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Linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors of mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2017

Charlotte Gooskens  and
Femke Swarte
Charlotte Gooskens
Affiliation:
Center for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen, P.O. Box. 716, 9722 AS Groningen, The Netherlands. c.s.gooskens@rug.nl
Femke Swarte
Affiliation:
Center for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen, P.O. Box. 716, 9722 AS Groningen, The Netherlands. femkeswarte@hotmail.com
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Abstract

We report on a large-scale investigation of the mutual intelligibility between five Germanic languages: Danish, Dutch, English, German and Swedish. We tested twenty language combinations using the same uniform methodology, making the results commensurable for the first time. We first tested both written and spoken language by means of cloze tests. Next we calculated linguistic distance at the levels of lexicon, orthography, phonology, morphology and syntax. We also quantified exposure and attitudes towards the test languages. Finally, we carried out a regression analysis to determine the relative importance of these linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors for the mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages. The extra-linguistic predictor exposure was the most significant factor in predicting intelligibility in the Germanic language area. The effect of attitude was very small. Lexical distance, orthographic and phonetic distances were the most important linguistic predictors of intelligibility.

Keywords

language attitudelanguage exposurelinguistic distancesmutual intelligibilityreceptive multilingualism
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 40 , Special Issue 2: Receptive Multilingualism , October 2017 , pp. 123 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2017 

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