Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

Some general remarks about the data nevertheless remain necessary.
– To give a realistic overview of the sociolinguistic situation of the
analysed area, the original data should include answers regarding situations
of several ambits (see table above) and the number of the analysed
situations per ambit should be balanced.
– Since the values are influenced by the number of analysed languages,
comparing data in pairs or grouped can, in extreme cases, give slightly different
results. The distance between two monolingual points x and y owing
each a different language L x and L y is 0.98 if the points are compared in
couples (2 languages) and 0.94 in a group including at least 5 points and
5 languages. But since the method is thought mainly to be used to count
distances through sociolinguistic continua in which multilingualism is
widespread and where rarely more than 5 or 6 codes are included, this error
should not cause any inconvenience. Additionally, note that the above
distances do not reach the value of 1: this is due to the degree of supposed
freedom of language choice (multilingualism) within a single situation (see
above).
– Extreme cases: the formula gives values between 0 and 1 in order to
include within this range all possible actual situations on the territory, but
not all statistical/mathematical possibilities. Here are a couple of examples
of values related to sociologically impossible realities (we assume that socially
perfect bilingualism does not exist):
a) the distance between 2 perfectly bilingual points sharing
1 language (2 points, 3 languages of which speakers have 1 in common
— 100% of speakers in each situation) is 0.96, exactly as the distance
between 2 monolingual points having no language in common;
b) the distance between 2 perfectly bilingual points having
2 different languages each (2 points, 4 languages — 2 of them having
100% of speakers in each situation in the first point and the other having
2 languages with 100% of speakers for each situation) is 1,35.
To the numerical values resulting from this analysis a variation between
sociolinguistic situations classified according to the current categorisations
(L1, L2, L3 = languages, Lh/Ll = high language/low language in
diglossia or dilalia (for a sociolinguistic discussion of the terms as used
here, see Dell’Aquila, Iannàccaro 2004) can be associated:
0.0–0.3 similar situations;
0.3–0.5 monolingualism in L1 vs. dilalia with L1 as Lh and L2 as Ll
0.4–0.5 dilalia L1/L2 vs. dilalia L1/L3
0.5–0.6 diglossia L1/L3 vs. diglossia L2/L3
0.6–0.8 monolingualism L1 vs. diglossia L1/L2
78