Norwegian Dialect Syntax - NorDiaSyn: Grammatical Variation - New Isoglosses and New Media, 2014.

Traditional studies of dialects focused on lexical issues, sound and inflection, but looked less at structural issues. Therefore, there was a dire need for more knowledge on the syntactic structures of the dialects and their interplay with other aspects of the grammar, and isoglosses. The project "Norwegian Dialect Syntax - NorDiaSyn: Grammatical Variation - New Isoglosses and New Media, 2014" aimed to investigate structural features of 100 dialects in Norway to map grammatical isoglosses, and research in depth two syntactic phenomena that showed variation geographically, morphologically and syntactically: for example expletive subjects and w-questions.

Norwegian dialect speech data were collected from more than 100 measuring points in Norway. The project also collected Norwegian dialect data from USA and Canada. In addition searchable corpora and a database were built with Norwegian and Scandinavian dialect data, constituting a valuable research resource for present and future linguists.

Dialect studies are important for many reasons. Linguistically, dialect studies can make possible detailed questions on relationships between phenomena. Dialects also represent Norwegian culture and history, and studying them is important to increase the knowledge of our heritage. Furthermore education and school material on dialects suffers from lack of knowledge, especially of grammatical structure and present use. Speech technology needs transcribed dialect speech to develop good tools for the physically impaired and dyslexics.

The electronic publication Nordic Atlas of Language Structures Journal (NALS Journal) contains papers written on the basis of the database and corpus, especially with a view to comparisons within and between the languages and dialects of the Nordic countries. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures Journal: http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nals/#/

Read more about the project and get access to Nordic Dialect Corpus and Nordic Syntax Database: http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nota/scandiasyn/index.html
Read more about Norwegian in America and get access to Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS): http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/norskiamerika/english/index.html