{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02190923317683881, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.7368421052631575, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Variation in the Aggregate: An Alternative Perspective for Variationist Linguistics

We argue that an aggregate view of language variation is needed to supplement the usual characterizations based on single features. Aggregate characterizations are compatible with the well-known exceptions in the distributions of individual elements (features), they depend less on the theorist's choice of which features to use as the basis of a characteriz- ation, and finally, they enable the characterization of general tendencies in variation data, something which has escaped accounts of dialectology based on single features (even in combination).