Individual Dialects Research Articles

UKRAINIAN-BULGARIAN MUTUAL INFLUENCE IN THE MULTIETHNIC AREA OF THE DANUBE-DNIESTER INTERFLUVE

The article deals with the study of the Ukrainian-Bulgarian interdialectal and interlingual influence in the multiethnic and multilingual area in the south of Ukraine, in the interfluve of Dniester and Danube. Polylingualism, dialectal diversity, the state and functioning of the South Bessarabian Ukrainian and Bulgarian dialects have been actively studied since the mid-twentieth century, but no comparative studies and comprehensive analysis of the linguistic situation and modern interference have been conducted, so work in this area is relevant and necessary. The dialects of different languages of the studied area have been unevenly studied descriptively and linguogeographically. Descriptive studies describe the structure of individual dialect systems, analyze certain structural levels, mainly in comparison with the literary language and within the principles of national dialectological schools, but practically ignore the territorially adjacent and mixed dialects belonging to different languages and the processes of interference. The purpose of this paper is to study two types of Ukrainian-Bulgarian mutual influence: at the interdialectal level and the influence of the Ukrainian literary language on the Bulgarian dialects of the Odesa region. The task is to systematize and generalize the phenomena of interference between two contacting languages and their dialects. The material of the study was based on authors’ own observations during field dialectological expeditions to the region, as well as material selected from the corpus of already published descriptions of individual dialect systems of South Bessarabian Ukrainian and Bulgarian dialects. It is noted that some Turkisms in Ukrainian dialects are borrowed through the mediation of Bulgarian diasystems and, moreover, constitute a corpus of regional integratisms. Two types of the latest borrowings from the Ukrainian literary language have been documented: a) officialese vocabulary which replaces previously used similar units of Russian-language origin; b) precedent statements and expressive vocabulary. It is stated that today there is no systemic Ukrainian-Bulgarian interference, but instead numerous borrowings are documented, the source of which is television and school.

Waiwaye A Kan Rabe-Raben Kare-Karen Harshen Hausa Na Yamma

Scholars have divergent views on the classifications of Hausa dialects. Their classifications were based on the Hausa dialects' linguistic features and the geographical locations of the dialects in the Hausa land. Bargery (1934) was the first scholar who classifies the Hausa dialects into two broad divisions of Eastern and Western Hausa dialects in the introduction of his famous dictionary. He made the classification based on their common linguistic features and their regional or geographical locations. Most of the subsequent research of scholars conducted after Bargery’s 1934 dictionary followed the same footsteps of the Eastern and Western dialects classifications, though some scholars had different views on the individual dialects constituting the earlier two broad divisions. Some of the works of these scholars include; Jaggar (1945), Muhammad (1978), Abubakar (1982), Amfani (1993), Bello (1992), Musa (1995), Fagge (2002), Sani (2003), Yakasai (2006), Muhammad (2010), Bello (2015), Musa (2015) and Bello (2016). However, the research works of Ahmed and Daura (1970), Malka (1978), Wurma (2005), and Zulyadaini (2005) on the other hand classified Hausa dialects on the basis of major and minor dialects. They argued that the dialects are supposed to be classified and studied based on popularity and populations of speakers. In essence, the population of speakers of a dialect determines its status of being either a major or a minor Hausa dialect. This paper attempts to make a critical review of the scholars' classifications of Hausa regional dialects of Eastern and Western Hausa dialect divisions with a view to highlighting some of the neglected Western Hausa dialects found in Nigeria today that were not earlier considered in the scholars' two broad divisions. The data of this research was sourced mostly from the Hausa dialect works conducted by scholars and researchers. The research discovered that the earlier classification of individual Western Hausa dialects made by scholars was too narrow, which resulted in merging a number of independent Hausa Western dialects into one, instead of classifying the dialects and studying each dialect independently and broadly.

THE PECULIARITY OF LANDSCAPE AND METEOROLOGICAL VOCABULARY OF RUSSIAN DIALECTS OF UDMURTIA

The article discusses the features of the composition of landscape and meteorological vocabulary in the Russian dialects of Udmurtia. The words of this subject recorded in the corpus of Russian dialects of Udmurtia, as well as in the records made by researchers of individual dialects on the territory of the republic, are analyzed. During the lexicographic analysis with the involvement of dialect dictionaries, it was revealed that most of the names of landscape features and natural phenomena in the Russian dialects of Udmurtia are commonly used words, as well as dialect designations known in Vyatka and Perm dialects. This conclusion is natural, since Udmurtia borders with the Kirov region in the north and west and with the Perm Region in the east, is located in the same natural zone with these regions, as well as at the intersection of the areas of the corresponding dialects. In addition, the study revealed a number of words that were not marked in the dialect dictionaries of neighboring regions or in Russian vernacular dialects in general. Such lexemes, fixed in this meaning only in the Russian dialects of Udmurtia, are formed from the all-Russian or dialect bases, but have phonetic, word-formation or semantic differences from the same-root words noted in lexicographic sources.

Assessing the vitality of Gombe dialect of Fulfulde: a multi-scale approach

Abstract Language vitality and endangerment theorizing and research have been focused mainly on whole languages, relegating their individual dialects to the background, on the one hand; and on using single scales in assessing vitality and endangerment, on the other. In this paper, however, we advocate a paradigm shift for more, better successes in this undertaking. Therefore, we aim to examine the degree(s) of vitality and endangerment of Gombe dialect of Fulfulde using multiple evaluative scales, both western and non-western. Prior to placing the dialect on these scales, we collected data from Fulfulde speakers of varied age ranges, all Gombe radio stations and listeners of their Fulfulde programs, using ‘insider’ participant observations, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a proficiency test component (after which both the respondents and the researchers agreed on the proficiency levels of the former) and online surveys. Analysis of the data reveals that the vitality of this code is better viewed relatively rather than absolutely. Its subsequent placement on the evaluative scales only helps to corroborate this. Finally, while our analysis shows that dialects are just as place-able on these evaluative scales as whole languages are (notwithstanding the hitches characterizing the scales), we argue that, with sustained collective efforts, a dialect-focused evaluative framework is likely to be born in the foreseeable future.

Когнитологическое осмысление семантического поля «Йәш/Возраст» в башкирском языке (на материале односложных корневых основ)

The paper addresses the issues of the cognitive approach in the study of the semantic field «Йәш» / “Age” in the Bashkir language and in a number of closely related languages of the Urals-Volga region. The research aims to develop a comprehensive interpretation of the conceptual field «Йәш» / “Age” not only as a separate concept but also as a phenomenon in the cognitive system of the Bashkir language and a number of related languages of the Urals-Volga region, as well as to identify coinciding monosyllabic stem types. The research is novel in that it is the first to identify stems of unexplored Bashkir dialect vocabulary associated with the conceptual field “Age”. As a result, similar monosyllabic stems belonging to the semantic field «Йәш» / “Age” in closely related languages have been found, which allowed the researcher to draw certain conclusions regarding the ethnogenetic connections of languages and individual dialects of the region.

The Development of Interdental Consonants in the Neo-Aramaic Dialects of the Aqra Region

Abstract This paper is a study of the reflexes of historically interdental consonants in the Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken in the region of Aqra in northern Iraq. These dialects can be classified broadly into those of the villages lying to the north of the Aqra mountain and those of the inhabitants of the region to the south of the mountain. It is shown that there are a wide range of reflexes in the various dialects of this region. Moreover, within individual dialects there is some degree of variation in the reflexes. Most of these can be explained as the result of articulatory phonetic processes. Some of the variations give us insight into the historical layering of the reflexes. There are a few cases of variation that are likely to be the result of dialect mixing.

Contacts and contexts: Varying diasporic interactions and koineisation outcomes for Indian languages in South Africa

AbstractThis paper focuses on (a) a period of forced and semi‐forced migration to newly established colonies under slavery and indenture in the era of European imperialism; and (b) a post‐independence period of economic migration involving voluntary movements of large numbers of individuals to those colonies. It will show that there is no one‐size‐fits‐all outcome regarding the linguistics of migration. Rather, the patterns of migration matter greatly. The paper describes past and ongoing research into five Indian languages of South Africa: Bhojpuri‐Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani and Gujarati. The diaspora varieties that evolved over a 150‐year period fall into four sociohistoric types, chiefly involving the formation of koinés as against individual dialect persistence. Implicated in these differential outcomes are important input factors like (a) areas of recruitment and origin and their linguistic diversity, (b) patterns of migration, whether unilinear, circular or chain migration, (c) internal relations among migrants with other Indian groups and (d) varied power relations involving other South Africans. The paper also presents research on the relations and interactions between the older diasporas and new Indian migrants of the global era.

Phonological development in school-aged Kuwaiti Arabic children with Down syndrome: A pilot study

BackgroundStudies on atypical phonological development are very limited for Arabic, and to date no studies on Arabic have investigated the development of phonology in children with conditions such as Down Syndrome. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is rich in consonants and consonantal variation. However, it differs greatly from region to region, and so reports on individual dialects or regional dialects are necessary. Kuwaiti Arabic, the focus of the present paper, is similar to other dialects in the Gulf region. AimThis is a preliminary study to examine the phonological development of school-aged Kuwaiti Arabic–speaking children with Down Syndrome in order to start to address the research gap noted above. Methods & ProceduresSix Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children were recruited for this pilot study from integrated public schools where children with disabilities and typically developing children are enrolled in the State of Kuwait: three male and three female students, age range of 5;10–12;3 years. All participants had the same single word speech test of 100 words. The first author, a native speaker of Kuwaiti Arabic, audio-recorded and phonetically transcribed the sample with the help of two speech-language pathologists from Kuwait. Reliability was confirmed by the first author and another expert rater. Both match and mismatch analyses were performed and compared to existing literature. Outcomes & ResultsOverall consonant accuracy across participants was 50%, with a variety of matches across consonant categories. However, the participants also exhibited a wide range of mismatches across positions in words and phonological features (place, manner, and laryngeal features). Place substitutions were the most frequent. Some sounds exhibited double (place and manner) mismatches. The most common word structure mismatch was consonant cluster reduction (no matches for word-initial clusters). Mismatch patterns resembled both those of normally developing Kuwaiti children and those of English speakers with Down Syndrome in certain ways. Conclusions & ImplicationsThis pilot study provides preliminary information for clinicians regarding the speech or children with Down Syndrome (DS), not only in Kuwait but also in the Gulf region where there are similarities to Kuwaiti Arabic.

Intra-individual variation in adults and children: measuring and conceptualizing individual dialect–standard repertoires

AbstractThis paper explores intra-individual variation as a manifestation of language-internal multilingualism in the Central-Bavarian Austrian context. Based on speech data from children and adults in different contexts, we discuss different methods of measuring and analyzing inter-situational variation along the dialect and standard language spectrum. By contrasting measures of dialectality, on the one hand, and proportions of turns in dialect, standard language or intermediate/mixed forms on the other, we gain complementary insights not only into the individual dialect-standard repertoires but also into the consequences of different methodological choices. The results indicate that intra-individual variation is ubiquitous in adults and children and that individual repertoires need to be taken into account from the beginning of the language acquisition process. We suggest that while intra-individual variation can be attested through the use of various methods, the revealed level of granularity and the conclusions that can be drawn as to the individual repertoires on the dialect-standard spectrum largely depend on the measures used and their inherent assumptions and intrinsically necessary categorizations.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ НЕКОТОРЫХ ФОНЕТИЧЕСКИХ ПРОЦЕССОВ В ЗЛАТОУСТЕ КОНЦА XVI ВЕКА

The article describes the phonetic processes reflected in the Russian manuscript of the end of the 16th century. It turns out that Zlatoust contains a lot of examples of such processes which were characteristic for the Old Russian language of the late period and its individual dialects. This situation indicates that by the end of the 16th century colloquial and dialect elements are increasingly penetrating into the language of canonical texts - works of religious content. In this regard, the article draws a parallel between Zlatoust and the manuscript of the Apostle of the early 16th century which is more conservative in terms of reflection of the phonetic changes.

중국어 방언 성조 분포 연구

Earlier literature on tones of Chinese dialects tends to describe a tonal inventory and tone sandhi of an individual dialect or diachronic changes across dialects. However, a typological explanation of tonal systems across various Chinese dialects is still in need to understand the language specific features of Chinese tones as well as their similarities with other tone languages. This paper collects tones from 738 dialects of Chinese and examines the tone distribution from a typological perspective. Results of the paper reveal several important features of Chinese tones: (1) Chinese has significantly larger inventories than tone languages in general. (2) The frequency pattern of ‘level ＞ fall ＞ rise ＞ concave ＞ convex’ found in tone languages shows a negative relation between tonal markedness and distribution. Chinese dialects, however, are not in line with this frequency pattern, i.e., the relative frequency among level, fall, and rise may vary. (3) The most distinctive specificity pertaining to level tone in Chinese is that high register is notably favored for level tone. (4) The balanced distribution between fall and rise and that between concave and convex in terms of pitch register found in tone languages are not shown in Chinese. Rather, fall and rise seem to favor low register and high register, respectively. (5) Complex contour tones appear to realize within the same register rather than across registers. (6) Tones treated as checked tone in a Chinese philological tradition tend to realize as level. Given the paucity of comparative research on Chinese dialects and other tone languages, the findings of the present study contribute to achieve a better understanding of not only the tonal systems of Chinese dialects but also the tonal universals across languages.

BORROWINGS IN THE LEXICAL SYSTEM OF YUZHINETS DIALECT OF THE KITZMAN DISTRICT OF CHERNOVTSI REGION

In modern society there are two ambivalent trends – globalization and humanization. In the humanization line we observe an interest to such linguistic fields as dialectology. Research of dialect speech has become especially relevant. Nowadays dictionaries and monographic descriptions of individual dialects are made. The village Yuzhinets of the Kitsmansky district of the Chernivtsi region as part of Northern Bukovina has passed a difficult historical path. The course of historical events left traces in the vocabulary of Bukovinian dialects. A specific feature of Yuzhinets dialect vocabulary is borrowed dialectisms. In Yuzhinets dialect a lot of dialectisms which were borrowed from the Romanian, Polish, German languages function; they also have preserved the Turkic, Greek, Latin, Russian, Czech and Bulgarian elements. A large number of Yuzhinets dialectisms of the Kitsmansky district of the Chernivtsi region are original Ukrainian words whose source is the Pre-Slavic language, which testify to a single linguisticshaped world of the Ukrainian nation. Among the borrowed dialectisms of the village of Yuzhinets we can distinguish several groups: words which were borrowed with the same meaning and adapted to the phonetic and grammatical patterns of the dialect language; words, whose meaning was changed and adapted by the lexico-semantic dialect system. Some dialecticisms have come a long way in forming, getting from one language to another, changing their meaning. For some borrowed dialectictisms of the village of Yuzhinets the Bulgarian language has become an intermediary language.

Language of relief: medical interpreting within the scope of the refugee crisis response

One of the main challenges facing local authorities in the regions affected by the current refugee and migrant crisis is to properly deal with the healthcare dimension, both in terms of providing adequate healthcare to migrants and regarding public healthcare of the host country. Because the crisis involves contact between people from distant regions, speaking a wide number of different languages that may be considered rare or emerging languages in the Balkans (such as Farsi and Dari or individual dialects of Arabic and Kurdish), the role of medical interpreters is often filled by ad-hoc interpreters who are native speakers of those languages, rather than trained medical interpreters. The aim of this paper is to examine the way medical interpreting services have been provided to refugees and asylum seekers in the Republic of Croatia between the peak period of the crisis in 2015 and 2019, paying special attention to the implications of this issue for the wider public healthcare concerns. The methodology used comprises an ethnographic case study supported by the qualitative analysis of interviews with the mediators involved in medical relief efforts.

СРАВНИТЕЛЬНАЯ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА ГРАММАТИЧЕСКИХ ОСОБЕННОСТЕЙ ГРУППЫ ЯПОНСКИХ ДИАЛЕКТОВ РЕГИОНА КИНКИ

It is not possible to study any dialect properly if it is not considered in historical, geographical, cultural, and linguistic contexts. Therefore, the research of the Kinki dialect cannot be conducted outside the context of the entire Japanese language, and in particular, the analysis of the peculiarities of the grammatical structures of various dialects of the Kinki region. The article presents a part of the research conducted by the authors in Japan by the material of the authentic Japanese dialogues through the comparative analysis of the grammatical systems of individual dialects functioning in the Kinki region of the island of Honshu.

Phonetic and grammatical features of the dialect of the village Yuzhinets, Kitsmansky district, Chernivtsi region

The relevance of scientific research is due to the need to study dialect speech, the creation of lexicographic works, a description of individual dialects. The purpose of the article is to analyze the phoneticgrammatical features of the dialect of the village Yuzhinets, Kitsmansky district, Chernivtsi region. The novelty of scientific research lies in the fact that for the first time information was provided on the interrelated levels of the language system of a particular book.nadgrutskogo dialect. The study used the following scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, descriptive, structural and comparative historical. Conclusion. The talk of the Yuzhinets village of the Kitsmansky district of the Chernivtsi region has archaic phonetic features inherent in the southwestern dialect dialects, specific phonetic features, which in part determine particular grammatical forms.

Regional Variation if Voice Quality

Regional variation of voice quality is one of the most neglected fields of German dialectology. This apparent lack of interest is all the more regrettable as international research has provided a substantial body of evidence for cross-linguistic and dialectal variation in voice quality. In most of these studies, however, it remains unclear whether the observed variation is a language effect or arises from the affiliation of the speakers to different speaker communities. Accordingly, the present study deals with two questions: (1) Is there regional variation of voice quality in the German language area, and if so, which aspects of voice quality are affected? (2) Is regional variation of voice quality a language effect or an effect of belonging to different speaker communities? In order to keep both aspects apart, bilingual speakers are examined who have grown up in two neighboring Low German dialect areas and share High German as a standard language. The study focuses on the Bersenbrucker Land in the north of the district of Osnabruck in Lower Saxony, which is a transitional dialect area between East-Westphalian in the south and Northern Low Saxon in the north. Two text passages were read aloud in a Low German and High German version, and four acoustic measures were calculated: the spectral slope between 0–1 kHz and 1–5 kHz, the spectral slope between 1–5 kHz and 5–8 kHz, the smoothed Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPPS), and the speaker’s formant. These measures characterize voice quality along the dimensions tense vs. lax voice, degree of breathiness and voice projection. The results indicate more lax and breathy voices in the south and more tense and less breathy voices in the north. At the same time, effects of gender, language, and reading task were found. As voice quality of both Low German and Standard High German varies between the north and the south, this variation can better be explained by the affiliation to different speaker communities than by a language effect in the sense that individual dialects or languages have their own voice quality.

Digitalni resursi za proučavanje makedonskih dijalekata

The paper presents a database of digital data for the study of the Macedonian language and its dialects, which is the result of collecting the material for the Macedonian dialectological atlas and the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas. In addition to the general overview of the dialect differentiation of the Macedonian language, including the different phases and the factors influencing it, the individual dialects are also presented, and a special part devoted to the most important characteristics for the differentiation of the Macedonian language - phonological, prosodic and morphological characteristics. Researchers also can download a Questionnaire. The Questionnaire has a list of problems related to phonology, morphology, word-formation, and syntax, which is supported by many examples, thus completing an inventory of relevant language problems based on the phonological, morphological and syntactic maps of the future issue of Atlas. In addition to giving researchers insight into the text of dialects, a digital map of the Macedonian dialects has been created, representing an interactive collection of about 300 texts and 25 audio files on the map. Also, a digital dictionary of Macedonian dialects is given, which allows the researcher to get information about the form in which the requested lexeme was recorded at certain research points. There are also data about the research points: the name of the research point, the previous and the present name of the municipality in which it is located, the dialect and the speech in the research point, the population, the interest of the inhabitants, the religion, whether the village has a school and when was the first time it is mentioned. Finally, the Small Atlas of the Macedonian Dialects is also available, which is a map of Macedonia with marked research points according to the research points indicated in the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas.

Developing Resources For Sentiment Analysis Of Informal Arabic Text In Social Media

Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications such as text categorization, machine translation, sentiment analysis, etc., need annotated corpora and lexicons to check quality and performance. This paper describes the development of resources for sentiment analysis specifically for Arabic text in social media. A distinctive feature of the corpora and lexicons developed are that they are determined from informal Arabic that does not conform to grammatical or spelling standards. We refer to Arabic social media content of this sort as Dialectal Arabic (DA) - informal Arabic originating from and potentially mixing a range of different individual dialects. The paper describes the process adopted for developing corpora and sentiment lexicons for sentiment analysis within different social media and their resulting characteristics. The addition to providing useful NLP data sets for Dialectal Arabic the work also contributes to understanding the approach to developing corpora and lexicons.

LANGUAGE PERSONALITY AS A NEW OBJECT FOR DIALECTOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The article is devoted to a new object of dialectology – a language personality. This is the phenomenon of specific social and personal traits of an individual native speaker being reflected in the text the speaker creates. It analyzes the research that arose at the junction of traditional dialectology and the theory of lingvopersonology that is being performed today by Russian dialectologists. The author examines the main projects that study the speech of an individual dialect speaker, typical features of the individuals under research, types of sources used by scientists, classical and new methods of collecting and analyzing speech material, and aspects of research of individual speech of representatives of national dialects. Prospects of this research for dialectology and other fields of the science of language are identified.

On the development of Lithuanian dialectology

This article provides a brief overview of research interests in dialectology and discusses some aspects of the classification of Lithuanian dialects.The first part of the article focuses on research interests in Lithuanian dialectology and their development and compares them to with the tendencies in Western dialectology. There are two dominant interests in traditional Lithuanian dialectology, i.e. linguistic and prescriptive. In addition, methodological research approaches have also been established in linguistic dialectology. It is possible to distinguish two clear approaches. The first one could be labelled traditional because it is governed by the atomistic research principle; the main focus in it is on listing specific linguistic peculiarities, sometimes researchers provide diachronical accounts. The dominant role in these studies is played by linguistic geography and research is carried out in accordance with the “pure dialect” principle. The second approach is structural dialectology. Its key characteristics are the application of structural methods, conduction of experimental studies, dominance of the principle of dynamic synchrony, and attention to variants. In comparison to the European dialectology, the interests of the Lithuanian dialectology are narrower. The dominant interest is linguistic, in which the largest part is occupied by descriptions of (sub-)dialects and studies of concrete levels of language (phonology, morphology, syntax). However, there are works which can be ascribed to other models rather than just purely linguistic, i.e. there are studies in perceptive dialectology as well as sociolinguistics. One of the most important goals of the history of Lithuanian dialectology is to create an exhaustive model of the interests of dialectology which would not only reflect the development of dialectology but also highlight the key peculiarities of its development and indicate the most significant transformations of the model.The second part of the article provides a critical overview of the classification of Lithuanian dialects. Considerable attention is paid to the controversial aspects of the classification, especially to terminology. Instead of the three-class system, the article proposes a four-class system of terms: tarmė is a hyperonym, patarmė is a hyponym with respect to tarmė and a hyperonym with respect to šnekta, šnekta, in its turn, is a hyponym with respect to patarmė and a hyperonym with respect to pašnektė. Concrete terms of patarmė, šnekta and pašnektė are equonyms. All these terms are classificatory because the dialectological units that they denote are distinguished according to certain linguistic feature (or features). In addition, they also cover a concrete territory. An exhaustive structure of the terms is presented in Figure 12 (see Appendix).In addition, the article discusses three topics related to the classification of dialects: a) the question of the boundaries of individual sub-dialects (šnektos); b) the question of the differential features of sub-dialects (šnektos); and c) the internal, more detailed classification of individual sub-dialects (šnektos).Even a rather general analysis of the classification of contemporary Lithuanian dialects has demonstrated that there is no necessity to change or transform its foundational model. Certainly, this classification is already in part historical since it is based on the synchronic model of dialects made in the 7th decade of 20th century. On the other hand, in publishing the Reader of Lithuanian Dialects (“Lietuvių kalbos tarmių chrestomatija”) its authors did not see the need to update the classification, which shows that it fits the scientific (and academic) level of contemporary dialectology.The review of the classification revealed one clear point which is not new and which depends not so much on the classification but rather on linguists that use it. It is the issue of the usage of terms. Considerable ambiguity/polysemy regarding the usage of terms tarmė, patarmė, that has been noticed to be establihed in Lithuanian dialectology.If a detailed classification (i.e. internal classification of individual dialects) were specially created, the guiding principles for researchers should be structural methods and the method of the frequency of phonemes which has proven efficient in practice.