tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "Linguistic Variation and Computation"

Language variationists study how languages vary along geographical or social lines or along lines of age and gender. Variationist data is available and challenging, in particular for DIALECTOLOGY, the study of geographical variation, which will be the focus of this paper, although we present approaches we expect to transfer smoothly to the study of variation correlating with other extralinguistic variables. Techniques from computational linguistics on the one hand, and standard statistical data reduction techniques on the other, not only shed light on this classic linguistic problem, but they also suggest avenues for exploring the question at more abstract levels,. | Linguistic Variation and Computation John Nerbonne Alfa-informatica BCN University of Groningen 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands nerbonne@ Abstract Language variationists study how languages vary along geographical or social lines or along lines of age and gender. Variationist data is available and challenging in particular for DIALECTOLOGY the study of geographical variation which will be the focus of this paper although we present approaches we expect to transfer smoothly to the study of variation correlating with other extralinguistic variables. Techniques from computational linguistics on the one hand and standard statistical data reduction techniques on the other not only shed light on this classic linguistic problem but they also suggest avenues for exploring the question at more abstract levels and perhaps for seeking the determinants of variation. 1 Introduction The study of language variation has always been an important aspect of linguistic research. It provides insights into historical social and geographical factors of language use in society. Gillieron the father of French dialectology was for example famous for showing that several linguistic divisions running roughly East-West across French corresponded closely with well established cultural divisions in particular the ethnic split between slightly Romanized Celts in the North and thoroughly Romanized non-Celts in the South the legal division between the common law North and the Roman law South and patterns of agriculture and architecture see Chambers and Trudg-ill 1980 pp. 111-123 . In recent years theoreticians have also turned increasingly to the study of dialects as a means of demarcating the possible range of human language in more detail Benincà 1987 . The present paper sketches some ways in which techniques from computational linguistics CL can be put to use in the study of variation. Language variationists study how languages vary along geographical or social lines or along lines .