Measuring Relationship among Dialects: DOC and Related Resources

Abstract

This paper is a synthesis of the past studies in measurements of dialect relationships. The phonological data of 17 Chinese dialects that were computerized in the late 1960s have been utilized for measurements of dialect distance. In addition, a file of over 6,400 lexical variants in 18 dialects was also used to quantify dialect affinity. This writing first explains the nature, the organization, and the coding of these files. A series of steps illustrate how the phonological file was processed to derive the needed information for calculation of correlation coefficients. The coefficients are considered as indices of dialect affinity. The dialects are then grouped by the average linking method of cluster analysis of the coefficients. The appropriateness of the correlation method to the data is then discussed. Recent work on calculation of dialect mutual intelligibility is presented to indicate the future direction of research.