We measure varietal di erences in general, and di erences with respect to standard languages in p... more We measure varietal di erences in general, and di erences with respect to standard languages in particular ( dialectality , in Herrgen/Schmidt's sense) in order to systematize observations about dialect di erences, to make sense of exceptions, and to enable measurements based on randomly selected material, thus obviating issues of potential bias. Finally, measurements allow the characterization of abstract relations among language varieties. We illustrate some issues with simple techniques for categorical data introduced by Seguy and re ned by Goebl, viz., issues concerning frequency, irrelevant variation, and competing forms. We proceed to measuring pronunciation di erences, focusing on di erences in the pronunciation of the same words in di erent varieties. Caution is needed to isolate pronunciation di erences from di erences in in ectional morphology, sandhi, and intonation. We characterize the di erence between sound segments and develop a measure of the di erence between the sequences of those segments in words, including insertions, deletions, and swaps (epenthesis, elision and metathesis). Automating measurement techniques exposes the issue of validation, which lay largely unexamined in earlier dialectology. We propose to validate measurements based on the degree to which they correlate with dialect speakers' judgments of di erence, justi ed by the presumed function of linguistic variation, that of signaling provenance.
Abstract Computing and Language Variation explores dialects and social differences in language co... more Abstract Computing and Language Variation explores dialects and social differences in language computationally, examining topics such as how (and how much) linguistic differences impede intelligibility, how national borders accelerate and direct change, how opinion and hearsay shape perceptions of language differences, the role of intonation (melody), the differences between variation in pronunciation and vocabulary, and techniques for recognizing structure in larger collections of linguistic data. The ...
Trudgill's (1974) suggestion that the diffusion of dialect features might obey a “gravity”-l... more Trudgill's (1974) suggestion that the diffusion of dialect features might obey a “gravity”-like law (also known as a hierarchical model or a cascade model) has been tested using individual features undergoing change in several different places, with differing results. The present paper replaces the examination of individual features with a dialectometric measure of aggregate differences, and eschews the focus on individual features undergoing change for an examination of the residue of pronunciation ...
The Editors: Introduction. Ronelle ALEXANDER: Tracking Sprachbund Boundaries: Word Order in the B... more The Editors: Introduction. Ronelle ALEXANDER: Tracking Sprachbund Boundaries: Word Order in the Balkans. Peter BAKKER: Convergence Intertwining: An Alternative Way Towards the Genesis of Mixed Languages. David BECK: Bella Coola and North Wakashan: Convergence and Diversity in the Northwest Coast Sprachbund. Liya V. BONDARKO: Language Contacts: Phonetic Aspects. Helene BRIJNEN: German Influence on Sorbian Aspect: The Function of Directional Adverbs. Bernard COMRIE: Language Contact, Lexical Borrowing, and Semantic Fields. Ellen COURTNEY: Duplication in the L2 Spanish Produced by Quechua-speaking Children: Transfer of a Pragmatic Strategy. N. Louanna FURBEE: Prestige, Power, and Potential for Language Shift: The Intrusion of Spanish into Tojolab'Al Maya. Lenore A. GRENOBLE: Morphosyntactic Change: The Impact of Russian on Evenki. Ekaterina GRUZDEVA: Aspects of Russian-Nivkh Grammatical Interference: The Nivkh Imperative. Cornelius HASSELBLATT: Estonian Between German and Russian: Facts and Fiction about Language Interference. Wilbert HEERINGA, John NERBONNE, Hermann NIEBAUM, Rogier NIEUWEBOER, Peter KLEIWEG: Dutch-German Contact in and Around Bentheim. Peter HOUTZAGERS: Effects of Language Contact as a Source of (Non)Information: The Historical Reconstruction of Burgenland Kajkavian. Lars JOHANSON: Linguistic Convergence in the Volga Area. Marina KHASANOVA: The Lower Amur Languages in Contact with Russian. Ane KLEINE: Varieties in Contact and Their Impact on Language Planning in Yiddish. Yuri KLEINER and Natalia SVETOZAROVA: Quantity Loss in Yiddish: A Slavic Feature? Alexandr KRASOVICKY and Christian SAPPOK: The Isolated Russian Dialectal System in Contact with Tungus Languages in Siberia and the Far East. Jurij KUSMENKO and Michael RIESSLER: Traces of Sami-Scandinavian Contact in Scandinavian Dialects. Wouter KUSTERS: Morphological Simplification: More than Erosion? Jouko LINDSTEDT: Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-Induced Change by Mutual Reinforcement. Patrick-Andre MATHER: Creole Genesis: Evidence from West African L2 French. Pieter MUYSKEN: From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics: A Research Proposal. Larissa NAIDITCH: Code-Switching and -Mixing in Russian-Hebrew Bilinguals. Irina NEVSKAJA: Shor-Russian Contact Features. Cecilia ODE: Some Notes on Prosody in Mpur and Local Indonesian. Pavel A. SKRELIN: Sound Databases in the Study of Phonetic Interference. Sarah GREY THOMASON: Linguistic Areas and Language History. Hanna TOBY: On the Low German Influence on Kashubian Dialects. Nina B. VOLSKAYA and Anna S. GRIGORYAN: Typological and Language Specific Features in Intonation Questions of Armenian and English.
We measure varietal di erences in general, and di erences with respect to standard languages in p... more We measure varietal di erences in general, and di erences with respect to standard languages in particular ( dialectality , in Herrgen/Schmidt's sense) in order to systematize observations about dialect di erences, to make sense of exceptions, and to enable measurements based on randomly selected material, thus obviating issues of potential bias. Finally, measurements allow the characterization of abstract relations among language varieties. We illustrate some issues with simple techniques for categorical data introduced by Seguy and re ned by Goebl, viz., issues concerning frequency, irrelevant variation, and competing forms. We proceed to measuring pronunciation di erences, focusing on di erences in the pronunciation of the same words in di erent varieties. Caution is needed to isolate pronunciation di erences from di erences in in ectional morphology, sandhi, and intonation. We characterize the di erence between sound segments and develop a measure of the di erence between the sequences of those segments in words, including insertions, deletions, and swaps (epenthesis, elision and metathesis). Automating measurement techniques exposes the issue of validation, which lay largely unexamined in earlier dialectology. We propose to validate measurements based on the degree to which they correlate with dialect speakers' judgments of di erence, justi ed by the presumed function of linguistic variation, that of signaling provenance.
Abstract Computing and Language Variation explores dialects and social differences in language co... more Abstract Computing and Language Variation explores dialects and social differences in language computationally, examining topics such as how (and how much) linguistic differences impede intelligibility, how national borders accelerate and direct change, how opinion and hearsay shape perceptions of language differences, the role of intonation (melody), the differences between variation in pronunciation and vocabulary, and techniques for recognizing structure in larger collections of linguistic data. The ...
Trudgill's (1974) suggestion that the diffusion of dialect features might obey a “gravity”-l... more Trudgill's (1974) suggestion that the diffusion of dialect features might obey a “gravity”-like law (also known as a hierarchical model or a cascade model) has been tested using individual features undergoing change in several different places, with differing results. The present paper replaces the examination of individual features with a dialectometric measure of aggregate differences, and eschews the focus on individual features undergoing change for an examination of the residue of pronunciation ...
The Editors: Introduction. Ronelle ALEXANDER: Tracking Sprachbund Boundaries: Word Order in the B... more The Editors: Introduction. Ronelle ALEXANDER: Tracking Sprachbund Boundaries: Word Order in the Balkans. Peter BAKKER: Convergence Intertwining: An Alternative Way Towards the Genesis of Mixed Languages. David BECK: Bella Coola and North Wakashan: Convergence and Diversity in the Northwest Coast Sprachbund. Liya V. BONDARKO: Language Contacts: Phonetic Aspects. Helene BRIJNEN: German Influence on Sorbian Aspect: The Function of Directional Adverbs. Bernard COMRIE: Language Contact, Lexical Borrowing, and Semantic Fields. Ellen COURTNEY: Duplication in the L2 Spanish Produced by Quechua-speaking Children: Transfer of a Pragmatic Strategy. N. Louanna FURBEE: Prestige, Power, and Potential for Language Shift: The Intrusion of Spanish into Tojolab'Al Maya. Lenore A. GRENOBLE: Morphosyntactic Change: The Impact of Russian on Evenki. Ekaterina GRUZDEVA: Aspects of Russian-Nivkh Grammatical Interference: The Nivkh Imperative. Cornelius HASSELBLATT: Estonian Between German and Russian: Facts and Fiction about Language Interference. Wilbert HEERINGA, John NERBONNE, Hermann NIEBAUM, Rogier NIEUWEBOER, Peter KLEIWEG: Dutch-German Contact in and Around Bentheim. Peter HOUTZAGERS: Effects of Language Contact as a Source of (Non)Information: The Historical Reconstruction of Burgenland Kajkavian. Lars JOHANSON: Linguistic Convergence in the Volga Area. Marina KHASANOVA: The Lower Amur Languages in Contact with Russian. Ane KLEINE: Varieties in Contact and Their Impact on Language Planning in Yiddish. Yuri KLEINER and Natalia SVETOZAROVA: Quantity Loss in Yiddish: A Slavic Feature? Alexandr KRASOVICKY and Christian SAPPOK: The Isolated Russian Dialectal System in Contact with Tungus Languages in Siberia and the Far East. Jurij KUSMENKO and Michael RIESSLER: Traces of Sami-Scandinavian Contact in Scandinavian Dialects. Wouter KUSTERS: Morphological Simplification: More than Erosion? Jouko LINDSTEDT: Linguistic Balkanization: Contact-Induced Change by Mutual Reinforcement. Patrick-Andre MATHER: Creole Genesis: Evidence from West African L2 French. Pieter MUYSKEN: From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics: A Research Proposal. Larissa NAIDITCH: Code-Switching and -Mixing in Russian-Hebrew Bilinguals. Irina NEVSKAJA: Shor-Russian Contact Features. Cecilia ODE: Some Notes on Prosody in Mpur and Local Indonesian. Pavel A. SKRELIN: Sound Databases in the Study of Phonetic Interference. Sarah GREY THOMASON: Linguistic Areas and Language History. Hanna TOBY: On the Low German Influence on Kashubian Dialects. Nina B. VOLSKAYA and Anna S. GRIGORYAN: Typological and Language Specific Features in Intonation Questions of Armenian and English.
Wieling, M., J. Bloem, R. H. Baayen, and J. Nerbonnne
In this study we investigate which factors... more Wieling, M., J. Bloem, R. H. Baayen, and J. Nerbonnne
In this study we investigate which factors affect the degree of non-native accent of L2 speakers of English who learned English in school and mostly lived for some time in an
anglophone setting. We use data from the Speech Accent Archive containing over 700 speakers speaking almost 160 different native languages. We show that besides several important predictors, including the age of English onset and length of anglophone
residence, the linguistic distance between the speaker’s native language and English is a significant predictor of the degree of non-native accent in pronunciation. This study extends an earlier study which only focused on Indo-European L2 learners of Dutch and used a general speaking proficiency measure.
Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining, Proceedings of the International IIS: IIPWM04 Conference. Proceedings published as Advances in Soft Computing, 2004
Mixed Effects Regression Models in Linguistics, 2018
Wieling, M., E. Valls, R. H. Baayen, and J. Nerbonne
In this study, we investigate which factors... more Wieling, M., E. Valls, R. H. Baayen, and J. Nerbonne
In this study, we investigate which factors influence the linguistic distance of Catalan dialectal pronunciations from standard Catalan. We use pronunciations from three regions where the northwestern variety of the Catalan language is spoken (Catalonia, Aragon and Andorra). In contrast to Aragon, Catalan has an official status in both Catalonia and Andorra, which likely influences standardization. Because we are interested in the potentially large range of differences that standardization might promote, we examine 357 words in Catalan varieties and in particular their pronunciation distances with respect to the standard. In order to be sensitive to differences among the words, we fit a generalized additive mixed-effects regression model to this data. This allows us to examine simultaneously the general (i.e. aggregate) patterns in pronunciation distance and to detect those words that diverge substantially from the general pattern. The results reveal higher pronunciation distances from standard Catalan in Aragon than in the other regions. Furthermore, speakers in Catalonia and Andorra, but not in Aragon, show a clear standardization pattern, with younger speakers having dialectal pronunciations closer to the standard than older speakers. This clearly indicates the presence of a border effect within a single country with respect to word pronunciation distances. Since a great deal of scholarship focuses on single segment changes, we compare our analysis to the analysis of three segment changes that have been discussed in the literature on Catalan. This comparison shows that the pattern observed at the word pronunciation level is supported by two of the three cases examined. As not all individual cases conform to the general pattern, the aggregate approach is necessary to detect global standardization patterns.
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In this study we investigate which factors affect the degree of non-native accent of L2 speakers of English who learned English in school and mostly lived for some time in an
anglophone setting. We use data from the Speech Accent Archive containing over 700 speakers speaking almost 160 different native languages. We show that besides several important predictors, including the age of English onset and length of anglophone
residence, the linguistic distance between the speaker’s native language and English is a significant predictor of the degree of non-native accent in pronunciation. This study extends an earlier study which only focused on Indo-European L2 learners of Dutch and used a general speaking proficiency measure.
In this study, we investigate which factors influence the linguistic distance of Catalan dialectal pronunciations from standard Catalan. We use pronunciations from three regions where the northwestern variety of the Catalan language is spoken (Catalonia, Aragon and Andorra). In contrast to Aragon, Catalan has an official status in both Catalonia and Andorra, which likely influences standardization. Because we are interested in the potentially large range of differences that standardization might promote, we examine 357 words in Catalan varieties and in particular their pronunciation distances with respect to the standard. In order to be sensitive to differences among the words, we fit a generalized additive mixed-effects regression model to this data. This allows us to examine simultaneously the general (i.e. aggregate) patterns in pronunciation distance and to detect those words that diverge substantially from the general pattern. The results reveal higher pronunciation distances from standard Catalan in Aragon than in the other regions. Furthermore, speakers in Catalonia and Andorra, but not in Aragon, show a clear standardization pattern, with younger speakers having dialectal pronunciations closer to the standard than older speakers. This clearly indicates the presence of a border effect within a single country with respect to word pronunciation distances. Since a great deal of scholarship focuses on single segment changes, we compare our analysis to the analysis of three segment changes that have been discussed in the literature on Catalan. This comparison shows that the pattern observed at the word pronunciation level is supported by two of the three cases examined. As not all individual cases conform to the general pattern, the aggregate approach is necessary to detect global standardization patterns.