Dialect differences and linguistic divergence

What is it about?

We make a systematic survey of dialect differences in languages of the world, investigating what types of grammatical structures are more likely to differentiate dialects, and what types are more likely to be variable within the same dialect. We find that dialects are often differentiated by the form of grammatical markers (e.g. affixes or function words), while the ordering of words and markers seems less amenable to differentiate dialects. However, dialects do tend to develop different orderings once their speakers lose contact with one another. This suggests that the forms of markers may be used more in signalling social differences, while the order of markers tends not to play this role.

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