Foundations of Russian dialectometry

This paper analyzes the data from The Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language. The fieldwork on which the atlas is based was carried out during the mid-20th century and published in 1986–2005, but the original data is no longer available, so the data for this study was retrieved indirectly from the physical maps. One set of analyses is purely dialectometrical, focusing on linguistic distance computation and cluster validation. Another set of analyses is aimed at developing an understanding of why distances among dialects are distributed the way they are, looking at the influence of some aspects of geography, namely biomes and rivers, as well as different administrative divisions. Our analyses are not exhaustive, so in the final section, in addition to conclusions, we offer various ideas for further research.