Abstract
The chapter provides an overview about methods and traditions of linguistic cartography in the past and present. Mapping language and mapping language-related data meets an increasing interest not only in disciplines such as dialectology and language typology, which are the classical domains of linguistic cartography, but also in sociolinguistics and theoretical linguistics. The chapter is structured in three main parts. First, the purposes of language mapping are introduced, ranging from visualization of the position of linguistic features in geographic space (the basic purpose of language mapping) through issues in language classification to correlations between linguistic and nonlinguistic features. Second, a formal typology of language maps based on their symbolization is given, distinguishing point-related maps, line-related maps, area-related maps, and surface maps. Third, major language mapping traditions worldwide are sketched in as much detail as possible in a short overview. The descriptions consider examples from all areas of the world (including reprints of maps and map details). A section on the effects of computerization on language mapping concludes the chapter.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Al-Wer, E., & De Jong, R. (2018). Dialects of Arabic. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 523–534). Hoboken: Wiley.
Anttila, R. (1989). Historical and comparative linguistics (2nd ed.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Balhar, J., et al. (1993–2005). Český jazykový atlas (ČJA) (5 Vols.). Prague: Academia.
Behnstedt, P., & Woidich, M. (2010–). Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte (WAD) (4 Vols.). Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Calvet, L.-J. (2006). Francophone West Africa. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society (Vol. 3, 2nd ed., pp. 1946–1951). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Campbell, L. (2006). The USA. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society (Vol. 3, 2nd ed., pp. 2052–2065). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Cao, Z. (Ed.). (2008). Linguistic atlas of Chinese dialects. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
Cao, Z., & Liu, X. (2012). The introduction of linguistic atlas of Chinese dialects (Papers from the First International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics, pp. 141–151). Tokyo: Aoyama Gakuin University.
Chirinos Rivera, A. (2001). Atlas Lingüístico del Perú. Lima: Ministerio de Educación/Cusco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas.
Dietrich, W. (2010). Mapping the romance languages of the Americas. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 301–317). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Fuchs, A. (1849). Die romanischen Sprachen in ihrem Verhältnisse zum Lateinischen. Nebst einer Karte des romanischen Sprachgebiets in Europa. Halle: H. W. Schmidt.
Glaser, E., & Bart, G. (2015). Dialektsyntax des Schweizerdeutschen. In R. Kehrein, A. Lameli, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Regionale Variation des Deutschen. Projekte und Perspektiven (pp. 81–107). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Goebl, H. (2010). Dialectometry and quantitative mapping. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 433–457). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Gordon, R. G., Jr. (2005). Ethnologue. Languages of the world. Dallas: SIL International.
Haag, C. (1898). Die Mundarten des oberen Neckar- und Donaulandes (schwäbisch-alemannisches Grenzgebiet: Baarmundarten). Reutlingen: Hutzler.
Hamel, R. E., & Butragueño, P. M. (2006). Hispanophone South America. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society (Vol. 3, 2nd ed., pp. 2115–2125). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Harmon, K. (2009). The map as art. Contemporary artists explore cartography. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Heggarty, P., Maguire, W., & McMahon, A. (2010). Splits or waves? Trees or webs? How divergence measures and network analysis can unravel language histories. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 365, 3829–3843.
Iwata, R. (2015a). Dialect geography (geolinguistics). In R. Sybesma (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics online. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_000039.
Iwata, R. (2015b). Dialect and language atlases of China. In R. Sybesma (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics online. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000125.
Jaberg, K., & Jud, J. (1928–1940). Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (AIS) (8 Vols.). Zofingen: Ringier.
Kehrein, R. (2017). Languages. In S. D. Brunn & M. Dodge (Eds.), Mapping across academia (pp. 183–208). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kloferová, S. (2010). Mapping the Slavic languages. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 317–333). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Kurath, H., et al. (1939–1943). Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE). Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies.
Lameli, A. (2013). Strukturen im Sprachraum. Analysen zur arealtypologischen Komplexität der Dialekte in Deutschland. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Lameli, A., Kehrein, R., & Rabanus, S. (Eds.). (2010). Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping. Part II: Maps. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Lee, S., & Li, D. C. S. (2013). Multilingualism in greater China and the Chinese language diaspora. In T. K. Bhatia & W. C. Ritchie (Eds.), The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (pp. 813–842). Chichester: Wiley.
Manni, F. (2017). Linguistic probes into human history. PhD thesis, University of Groningen.
Meringer, R. (1904). Wörter und Sachen II. Indogermanische Forschungen, 17, 100–166.
Mühlhäusler, P. (2010). Mapping linguistic typology. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 355–374). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Nerbonne, J. (2010). Mapping aggregate variation. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 476–495). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
OLA (Oбщecлaвянcкйи лингвиcтичeкий aтлac [Panslavic linguistic atlas]). (1965–2008). Many vols., eleven national committees, various editors and publishing houses; see Lameli, Kehrein, Rabanus (Eds.) (pp. 427–429) for a complete reference list.
Onishi, T. (2010). Mapping the Japanese language. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 333–354). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Onishi, T. (2018). Dialects of Japanese. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 559–570). Hoboken: Wiley.
Ormeling, F. (2010). Visualizing geographic space: The nature of maps. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 21–40). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Rabanus, S. (2012). Mapping techniques. In S. Schierholz, et al. (Eds.), Wörterbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (WSK) Online. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. http://www.degruyter.com/view/WSK/wsk_id07791f1d-2c32-477a-adf6-4a7335a5d763
Rabanus, S. (2018). Dialect maps. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 348–367). Hoboken: Wiley.
Rabanus, S., & Lameli, A. (2011). L’immagine mentale dell’Italia linguistica. Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia, 35, 109–134.
Šafařik, P. J. (1842). Slovanský zeměvid [Slavic map]. Prague: Vincenc Paseka.
Swiggers, P. (2010). Mapping the Romance languages of Europe. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 269–300). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Tang, C. (2018). Dialects of Chinese. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 547–558). Hoboken: Wiley.
Thun, H., Aquino, A., Dietrich, W., & Symeonidis, H. (Eds.). (2015). Atlas lingüístico Guaraní-Románico (ALGR) (Vol. II). Kiel: Westensee-Verlag.
Wenker, G. (1889–1923). Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs (WA). Hand-drafted by E. Maurmann, G. Wenker and F. Wrede. Manuscript held at Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas, Marburg. Maps available in digital form in the REDE system at https://www.regionalsprache.de
Wieling, M., Montemagni, S., Nerbonne, J., & Baayen, R. H. (2014). Lexical differences between Tuscan dialects and standard Italian: Accounting for geographic and sociodemographic variation using generalized additive mixed modeling. Language, 90(3), 669–692.
Wikle, T. A., & Bailey, G. (2010). Mapping North American English. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Vol. 2: Language mapping (pp. 253–268). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Wurm, S. A., Mühlhäusler, P., & Tryon, D. T. (Eds.). (1996). Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Vol. I: Maps. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Rabanus, S. (2019). Language Mapping Worldwide: Methods and Traditions. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_151-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_151-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences