Transitional Dialects Research Articles

Satakuntalaisuus puheessa -korpus ja siitä tehtyjä synkretismihavaintoja

Satakunta in Speech, a research project at the University of Turku, started in 2007. Since the beginning, the goal of the project was to study the current dialects around the province of Satakunta, one of the historical provinces and administrative units in Finland. Yet, dialectically the province is divided into two; the dialectal boundary between 1) the Southwestern Dialects and 2) the Dialects of Häme and the Transitional Dialects is traditionally considered one of the most distinctive in Finland. To further showcase the corpus compiled over the course of the project and challenges in annotation, we assess several types of syncretistic phenomena fairly widespread in contemporary Satakunta dialects and vernaculars: merging together of certain cases, finite and infinitive verb forms. Our aim is to make tentative and qualitative observations on the subject, which calls for a more thorough examination.

Ja hän tutkei – kaksitavuisten i-vartaloisten verbien imperfektin i ~ ei -vaihtelu ja sen esiintyvyys Satakunnan alueella puhuttavissa murteissa

This article focuses on the i ~ ei variation occurring in verbs with stems ending in i. The ei variant demerges convergent verb forms in present and past tense, for example tutkin ’I research’ and tutkein ’I researched’. The aim of this article is to study the distribution of i ~ ei variation in dialects around the Satakunta province which is dialectically divided into two. In this article, there is a brief look at the historical situation and then an overview of the current situation of the variation. The data is collected from the Satakunta in Speech corpus. The i ~ ei variation seems to merge both the Southwestern and the Transitional Dialects. The ei variant may not be widely used, but it is still largely an extant feature in the dialects spoken in Satakunta.

Особенности словообразования в мокшанских переходных говорах рузаевского ареала

The aim of the study is to determine the word-formation potential of the Moksha transitional dialects of the Ruzaevka area, which occupy border areas with the central and south-eastern dialects. Attention is paid to the suffixes that form verbs from verbal and nominal stems. The scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the features of word formation in transitional dialects are considered for the first time. As a result of the analysis of a large lexical material, it has been revealed that in the word-formation system of the dialects, verbal suffixes constitute a significant group, for some of them the motivating basis is a verbal stem, for others it is a nominal one.

The Historical Anthroponymy of the Ruthenian Population Living in the Historical Territories of the Eastern Lublin Region (On the Material of Registers of Parishes in the Former Greek-Uniate Diocese of Chełm)

The subject of research is the anthroponymy of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population living in the historical territories of the eastern Lublin region on the Polish-East-Slavic borderland. The underlying objective of the study was to investigate the Ruthenian onomastics functioning in the historical Polish-Ukrainian onomastics and to highlight the territorial diversification of the personal names of Ukrainians, related to the dialectal diversity in the studied territory. The reference database is personal proper names excerpted from the parish registers of Uniate parishes in the former Chełm diocese. The territory investigated was divided into three areas: northern, central and southern, based on the ranges of the Ukrainian dialects spoken in the territory of present-day Poland. The research material was excerpted from the records of Uniate parishes in the former Chełm diocese in the years of 1662–1810.
 The northern area, defined by the range of Podlasie local dialects, and the central area, determined by the ranges of transitional dialects from northern to southern ones and Volhynian dialects, exhibit features closely similar to peasant anthroponymy, while the southern area, defined by the ranges of Dniester and San dialects, presents features characteristic of the anthroponymy of the lower Ukrainian gentry.

NADVIRNA AREA ON LINGUISTIC MAPS

The paper is devoted to the status of dialects of the settlements in Nadvirna district, Ivano-Frankivsk region, which required a through studying of the works of well-known dialectologists of the boundaries of pokutskyi, naddnistrianskyi, hutsulskyi, boikivskyi dialects.
 The paper contains the analysis of the linguistic maps of AUL (Atlas of the Ukrainian language), made by S. Bevzenko, О. Horbach, Ya. Zakrevska, F. Zhylko, Ya. Yanіv, Т. Yastremska; it also includes descriptive works of the researchers of sub-dialects of a south-west dialect where dialects of settlements of Nadvirna distirct, Ivano-Frankivsk region were represented.
 The material, cartographed by precursors, has proved that dialects of Nadvirna area are not similar at all language levels. It was stated that researchers chose various networks of dialects which did not allow them to draw demarcation lines between hutsulskyi, naddnistrianskyi, pokutskyi and boikivskyi dialects. In descriptive works about these dialects a starting point in defining boundaries is Nadvirna, part of Nadvirna district (except for the settlements in the north), part of Nadvirna area to the north of Yaremche and others. The attention has been paid to the fact that a demarcation line can stretch for tens and hundreds of kilometers. The assumption has been made that a greater part of Nadvirna area will have a status of transitional dialects.
 Some own maps of lexical-semantic phenomena, which helped separate groups of dialects – a northern group, a south-eastern group, were analyzed.
 It has been stated that a larger number of cartographic data will enable to elaborate the boundaries of dialects which contact, to determine transitional dialects, to identify zones and groups of dialects on Naddniprianshchyna area.

Терехівська говірка в контексті діалектного континууму української мови

In the article, on the basis of linguistic analysis, the dialect features of the Terekhiv sub-dialect of the Polissya dialect of the Ukrainian language are investigated, which is due to the actualization of the study of separate microareals of the dialect space. Today, dialectical discourse is perceived not as a deviation from the literary norm, but as another, equal form of the national language with significant linguistic and communicative potential. Polissya is characterized by a diverse ethnic composition, which makes this region, an area of multilateral intensive ethnic contacts, and creates the preconditions for the study of interlingual and interdialectal interactions. The source of the study is the actual material collected in 4 localities: Terekhivtsi, Malynivtsi, Tovstolis, Stasy. The main geohistorical data of the villages subordinated to the Terekhiv rural community are established, which explain the peculiarities of the formation of vocal and consonant systems of speech, word-changing paradigms. It was found that the speech of dialect speakers was formed under the influence of the languages of countries that played a significant role in the history of Chernihiv: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russia, Belarus. Phonetic and morphological features of speech as a separate microareal of dialect space are revealed and characterized. Dialectal differences proved to be multifaceted, both in their meaning and in their functional yield. At the level of vocalism and consonantism, the most notable phenomena are “akanya” (karomyslo, ad'in, stayat); “dzekannya” (dz'akuvalá, dzadz'ko) the presence of the diphthong ie (d'evchini, b'iel'en'k'iy, hm'iel'u); crossing of sound fields / i / and / y / (vkral'i, sakol'ik, z'imu); preservation of the relic of ancient softness [h'] (chi, khoch', vódoch'k'i); getting harder [ts′] (khlóptsy, vyétsa, zhýrytsa). Among the mophological features the most characteristic are the ancient ending -e and the absence of elongation in the nouns of the second declension of the middle gender (káhane, plákan’e), short forms of masculine adjectives in N. v. (sl’ip, smut’ón, ves’ól), unstressed forms of adjectives of the middle gender (saldatskóye, bahátoye), forms of the past tense (býla z vám’i s’edalá). It has been established that the Terekhiv sub-dialect has many dialectal features that are common of the transitional dialects of the Ukrainian language Polissya dialect. Significantly expressed is the influence of the Belarusian and Russian languages. In addition, the sub-dialects of this region, like most sub-dialects of the Polissya area, retain a number of archaic features.

STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF TOPONONYMIC NAMES OF THE BATLUH DIALECT OF THE AVAR LANGUAGE

The article discusses the problems of the structure and semantics of place names of the Batuh transitional dialect of the Avar language.

Матеріали до словника говірки села Росохи Старосамбірського району Львівської області

The proposed article substantiates the importance of dictionary works of one dialect, which form a general-linguistic dictionary register. It is a strong factor source for advanced scientific studies in lexicology, language history, comparative research, etc. The fragment of the dictionary presented in the article is based on the author's records in Rosokhi village of Starosambir district of Lviv region in July 2010. The dialect is interesting, because, first of all, it belongs to the transitional dialects: boyko dialect, Sian dialect, naddnistriannia dialect, which meet together on the western territory of Lviv region suburbs. The objective of such dictionary is to present the vocabulary of the dialect researched as fully as possible. In order to provide a dictionary for the widest range of interested readers, simplified text transcription and diacritic accent are applied. It is noted that there are words, set phrases, phraseologisms and paremias units included in the dictionary register of Rosokhy village. This vocabulary is known to the literary language (denoted by local features in pronunciation, words stressing, grammar or has another meaning different from a standard language) and narrow-sided.

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.

Diachronic and Synchronic Phonology of Southeastern Yiddish

Abstract Present-day Southeastern Yiddish (sey) is a relatively young dialect, probably formed after the Khmelnytskyy massacres of 1648. Was the primary force in its historical phonology the influence of coterritorial languages, of other dialects, or internal factors? How important was the role of homonymy and the functional load of specific phonemes? Internal factors that may have had the greatest influence on the development of sey are best sought in the transitional dialects on the fringes of sey.

Improving English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning via Speech Corpora of Learners with Dialectal Backgrounds

Speech corpora play an important role in phonetic research and have been applied in daily life. Their application can be found in pronunciation teaching and learning. This article takes Jianghuai mandarin, a transitional dialect between northern and southern dialects in China, as an example to illustrate the necessity and procedures about the construction of an English speech corpus of learners with dialectal backgrounds. It shows that such corpus can be applied to help improve English pronunciation teaching and learning with its technical power in saving large audio data and its annotation with voice editing and analyzing software. It assists, when working together with Praat, to visually demonstrate spectrogram of similarities and differences between English and native language. It also functions to raise pronunciation awareness and help improve learners’ pronunciation. It is expected to be useful in stimulating teachers and learners to study pronunciation based on data analysis of physical features of recorded audio sound.

Fonološki opis posavskega govora v Stržišču

Štajersko posavsko narečje je eno izmed manj raziskanih slovenskih narečij. Je prehodno narečje, saj se v njem prepletajo starejše dolenjske in mlajše štajerske narečne značilnosti. Vtem prispevku sta v obliki fonološkega opisa predstavljena glasoslovje in naglas govora vasi Stržišče z okolico, ki spada v posavski sevniško-krški govor. Zaradi obrobne lege in dnevnih migracij izkazuje stržiški govor celo nekaj značilnosti t. i. mešanih govorov. Stržiškemu govoru najbližja točka v mreži za SLA je Sevnica (Slovenski lingvistični atlas, točka 304), kipa danes že kaže značilnosti mestne govorice

Perceptual Salience in Dialect Contact: The Okan'e/Akan'e Dialects of East Slavic

In East Slavic, akan'e (neutralization of /o/ and /a/ after non-palatalized consonants) has spread or is spreading to dialects which maintain the mid- and low-vowel contrast ( okan'e ). Under the assumption that vowel neutralization is favored in durationally deprived syllables, it is expected that akan'e would first spread in weak positions, and in some transitional dialects this is exactly what happens: akan'e is found in non-immediately pretonic and post-tonic syllables. But in other dialects the patterns of akan'e spread are unexpected: it first appears in the immediately pretonic position and before stressed high vowels and often before stressed /a/ before it occurs elsewhere. I focus on these unexpected patterns and suggest that they may emerge as a consequence of perceptual salience through contact with neighboring strong akan'e dialects in Pskov and Novgorod oblasts of Russia and in Homel' and Minsk oblasts of Belarus. Similar patterns are found in other East Slavic dialect contact situations under similar conditions, as is to be expected.

Lakī and Kurdish

AbstractThis paper aims at verifying the traditional set of phonetic changes, defined by D. N. Mackenzie as the main distinctive feature of the Kurdish dialects, with regard to Lakī having yet no clear affiliation in the Iranian dialectology. It is usually considered to be a dialect of Kurdish, sometimes a transitional dialect between Kurdish and Luri, and even a separate idiom.

O pochodzeniu nazw owadów w białorusko-ukraińskich gwarach przejściowych na Białostocczyźnie

The article includes an etymological analysis of a local dialect vocabulary in the scope of insects' names. The research is based on the linguistic material collected directly in the area and excerpted from Atlas gwar wschodniosłowiańskich Białostocczyzny / Atlas of Eastern Slavonic Dialects of Białostocczyzna/, comprising the area of Belarus-Ukrainian transitional dialects in Białostocczyzna. The description of the entomological lexis origin implies its considerable differentiation. Moreover, it enables to distinguish words of a generally Slavonic nature as well as lexical chunks/units occurring only in the researched dialects. Borrowings from Polish make a separate group.

Mergers in the mountains

This paper examines the status of two vowel mergers in a rural area of the United States. The front-lax merger has traditionally been a southern US merger, and the low-back merger has traditionally been a northern or western US merger. In areas of West Virginia, the same speakers demonstrate both. This geographic overlap of both mergers reinforces the idea that West Virginia is a transitional dialect region. In addition, the traditionally distinct dialect regions of West Virginia are finding increased unity in this overlap of mergers.

Neighbours or Enemies? Competing Variants Causing Differences in Transitional Dialects

The aim of this study is to show how clusteranalysis can shed light on very complexvariation in a transitional dialect zone ineastern Finland. In the course of history thisarea has been on the border between Sweden andRussia and the population has clearly been oftwo kinds: the Savo people and the Karelians.It is a well-known fact that there is variationamong these dialects, but the spread and extentof the variation has not been demonstrated previously.The idiolects of the area were studied in thelight of ten phonological and morphologicalfeatures. The material consisted of recordingsof 198 idiolects, totalling around 195 hoursand representing 19 parishes. The variation wasanalysed using hierarchical cluster analysis.While the analysis showed the extent of thevariation between idiolects and parishes, italso demonstrated how the effects of the oldparishes, borders and settlements are stillvisible in the dialects. On the parish level,the data formed clear clusters that correspondwith the main dialects in the area and itssurroundings. On the idiolect level, however,the speakers from the surrounding areas formedfairly homogenous clusters but the idiolectsfrom the Savonlinna area were spread acrossalmost all clusters.

Katalog slovenskych narativnych piesni/Typenindex slowakischer Erzahllieder (review)

Reviewed by: Katalóg slovenských naratívnych piesní/Typenindex slowakischer Erzähllieder Robert A. Rothstein Katalóg slovenských naratívnych piesní/Typenindex slowakischer Erzähllieder. By Soňa Burlasová. (Etnologické štúdie, 2–4.) (Bratislava: Veda, 1998. Pp. 682, introduction, bibliography, indexes.) In 1969, the Commission for Folk Poetry of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore issued a call for the creation of national ballad catalogs as a first step toward the compilation of a catalog of European ballads. The Commission also proposed a taxonomy to be used in such catalogs, while leaving open the possibility of local modifications. The three-volume Catalog (or Index) of Slovak Narrative Songs, compiled by Soňa Burlasová of the Institute for Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, is the first publication of this sort in the Slavic world to encompass the entire range of ballad types. (Earlier partial taxonomies based on the proposed European framework were published by Marta Šrámková and Oldřich Sirovátka for Czech ballads and by Elżbieta Jaworska for Polish ballads.) The Slovak Index is based on both published and archival sources, and the ballads cited come from nearly 800 locations in Slovakia, 59 in Hungary, and from smaller numbers of Slovak villages in Vojvodina (Serbia), Romania, and Bulgaria. The author excluded material from neighboring regions of Moravia, Poland, and Ukraine because of the difficulty of assigning texts in transitional dialects to one or the other of two neighboring ethnic groups. Chronologically, the material ranges from the second half of the 18th century to the early 1990s. While the Czech and Polish indexes use the word ballad, Burlasová prefers the formula "narrative songs" because of what she calls the "persistent openness of the definition of the ballad" (p. 8). By including all songs in which "the epic principle is embraced in any way," she argues that the corpus of examples provides [End Page 108] a better basis for future comparative studies (p. 8). In the meantime, the Index documents the variety of narrative songs in Slovak. Although some new collections have been published since the project was completed in 1992, and fieldwork continues, new data are not expected to change the picture presented in the Index. The taxonomy proposed in 1969 divided ballads into ten thematic groups: supernatural forces, (religious) legends, love ballads, family relationships, social conflict, historical ballads, heroic conflict, strokes of fate and catastrophes, cruel deeds, and humorous ballads. Burlasová adheres to the first six categories but divides heroic conflict into two groups: songs about war and songs about highwaymen. The last group, the hôrni chlapci (mountain lads) is the Slovak analog to Robin Hood and his Merry Men and is especially well represented in Slovakian folk genres ranging from songs and stories to paintings on glass. To better reflect the Slovak material, the author similarly renames groups eight and nine as songs about misfortunes and songs about acts of violence, respectively. Her tenth category is songs about animals, which includes those humorous ballads that are not listed in other categories (mostly under love and family songs). Each group is subdivided, for example, the acts of violence category includes the subheadings "death in a fight," "suicide," "murder for profit," and the like. A total of 307 ballad types are divided among these ten thematic groups and their subgroups. The entry for each ballad type consists of five parts: (1) the heading or title (e.g., "A mother turns her daughter into a maple tree"); (2) a plot summary with information about variants; (3) the most typical first line for this type; (4) a listing of published and unpublished variants by location and year of recording with bibliographical and other information; and (5) a representative example with a melody line (unless the melody was unavailable). The heading and the plot summary are given in both Slovak and German, as are most of the introductory material and the table of contents. Burlasová appropriately stresses the inclusion of concrete textual and melodic examples as one of the most important features of the Index since in many cases "thematically similar types differ noticeably in their prosodic system and the melody associated with it" (p...