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Perceptual dialectology is the study of how nonlinguists perceive variation in language—where they believe it exists, where they believe it comes from, and how they believe it functions. Perceptual dialectology differs from standard dialectology in that it is concerned not with formal linguistic differences among dialects, but rather with how nonlinguists perceive them (which may or may not correlate with scientific linguistic findings). Because it focuses on nonlinguists' views of linguistic concepts, perceptual dialectology is considered a subset of the study of folk linguistics, as well as part of the general field of sociolinguistics. Common topics in the study of perceptual dialectology include the comparison of folk perceptions of dialect boundaries with traditional linguistic definitions, the examination of what factors influence folk perceptions of variation, and what social characteristics individuals attribute to various dialects. ==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 they thought other people spoke the same or different dialect as them, and what the dialect difference was if there was deemed to be any. Weijnen analyzed this data through the little-arrow method that she devised. Many studies proceeded from this, and perceptual dialectology surveys took place in various 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 the fact that 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.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「perceptual dialectology」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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