Overview of the cross-linguistic comparisons

Chapters 3–6 present the extensive preliminary analyses required for cross-linguistic MD comparisons of register variation. Chapter 3 describes the four language situations considered in the present study, including the situational characteristics of each register and a brief social history of literacy in each language. The main purpose of chapter 4 is to demonstrate the difficulty of cross-linguistic register comparisons based on individual linguistic features, and to thereby establish the need for an alternative approach. The multidimensional approach is then offered as particularly well suited to the analytical requirements of cross-linguistic register comparisons. Chapter 5 provides a methodological description of the MD approach and presents the technical details of the MD analysis for each language. Finally, chapter 6 gives a fairly detailed description of each dimension in each of the languages, including analysis of: the co-occurring linguistic features on the dimension, the distribution of registers along the dimension, the functions of dimension features in particular text samples, and the overall functional basis of the dimension.

Given this background, it is now possible to proceed to the cross-linguistic analyses. In general terms, the analyses presented in chapter 6 show that the linguistic relations among spoken and written registers in all four languages are quite complex, and that a multidimensional analysis is required because no single dimension by itself adequately captures the similarities and differences among registers.