Adapting the AIS for geographic and phylogenetic research on language change dynamics

Abstract Traditional linguistic atlases can be leveraged to investigate the dynamics of language diversification and change but are severely underexploited for this purpose. Here we present a cleaned up and augmented dataset derived from the AIS (Swiss-Italian Atlas) which allows us to explore the amount of innovation at different linguistic levels (lexicon vs. phonology), and the geographic, societal, and evolutionary factors predicting the amount of change in different varieties. Results point towards a significant correlation in the speed of lexical and phonological change, as well as the greater relevance of extralinguistic variables (most importantly population size) to predict lexical innovation.