Contemporary research into language stratification in different languages establish that there is no simple model which would allow us to predict the development of individual varieties of any language, i.e. such predictions are possible only after detailed empirical research for each separate language. Research into dialect idioms in recent decades reject the thesis about the extinction of regional dialects and confirms their asymmetrical development, during which, besides varieties with a clear tendency towards dialect levelling or approaching standard varieties, there exist varieties which do not only preserve their language structure, but are also used in an increasingly extending functional scale. These findings have brought about a redefinition of dialectology, which occurs especially in the linguistic sciences with Anglo-Saxon and similar models of language stratification. On the other hand, in linguistics with a hierarchical model of language stratification, Slovene among others, dialectology has remained on the margin of language variability studies.
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