Author:

Abstract:

© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York. We examine the role of concept characteristics in the study of lexical variation among dialects: using a quantitative methodology, we show that onomasiological heterogeneity in a dialect area may be determined by the prototype-theoretical features of the concepts involved. More specifically, a regression analysis of data taken from a large lexical database of Limburgish dialects in Belgium and The Netherlands is conducted to illustrate that concept characteristics such as concept salience, concept vagueness and negative affect contribute to the lexical heterogeneity in the dialect data.