An Easy Guide to Dialectometric Analysis with Gabmap
Introduction
Welcome to this tutorial on analyzing linguistic data using Gabmap, a powerful web application for dialectometric analysis and linguistic mapping. In this guide, we will explore how to leverage Gabmap to create thematic maps, dendrograms, and visualizations that highlight linguistic features across a given dataset. Whether you’re a linguist, researcher, student, or simply curious about language variation, this tutorial will provide step-by-step instructions to help you analyze and interpret linguistic data effectively. By the end of this guide, you’ll have the skills to create similarity maps, interpret clustering patterns, and understand how Gabmap can be used to explore the relationships between dialects or linguistic varieties. Let’s get started!
What is Gabmap?
Gabmap is a web application for dialectometrics and cartography. It allows you to make mappings and statistical analyses of your dialect data. Using Gabmap, you can compare the pronunciation of words in the different dialects and make maps of the results (1). This tutorial primarily emphasizes the analysis of phonetic transcriptions. However, Gabmap is versatile and can also handle numeric dialect data, such as formant frequencies, as well as categorical data, like syntactic or morphological variables.
