27.938, Disc: Percentages, norm, corpus, variants and borders

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-938. Mon Feb 22 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.938, Disc: Percentages, norm, corpus, variants and borders

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Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 12:22:25
From: Esad Halilović [esadhalilovic at gmx.com]
Subject: Percentages, norm, corpus, variants and borders

 
Hello,

Please help me with these three research questions:

1. Has anyone ever written on any attempts at setting some sort of loose
percentage boundaries at which certain linguistic changes enter the standard
norm? Please do not get me wrong, I am not saying that there should be any, I
am just researching any possible attempts at it. Other factors do wield a
strong influence, but in general I was wondering has anyone ever tried to
observe at which boundaries does a let's say new synonym become a valid
counterpart. Is it when it is used in 10-20%, 20-30% or 30-40% of occurrences.
An awfully generalized statement but still. Or perhaps something along the
lines of how rare of an occurrence does a lexeme have to have to be rendered
obsolete. Or anything similar. Please let me know if you know of anyone who
could help me with this question.
2. Does anyone know of any other available corpus of variants of English which
have fewer speakers, such as Australian, Canadian, Irish, Singapore etc.
except for Glowbe?
3. Has anyone ever dealt with what happens when variants of a given
language (or very similar languages) are not always clearly discernible (in
shorter texts) or do not coincide with geographical or state borders?
Sometimes it feels more as if one is researching an area more than a language.

Many thanks.

Kind regards,
Esad Halilović



Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Discipline of Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Lexicography
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics



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