Dialectal Variation Research Articles

Spanish contact influence in a Finnish heritage community in Misiones, Argentina

AbstractThis study examines contact outcomes in Finnish spoken in a heritage community in Misiones province, Argentina, in the 1970s. The data show limited morphosyntactic differences from dialectal varieties of Finnish, and most of the Spanish influence is lexical loans or sporadic codeswitches that have an emphatic function. The results show that beyond established lexical loans, both fluent and less fluent speakers avoid mixing and comment on it when it occurs. Translation and word search strategies show evidence of the speakers’ awareness about language mixing in the interview setting in which data were collected.

Language variation and change in the formation of Greek superlative constructions

Abstract This paper addresses variation and change in the realization of superlative constructions in the light of the evidence provided by Modern Greek dialectal variation as a window into the study of the organization of grammar. Dialectal data show that analyticity prevails in the realization of relative comparative constructions, while absolute ones seem to resist more persistently due to their high relevance with another morphological category, evaluative intensification. Our findings argue in favour of the strong interplay among all three processes, viewed as realizations of the conceptual category of gradation, accounted for in terms of a continuum. The proposed organization captures the strong interplay between intensification and absolute superlatives on the one hand, while relative and absolute superlative formations on the other. On a theoretical level, this account could contribute further to important issues such as the controversial status of comparison and evaluation in grammar, which may differ cross-linguistically, suggesting that a combined account of the three processes might prove more adequate.

OED and EDD: comparison of the printed and online versions

Abstract This paper revisits the issue of the opaque interrelationship between the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). While work on OED3, the online version, has been in progress since 2000, the EDD was digitised in three phases between 2006 and 2019. EDD 3.0, with its sophisticated interface, was launched in April 2019. This paper ventures to question the OED’s policy of providing or omitting source evidence for some of its data. After a survey of the unequal aims and structures of the two dictionaries from their beginnings down to the end of OED2 (1989), the focus of the paper is on their relationship with regard to the two online versions, first as described by recent OED editors, and then by examining the interfaces. A quantitative analysis of the lexical variants attributed to Worcestershire in the two dictionaries is used as a test case to show that OED3 has borrowed more data from EDD (Online) than the OED entries attest and the ranking-list of sources misleadingly suggests. The paper critically analyses the OED’s practice of providing source evidence only for quotations, but generally not for (dialectal) variants.

CHARACTERISTICS OF JAVANESE LANGUAGE IN BLORA DIALECT

Indonesia is a country that has many regional languages. The diversity of regional languages is a characteristic of Indonesia. One of them is the Javanese language which is used by the Javanese people and has a variety of dialects. Therefore, the writer is interested in conducting research on the characteristics of the Javanese dialect of Blora in accordance with sociolinguistic studies that examines the relationship between language and its speaking community. This is similar to the writer aim to analysis the differences between Blora, Temanggung and Mojokerto dialect. The writer also analyzes the use of Javanese speech level used by the people of Blora. This is because there are still many people who do not know the geographical location of Blora City. In this study, the writer uses a qualitative descriptive method and the data collection methods needed to analysis the data are simak method and cakap method. The analysis results showed that there are characteristics of the Blora dialect and there are differences between Blora, Temanggung and Mojokerto dialect. It can be concluded that the variations of the three dialects have different morphology, phonology, lexical and semantics. This is due to the diversity of dialect differences from the results of regional observations.

Which Speech Sound Norms Are Used in U.S. Public Schools? A Retrospective Survey Analysis.

Normative data concerning speech sound acquisition are widely and heavily used in the United States to determine eligibility for services. Normative studies differ in the age and geographic location of participants, which can limit applicability across the United States. In 2016, we queried school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the United States using a web-based survey to determine which speech sound norms are used. Nine regions from the U.S. census were represented. The Iowa-Nebraska norms were most commonly reported. However, many SLPs were unable to name the source of the data that they used. More than 60% of the sample indicated that they referred to one source of normative data. Results of a logistic regression indicated that region of the United States predicted if SLPs used one or multiple sources. Specifically, SLPs in the West North Central region of the United States (which includes Iowa and Nebraska) were more likely to use only one source of data, the Iowa-Nebraska norms. We recommend that speech sound norms are less heavily relied upon for eligibility decisions, particularly due to the substantial variations in culture and dialect throughout the various regions of the United States.

The Focus of Grammar in International Examinations

Studies have proven that teaching grammar plays a significant role in teaching of English language. However, there is a need for teachers to know what to focus in teaching grammar because of its complexity in most international examinations. Therefore, the present study aimed at knowing the different focuses in teaching grammar in some of the known international examinations like IELTS, TOEFL, OET, and PTE. The researchers employed a systematic literature review where studies on this area were appraised guided by inclusion-exclusion criteria, and it was found out that there were four (4) primary areas that teachers need to ponder in teaching grammar - syntactic grammar, parts of speech, word choice, and dialect variation. Moreover, it was suggested that teachers need to revisit the practices and approaches they employed in the teaching-learning process of English in general and review all existing English criteria and tools that quantify their content knowledge.

Lengua y mercado en el mundo hispanohablante: un acercamiento al estado de la traducción literaria

This paper analyzes the status of literary translation in Spanish America and its conditions of production. Working with the Argentinean case as an exam-ple, we try to explain the logic of a cultural field strongly shaped by editorial globalization and economic dependency on the former home country. We discuss a number of theoretical issues related to the possible existence of a mega-polysystem linking the Spanish-speaking countries and their literary systems, as a way to approach the complex relations between a supraregional language and the national States sharing it. In this context, we analyze the unequal distribution of Spanish dialectal variations in the verbal market, and we examine the strategies that aim at resisting this kind of cultural dependency.

Zur Stabilität dialektaler Formen.

Stability is an essential but frequently underrepresented fact in the study of language variation and change. Although in dialectology the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” dialect features initially led to a certain consideration of stable features as opposed to more dynamic ones, more recent empirical studies have not taken any notice of the former. The question of stability is nevertheless crucial for dialectology. For example, the extent of dialect loss cannot be assessed without establishing which forms are stable. The aim of this study is therefore to address this desideratum by investigating ten dialectal features in Austria’s rural dialects. All ten examples concern variables of the vowel system which show large phonetic differences between dialect and standard variants. On the basis of a comprehensive dialect survey, both a real- and an apparent-time study is conducted to examine the extent and the factors of dialectal stability and change. The study provides evidence for a surprisingly high degree of stability and continuity in Austria’s rural dialects. Changes are not only restricted to a few variables, but also limited (a) to a lexical factor – only a small group of lexemes is not completely stable –, and (b) to a regional factor – only some eastern parts of Austria show a higher degree of change. Other factors, such as the extent of the spatial distribution of a form or the phonetic distance to the standard, do not prove to be relevant for stability and change of the variables.

Voice onset time and vowel quality in Madurese

Abstract Madurese exhibits a three-way laryngeal contrast in its plosive inventory, distinguishing voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated plosives. Previous studies have investigated some acoustic characteristics of the contrast but have not examined possible dialectal variation in this contrast. The present study aims to discuss the contrast by examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) and vowel quality (F1). Twenty participants (10 Western Madurese speakers and 10 Eastern Madurese speakers) were recruited and instructed to read 150 Madurese words containing plosives. The results showed that an interaction of dialect and gender were significantly correlated with VOT: male Western Madurese speakers produced shorter VOT for voiced and voiceless aspirated plosives than their Eastern counterparts. There was also variation in F1 between gender across dialects: male Western Madurese speakers produced [ə] with a lower F1 than their Eastern counterparts. It was suggested that the variation was possibly due to language contact with Javanese.

Dialectal Variation in Old Saxon and the Origins of the Hêliand Manuscripts

Dialectal Variation in Old Saxon and the Origins of the Hêliand Manuscripts

Syntactic vs. phonological areas: A quantitative perspective on Hessian dialects

AbstractThis paper takes a quantitative perspective on data from the projectSyntax hessischer Dialekte(SyHD), covering dialects in the German state of Hesse, an area with rich dialectal variation. Many previous dialectometric analyses abstracted away from intralocal variation (e.g., by only counting the most frequent variant at a location). In contrast, we do justice to intralocal variation by taking into account local frequency relations. The study shows that the border between Low German and Central German—one of the most important isoglosses in German dialectology—is not relevant for syntactic phenomena. At the same time, a comparison with charactern-grams (a global measure of string similarity) reveals that the traditionally assumed dialect areas, primarily defined according to phonological developments, are still present in the twenty-first century data. Different from previous studies, our results are obtained from a uniform data base. Therefore, the differences between syntax and phonology cannot be due to variation in sampling, elicitation method, or time of elicitation.

Cross-Dialectal Novel Word Learning and Borrowing.

The objective of this paper was to study the cognitive processes underlying cross-dialectal novel word borrowing and loanword establishment in a Standard-Chinese-to-Shanghainese (SC-SH) auditory lexical learning and borrowing experiment. To investigate these underlying cognitive processes, SC-SH bi-dialectals were compared with SC monolectals as well as bi-dialectals of SC and other Chinese dialects (OD) to investigate the influence of short-term and long-term linguistic experience. Both comprehension and production borrowings were tested. This study found that early and proficient bi-dialectism, even if it is not directly related to the recipient dialect of lexical borrowing, has a protective effect on the ability of cross-dialectal lexical borrowing in early adulthood. Bi-dialectals tend to add separate lexical representations for incidentally encountered dialectal variants, while monolectals tend to assimilate dialectal variants to standard forms. Bi-dialectals, but not monolectals, use etymologically related morphemes between the source and recipient dialects to create nonce-borrowing compounds. Dialectal variability facilitates lexical borrowing via enriching instead of increasing the short-term lexical experience of learners. The long-term bi-dialectal experience of individuals, as well as their short-term exposure to each specific loanword, may collectively shape the route of lexical evolution of co-evolving linguistic varieties.

An Autosegmental Analysis of Tone Usage Among Yoruba-Speaking CVA-Aphasic Adults

This inquiry investigated tone use among Yoruba-speaking adults recovering from an aphasic insult/attack initiated by a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), otherwise known as a stroke. In pursuing the aim of the study, the research was guided by three research questions, namely, do Yoruba-speaking aphasic adults have the perceptual ability to perceive tone in the language; can Yoruba-speaking aphasic adults differentiate between the three lexical tones in the language; and which of lexical tones do Yoruba speaking aphasic adults find difficult to perceive? The study drew upon the theoretical and analytical scope of the autosegmental approach and a constructivist methodology paradigm inspired by a descriptive research design that used the qualitative approach. Data elicited from purposively sampled informants via structured interviews involving two groups of participants three aphasic Yoruba individuals and three Yoruba non-aphasic individuals in Nigeria. The purposive sampling was premised on informants’ dialectal proficiency, availability and diversity, and occurrence of CVA (stroke). The aphasic subjects were identified with the initials AB, CD and EF to conform to confidentiality etiquette in clinical linguistics. For ethical consideration, the informants were required to fill in a consent form before eliciting data from them. Once that was done, the aphasics were availed 100 words from the combined Swadesh 200 and Ibadan 400 wordlist of essential and cultural items, recorded by the non-aphasic individuals who speak Yoruba as their first language, to identify which tones they perceive. The data elicited was analysed using the perceptual approach in which the recorded data was listened to several times to discover if adult Yoruba speakers that are aphasic were still able to recognise the high ( ́), mid ( ̄) and low tone (̀ ) in words. The findings reviewed that Yoruba aphasics have diverse perceptual abilities of tone. Furthermore, it was established that Yoruba aphasics displayed varying deficiencies in differentiating the three lexical tones of Yoruba. Of the three lexical tones (H, M and L), the unmarked M tone was consistent, while the H and L tones had varying perceptual outcomes among the CVA-aphasics. The implication of the finding is that tone recoveries among CVA-aphasics is never the same and, therefore, calls for various linguistic therapies according to each CVA-aphasic case.

Contrasting Romance and Turkish as Source Languages: Evidence from Borrowing Verbs in Modern Greek Dialects

Abstract In this paper, I deal with verb borrowing in a language-contact situation involving Greek as target and Romance and Turkish as source languages. More particularly, I discuss the reasons and techniques that make verbs of typologically and genetically different languages to be accommodated in a uniform way within the same linguistic system, and verbs of the same donor to be integrated in a different manner within the same recipient. I try to provide an explanation for the observed divergences and similarities by appealing to an interplay of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. For the purposes of this study, evidence is drawn from both written and oral sources from five Greek dialectal varieties: Grekanico, Heptanesian, Pontic, Aivaliot and Cypriot.

Acoustic Variation of Syllable-Initial [ŋ] in Zhengding Chinese

The study explores the acoustic properties of syllable-initial [ŋ] in Zhengding dialect, to see whether the younger generation shows the same pattern with the senior group. 60 items with vowel realizations [ʌ, a, ɑ, ə, ɤ] and [ai, ɑo, ou] in ‘[ŋ]-V’ and ‘[g]-V’ structures are produced by 8 native speakers. Three experiments are conducted. Experiment I compares ‘[ŋ]-V’ and ‘[g]-V’ structures in senior speeches. Three acoustic effects due to the initial [ŋ] are established: vowels become less distinctive from each other by decreasing the first formant (F1), increasing the second formant (F2), and shrinking the gap between the second formant (F2) and the third formant (F3). Experiment II is conducted between ‘[ŋ]-V’ and ‘[g]-V’ in the younger speakers, investigating whether they have a similar pattern with the seniors. Experiment III is supplemented to compare the younger speeches in Zhengding dialect and Mandarin, to explore whether the generational variation in Zhengding dialect is relevant to dialect contact, i.e., whether the younger speakers are largely influenced by Mandarin. The result shows the younger generation does not produce the initial [ŋ] with the vowel realizations [ʌ, a, ɑ, ə, ai, ɑo, ou], which traditionally have an initial [ŋ], with an exception in [ɤ]. A fusion process is assumed in [ɤ] in the younger pattern, in which the initial nasal [ŋ] and the following vowel [ɤ] are combined into the single nasalized vowel [ɤ̃], with the nasal effects remained, but the initial nasal then deleted. From the sociovariationist perspective, the nasal-initial pronunciation is a partial variation in Zhengding dialect. Not all speakers pronounce with the velar-initial [ŋ]. The older generation largely remained the velar-initial variant, but the younger generation preferred the zero-onset, which might be due to the influence of dialect contact with Mandarin.

The Role of the Police Institution in managing the new Crises as seen by a Sample of the Public in the Emirate of Ajman 'COVID crisis 19 models'

The study aimed to identify the role of the police institution in managing the new crises as seen by a sample of the public in the Emirate of Ajman. By getting to know the role of Ajman Police and its initiatives in managing the (COVID 19) crisis and dealing with it, and identifying the obstacles to managing the crisis of the spread of the new Corona virus. The historical and descriptive method was used to achieve these goals, the questionnaire tool was used to collect information from the respondents, and appropriate statistical methods were used to process the data. The study concluded that: Ajman Police has benefited from the Coronavirus crisis in laying down a set of scientific rules and foundations to confront health crises in general, and has been able to cooperate with all local governmental and private bodies and participate in facing the crisis and limit its various effects. And it has adopted partnership initiatives with the local community at the official and civil levels in order to unify efforts to confront the crisis, control it and limit its spread and severity. The analyzes also showed that despite the practical achievements and preventive and remedial measures provided by Ajman Police in facing the crisis and limiting its spread at the emirate level However, there is a set of challenges and obstacles it has faced to accomplish these tasks effectively, the most important of which are: obstacles related to managing the crisis, the most important of which are: relying on digital technology in business administration, and implementing a remote work strategy. And obstacles related to the diversity of the population composition of the Emirate of Ajman in terms of the diversity of nationalities and cultures, as well as the diversity of languages and dialects. And conflicting information and diversity about the evolution of the virus. The study recommended the necessity of establishing centers for future planning and crisis management in all governmental and private institutions and support it with all human, material, informational and technological requirements, and the necessity of modern and advanced early warning systems to predict crises and disasters before they happen.

Social Media Monitoring of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Influenza Epidemic With Adaptation for Informal Language in Arabic Twitter Data: Qualitative Study.

BackgroundTwitter is a real-time messaging platform widely used by people and organizations to share information on many topics. Systematic monitoring of social media posts (infodemiology or infoveillance) could be useful to detect misinformation outbreaks as well as to reduce reporting lag time and to provide an independent complementary source of data compared with traditional surveillance approaches. However, such an analysis is currently not possible in the Arabic-speaking world owing to a lack of basic building blocks for research and dialectal variation.ObjectiveWe collected around 4000 Arabic tweets related to COVID-19 and influenza. We cleaned and labeled the tweets relative to the Arabic Infectious Diseases Ontology, which includes nonstandard terminology, as well as 11 core concepts and 21 relations. The aim of this study was to analyze Arabic tweets to estimate their usefulness for health surveillance, understand the impact of the informal terms in the analysis, show the effect of deep learning methods in the classification process, and identify the locations where the infection is spreading.MethodsWe applied the following multilabel classification techniques: binary relevance, classifier chains, label power set, adapted algorithm (multilabel adapted k-nearest neighbors [MLKNN]), support vector machine with naive Bayes features (NBSVM), bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), and AraBERT (transformer-based model for Arabic language understanding) to identify tweets appearing to be from infected individuals. We also used named entity recognition to predict the place names mentioned in the tweets.ResultsWe achieved an F1 score of up to 88% in the influenza case study and 94% in the COVID-19 one. Adapting for nonstandard terminology and informal language helped to improve accuracy by as much as 15%, with an average improvement of 8%. Deep learning methods achieved an F1 score of up to 94% during the classifying process. Our geolocation detection algorithm had an average accuracy of 54% for predicting the location of users according to tweet content.ConclusionsThis study identified two Arabic social media data sets for monitoring tweets related to influenza and COVID-19. It demonstrated the importance of including informal terms, which are regularly used by social media users, in the analysis. It also proved that BERT achieves good results when used with new terms in COVID-19 tweets. Finally, the tweet content may contain useful information to determine the location of disease spread.

Consequential choices: A language ideological perspective on learners' (non‐)adoption of a dialectal variant

AbstractThis article employs a language ideological framework to explore how particular language attitudes and beliefs shaped one group of U.S. students' choices to avoid producing a dialectal variant, Castilian Spanish [θ], in the context of an undergraduate Spanish pronunciation class. An analysis of ethnographic data points to the significance of three common beliefs that frame the appropriate use of [θ] in idealized monolingual terms that are incongruous with a U.S. national identity. The instructor mobilized these beliefs at key moments to establish normative expectations that discouraged learners from producing [θ]. Students also alluded to these beliefs and the consequences of being unable to use [θ] appropriately to explain their decisions to eschew this variant following the class. These findings suggest that language attitudes and beliefs shape learners' choices to adopt dialectal variants in production as an effect of language ideologies on the L2 development of phonology and sociolinguistic competence.

English Accent Variations in YouTube Voice-Over Ads and the Role of Perceptions on Attitude and Purchase Intentions

Recent changes in the media landscape have refocused research onto online advertising, such as YouTube advertising, Instagram TV, and Facebook video advertisements. The aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of accented voice-overs ads without the physical appearance of the spokesperson on consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Two studies were conducted, and the results show that foreign/nonnative accents and host/native accents are different in their effectiveness when determining consumers’ perceived attractiveness, expertise, and entertainment in their attitudes toward the YouTube ad and purchase intentions. Results show that a nonnative accent is perceived to be more entertaining than a native accent. The perception of expertise was very similar for native and nonnative English accents. The implications based on the two studies suggest that perceived attractiveness of the accent was dependent on the similarity (e.g., tonal language) between the nonnative and native accent. The results imply that the motive of the ad (e.g., information versus entertainment) must be clear so that there is congruency between motives and perceptions toward the respective accent.

Linguistic Variation and Change in Nawfija Speech Community

The focus of this study is on linguistic change and variation in the Nawfija speech community. It distinguished dialect from other similar words and contrasted the traditional Igbo dialect with the Nawfija dialect of the Igbo language on an equal footing. The types of dialectal variations found in the Igbo Nawfija dialect were investigated in this study, as well as the question of dialect supremacy. For the creation of standard Igbo, some suggestions have been made.