From Regional Dialects to the Standard: Measuring Linguistic Distance in Galician Varieties

Abstract

The analysis of the linguistic distance between dialect varieties and the standard variety typically focuses on establishing the influence exerted by the standard norm on the dialects. In languages whose standard form was established and implemented well after the beginning of the last century, however, such as Galician, it is still possible to perform studies from other perspectives. Unlike other languages, standard Galician was not based on a single dialect but aspired instead to be supradialectal in nature. In the present study, the tools and methods of quantitative dialectology are brought to bear in the task of establishing the extent to which dialect varieties of Galician resemble or differ from the standard variety. Moreover, the results of the analysis underline the importance of the different dialects in the evaluation of the supradialectal aim, as established by the makers of the standard variety.