Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

eality. In order to do that we must assume, as a postulate, that the distance
between a point and itself is zero and that between two points having no
language in common independently from the number of languages involved
is the maximum possible value. It means that the distance between
point P 1 in which only the language L 1 is spoken and P 2 in which only L 2 is
spoken is the same as between P 1 and P 3 in which two languages L 3 and L 4
are spoken.
Given that we can weight the row Euclidian distance with the number
of analysed language; and knowing that the highest value of each variable
is 100 and that the sum of values of the languages within the same
situation is higher or equal to 100 we obtain a value of the distance index
included in a the range from 0 to 1. In the case of Tabore area and Auleja
the relative distance between them would be 0,78.
Furthermore, since we know that a certain freedom of language
choice exists in many circumstances, for instance dilalic situations, i.e.
when at least one low status language/dialect (L l ) is spoken only in informal
situations and a high status language (L h ) can be used by everybody in
all situations, a socially based adjustment of the above formula could give
more accurate results. Observing actual data we can assume that the mean
of maximal values of bilingualism within each communicative situation is
around 150 instead of 100 (higher if more languages are in use in the
studied area, lower if less). It means for example that in the situation “language
used with the mother” we can find that 75% of the respondents use
language L 1 and 75% use language L 2 , which implies that 50% of the interviewees
use both L 1 and L 2 . This natural degree of language overlapping
can be mathematically included in the formula by adding to the divisor
of the number of coexisting languages a decimal value. This value has
to be proportional to the number of the existing languages and should be
adapted after empirical observation of the social norms that rule the language
choice within the community. To continue with our Latgalian example,
if we assume that in this area there is no social freedom of choice
of the language to be use in each situation, i.e. for example it is not possible
for a speaker to use Latgalian o Latvian in professional life (only Latvian
is socially permitted) or at home (only Latgalian is permitted), the sociolinguistic
distance will be 0,78 (as above); if instead the situation is
going toward a theoretically equilibrated bilingualism, i.e. it is socially
possible to use both Latgalian and Latvian as spoeken language in many
domains or Latvian and Russian are both used by the majority of the
population as written languages, the distance can fall to less than 0,70.
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