Introduction

Abstract

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book seeks to provide both experienced practitioners and their apprentices with an overview of the field of dialectology—past and present—comprising three main aspects of the topic: principal theoretical approaches, methodological traditions, and sets of data. This trio of topics provides the main organizational basis for the book. The book also gives a detailed account of the historical and contemporary development of dialectological thinking, including crucial concepts like the dialect dictionary, the dialect atlas, and the various interfaces with other areas of linguistics and non-linguistic sciences. It is concerned entirely with methodological matters —how dialect data are collected and analyzed. It further reviews dialect variation in the world's most widely spoken languages and language families, particularly those that have produced the richest traditions of dialect study.

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