The Linguistic Atlas Project (LAP) was founded in 1929 at the behest of the American Dialect Society and remains the most thorough and expansive study of American English undertaken to date. The LAP consists of several sub-projects, divided by geographical region. Each project represents the collection of linguistic data (vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation) in the form of dialect interviews, face-to-face interviews in which people were asked a series of targeted questions, such as “What do you call the piece of furniture that has drawers for you to keep your clothes in?” (‘Bureau’, ‘dresser’, and ‘chest of drawers’ were common answers in the 1930s and 40s). The 800+ targeted questions cover a range of topics, from the house and farm/ranch, to weather, flora and fauna, to food and cooking, and to community relationships. Fieldworkers wrote down the answers in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a set of symbols that linguists use to capture pronunciation.
The first director of the LAP was Hans Kurath, an Austrian-American linguist, who oversaw the first of the LAP regional surveys. Over time, Kurath’s students and other researchers branched out and started regional projects at universities across the U.S. To date, over 5000 interviews have been conducted. Now housed at the University of Kentucky, LAP data is being made available to researchers and to the general public via an archival website and a GitHub repository that contains raw data.
The concept behind the Linguistic Atlas has been to paint a comprehensive picture of American English, a picture that highlights variation and points to connections between language and various social, cultural and historical factors. The amount of linguistic data contained in the Atlas is unparalleled in American sociolinguistics; truly this project exemplifies the concept of “big data” in the social sciences.
While the project is still working on making all this data digitized and available to the public, there has been a great deal of research produced from what is currently available. If you are a researcher who is seeking something specific on the Linguistic Atlas Project feel free to reach out to lap at uky.edu.
Project Overviews
editThe project is currently held at the University of Kentucky and was previously housed at the University of Georgia.
| Name | Founding Director(s) | Interview Dates | States | Number of Speakers | If Audio Exisits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LANE | Hans Kurath | 1931-1933 | MA, NH, CT, VT, NY, RI, ME | 416 | Yes, partial interviews have been transcribed |
| LAMSAS | Hans Kurath | 1933-1974 | NY, NJ, PA, WV, DE, MD, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL | 1162 | There are some audio recordings |
| LANCS | Albert Marchwardt | 1933-1978 | WI, MI, IL, IN, OH, KY | 542 | There are some audio recordings, and transcripts of full interviews are currently being transcribed |
| LAGS | Lee Pederson | 1968-1983 | FL, GA, TN, AL, MS, LA, AR, TX | 914 | There are audio files |
| LAO | William Van Riper | 1959-1963 | OK | 57 | There are audio files |
| LAPNW | Carroll Reed, David Carlson | Unknown | OR, WA, ID | 51 | Some audio files exist for the interviews |
| LAPC | David Reed, Allen Metcalf | 1952-1959 | CA, NV | 300 | None |
| LAMR | M. Madsen, L. Antieau | 1988-2003 | CO, WY, UT | 70 | Yes, and interviews have been fully transcribed |
| LAUM | Harold Allen, M. Linn | 1949-1962 | MN, IA, ND, SD, NE | 203 | No |
| GDS | Lee Pederson | 1968-1972 | GA | 288 | Yes |
| LDS | C.M. Wise | 1935-1951 | LA | 84 | No |
| LAH | C.M. Wise | 1950 | HI | 8 | No |
| Gullah | Lorenzo Dow Turner | 1933 | SC, GA | 21 | unsure |
| SKNP | Lee Pederson | 2003 | St. Kitts, Nevis | 23 | Yes |
| LASE | G. Lowman | 1937-1938 | Southern England | 59 | No |
| HuVa | J. Hawkins | 1938-1940 | NY, NJ | 34 | No |
This table is adapted from (Burkette 2023)[1]
Publications and Work from the Linguistic Atlas Project
editWorks from the 1940s-1950s
Atwood, E. B. (1953). A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.[2]
Kurath, H. (1949). A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.[3]
Kurath, H., & McDavid, R. I. Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.[4]
McDavid, R. I. (1958). The Dialects of American English. In The Structure of American English, ed. N. Francis. New York: Ronald Publisher.
Works from the 1990s-2000s
Kretzschmar, W. A., Jr. (2003). Mapping Southern English. American Speech, 78(2), 130-149.[5]
Kretzschmar, W. A., Jr. (2009). Linguistics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[6]
Kretzschmar, W. A. Jr., McDavid, V. G., Lerud, T. K., & Johnson, E. (Eds.). (1993). Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic states. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, E. (1996). Language variation and change in the Southeastern United States: 1930-1990. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.[7]
Works from the 2010s-Present
Burkette, A., & Antieau, L. (2022). A-prefixing in the Linguistic Atlas Project. American Speech, 97(2), 167-196.[8]
Fruehwald, J. (2022). Doing Sociophonetics with Linguistic Atlas Project Data. Paper presented at Methods in Dialectology XVII, Mainz, Germany, August 02, 2022.
Jones, J. A., & Renwick, M. E. L. (2021). Spatial analysis of sub-regional variation in Southern US English. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 9(2), 86–105.[9]
Passarelli, N. A. (2023). “Local, but intelligent”: Language Ideologies in the Informant Biographies of the Linguistic Atlas Project. MA thesis, University of Kentucky.
Renwick, M. E. L., & Olsen, R. M. (2017). Analyzing dialect variation in historical speech corpora. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 142(1), 406–421.[10]
Renwick, Margaret E. L. and Joseph A. Stanley. (2020). Modeling dynamic trajectories of front vowels in the American South. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 147(1), pp. 579-595.[11]
Stanley, J. A., Renwick, M. E. L., Kuiper, K. I., & Olsen, R. M. (2021). Back vowel dynamics and distinctions in Southern American English. Journal of English Linguistics, 49(4), 389-418.[12]
References
edit- ^ Burkette, Allison (2023). "The Linguistic Atlas Project in the Twenty-First Century". Publication of the American Dialect Society. 108 (1): 132-146. doi:10.1215/00031283-11036896.
- ^ Atwood, E. B. (1953). A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor,MI: University of Michigan Press.
- ^ Kurath, Hans (1949). A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
- ^ Kurath, Hans; McDavid, Ravin (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
- ^ Kretzschmar, William (2003). "Mapping Southern English". American Speech. 78 (2): 130-149.
- ^ Kretzschmar, William (2009). Linguistics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Johnson, E (1996). Language variation and change in the Southeastern United States: 1930-1990. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
- ^ Burkette, Allison; Antieau, Lamont (2022). "A-prefixing in the Linguistic Atlas Project". American Speech. 97 (2): 167-196.
- ^ Jones, J. A. (2021). "Spatial analysis of sub-regional variation in Southern US English". Journal of Linguistic Geography. 9 (2): 86-105.
- ^ Renwick, Margret E. L.; Olsen, R. M. (2017). "). Analyzing dialect variation in historical speech corpora". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 142 (1): 406-421.
- ^ Renwick, Margret E. L.; Stanley, Joseph (2020). "Modeling dynamic trajectories of front vowels in the American South". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 147 (1): 579-595.
- ^ Stanley, Joseph; Renwick, Margret E. L.; Kuiper, K.; Olsen, R (2021). "Back vowel dynamics and distinctions in Southern American English". Journal of English Linguistics. 49 (4): 389-418.