[Lingtyp] Regarding the term "lectometry"

[JOO Ian]

Dear typologists,

My colleagues and I are planning a monograph titled “Lectometry: Measuring cross-linguistic distances”. In this prospective monograph, we define “lect” as any linguistic variety (including dialects and languages) and lectometry the measurement of the distance between lects at any level.
I went through the previous literature using the term “lectometry” and discovered that the authors who have been using it did so in a slightly different sense, i.e. the distance between “lects” such as dialects, regiolects, sociolects, and other “micro-”levels, not including what are commonly referred to as “languages”.
While we would like to use the term “lectometry” for a broader sense to cover languages or even macrolanguages, it would not be desirable to “hijack” a term that is already being used in a different sense. So I would like to ask you for a general opinion on using the word in this sense. Please find attached the abstract of the introduction of the monograph that explains the rationale for using this term.
If you think expanding the semantic scope of an existing word is not adequate, I would also appreciate any suggestions on what alternative terms (existing or not) may be preferred.

From Otaru,
Ian

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朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce
🌐 ianjoo.github.io<http://ianjoo.github.io/>
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