User:Cyoo/sandbox

Description goes here

History
Linguists disagree on whether the beginnings of perceptual dialectology can be traced to the 1920s in Japan or the Netherlands in the 1930s.

A pioneering study in traditional perceptual dialectology took place in the Netherlands in 1939 and was conducted by W.G. Rensink. The study sought to investigate perceptual dialect boundaries through a Dutch dialect survey in which subjects were asked to state whether people spoke the same or different dialect as them, and what the dialect difference was if different. Weijnen analyzed this data through the little-arrow method that she had devised. Many studies proceeded from this, and perceptual dialectology surveys took place in many different countries.

Perceptual dialectology studies in Japan were also taking place during the early 20th century. Japanese methodology was fundamentally different from the Netherlands' in that informants were asked to judge differences between dialects on degrees of difference (for example, from 'not different' to 'incomprehensible'). Data was thus analyzed by drawing lines between areas to indicate a scale of difference, and was the first method in 'calculating' perceptual boundaries.

Linguists became increasingly interested in how non-linguists distinguish between language varieties, including how pitch accent is one of the major ways that non-linguists distinguish between varieties.

Contemporary perceptual dialectology was spearheaded by Dennis Preston, who is seen to be the major proponent of perceptual dialectology. His five-point approach to the study has been a benchmark for the advancement of the field.

Language attitude studies and its related matched-guise methodology are also seen to be related to perceptual dialectology.

Linguistic vs. Folk Judgments
One of the areas of perceptual dialectology is discerning linguistic and folk judgments. A study by Zoë Boughton investigates perceptual dialectology in northern France through an accent identification task. Subjects were asked to identify the regional origin of a speaker after listening to a voice samples. The Pays de la Loire respondents (from Nancy and Rennes, respectively the northeastern and northwestern regions) were not especially successful at correctly identifying the regional origins of the voice samples, but were able to detect some differences between the Nancy and Rennes speakers. The results suggest two regional-perceptual axes: the "North/east" relating to regional or social accent divergence, while the "West/Centre/Paris" is more related to standardness of accent and convergence. The usage of authentic speech samples for identification reveals how well subjects are able to actually perceive the differences between dialects according to their own folk beliefs.

Slang
Slang can also be influential for non-linguists in determining where dialect boundaries are. Many of the labels in a dialect mapping task focused on slang terms when studying perceptual dialectology of English spoken in California. University of California, Santa Barbara students were asked to label a map of California according to subjects, particularly Southern Californians, used "hella" to identify the Northern California region. "Dude" was also used to identify the San Diego region.