Lects are perceptually invariant, productively variable: A coherent claim about Danish lects

On the basis of data from the DNRF LANCHART Centre's study of language change in real time four Danish sites are investigated for systematic co-variation of selected features. Having demonstrated that co-variation is not dependent on site nor can be said to hold in general for idiolects we discuss the notion of coherence as co-variation of features and relate this both to studies in the history of the discipline and to the perception of variation in Danish lects. We argue that lects are perceived as such precisely because some features are foregrounded to the extent that other features are neglected or seen as irrelevant. The empirical basis for the paper is a data set of a total of 187 speakers from the extremely dialect-leveled speech community of Denmark recorded 2005–2008. The speakers come from four sites and are distributed as to generation, gender, and social class.