyntax features in 34 dialects all over Great Britain

Biodiversidade e reforma agrária: uma experiência agroecológica na região canavieira de Ribeirão Preto, Brasil.

A região de Ribeirão Preto, norte do estado de São Paulo, Brasil, se caracteriza pelo predomínio da monocultura da cana de açúcar, com grande potencial de impacto ambiental negativo sobre o Aquífero Guarani. Visando conciliar a demanda social por terra e a preservação ambiental, em 2004 foi implantado na região um assentamento de reforma agrária - o assentamento agroecológico Sepé Tiraju, apoiado na matriz tecnológica da agroecologia. Desde o ano de 2005 a EMBRAPA e o INCRA, em colaboração com o MST, organizações locais dos trabalhadores assentados e outras organizações da sociedade civil, vêm desenvolvendo um projeto de pesquisa e capacitação participativa em Sistemas Agroflorestais agroecológicos (SAFs). Com vistas a uma primeira avaliação deste processo, em 2007 foi realizado um levantamento em nível de lotes. Ainda que o assentamento esteja em seu início e existam enormes desafios para sua consolidação, é inegável que trata-se de experiência inovadora na construção de um novo modelo de assentamento, e que o uso de Sistemas Agroflorestais pode se constituir em uma alternativa de estímulo econômico à recuperação florestal e incorporação do componente arbóreo nos sistemas produtivos dos agricultores assentados, que desta forma assumem o papel de importantes protagonistas na transição para a um desenvolvimento econômico sustentável, pois ao mesmo tempo que produzem alimentos, resgatam e conservam a biodiversidade

Divergence in Dialogue

Copyright: 2014 Healey et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; http://www.esrc.ac.uk/) through the DynDial project (Dynamics of Conversational Dialogue, RES-062-23-0962) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/) through the RISER project (Robust Incremental Semantic Resources for Dialogue, EP/J010383/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

A simple view of linguistic complexity

Although a growing number of second language acquisition (SLA) studies take linguistic complexity as a dependent variable, the term is still poorly defined and often used with different meanings, thus posing serious problems for research synthesis and knowledge accumulation. This article proposes a simple, coherent view of the construct, which is defined in a purely structural way, i.e. the complexity directly arising from the number of linguistic elements and their interrelationships. Issues of cognitive cost (difficulty) or developmental dynamics (acquisition) are explicitly excluded from this theoretical definition and its operationalization. The article discusses how the complexity of an interlanguage system can be assessed based on the limited samples SLA researchers usually work with. For the areas of morphology, syntax and the lexicon, some measures are proposed which are coherent with the purely structural view advocated, and issues related to their operationalization are critically scrutinized

Dialect typology: recent advances

This chapter provides an overview of recent innovative approaches that focus on the distributional patterns of linguistic phenomena in dialects across different languages. We set the stage by discussing a number of geographical factors that are assumed in the literature to have a bearing on the structural make-up of different languages and dialects such as world region, altitude, contact with speakers of other languages or dialects, etc. We then move on to sketch the extent to which dialects of a language exhibit common features (e.g., “vernacular universals” à la Chambers 2004) and identify structural dichotomies and continua that are regularly invoked when it comes to explaining the structural diversity of languages, namely, analyticity versus syntheticity, explicitness versus economy, complexity versus simplicity, and innovativeness versus conservativeness, all within the context of geographic space