In this corpus-based study, we explore how the similarity of Low Saxon dialects among each other and to the state languages Dutch and German has changed from the 19th century to today. In particular, we want to investigate if the traditional classification into an eastern and a western group is visible in the data and if the Low Saxon dialects can be found to diverge at the Dutch-German border. We apply principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering to n-grams of characters, part of speech tags and morphological features and observe divergent developments at the separate levels. As a reflection of different orthographic traditions, a noticeable distance between Dutch Low Saxon and German Low Saxon can be attested at the character level. At the PoS and morphological level, we however find a particular closeness between Dutch Low Saxon and the northern dialects from Germany, while we see German Westphalian in an outlier position. A shift towards the state languages can be observed at the PoS level, but the overall distance between Dutch Low Saxon and German Low Saxon does not seem to markedly increase at the three levels we studied.

Peer reviewed