Standard Dialect Research Articles

Realization of Thai tone change in the Northern Thai dialect of Chiang Mai

Recent studies have found evidence of tone change in progress among Thai speakers. In particular, changes in the high tone, traditionally considered a level tone, have caused some to suggest it should instead be considered a contour tone (Zsiga, 2008; Teeranon and Rungrojsuwan, 2009). However, the previous research has focused primarily on the Central Thai dialect found in Bangkok, the standard dialect of Thai. This study examines the current state of tones in the Northern Thai dialect of Chiang Mai, which has six contrastive tones, rather than the five found in Central Thai. This data allows for a comparison to both the Central Thai literature as well as previous studies of Northern Thai, to examine whether Northern Thai is undergoing tone change as well and whether it exhibits similar changes to those reported for Central Thai. Significant exposure to Central Thai via mass media as well as the education system, and widespread bi-dialectalism, may carry the influences of Central Thai tone changes into Northern Thai as well. This study aims to provide further insight into the ongoing changes in the Thai tonal space, in order to clarify the nature of Thai tones today.

The Role of Accent on the Credibility and Effectiveness of the Salesperson

The study focuses on assessing the impact of a salesperson's accent on people's perception of his effectiveness, including credibility, competence, friendliness, and intentions to buy. One hundred and forty-six students listened to tape recordings of three presenters speaking with Greek-accented English and three presenters speaking with standard American accent. The message was a hypothetical sales pitch for a VCR. The results indicate that, for an American audience, a sales pitch in standard American accent evoked more favorable judgments on all measured dimensions than Greek-accented English.

When Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Prejudice against a social group may lead to discrimination of members of this group. One very strong cue of group membership is a (non)standard accent in speech. Surprisingly, hardly any interventions against accent-based discrimination have been tested. In the current article, we introduce an intervention in which what participants experience themselves unobtrusively changes their evaluations of others. In the present experiment, participants in the experimental condition talked to a confederate in a foreign language before the experiment, whereas those in the control condition received no treatment. Replicating previous research, participants in the control condition discriminated against Turkish-accented job candidates. In contrast, those in the experimental condition evaluated Turkish- and standard-accented candidates as similarly competent. We discuss potential mediating and moderating factors of this effect.

Castilian speakers’ attitudes towards accents and regional stereotypes in Spain

This study investigated what Castilian speakers thought about their own and ten other regional varieties of Spanish in Spain, including their perception of regional stereotypes. A questionnaire containing statements about language attitudes and regional stereotypes was administered to 620 subjects. Results were compared across language varieties, and by age, gender and level of formal education. Comparisons were also made between Castilian speakers from Madrid and the rest of the group. Findings reveal that Castilians like their own variety of Spanish better than almost any other, but that they also show a positive attitude toward the other ten varieties. Age proved to be a significant variable, in particular with regard to Catalan Spanish, with the oldest and the youngest groups showing a slight dislike of that variety. Age, gender and level of education also made a difference when analyzing responses to stereotypes. No important distinctions were found between the Madrileno and Castilian subgroups. Through this study, we are better able to understand how speakers of a standard dialect perceive non-standard dialects of that language, and how their attitudes may change over time.

Elaboration on Social Class-based differences in Applying Persian Forms

Although every language consists of many dialects used under the influence of varying social and regional factors, a standard dialect is greatly appreciated whereas less standard dialects are seriously downgraded by some social class- based societies. Thus, the study investigated the use of less standard Persian language forms by 123 Iranian females concerning their educational degrees and ages. The findings revealed significant differences among the educational levels and age groups in applying the language items. However, no significant interaction was reported between the educational levels and age groups in using less standard forms.

Lithuanian on both sides of the Atlantic: Toward the “intended” standard

This article investigates the interaction between the developing Standard Lithuanian and spoken dialects as reflected in lower class writing (correspondence written by emigrants and to emigrants). More specifically the article focuses on the choice and use of those phonological or morphological variables that are the most salient in the scribes' dialects, in order to establish and define those features that indexed "standard" for lower class writers in the first half of the twentieth century. The data consists of sixty-five letters (17,990 word tokens) written by twenty-four individuals between 1905 to 1939. Analysis revealed that lower class scribes did not write pure dialect, but rather shifted toward the "intended" standard. At least two writing strategies toward the "intended"standard - imitation and conscious adoption of "standard" spellings (generalization) - are outlined in the article. Graphic representation (non-vernacular spellings) of certain phonological features was first visually memorized in the high frequency words and later generalized (consciously modified) to all positions. The use of memorized spellings of certain words, as well as later conscious choices to use standard spellings rather than graphic representation of their local dialects indicate that less educated writers perceived written and spoken varieties as distinct.

GLOBALIZATION, STANDARDIZATION, AND DIALECT LEVELING IN IRAN

This paper is an attempt to shed light on the effects of modernization, urbanization, monolingual educational system, and mass media as well as the process of globalization on dialect leveling among Persian dialects. In so doing, the first part of the paper elaborates on the relationship between globalization and sociolinguistics, and on the concept of standardization. Also, it discusses some factors accelerating dialect leveling among Persian dialects. The second part of the paper presents some empirical evidence for the change, based on the data collected from 3 Persian dialects, namely: Birjandi, Neyshaboori, and Yazdi. Three spoken language sample corpora from two age cohort groups in each speech community were collected. Having transcribed the data, the researchers juxtaposed the phonological, morphological, and syntactic conventions of the two groups of each speech community for further in-depth analysis. Comparing the speech samples of the two age cohorts in each corpus revealed significant movements towards standard dialect. However, the quality and quantity of the observed movements did not appear to be the same across the dialects in question.

Sumi (Sema)

Sumi (also known by its exonym ‘Sema’) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, North-east India. It is one of the major languages of the state, with an estimated 242,000 speakers living primarily in Zunheboto district, as well as in the major cities of Kohima and Dimapur. Bradley (1997) places Sumi (referred to as Sema), among the ‘Southern Naga’ languages, which include Angami (also known as Tenyidie) and Ao, in contrast to the ‘Northern Naga’ languages such as Konyak and Nocte. Burling (2003) offers a more conservative classification, placing Sumi (referred to as Simi) in an ‘Angami-Pochuri’ group containing Angami, Chakhesang (Chokri and Kheza) and Mao. Four main dialects of Sumi have been identified: the Western dialect, the Eastern dialect, the Chizolimi dialect, and the Central dialect. The Central dialect is the standard dialect used in published works of Sumi (Sreedhar 1976: 4–5).

“You Lost Me at Hello”: How and when accent-based biases are expressed and suppressed

This research examines customer biases relating to employee accents in call service encounters. Extant research and practitioners generally assume that customers automatically evaluate call service employees with a nonstandard accent lower than employees with a standard accent. However, using the justification–suppression model as a framework, we argue that customers frequently suppress accent biases toward call service employees. We conduct three empirical studies, and our findings indicate that customers rate employees with an accent receiving a negative bias lower only when a service outcome is unfavorable for customers. In contrast, accents receiving a positive bias only impact customer evaluations when service outcomes are favorable for customers. Additionally, we demonstrate that the suppression and justification of accent biases rely on both cognitive and affective mechanisms. Finally, we show that customers who are informed of the frequency of a favorable vs. unfavorable outcome are more likely to suppress biases.

Dictionaries and the Standardization of Spelling in Swahili

The paper discusses the role of the dictionary in standardizing the spelling of Swahili. The discussion begins by defining key terms in this paper: spelling and standardization of spelling. It surveys lexicons written in Swahili between 1811–1990 and records the efforts made to establish spelling conventions for Swahili words in Roman characters, pointing out variant spellings of words written by different authors. The paper focuses on the role played by different lexicons in setting orthography for Swahili words, viz. Steere (1870), Krapf (1882), Nettelbladt (1891), Madan (1903), Sacleux (1939), etc. It observes how the lexicons established norms for words of a language which was hitherto not written in Roman characters. It also shows how lexicons helped to standardize the spelling of words to its current form especially after a standard dialect had been selected, pointing out lexicons which exclusively recorded words of the standard language with minimal variants. Finally the paper emphasizes the significance of the dictionary to adhere to the standard orthography. Keywords: standardization of spelling; spelling conventions; standard orthography; swahili alphabet; dialectical variations; catchwords; phonetic transcriptions; standard language; spelling system; nonstandard orthography; standardization process; word-list; lexicon and dictionary

Weight sensitivity and syllable codas in Srinagar Koshur

This paper describes and analyses the pattern of word stress found in the standard dialect of Koshur (Kashmiri) spoken in Srinagar. The significance of Koshur for studies of stress lies in that taken together, its pattern of stress assignment and a pervasive pattern of syncope conspire to produce a four-way syllable weight distinction that has sometimes been expressed as the scale CVːC>CVː>CVC>CV. The interesting feature of this type of scale is that closed syllables, CVːC and CVC are preferred as stress peaks over open syllables with vowels of the same length. Other researchers have noted that in languages with this scale, or the abbreviated ternary version CVː>CVC>CV, CVC syllables behave ambiguously with respect to stress. They seem to be heavy in relation to CV when CVː syllables are absent. In a stress clash context however, CVC defers to CVː. ‘Mora-only’ accounts of other languages with this scale have interpreted the ambiguous behaviour of CVC as evidence that CVC syllables are bimoraic where their behaviour seems to group them with CVː but monomoraic elsewhere (e.g. Rosenthall & van der Hulst 1999, Morén 2000). To account for the CVːC>CVː effect, mora-only accounts have been forced to assume that CVːC are trimoraic. We show that a mora-only analysis does not offer a satisfying account of the Koshur facts, and we argue instead that the origin of the CVC>CV and CVːC>CVː effects is the presence of a coda that branches from the final mora of a syllable, making the closed syllables more harmonic as prosodic heads. Under this view, branchingness emerges as another dimension of the mora, along with moraic quantity and the quality of segments linked to moras, which contributes to syllable prominence.

Voice onset time in Persian stop consonants

Introduction: Voice onset time has been known to be the most reliable acoustic cue in differentiating voiced and voiceless stops. It can also be used in describing or categorizing various developmental, neuromotor and/or linguistic disorders. Values of voice onset time have been determined for many languages, and in the present study, voice onset time values were investigated for Persian language (Standard dialect). Materials and Methods: In this study, 44 healthy subjects, who were selected through convenient sampling method, produced each of 42 monosyllabic words twice. All stimuli contained 7 Persian stops in the initial position. Using Praat software, the voice onset time values were calculated in milliseconds according to waveform and wideband spectrograms. Vowel effect, sex differences, and the effect of place of articulation on VOT were analyzed. Results: No significant difference was found for the voice onset times obtained from male and female Persian speakers (P > 0.050). However, vowel and place of articulation had a significant effect on the voice onset times (P < 0.001). The mean of voice onset time values for /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/, /g/, /k/, /G/ consonants and for [c] and [ɟ] allophones, along with their standard deviations, were 12.41 (12.7), 78.27 (18.1), 89.44 (20.9), 16.63 (9.8), 100.73 (20), 30.34 (9.1), 23.98 (8.69), 33.6 (7.7) and 103.13 (18) ms respectively. Conclusion: It was revealed through this study that voice onset time values are the same for Persian-speaking men and women. However, like many other languages, back and high vowels and back place of articulation increased VOT values. Moreover, the results indicated that voiceless stops had long voicing lags and were aspirated in Persian language. On the other hand, voiced stops had positive VOT values and short voicing lags. Keywords: Voice onset time, Persian language, Consonant, Vowel

The Effect of Interviewers’ and Respondents’ Accent and Gender on Willingness to Cooperate in Telephone Surveys

This article presents two real-life experiments that investigate whether an interviewer’s accent and gender combined with a respondent’s accent and gender have an impact on telephone survey cooperation rates. Expectations were based on the authority and liking principles of the compliance theory. In Study 1, 12 standard-speaking interviewers (6 men, 6 women) and 12 interviewers with a regional accent (6 men, 6 women) called 1925 male and female respondents (speaking either the standard or the regional variety). In Study 2, a female interviewer who mastered the standard accent and the regional variety, called 120 respondents from the same categories as in Study 1. The expectations were not confirmed. Interviewers with authority (male, speaking standard Dutch) had no more success than interviewers with less authority (female, speaking a regional accent), and agreement of gender and accent between interviewer and respondent had no impact on the level of cooperation of the respondents. The results seem to indicate that it is not necessary for research bureaus to reject potential employees with a regional accent or with a less authoritative voice, and that they do not need to make an effort to match interviewers and respondents in characteristics such as gender and accent.

Šiaurinių širvintiškių daiktavardžio kamienai ir jų hierarchija

NOUN STEMS AND THEIR HIERARCHY IN THE NORTHERN SIRVINTISKIAI SUBDIALECT Summary In the Northern Sirvintiskiai subdialect, a noun stem is treated as independent if it differs from other stems in at least the ending of one case form. With regard to this condition, the i stem and the consonant stem are subdivided into the masculine and feminine gender stems. In the subdialect, tradi­tional stems have been better retained in nouns having mobile stress. Due to shortening of unstressed long vowels, partial stress retraction and other reasons, barytone nouns have deviated to a great extent from the primary paradigms. In the Northern Sirvintiskiai subdialect, the number of noun stems is lower than that in standard Lithuanian and in the majority of its dialects, as iu , ia 1 and ia 2 stem nouns are inflected in a totally homogeneous way, i. e. according to the ia 2 stem implicative model. Nouns of mobile stress have a , ia 2 , u , ā , i ā , ē , i m , i f , C m and C f stems. Barytone stress nouns only have six stems, i. e. a , ia 2 , u , ā , ē , and i f stems. The i ā stem has coincided with the ē stem. Meanwhile, the i m , C m and C f stems are not found in words with barytone stress. Hierarchic stem grouping “trees” that are produced using three methods (the maximum, minimum and average methods) indicate existence of three different types of noun declension: the masculine model (embracing the a , ia 2 and u stems), the feminine model (the ā and i ā stems) and the mixed model (the i m , i f , C m and C f stems). The ē stem is isolated: it embraces feminine gender nouns, yet according to declension there is a tendency towards the mixed declension type to a slightly greater extent. The a , ia 2 , ā , i ā and ē stems are stable. They do not decline or rarely decline from their implicative models, and have no additional (complementary) paradigms. They are all (except for the i ā stem) highly productive, open, constantly enriched with words from standard Lithuanian, other dialects and languages, and also with words having unstable stems. Unstable stems are as follows: u , i m , i f , C m and C f .They are unproductive, and often have complementary paradigms and lose part of words belonging to them.

A meta‐analysis of the effects of speakers' accents on interpersonal evaluations

AbstractThis paper reports a meta‐analysis of the empirical literature on the effects of speakers' accents on interpersonal evaluations. Our review of the published literature uncovered 20 studies that have compared the effects of standard accents (i.e., the accepted accent of the majority population) versus non‐standard accents (i.e., accents that are considered foreign or spoken by minorities) on evaluations about the speakers. These 20 studies yielded 116 independent effect sizes on an array of characteristics that were selected by the original researchers. We classified each of the characteristics as belonging to one of three domains that have been traditionally discussed in this area, namely status (e.g., intelligence, social class), solidarity (trustworthiness, in‐group–out‐group member), and dynamism (level of activity and liveliness). The effect was particularly strong when American Network accented speakers were compared with non–standard‐accented speakers. These results underscore prior research showing that speakers' accents have powerful effects on how others perceive them. These and other results are discussed in the context of the literature along with implications for future research in this area. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

The phonetics and phonology of onset-sensitive accentuation of novel words in North Kyungsang Korean

Aspirated onset consonants are not necessarily associated with a high tone pitch accent in North Kyungsang Korean although vowels following aspirated obstruent consonants tend to have higher F0 than those following other consonants in both standard Korean and Kyungsang dialects. However, this study presents evidence that aspiration plays a role in the assignment of a pitch accent pattern to novel words. This study shows that NKK accentuation of new words is not random but rather constrained: either by phonetics-based or phonologically-grounded constraints. This study suggests that even though the effect of aspiration on accentuation is not categorical, the phonetic effect was important enough to at least serve as a factor in deriving variation in accent patterns in newly adopted words.

The contributions of the lips and the tongue to the diachronic fronting of high back vowels in Standard Southern British English

Recent acoustic studies have provided evidence that /u/ (goose) and /ʊ/ (foot) have fronted in the standard accent of England in the last fifty years, but what is less clear is whether this fronting is due entirely to a repositioning of the tongue or whether it has been accompanied by an unrounding of the lips. Four experiments were carried out to shed light on this issue. An acoustic study of anticipatory coarticulation in /s/ in the first of these suggested a similar degree of lip-protrusion for young speakers whose F2 of /u/ was raised compared with that of older speakers. Compatibly, judgments of lip-rounding elicited from cross-dubbed auditory-visual stimuli and an analysis of lip movement showed young speakers' /u/ to be produced with rounded lips. Their tongue positions and movements in the final experiment were found to be almost as advanced for /u/ as for /i/ (fleece) and nearer to a central position for lax /ʊ/ (foot). Taken together, these results confirm firstly, that the diachronic shift in /u/ has involved a realignment of the tongue, but not of the lips; and secondly, that the diachronic shift in /ʊ/ is likely to be a more recent innovation than that of its tense counterpart.

The varying influence of spokesperson's accent in communication effectiveness: A comparative study in two different regions of Mexico

This study examines the communication effectiveness of a spokesperson with an American-Spanish Accent (ASA) and a Mexican-Spanish Accent (MSA) in two different locations of Mexico. These cities were selected based on their high or low exposure of the US culture (that is, high exposure is assumed if the city was close to the US border and/or coastal city). We used Tajfel's Theory to hypothesize the relationship between spokesperson's accent and consumers’ purchase intentions in that location. The theory posits that the most influential spokesperson will be the person who speaks with the standard accent for a given region but what is considered standard accent changes based on cultural influences of different groups. To test the hypothesized relationships, we used a sample of 1058 student subjects who observed an advertisement with different accented spokespersons. Consistent with the theory, the results of this study indicate that consumers that are less exposed to the US culture (inland Mexico cities) had more favorable views about the spokesperson that had an MSA than a spokesperson with an ASA. Moreover, consumers in the cities close to the US border and coastal areas had equally favorable views for both accents. The implications for the marketers are discussed.

Types of dialect accommodation in first-generation contact between adult speakers of mutually intelligible but regionally different varieties

This study reports on the linguistic behaviour of 39 university students from Moravia (in the east of the Czech Republic) living at a hall of residence in Prague, Bohemia (an area covering the west/central parts of the Czech Republic). In Bohemia, Moravian dialects and Standard Czech (SC) – an archaic and semi-artificial standard dialect that is rarely used in informal communication – are both stigmatised, although for different reasons. It has been speculated therefore that speakers of Moravian dialects living in Bohemia quickly start to drop or avoid marked items of their localised vernaculars and accommodate to Common Czech (CC), a non-standard koïné spoken throughout Bohemia and the westernmost parts of Moravia. To date, however, this hypothesis, which was formulated by linguists who advocate CC as a second central variety of Czech, has not been substantiated by empirical evidence. This study is the first attempt to systematically describe the accommodation of Moravian migrants in Bohemia. The results are based on the linguistic behaviour of a representative sample of informants stratified according to four independent social variables; informants' accommodation is quantified according to their acquisition of six CC variants. The aim of this paper is to describe the types of accommodation that are observed in first-generation dialect contact. I consider which features of the host variety are acquired the most or least (and why), how quickly individual features are assimilated and whether accommodation follows a specific route. Emphasis is placed both on the language-internal and in particular on the extralinguistic factors that promote/accelerate, or delay or even prevent the assimilation of particular linguistic items. I highlight several types of partial (incomplete) accommodation, including forms that are intermediate between those found in the migrant and host dialect (‘interdialect’ forms) and ‘hyperdialectisms’, which are the result of migrants' misanalysis/overgeneralisation of the host variety. This study provides valuable data on the processes involved in the accommodation of first-generation adult migrants, which we can test against the frameworks that have been advanced – on the basis of just a few empirical studies – in an attempt to explain the character of and variation in long-term accommodation, and which we can compare with results elicited in other studies of dialect contact in societies with a different sociolinguistic profile.

Framing dialect in the 1800 Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth, regionalisms and footnotes

This article addresses one of the most theoretically and linguistically vexing issues in the history of English poetic language: stylistic variation in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. It suggests that two footnotes, added to the 1800 edition, offer a new perspective on a question which has prompted debate since its publication: specifically, what is the relationship between Wordsworth’s use of dialect and the language of ‘low and rustic life’ promised by the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads? In sections 1 and 2 the article expands on the importance of the footnotes in relation to the discussion surrounding Wordsworth’s language. Section 3 examines the departure of Lyrical Ballads from 18th-century conventions regarding the glossing of non-standard language in poetry, while section 4 explores the function of the unfootnoted and unframed regionalisms that can be found throughout the collection. Sections 5 and 6 discuss the content of the two footnotes in relation to Wordsworth’s blurring of the roles of poet and glosser, and suggest that this conflation of roles is connected to Wordsworth’s implicit blurring of Standard English and dialect in his definition of ‘low and rustic life’ (a definition explored in greater detail in section 7). The conclusion suggests that the lack of specificity in Wordsworth’s Preface and his approach to framing dialect were part of a single strategy to integrate Standard English and dialect in a more organic manner than was typical of 18th-century writing.