Op 23 maart 2007 zal ik in zaal 420 van het Bungehuis in de Spuistraat van 15:15 uur tot 16:30 uur de ACLC lezing verzorgen. Ik zal het gaan hebben over "Quantitative perspectives on syntactic variation". Ik wil met deze presentatie onder meer duidelijk maken dat kwantitatief taalkundig onderzoek zowel een uitbreiding als een verrijking is van meer traditioneel/kwalitatief onderzoek. Hieronder volgt het abstract.
Event: ACLC Seminar
When: March 23, 2007
Name: Marco René Spruit
Title: Quantitative perspectives on syntactic variation
Affiliation: Meertens Instituut / ACLC
In this talk I will present three quantitative perspectives on syntactic variation to demonstrate how quantitative linguistics augments and enriches more traditional/qualitative research.
First, I will discuss how to quantify syntactic differences between language varieties. I will apply the model by measuring the syntactic distances between Dutch dialects which results in surprisingly geographically coherent patterns of syntactic variation.
Second, I will quantify the degrees of association among aggregate pronunciational, lexical and syntactic differences in Dutch dialects and will show that there is evidence for influence among the linguistic levels, even once the effect of geography is controlled for. This approach aims to answer the question whether syntax and pronunciation are more strongly associated with one another than either (taken separately) is associated with lexical distance.
Third, I will demonstrate how to discover relevant associations between syntactic variables using a data mining technique based on geographic co-occurrences. This approach aims to quantitatively validate existing typological hypotheses and to facilitate investigations of variable relationships across linguistic levels and even nonlinguistic contexts.
