My PhD project involves using computational methods and cartographic techniques to explore, visualise and analyse dialectal variation.
The primary focus of my project is to develop a tone distance metric which allows dialectologists to calculate dialect distances on the tonal level. In addition, I will address dialectological questions such as “do dialect boundaries exist?” and “what are transition dialects like?” for both tonal and segmental levels, using Yue as my case study. To address these questions, I look at 100+ dialects, and the findings are aimed to be non-language-specific, while the methods are aimed to be applicable cross-linguistically.
PhD Project
My PhD project involves using computational methods and cartographic techniques to explore, visualise and analyse dialectal variation.
There are two main components in my project: 1) developing a tonal distance metric, investigate how tones vary geographically and how they differ from segments, and 2) developing a method which automatically detects dialect features which are exclusive to specific dialect areas.
In addition, I will address classical dialectological questions using Yue as my case study. Do we find similar patterns in dialectal variation of Yue like we do in Europe? I will also revisit the classification of Yue dialects, including the internal classification within Yue, and the Yue-Pinghua dichotomy. Are Yue and Pinghua two separate Sinitic branches? Is the current classification of Yue justified under data-driven, aggregate dialectology?
Fields of interest
- General Dialectology;
- Dialectometry;
- Computational Dialectology;
- Linguistic Mapping (QGIS);
- Dialect Classification;
- Yue (粵語) dialectology
- Segmental and tonal variation