Small Number Of Speakers Research Articles

Balancing validity and reliability as a function of sampling variability in forensic voice comparison

In forensic comparison sciences, experts are required to compare samples of known and unknown origin to evaluate the strength of the evidence assuming they came from the same- and different-sources. The application of valid (if the method measures what it is intended to) and reliable (if that method produces consistent results) forensic methods is required across many jurisdictions, such as the England & Wales Criminal Practice Directions 19A and UK Crown Prosecution Service and highlighted in the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report and by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2016. The current study uses simulation to examine the effect of number of speakers and sampling variability and on the evaluation of validity and reliability using different generations of automatic speaker recognition (ASR) systems in forensic voice comparison (FVC). The results show that the state-of-the-art system had better overall validity compared with less advanced systems. However, better validity does not necessarily lead to high reliability, and very often the opposite is true. Better system validity and higher discriminability have the potential of leading to a higher degree of uncertainty and inconsistency in the output (i.e. poorer reliability). This is particularly the case when dealing with small number of speakers, where the observed data does not adequately support density estimation, resulting in extrapolation, as is commonly expected in FVC casework.

Lexical and Grammatical Borrowings in Raji

When languages have a relatively small number of speakers and live along with the speakers of dominant languages, there is a gradual shrinkage in their vocabulary, and grammatical patterns. This study is mainly based on the wordlist and texts initially gathered for the primary documentation of Raji in 2018. Raji presents a typical case in which 46.2 percent lexical items are borrowed from Indic languages (and mainly from Nepali). The verbs borrowed from Indic sources exhibit systematic behavior as all of them index the suffix -e to the verb roots as a technique of accommodation before other suffixes are added to them. Some lexical items end in -əu, -ŋ, -ja, -l when they are borrowed to Raji. The grammatical borrowings are largely evidenced in the areas of morphology, and clause combining.

Data-Driven Analysis of European Portuguese Nasal Vowel Dynamics in Bilabial Contexts

European Portuguese (EP) is characterized by a large number of nasals encompassing five phonemic nasal vowels. One notable characteristic of these sounds is their dynamic nature, involving both oral and nasal gestures, which makes their study and characterization challenging. The study of nasal vowels, in particular, has been addressed using a wide range of technologies: early descriptions were based on acoustics and nasalance, later expanded with articulatory data obtained from EMA and real-time magnetic resonance (RT-MRI). While providing important results, these studies were limited by the discrete nature of the EMA-pellets, providing only a small grasp of the vocal tract; by the small time resolution of the MRI data; and by the small number of speakers. To tackle these limitations, and to take advantage of recent advances in RT-MRI allowing 50 fps, novel articulatory data has been acquired for 11 EP speakers. The work presented here explores the capabilities of recently proposed data-driven approaches to model articulatory data extracted from RT-MRI to assess their suitability for investigating the dynamic characteristics of nasal vowels. To this end, we explore vocal tract configurations over time, along with the coordination of velum and lip aperture in oral and nasal bilabial contexts for nasal vowels and oral congeners. Overall, the results show that both generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) and functional linear mixed models (FLMMs) provide an elegant approach to tackle the data from multiple speakers. More specifically, we found oro-pharyngeal differences in the tongue configurations for low and mid nasal vowels: vowel track aperture was larger in the pharyngeal and smaller in the palatal region for the three non-high nasal vowels, providing evidence of a raised and more advanced tongue position of the nasal vowels. Even though this work is aimed at exploring the applicability of the methods, the outcomes already highlight interesting data for the dynamic characterization of EP nasal vowels.

Covid-19 mõju liivi keele omandamise võimalustele

This article examines several programmes created by the University of Latvia Livonian Institute promoting Livonian language learning which came about as a result of the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. The value and role of specifically digital solutions increased across society during this period, becoming a standard part of every aspect of daily life. Taking into account the reasons for the present Livonian language situation, it becomes clear that despite the overall seriousness of the circumstances created by the pandemic, there have also been certain positive developments for language learning and endangered language maintenance resulting from this situation. It may be that the pandemic situation prompted a change in perspective - among not only researchers but also society in general - on Livonian language preservation as well as its role and function. This shift confirmed and emphasised to the Livonian community as well as to broader society that Livonian - despite its small number of speakers - deserves the same opportunities available to every language and that these are offered not only by modern technology, but also by linguistic insights into language vitality and language acquisition theory. In this context, the two main Livonian language learning programmes prompted by the pandemic are discussed. These are: (1) the 7 online Livonian language lessons, which originally were developed as an instructional module for general education schools and were the first time in history when the opportunity to study Livonian was included in the school programme in Latvia;and (2) the next step in learning language basics, which grew out of this project - a series of songs written by Livonian authors intended for children and young people. These Livonian language learning and popularisation initiatives - motivated by the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic - are grounded in new approaches and methods of language acquisition as well as other proven techniques for preparing educational materials. These initiatives show that in a difficult situation, a flexible approach and creative solutions can place even a small language on a more equal footing when competing with larger languages. © 2021 Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia, Emakeele Selts. All rights reserved.

Konsonan dalam Bahasa Koloncucu

Bahasa Koloncucu adalah salah satu bahasa daerah di Maluku Utara yang tergolong dalam kategori bahasa yang punah (moribund languages), karena memiliki jumlah penutur yang sangat sedikit. Dalam hitungan beberapa decade, bahasa ini akan benar-benar hilang bersama dengan penuturnya. Data ilmiah tentang bahasa inipun belum banyak dilakukan. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan bentuk dan klasifikasi konsonan dalam bahasa Koloncucu, sebagai salah satu upaya pelestarian bahasa daerah. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskripsi dengan tiga tahapan, yaitu tahap penyediaan data, tahap analisis data, dan tahap penyajian hasil analisis data. Analisis data dilakukan setelah proses klasifikasi data yang kemudian diterapkan menggunakan metode agih dengan teknik bagi unsur langsung. Hasil tulisan ini adalah bentuk dan klasifikasi konsonan dalam bahasa Koloncucu, yaitu: konsonan hambat letup (Stops, Plosives), konsonan nasal (Nasals), konsonan sampingan (Laterals), konsonan geseran atau frikatif (Fricatives, Fristions), konsonan getar (Trills, Vibrants), dan semi vokal. Sedangkan konsonan sentuhan (Tap), konsonan sentuhan kuat (Flap), dan konsonan paduan (Affricates) tidak ditemukan dalam bahasa Koloncucu

A note on language contact: Laz language in Turkey

Classified as an endangered language, the Laz language is spoken in a restricted area by a small number of speakers. The contact between Turkish and Laz is intense and unidirectional in that the latter is only restrained to communication among family members in small speech communities. Contact-induced change, which is an inevitable outcome of Turkish-Laz contact, is investigated by placing special emphasis on loanwords. This paper, thus, addresses the contact between Turkish and the Laz language at lexical level and aims to examine whether the existence of Turkish nouns as loanwords in the Laz language is due to contact-induced language change with a culture-heavy loanword transmission or to gradual language loss. The data analysis reveals that these alterations can be divided into four major categories which are i) treatment of vowels, ii) treatment of consonants, iii) direct insertion, and iv) loanblends. The results show that nouns that are transmitted from Turkish into the Laz language undergo phonological and morphological alterations. The contact-induced change in the Laz language is probably due to historical process, lack of knowledge of the Laz language among the young generation and the dominance of Turkish language in social and educational setting. The study is original as it is the first attempt to examine the contact-induced change at lexical level in addition to studies by İmer (1997) and Kutcher (2008) investigating contact between Turkish and the Laz languages. The findings of the study are limited to contact-induced changes taking place in nouns transmitted from Turkish into the Laz language. Therefore, further research is needed to shed light on changes in other lexical categories like adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and so on.

Language attrition, language contact and the concept of relic variety: the case of Barossa German

AbstractThis article theorizes on the relation between individual and societal language loss. In this context, the notion of relic variety will be introduced, describing a setting where a language is spoken by a very small number of speakers who live isolated from the main speech community and have not acquired literacy in their L1. The article focuses on attrition phenomena in a specific relic variety, i.e. Barossa German, a German-speaking enclave in South Australia. It analyses phenomena caused by lack of usage (hesitation phenomena, code-switching, semantic restructuring) as well as reduction processes, namely of the German case system. The results of the analysis demonstrate that in contrast to canonical attrition settings, in a relic variety morphological markers are only retained in constructions that had been either entrenched early in the acquisition processes or are very frequently used. It will be argued that the main factors influencing the reduction process are the variety of input, a decrease of normativity and the absence of a written variety.

How to investigate linguistic diversity: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest

On the basis of five case studies from languages of the American Pacific Northwest, we argue that, at least in the areas of syntax and semantics, a scientific approach to the study of linguistic diversity must be empirically grounded in theoretically informed, hypothesis-driven fieldwork on individual languages. This runs counter to recent high-profile claims that large-scale typology based on the sampling of descriptive grammars yields superior results. We show that only a hypothesis-driven approach makes falsifiable predictions, and only a methodology that yields negative as well as positive evidence can effectively test those predictions. Targeted elicitation is particularly important for languages with a small number of speakers, where statistical analysis of large-scale corpora is impossible. Given that a large proportion of the world’s linguistic diversity is found in such languages, we conclude that formal, hypothesis-driven fieldwork constitutes the best way rapidly and efficiently to document the world’s remaining syntactic and semantic diversity.

MULTILINGUALISM IN EDUCATION: THE ROLE OF FIRST LANGUAGE

A bstract: This paper discusses the possibilities and effects of different language policies in schools around the world, based on recent research on second language learning and on the relationship between language and cultural identity. With reference to some of the latest findings from brain imaging in learners who speak one, two or more languages, it looks at the physical effects of bilingualism and multilingualism, and how these may be applied in teaching and in school policy to improve education. With reference to a recent survey of students in international secondary schools in Indonesia, it also discusses the cultural aspects of language use in schools and the role of language in identity. It examines the effects of learning more than one language at a young age, and of learning subjects through a language which is not the learner's first language. A large number of schools worldwide currently teach English to speakers of other languages from an early age. This paper discusses the degree to which such early foreign or second language teaching is actually useful or effective. In many parts of the world, it has also become popular to teach mainstream or even all curriculum subjects in English. Some, however, have found this to be detrimental in several ways and have therefore reverted to teaching subjects in their national language. Many are concerned about the possibility that languages with a small number of speakers are doomed to being lost and replaced by a national language, or that their national language could eventually be replaced by English. This could have important repercussions both on local cultures and on international relations, given the emotive aspects of one's first language. Vital decisions on language are frequently made based on the need for English in careers. However, it may be that the current language teaching situation is not actually succeeding in improving students' use of English or their learning in general. Moreover, there is a great risk of producing one or more generations of school leavers and graduates who cannot function beyond everyday conversation in their first language. It may be impossible for English to continue to dominate education without raising affective barriers to learning by giving a low status to local languages and cultures. In this paper, all of the above questions are discussed and researched, and several solutions to the problems arising from them are proposed. Keywords : multilingualism, first language, second language curriculum

ONLINE SPEAKER DIARIZATION FOR MULTIMEDIA DATA RETRIEVAL ON MOBILE DEVICES

Speaker diarization detects speaker change points in spoken data and organizes speaker clusters so that each cluster contains one speaker's segments. This study aims to develop online speaker diarization for multimedia data retrieval on mobile devices. Researchers have proposed various methods of diarization, but most approaches thus far depend on an empirically determined threshold as a criterion or work in an offline manner that requires prior knowledge, such as the overall number of speakers. There are therefore clear drawbacks with mobile devices, on which various types of spoken data are frequently played and replaced. A new approach to online speaker segmentation and clustering is proposed for overcoming these drawbacks. The proposed segmentation method considers the temporal locality of an analysis window, assuming that each window contains only a small number of speakers. In accordance with this property, a local universal background model (UBM) is constructed in a window and the model is used to detect speaker change points. A cluster boundary-based dynamic decision criterion is proposed for speaker clustering. This approach estimates the internal characteristics of clusters and uses them to determine cluster boundaries. In experiments using a broadcast news corpus, our techniques exhibited superior performance compared to conventional approaches.

Acoustic landmark analysis of speaker differences in producing clear versus conversational speech.

In previous work, we have shown that landmark analysis can be used to detect acoustic changes in clear versus conversational (typical and plain) speech that are associated with changes in intelligibility to listeners. However, these results derive from studies using a small number of speakers [Bradlow and Bent, (2002); Smiljanic and Bradlow (2008)]. The degree to which landmark analysis can be used to predict intelligibility for any particular speaker or sample of speech is not known. In this paper, we present results from a study of listener intelligibility for clear and conversational speech by four speakers with widely differing scores on parameters of acoustic change as determined by landmark analysis. The data consist of intelligibility scores (# content words correct) for a set of BKB sentences produced by these four speakers and presented to four groups of listeners in quiet and in noise. We compare these data with data from studies by Krause & Braida [2002, 2004]. Results will be discussed in terms of the distribution of acoustic changes used by individual speakers to produce clear versus conversational speech, and the relationship of these changes to listener intelligibility.

"Ladinische Einheit" zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

The article describes the historically induced linguistic division of the Ladin language region in Italy that has been decisively deepend due its administrative tripartite division. As the Ladin language is spoken only by a very small number of speakers, the author underlines the necessity of a unified language planning and standardization in order to preserve its vitality.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: THE ROLE OF BOOK INDUSTRIES IN SMALL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

This paper deals with four cultural and historical features of book industry that still determine the nature of book business. The paper concentrates on how these features impact book industries in linguistic communities with a relatively small number of speakers. The paper also examines the reasons for absence of the publishing education and contemporary publishing research in the world of academia. In its final part, the paper shows the reason why, at least for the time being, e-books will not outperform printed books and stresses that current developments have triggered not only new research on contemporary books, but also created a set of threats and opportunities for book business in small language communities.

AFIRST OVERVIEW OF MORPHOLOGY OF KANOÊ

This article presents a first parts of speech description in Kanoê, a Brazilian isolated indigenous language, that finds endangered from short term, because it has a very small number of speakers (about five), between almost a hundred of remaining. They live dispersed in the indigenous areas of Deolinda, Sagarana and Rio Guaporé, and also a family in the border of Omeré river, in the south of Rondônia, Brazil The partial data here introduced were carried out in two fieldwork sessions (June 1991, January 1997) and submitted to the usual analytic methods in Descriptive Linguistics.

Media Freedom and Political Debate in the Digital Era

This article examines the impact of online expression on theories of media freedom. While media freedom has generally been justified instrumentally, the opportunities for expression via the Internet may require greater emphasis on the interests of the individual speaker. Despite this development, this article shows how a small number of speakers will still command a much wider audience and have greater influence over political debate. For such speakers the approach to media freedom devised in the mass media era will remain applicable.

Apparatus and method for automatic equalization of personal multi-channel audio system

An apparatus for automatically equalizing a personal multi-channel audio system, and a method therefor, are disclosed. White noises which are generated by a transfer characteristic measuring section are reproduced through speakers. Transfer signals from the respective speakers are collected through a microphone array at a listening position so as to transmit the collected signals to a transfer function calculating section. The transfer function calculating section calculates the transfer characteristics between the respective speakers and the listening position by utilizing the white noise and the collected signals. Then the sound characteristics of the respective sound channels are adjusted so that the transfer characteristics between the respective speakers and the listening position would be equalized. Further, phantom channels are synthesized and reproduced by utilizing the transfer functions and the installed speakers. Therefore, at the given environment, an optimum sound reproduction is obtained. Further, a small number of speakers can give an effect of a large number of speakers through the synthesis of phantom channels. In the case of an A/V system, the sound reproduction range can be adjusted in accordance with the size of the screen.