Dialect Change Research Articles

ОТДЕЛ ПРИКЛАДНОЙ ЛИНГВИСТИКИ И ДИАЛЕКТОЛОГИИ: ВЕХИ СТАНОВЛЕНИЯ

The article discusses the stages of formation of the Department of Applied Linguistics and Dialectology. This department was created on the basis of the Laboratory of Linguistics and Information Technologies of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Ural Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Over the years of its existence, the laboratory has made a significant contribution to the support of the Bashkir language in computer technology. Standards for the code table and keyboard layout for the Bashkir language were developed, a number of software products were localized that created an «infrastructure» for the national language in IT technologies. The employees of the division created linguistic information systems: a machine fund of the Bashkir language, corpus projects, a terminological data bank, which operate on the Internet in the public domain. Significant work was done by Bashkir dialectologists in the early and middle of the 20th century: field material was collected on the reference points of dialects, dialectological dictionaries were published, the dialect system was described, and an atlas of dialects of the national language was prepared. But due to the departure of the generation of dialectologists and the mistakes made by the previous leaders of the IIL in the personnel issue, from the 90s to the present, a systematic scientific study of the Bashkir dialects and dialects has not been conducted at the IIL. The number of expeditions with a unified program for collecting the materials themselves has sharply decreased. The materials of previous expeditions were not digitized, most of them were lost. For more than 30 years, there have been shifts and changes in dialects and dialects that have not been recorded or studied. Modern dialectology puts forward new approaches to the study of dialects, a new methodology for processing field materials has appeared. Taking into account the need to restore research on Bashkir dialectology, in particular, the immediate start of collecting field materials, since the process of the disappearance of the speakers themselves is underway, creating information resources on dialects on their basis, the directorate of the institute and the leadership of the UFIC, it was decided to strengthen the staff of the unit with specialists in dialectology and transform the laboratory to the department. The article deals with new scientific tasks facing the department.

A discourse of virtue: how poor women entrepreneurs justify their activities in the context of moderate Islam

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship has been both celebrated and critiqued in terms of its ability to assist women in developing countries to overcome the constraints of patriarchy, with recent views acknowledging its potential for incremental, dialectical change. This is particularly true for women entrepreneurs in contexts where Islamic gender relations are practiced, which can pose certain limits to women’s entrepreneurship. We contribute to an emerging stream of research that highlights how women entrepreneurs in such contexts leverage diverse interpretative repertoires to describe and justify their work. In particular, we shed light on the understudied but populous group of women entrepreneurs of lower social class in contexts of moderate Islam. We identify virtuous repertoires as a key discursive element that assists women in these contexts to present their entrepreneurial activities and discuss implications for theory and practice.

Pietų žemaičių raseiniškių šiaurinės dalies tarmiškumo pokyčiai (XX a. 2-oji pusė – XXI a. 2-asis dešimtmetis)

    Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas pietų žemaičių raseiniškių šiaurinės dalies XX a. 2-osios pusės ir XXI a. 2-ojo dešimtmečio tarmiškumas. Tarmiškumo pokyčiai atskleidžiami analizuojant dviejų laikotarpių medžiagos (XX a. 2-osios pusės rankraštinių tekstų fragmentų ir XXI a. 2-ojo dešimtmečio garso įrašų) tarminius duomenis iš geriausiai XX a. raseiniškių patarmę turėjusių reprezentuoti septynių LKA punktų: Kùrtuvėnų (LKA 195), Kušlekių (LKA 225), Pãdubysio (LKA 226), Krãžių (LKA 257), Kel̃mės (LKA 258), Adomáičių (LKA 292) ir Pãkražančio (LKA 293).    Per daugiau nei šešis dešimtmečius patarmės šiaurinėje dalyje tarminių ypatybių vartosena pakito. Tačiau XXI a. 2-ajame dešimtmetyje raseiniškių patarmės vyresniosios ir vyriausiosios kartos patarmės atstovai kalba vietiniais raseiniškių patarmės variantais (tarmine kalba), susiformavusiais tradicinės patarmės požymių pagrindu.    Minimalių ir maksimalių tarmiškumo rodiklių skirtumai bei vyraujančių rodiklių svyravimai įrodo, kad tarminis heterogeniškumas tiriamai Kel̃mės zonai būdingas jau XX a. 2-ojoje pusėje. Tačiau didesni tarmiškumo įverčių svyravimai garso įrašuose nei tekstų fragmentuose atsargiai leidžia teigti spartesnę patarmės kaitą XXI a., vykstančią dėl konvergencijos procesų.

Some Tendencies in the Morphosyntax of the Migrational Shtokavian Dialects in Albania (Shijak and Myzeqe) and Slavic-Albanian Language Contact

This article puts into academic circulation the materials of the little-described migrational Shtokavian dialects in the Shijak (Durrës) and Myzeqe (Fier, the villages of Rreth Libofsha, Hamil, etc.) areas collected during a linguistic expedition in July and August 2021. The Sandžak region (Novi Pazar, Tutin and Sjenica, modern Republic of Serbia), where the Shtokavian Novi Pazar-Sjenica dialects have been traditionally spoken, is considered a homeland for the descendants of the Myzeqe Muslim Slavs. The Muslim Slavs from the Shijak region (Borake and Koxhas villages) migrated to Albania from the vicinity of Mostar (modern Bosnia and Herzegovina). Their linguistic origin is from Central Herzegovinian dialects (mostly to the east of the Neretva River) between the younger Ikavian and Eastern Bosnian dialects. The generations-long contact with the Albanian language intensified as a result of increased social mobility resulting from socio-political changes in Albania in 1990. These changes led to a number of quantitative and, to a lesser extent, qualitative changes in the migrational dialects at different language levels. Since the Albanian language is a part of the Balkan sprachbund, some of the changes support balkanizing processes in the structure of the dialects. Our material shows some signs of analytisation in the morphosyntactic / syntactic system (the prevalence of prepositional phrases over bare cases, infi nitive reduction, clitic doubling, etc.), which are associated with Albanian contact infl uence. The article also describes the principles we adhered to when collecting linguistic data, as well as the topics of ethnolinguistic questionnaires. Examples of dialect recordings are included in the appendix.

Interaction between a language and a dialect in Italian discourse

The national language is a fundamental and essential communication tool due to the fact that it is evenly distributed throughout the country, it is understood and spoken by most people who have certain rules of language use, and have a certain vocabulary, which more or less depends on the level of education and culture of a person. This article reveals the concept of a language and a dialect, characterizes the contact between them, and considers the dialect’s essence. The study highlights the problem of interaction between a language and a dialect and pays special attention to the role of dialect in language and cultural space. Based on linguistic mapping by isogloss strands, the boundaries of dialects are outlined, and the interpenetration issues of features of neighboring dialects as a result of their long-term interaction are considered. It is also emphasized that the structural features of the dialect change over time due to interdialect interaction and the influence of the literary language, but the dialect as a form of existence of the national language does not disappear, and only transforms into a new quality.

Perception of Prosodic Modulations of Linguistic and Paralinguistic Origin: Evidence From Early Auditory Event-Related Potentials.

How listeners handle prosodic cues of linguistic and paralinguistic origin is a central question for spoken communication. In the present EEG study, we addressed this question by examining neural responses to variations in pitch accent (linguistic) and affective (paralinguistic) prosody in Swedish words, using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. The results indicated that changes in pitch accent and affective prosody elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at around 200 ms, confirming the brain’s pre-attentive response to any prosodic modulation. The MMN amplitude was, however, statistically larger to the deviation in affective prosody in comparison to the deviation in pitch accent and affective prosody combined, which is in line with previous research indicating not only a larger MMN response to affective prosody in comparison to neutral prosody but also a smaller MMN response to multidimensional deviants than unidimensional ones. The results, further, showed a significant P3a response to the affective prosody change in comparison to the pitch accent change at around 300 ms, in accordance with previous findings showing an enhanced positive response to emotional stimuli. The present findings provide evidence for distinct neural processing of different prosodic cues, and statistically confirm the intrinsic perceptual and motivational salience of paralinguistic information in spoken communication.

Regional Relocation and Phonetic Dialect Markers


 This paper tracks phonological change in the (ING) morpheme in two YouTube personalities over time. Both participants relocated to a different dialect region than their hometowns over the course of their careers, motivating the hypothesis of this paper: geographic relocation is a catalyst for adult accent change. With a longitudinal study method, I selected audio clips from different periods in each YouTuber’s life and collected formant measurements of the targeted words. Based on a Pearson’s correlation analysis and hypothesis testing models, the participants showed statistically significant progression in their speech over time. Additionally, the speakers exhibited audible shifts most likely as an effect of aging. It is inconclusive whether this study’s observations are influenced by the difference in dialect or societal pressures of the relocated locations without further research in the other variables of each regional dialect.

First approaches to an underexplored dialect region: Trudgill’s Upper Southwest

Abstract Although dialectology in England received two major boosts at the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century (Ellis 1889 and Orton & Barry 1956-8), discussion of dialect change since that time has avoided discussion of many areas, concentrated as it was in those Universities with a tradition of dialectology (Essex, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle). Though many areas have since been re-examined in England; notably Bristol dialect (Blaxter & Coates 2019), Newcastle dialect (Milroy 1994, Milroy et al. 1999) Sunderland dialect (Burbano-Elizondo 2007), and Manchester dialect (Baranowski & Turton 2015, Bermúdez-Otero et al. 2015) there remain many areas which were never fully explored at the time of the Survey of English Dialects (Birmingham as an urban area for example was completely bypassed by that survey), as well as many areas which remain little known and studied. This paper brings together what is known about the dialects of the Upper Southwest and suggests pointers for directions in future research there based on the data from Worcestershire and Herefordshire that we discuss.

Social class across borders: Transnational elites in British ideological space

AbstractStudies of generational dialect change in diaspora communities have tended to find that local forces outweigh transnational ones: parent varieties are rejected as too saliently foreign, and transnational effects fade in later generations. Examining the speech of second‐generation British Asians, I document this initial shift away from the low status of Indian English, but also unexpected long‐distance adoption of Indian English more recently, in both ideology and routine use. Why choose a stigmatized variety 50 years on? To answer this, I revise the classic triangular class hierarchy of British dialects and model diasporic language‐ideological space as a meeting of two such systems. Young British Asians selectively adopt features of educated Indian English, a variety with increasing global status, at the apex of an Indian hierarchy. For some British Asians, this new exogenous form of symbolic capital is an alternative to the struggle for class mobility within the British system. These new cross‐border acts of affiliation empower formerly subordinated speakers, but also reinforce new hierarchies. In closing, I discuss current and historical parallels where a diasporic imaginary can feed local language change.

RP English Vowel and Consonant Changes in the Brummies' English Accent

This study aims to investigate consonant and vowel changes in the Brummie accent as compared with the ones in the standard variety of English through a comparative descriptive study. The investigation is based on an audio recording conversation and an extract of a TV show film; in addition to a questionnaire administered to 40 second year students of Master degree of linguistics from the English section of Ibn Khaldoun University, after they have been exposed to both the audio recording and the film extract. This is to gather information about their attitudes towards the aforementioned changes’ effects. Thefindings of the current study reveal the existence of great alterations in the articulation of vowel and consonant sounds in Brummie accent, which may differ from the norms that govern the standard variety of English. The outcomes of the audio recording and video extract as well as the gathered data from students’ questionnaire point out negative effects on learners’ clear perception of Brummie accent, which will undoubtedly lead to their fear of confronting serious communication problems when talking with UK citizens.

Bound, free and in between: A review of pronouns in Ngarrindjeri in the world as it was

ABSTRACT Ngarrindjeri, a language from southern South Australia, is being revived on the basis of material recorded from 1840 until the 1960s. This material shows a heavy use of three types of pronouns, suggesting a language that is ‘pronoun happy’. When reviving a language, it is essential to know how pronouns work, but the earliest source does not include the kinds of texts that allow analysis of how speakers use pronouns. Texts representing actual connected free speech in Ngarrindjeri are not attested until nearly a century later, by Ronald and Catherine Berndt and Norman Tindale. We compare the forms, meanings and second position distribution of Ngarrindjeri pronouns over time and across sources, considering dialect variation and language change. We show that the pronoun form-meaning pairs in texts recorded in the 1930s and 1940s are consistent with those recorded in the nineteenth century, and so we can have some confidence in using the Berndt and Tindale texts to reconstruct pronoun function. Confidence is further enhanced by showing the similarity in pronoun functions in texts recorded on the same topic from the same speaker, Albert Karloan, by the Berndts and Tindale. This review of Ngarrindjeri pronouns opens up possibilities for language revivalists.

Reduction of Survey Sites in Dialectology: A New Methodology Based on Clustering.

Many language change studies aim for a partial revisitation, i.e., selecting survey sites from previous dialect studies. The central issue of survey site reduction, however, has often been addressed only qualitatively. Cluster analysis offers an innovative means of identifying the most representative survey sites among a set of original survey sites. In this paper, we present a general methodology for finding representative sites for an intended study, potentially applicable to any collection of data about dialects or linguistic variation. We elaborate the quantitative steps of the proposed methodology in the context of the “Linguistic Atlas of Japan” (LAJ). Next, we demonstrate the full application of the methodology on the “Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland” (Germ.: “Sprachatlas der Deutschen Schweiz”—SDS), with the explicit aim of selecting survey sites corresponding to the aims of the current project “Swiss German Dialects Across Time and Space” (SDATS), which revisits SDS 70 years later. We find that depending on the circumstances and requirements of a study, the proposed methodology, introducing cluster analysis into the survey site reduction process, allows for a greater objectivity in comparison to traditional approaches. We suggest, however, that the suitability of any set of candidate survey sites resulting from the proposed methodology be rigorously revised by experts due to potential incongruences, such as the overlap of objectives and variables across the original and intended studies and ongoing dialect change.

Parental Views of Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Disorders During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the infection caused by the novel coronavirus detected in December 2019 by World Health Organization (WHO), has detrimentally impacted human life in a variety of areas. Many concepts including outbreak, pandemic, and quarantine have been an inseparable part of our lives. This kind of dialectic change naturally affects persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental disorders (DD) and their families. The present study using a mixed-method evaluation aims to reveal the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the family functioning of children specifically with ASD in Turkey. This study promises a holistic understanding of how the lockdown depending on the COVID -19 pandemic affects families and their children with ASD with positive and negative sides.

Foreign Accent Syndrome

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare speech disorder characterized by the emergence of a foreign accent. To date, more than a hundred cases of FAS have been reported, and the impression of accent change is regarded to be the result of a combination of segmental deficits (i.e., phonetic distortions and phonemic paraphasias) and supra-segmental changes (i.e., stress, pitch, or rhythm variation). The most common etiology of FAS is stroke, followed by other causes. Various lesion locations have been identified to cause FAS. Owing to various heterogeneous etiologies and lesion locations, it remains controversial whether there is enough consistency or universality to treat FAS as a "syndrome".

부산 방언의 어휘고저액센트 약화 현상과 파열음의 발성 유형의 변화의 상관성 연구

부산 방언의 어휘고저액센트 약화 현상과 파열음의 발성 유형의 변화의 상관성 연구

The Effect of Age on Dialect Change: The Case of Diphthongs in a Saudi Dialect

The aim of this paper is to investigate the changes that occur in one of the Saudi dialects, that is Ghamdi variety. The researcher examined the speech of Ghamdi migrants in the city of Mecca within the framework of dialect contact. Those migrants migrated from Al-Baḥa, a rural area in the south-western region of Saudi Arabia, to the city of Mecca in the Hijazi region. The data was collected through sociolinguistic interviews with 49 Ghamdi speakers, and one social variable was used namely, age. The speakers were divided into four age groups 14- 29, 30- 45, 46- 61 and 62+. This investigation was motivated by the obvious linguistic differences between rural Ghamdi and urban Meccan dialects. Two linguistic variables were examined: the diphthongs (ai) and (aw). The results showed that Meccan features, the monophthongs [ɛ:] and [ɔ:], occur in all age groups of Ghamdi migrants. This indicates that there is a change in progress toward Meccan features. Furthermore, the results of this research manifested intermediate features in the speech of Ghamdis, that can be described as narrower diphthongs [ɛi] and [ɔu].

Grammatical Gender: Acquisition, Attrition, and Change

This paper discusses grammatical gender in Norwegian by bringing together data from first language acquisition, Norwegian heritage language, and dialect change. In all these contexts, gender is often claimed to be a vulnerable category, arguably due to the relative non-transparency of gender assignment. Furthermore, the feminine gender is in the process of being lost in many Norwegian dialects, as feminine agreement forms (for example, the indefinite article) are merged with the masculine. The definite suffix, in contrast, is quite stable, as it is acquired early and does not undergo attrition/change. We argue that the combined data provide evidence that gender and declension class are separate phenomena, and we outline a possible formal analysis to account for the findings.*

Foreign Accent Syndrome: A Rare Sequelae after Orthognathic Surgery

Background: Foreign accent syndrome is a rare speech disorder in which patients develop a sudden change in accent (eg, from American English to British accent) secondary to neurogenic, psychogenic, structural, or mixed causes. Orthognathic surgery may produce alterations in speech in select patients. Until now, foreign accent syndrome has not been noted after orthognathic surgery. Methods: A retrospective study of patients who underwent orthognathic surgery and developed foreign accent syndrome was conducted to document surgical details, postoperative course, speech evaluations, perioperative imaging and follow-up outcome (n = 5). Results: Patients who developed FAS after orthognathic procedures had an age range of 19 to 42 years and changed speech from American English to a British accent almost immediately in the postoperative period. There were no perioperative complications. Speech therapy revealed similar speech patterns and articulation changes. Patients found speech therapy helpful and all but 1 patient had resolution of their FAS speech within 2 years. Conclusion: Foreign Accent Syndrome is very rare but may result after orthognathic surgery when presumably a minor neurologic insult from temporary brain ischemia occurs during surgery. However, this phenomenon typically resolves and speech therapy may be helpful.

Gschmöis – Crowdsourcing grammatical data of Swiss German

AbstractIn recent years, a number of applications on Swiss German have been released. They all crowdsource dialectological data, yet until recently their main focus has been on lexical and phonological features. In 2018, we launched the appgschmöis, an app designed to (1) give users an insight into dialectological research, and (2) collect Swiss German data on all linguistic levels, but with a strong emphasis on morphosyntactic phenomena. At the beginning, three rounds were published. Since then new rounds were published periodically. By including not only lexical and phonological features, we want speakers of Swiss German to become aware of differences in the grammar of various Swiss German dialects.The same linguistic phenomena are covered by multiple questions, and some of the questions are duplicated from more traditional projects, like atlas projects on Swiss German. This allows for comparison across different question types (i.e. translation tasks vs. multiple choice questions), different collection methods (fieldwork methods used in the SDS, written questionnaires used in the SADS, and crowdsourcing via the smartphone applicationgschmöis), and different groups of informants (NORMs vs. speakers of Swiss German of various gender and age groups). Furthermore, the older data of previous projects can directly be compared with the crowdsourced data, so that recent dialect change can be detected.

La asolación del jaguar en el capital

La asolación del jaguar comienza con la aparición y expansión del humano en América, creando una relación asimétrica entre estas dos especies de animales, preponderante al humano. La presente obra devela la opresión a la que ha sido sometido el jaguar, avasallado por la dominación humana y acentuada en la época prehispánica, colonial y la era del capital. El jaguar llevado al proceso de extinción es cosificado, se le mercantiliza y su existencia es reducida al fetichismo. Al jaguar se le oculta su ser, su racionalidad, su conciencia y sus capacidades cognitivas, para despojarlo de la vida, sin entender que cada individuo de esta especie se constituye como un ser en sí mismo; su vida libre, su dignidad, su pertenencia, su papel en el mundo y su vida son irremplazables. La conservación del jaguar requiere de un profundo cambio dialéctico de liberación dando paso a un nuevo paradigma de la conservación, resignificando al jaguar y la naturaleza, dejando atrás el pensamiento mercantilista, cosificador, utilitarista y colonizador.