Dialect Formation Research Articles

Hermann Heller’s critique of liberalism

ABSTRACT Hermann Heller’s critique of liberalism was both theoretical and conjunctural. He derided liberalism’s erosion of the concept of sovereignty and lamented liberalism’s complicity with the substantive inequality of his time. It its place, he argued for a restoration of the concept of popular sovereignty, as a dialectical formation of political unity and material equality through the democratic process. As a matter of political practice and strategy, however, Heller equivocated in his stance on the constitutional politics of the Weimar Republic. He initially tolerated the abrogation of parliamentary democracy due to his faith in the neutrality of the state, before diagnosing the regime as a form of authoritarian liberalism determined by the capitalist economy. This article examines Heller’s theoretical and political critique of liberalism. It outlines Heller’s conception of popular sovereignty against both Kelsen’s legal rationalism and Schmitt’s political decisionism. It also examines the significance of the interwar conjuncture, highlighting that the turn of the bourgeoisie to authoritarianism and ultimately to fascism represented a continuity of the liberal elision of the principle of popular sovereignty.

Modernity and inter‐imperiality: Rethinking social theory in East Asia

AbstractThis paper aims to contribute to global social theory by contextualizing modernity/coloniality in East Asia. It begins with a reconstruction and evaluation of three sociological accounts of East Asian modernity, namely Kazuko Tsurumi's theory of endogenous development, Sun Liping's theory of communist civilization, and Chang Kyung Sup's theory of compressed modernity. Despite their insights, these theorists fail to transcend the Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism implicit in the paradigm of latecomer modernization. These problems can be better addressed by anti‐colonial perspectives, including Tani Barlow's colonial modernity, Chen Kuan‐Hsing's inter‐Asia, Xie Lizhong's post‐Western sociology, and Wang Mingming's civilizational anthropology. Yet European hegemony continues to define the spatiotemporal frame of these perspectives. To overcome the lingering problem of Eurocentrism, Laura Doyle's notion of inter‐imperiality is employed to highlight the power‐laden interaction and interdependence among imperial powers in the global and regional history of East Asia. This alternative approach, I argue, can shed new light on East Asian modernity and delineate its dialectical formation.

Metaphore as a projection of geschtalt: Neurophysiologic and linguistic aspects

The paper considers the neural and functional grounding of human skills in the production metaphoric/metonymic extension. Two existing theories underlie the main concept of the paper. The first one focuses on the correspondence of a certain cell assembly in the human cortex to a specific entity or an object; the cell assembly may embed the neurons pertaining to different cortex areas (sensory, motor, or language areas). The second proposition employed is based on the theory of Geschtalt, arising as a consequence of an object/event’s repeated perception. We also consider the model of a higher-order cell assembly formation. According to the model, some lower-order cell assemblies, each of them corresponding to a Geschtalt component, may be united in the framework of a Geschtalt matrix. The process is embodied in cognitive and verbal domains. We argue that the existing denotation, encoded in the preceding cell assembly, is transposed onto a new one represented by the Geschtalt cell assembly, when the phonetic form and semantics of the previous object are retained during this process. The neurophysiological process, which has been detailed in the paper, bears considerably on language evolution. In the case where the phonetic contours and semantics of an existing lexeme are transferred upon a second lexeme, adjacent to the first one within the Geshtalt framework, a whole tree of lexemes pertaining to one cognitive domain is formed. Due to this phenomenon, lexeme diversification occurs, which in turn gives rise to the formation and ramification of language dialects.

Geographic structure of Chinese dialects: a computational dialectometric approach

Abstract Dialect classification is a long-standing issue in Chinese dialectology. Although various theories of Chinese dialect regions have been proposed, most have been limited by similar methodological issues, especially due to their reliance on the subjective analysis of dialect maps both individually and in the aggregate, as well as their focus on phonology over syntax and vocabulary. Consequently, we know relatively little about the geolinguistic underpinnings of Chinese dialect variation. Following a review of previous research in this area, this article presents a theory of Chinese dialect regions based on the first large-scale quantitative analysis of the data from the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects, which was collected between 2000 and 2008, providing the most up-to-date picture of the full Chinese dialect landscape. We identify and map a hierarchy of 10 major Chinese dialect regions, challenging traditional accounts. In addition, we propose a new theory of Chinese dialect formation to account for our findings.

500 Years of Past Be in East Anglia: A Variationist Investigation

As it is widely known, the verb to be, in its different tense, person and number forms, is the most frequently used verb in both written and oral English. Additionally, at least in Standard English, it is the most irregular verb, with many different forms. However, this degree of irregularity is not universal across the English-speaking world—more regularised patterns are found in a number of non-standard varieties. Despite much empirical investigation in the variationist literature on past BE, and despite the considerable corpus of work examining East Anglian English, especially by Peter Trudgill (e.g. 2021), there has, as yet, been no variationist investigations of past BE from the core heartland of linguistic East Anglia. In this paper, we try to address this by examining datasets from East Anglia that are half a millennium apart. We begin with a historical sociolinguistic study of past BE forms in the Late Middle English stages of the history of English by observing, detecting, quantifying and analysing their presence in one of the most important linguistic corpora of the period: the Internet electronic edition of the (East Anglian) Paston Letters from the Virginia University Electronic Text Center. We then, much nearer to the present-day, scrutinise a more contemporary corpus of East Anglian English for variable patterns of past BE, namely Peter Trudgill’s own corpus of sociolinguistic interviews from Norwich in the 1960s (see Trudgill, 1974). While the data are (understandably) of very different kinds, our analysis enables us to broaden our understanding of past BE variability, both diachronically and synchronically, by adding East Anglia to the map.

Between Linguistics and Ideology: Lev Iakubinskii on Social Dialects

Abstract One of the central points of the sociolinguistic conception of Lev Iakubinskii (1892–1945) became the thesis about the differentiation of language in accordance with the social structure of society, leading to the formation of class dialects. The basic ideas of this conception were formulated by Iakubinskii in a series of articles published in the journal “Literary Studies” in 1930–1931 and in the collection “Essays on Language” (1932). In these works, Iakubinskii considers language as a heterogeneous formation, consisting of the languages of certain class groups (the language of the peasantry, the language of the proletariat, etc.), and also addresses the question of the formation of a united national language. The present article examines the origins and components of Iakubinskii’s sociolinguistic conception and considers to what extent his engagement with this topic was influenced by the complex political and ideological context of the early Soviet period.

CULTURAL GENESIS AND ETHNIC PROCESSES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE 3RD MILLENNIUM BC: YAMNAYA, CORDED WARE, FATYANOVO AND ABASHEVO CULTURES

There are two main hypotheses about the localization of the Indo-European homeland. The first connects the spread of the Indo-Europeans with the migrations of the kurgan cultures of the Ponto-Caspian steppes, primarily the Yamnaya. Therefore, the hypothesis was called “kurgan”. The second hypothesis assumes the localization of the Indo-European homeland in the Near East. According to the Kurgan hypothesis, the Yamnaya migration at the beginning of the EBA led to the formation of Corded Ware cultures from the Rhine to the Volga, which caused the spread and formation of modern European dialects. In fact, there are no grounds for assuming the formation of Corded Ware cultures on the Yamnaya basis. They were formed partly on the basis of European Neolithic cultures, partly on the basis of impulses from the steppe zone in the pre-Yamnaya time. There is also no reason to assume that it was this process that led to the formation of the Celto-Italic and Balto-Slavic-Germanic languages. It is more likely that bearers of these cultures spoke Proto-Venetic and Proto-Illyrian languages.

Continuity and Change in New Dialect Formation: Tú vs. Usted in New York City Spanish

Abstract This study uses an innovative translation task method to explore second person singular (2ps) address patterns in New York City Spanish (nycs), a new dialect that formed in contact with English and among multiple dialects of Spanish. Results reveal more continuity than disruption in address choice with source varieties of Spanish, unlike some other diasporic language communities that show radical simplification in address systems. However, there was acceleration of trends found in most Spanish-speaking regions with greater use of the familiar tuteo variant over the formal ustedeo in apparent time. Our findings also point to spending adolescence in nyc as a key predictor of conformity to nycs patterns. This finding contrasts with studies of formal features in new dialect formation that have found middle childhood to be when conformity to local patterns mostly occurs.

В.И. ДАЛЬ: ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ПРЕДВИДЕНИЯ

More than half-century collection of geographically and functionally diverse lexicographic material on the territory of the Russian Empire allowed V.I. Dahl to determine the peculiarity of the language situation and the main directions of the development of the Russian language in the relationship between the interaction of inter-dialect and foreign-language interactions, largely correlated with the achievements of modern linguistics. Particularly significant in this regard are the comments of V.I. Dahl on the formation and development of secondary dialects in the vast territory of the Orenburg province, where the post of assistant to the Orenburg military governor allowed him to directly observe the features of Orenburg dialects, which are formed in isolation from maternal dialects in direct contact with the dialects of more than twenty provinces of the Russian Empire and in the neighborhood with Turk and Finno-Ugric languages. At the same time, V.I. Dahl notes the specifics of Cossack dialects, due to the status of the Cossacks in the border territories, as well as gender and socially significant differences in the speech of Cossacks and Cossacks. Filigree linguistic observations of V.I. Dahl on the variety of Orenburg dialects at the stage of their formation and development have scientific significance not only in historical terms, but also to a certain extent correlate with the modern level of studying dialects of late settlement territories, including studies in the field of interference, contact and specificity of the permeability of Russian dialects.

The First Ethnomusical Publications by Volodymyr Hoshovskyi

Relevance of the study. In 2022, the world community will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the outstanding Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Volodymyr Hoshovskyi. This date inspires a research of Hoshovskyi’s scientific career and his achievements.
 The main purpose of the study is to focus on less known period of scientific biography of V. Hoshovskyi and discuss his first ethnomusicological publications in 1958–1961, written in Transcarpathia in the early period of his scientific career. Scientific novelty of the research. V. Hoshovskyi’s early publications are considered in a new perspective. For the first time, the links between his four first published works have been revealed. Some of the publications have not yet been deeply analyzed in Ukrainian ethnomusicology.
 The main results and conclusions of the study. The study proved that not only a few, as was thought previously, but all early publications of V. Hoshovskyi discuss the issues of musical dialectology. The study «On the issue of musical dialects of Transcarpathia» (1958) became the first study on this problem. Taking into account the geographical landscape and stylistic heterogeneity of the folk music of the region, the scientist sketched out the main groups of musical dialects. The article «Some peculiarities of the historical development of Ukrainian folk song in Transcarpathia» (1959) touched upon the aspects of history influencing the formation of musical dialects and revealed such aspects as 1) the East Slavic origin of Transcarpathian music; 2) the processes of assimilation during the thousand years of Hungarian expansion, 3) contacts between inhabitants of the multinational Austria and Hungary. The issue of the influence of Czech and Slovak folklore on folk songs of Transcarpathia V. Hoshovskyi considered separately in the publication «Czech and Slovak songs in Ukrainian folklore of the Transcarpathian region of the Ukrainian SSR» (Prague, 1961; 1962, in Czech), thereby completing a historical review of multinational influences on folk music of Transcarpathia.
 The key role for the further Hoshovskyi scientific work had the article «Musical archaisms and their dialectal features in Transcarpathia» (1960), dedicated to the development of the methodology of musical and dialectical research. The innovative approach of V. Hoshovskyi consisted in a combination of achievements in related sciences: linguo-geography and ethnomusicology and was associated with a great rise in linguodialectic research in Transcarpathia.
 Thus, the early publications of V. Hoshovskyi identified the object of research, the reasons for the formation of musical dialects and outlined the methodology for their study. These studies reflected the stage of the formation of V. Hoshovskyi as a scientist, and in a broader sense – the first steps of Ukrainian ethnomusicology towards the development of musical dialectology.

Enregisterment eines /r/-Allophons?

In the study presented in this paper the use of a specific linguistic non-standard feature of German by 100 speakers representing three generations was analysed. The speakers originate from 25 different locations within the Middle Franconian dialect formation covering the middle-western parts of Germany. The feature analysed is the realisation of the Standard German phoneme /r/ as a voiceless velar or uvular fricative [x, χ] when following a short vowel and preceding a coronal obstruent. The comparison of how frequently the speakers use [χ] in different communicative contexts results in the observation of three types of speakers (i. e., [χ] users): The first type are dialect speakers mostly of the older generation (60 years and above) who use the variant in a traditional manner, namely when aiming at producing their best way to pronounce Standard German. According to these speakers [χ] forms part of the Standard German pronunciation norm. The second type is mainly represented by middle aged speakers (45–55 years) who use the feature in nearly all communicative contexts except when they have a dialect competency and are asked to produce their “strongest dialect”. Finally, the third type of speakers are mainly young people (17–23 years) who do not have any dialect competence. These speakers only use [χ] when they are asked to produce their “strongest dialect” and/or when they are talking to friends. On the basis of these results it is argued that, between these types of speakers and the generations they represent, a re-evaluation of the feature has taken place that may be classified as enregisterment, because speakers of the third type seem to use [χ] indexically in order to signal familiarity with their interlocutors on a interpersonal-social level.

The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.

<i>The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life</i>. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.

Development of German Island Dialects in Russia (The Case Study of Dialects of the Russian Germans in Kirov Region, Russia)

The relevance of this work lies in the fact that the specificity of the formation and development of German island dialects in Russia, in particular in the Kirov region, is associated with the problem of studying linguistic stability in a complex imbalanced linguistic situation and interference. The aim of this work is to identify the development features of German island dialects in a foreign language environment. The following methods have been used to achieve this goal: field methods in collecting linguistic material; method of sociolinguistic questioning and interviewing of respondents; statistical and comparative analysis when correlating the studied dialect systems with other German dialect systems, with the Russian language and Russian regional dialects. It should be noted that the German island dialects of the Kirov region have peculiar linguistic features, including new vocabulary units, as well as involving the language of the surrounding majority.

Północna grupa gwar białoruskich jako przykład związków z sąsiednimi grupami etnicznymi i językami

The article discusses the Northern subdialect group of the Northeastern Belarusian dialect, which is one of the least studied in terms of its structure and genesis. It is characterized primarily by a number of lexical and lexical-semantic features, typical not only for this area of Belarus, but linking it with Russian dialects and dialects of the Baltic languages. These features were formed in various historical periods: the oldest (from before the writing system appeared) include, among others, the so-called cokan'e and the preservation of the suffix -dl- forming the names of farm tools; the syncretism of noun endings probably dates back to to the general Russian period, while the pronouns íchny, jéjny and the verb forms jadzióm and dadzióm are newer innovations from the period of the formation of Belarusian dialects.

The History of Formation and Phonetic Peculiarities of the Basic English Dialects in Southeast Asia

The History of Formation and Phonetic Peculiarities of the Basic English Dialects in Southeast Asia

Intonational Variation in the North-West of England: The Origins of a Rising Contour in Liverpool.

This paper investigates intonation in the urban dialect of Liverpool, Scouse. Scouse is reported to be part of a group of dialects in the north of the UK where rising contours in declaratives are a traditional aspect of the dialect. This intonation is typologically unusual and has not been the subject of detailed previous research. Here, we present such an analysis in comparison with Manchester, a city less than 40 miles from Liverpool but with a noticeably different prosody. Our analysis confirms reports that rising contours are the most common realization for declaratives in Liverpool, specifically a low rise where final high pitch is not reached until the end of the phrase. Secondly, we consider the origin of declarative rises in Scouse with reference to the literature on new dialect formation. Our demographic analysis and review of previous work on relevant dialects suggests that declarative rises were not the majority variant when Scouse was formed but may have been adopted for facilitating communication in a diverse new community. We highlight this contribution of intonational data to research on phonological aspects of new dialect formation, which have largely considered segmental phonology or timing previously.

Conservation practices and the formation of vocal dialects in the endangered Puerto Rican parrot, Amazona vittata

Captive breeding is a conservation strategy that often results in behavioural changes in animals born and reared in captivity. Culturally transmitted behaviours, such as learned vocal signals, are particularly prone to the effects of captive breeding because captive animals have limited opportunities to learn these behaviours from wild animals. Changes in learned behaviour could affect the success of reintroduction programmes once captive animals are released into the wild. We tested for vocal divergence of learned calls in Puerto Rican parrots, Amazona vittata. We recorded parrots from two captive populations and two wild populations, representing all extant populations of this species. We also recorded parrots that had been translocated between populations and evaluated changes in their vocal signals over time. Fine-scale acoustic analysis revealed vocal divergence in all four populations. The geographical variation in vocal signals evolved over a time span of 10–40 years, demonstrating that cultural traits can evolve rapidly in managed parrot populations. Parrots that were translocated between populations adopted the new vocal signals. Vocal divergence in this species likely resulted from a combination of historical rearing practices, cultural drift and geographical separation. Managers should consider strategies to facilitate the acquisition of foreign vocal signals prior to release.

Bioacoustic variation in Wren Troglodytes troglodytes populations on Welsh islands

ABSTRACT Capsule: Duration and peak frequency of Wren Troglodytes troglodytes songs differ between Welsh islands (Skokholm, Flat Holm, and Sully Island) and a mainland site, suggesting random or cultural divergence. Aims: The study tests for differences in bioacoustic traits in Wren song between four breeding sites. Methods: Songs from breeding male Wrens were recorded from three Welsh islands and a representative location on the local mainland. Each sonogram was measured for six variables from the whole song and two distinct phrases from the beginning and middle. The variables were measured manually using an open source acoustic tool and compared between sites using generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results: There was significant variation in song variables between island sites and the mainland. Skokholm Wren songs were significantly longer in duration than all other sites by up to 66%. Peak frequency was significantly different across all sites with Sully Island having the highest peak frequency and Skokholm the lowest. Conclusion: The differences in song duration and frequency do not directly suggest a trend associated with selective pressures such as habitat or noise, but instead may be explained by non-selective drivers such as cultural drift or local dialect formation.

Identification of regional dialects of Telugu language using text independent speech processing models

Telugu language is one of the important languages in the world. The language that is spoken by most of the people in a region is called as dialect. In the recent days, speech recognition system is present in almost all electronic devices. In this, dialects of particular language perform a vital role. The accurate dialects identification technique helps in not only enhancing its features but also expected to provide in modern services in health and telemedicine for older and homebound peoples. Like any other language, even Telugu language has diversified itself into different dialects viz., Telangana, Kostha Andhra, and Rayalaseema. Combination of all the dialects is the language TELUGU and it is a perfect blend of elegance in Sanskrit, sweetness in Tamil along with the essence of Kannada language. The formation of dialects can be of different reasons. For speech processing research, till today there is no standard speech database created for Telugu dialects. In this paper we developed a speech database that can be utilized for the recognition of Telugu dialects and we had applied two modeling techniques that are, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) in order to recognize the dialects of Telugu language by using speech independant utterances. We imposed Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient for extracting the spectral features from the obtained speech data and observed that GMM provides better accurate results than HMM.

The synergy of topoi and socio-cognition in ideology construction and identity reformation: war on terror discourse

ABSTRACT Based on 29 Armed Forces' statements produced on the Comprehensive Counterterrorism Operation of Sinai 2018, this case study argues a consequential faculty and a constitutive functionality of war on terror discourse in reproducing social national identity. Examining an under researched discourse, this paper claims an underlying ‘crowd discursive manipulation' as a function of this discourse. In doing so, it contends a delicate reformulation in the compositional perspective of a terrorist using dialectical formation of a fellow-citizen/kindred enemy who is combated rationally, ethically, and emotionally. This paper proposes an additional dimension of the terrorist's social identity which may render a consequential restructure of the dynamics of social context. Informed by a fuse of Reisigl and Wodak's Theory of Argumentative Topoi (2001) and Van Dijk's Ideology Square (1998) in Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper critically analyses the dialectical and the discursive construction of ideology, and the reformation of identity deploying new socio-political realities. It conceives at least three cardinal dialectal strategies: conflict, fear, and legitimacy which work consecutively to sell ‘noble war’. The results suggest that war on terror discourse relies on constructive, transformative, destructive, exclusionary, and justificatory meso-strategies. This marks the discursive reconstruction of nationalism instantiating social exclusion, impersonalisation and Otherness.