Sign in to use this feature.

Years

Between: -

Subjects

remove_circle_outline
remove_circle_outline

Journals

Article Types

Countries / Regions

Search Results (4)

Search Parameters:
Keywords = phonological proximity

Order results
Result details
Results per page
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
19 pages, 4218 KiB  
Article
Dialect Classification and Everyday Culture: A Case Study from Austria
by Philip C. Vergeiner
Languages 2025, 10(2), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10020017 - 23 Jan 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1398
Abstract
Considering dialect areas as cultural areas has a long tradition in dialectology. Especially in the first half of the 20th century, researchers explored correspondences between dialect variation and other elements of everyday culture such as traditional clothing and customs. Since then, however, few [...] Read more.
Considering dialect areas as cultural areas has a long tradition in dialectology. Especially in the first half of the 20th century, researchers explored correspondences between dialect variation and other elements of everyday culture such as traditional clothing and customs. Since then, however, few studies have compared dialect variation with everyday culture, and virtually none have used quantitative methods. This study addresses this issue by employing a multivariate, dialectometric approach. It examines dialect variation in phonology and its relationship to non-linguistic aspects of everyday culture in Austria using two types of data: (a) dialect data from a recent dialect survey, and (b) ethnographic data published in the ‘Austrian Ethnographic Atlas’. Analyzing 90 phonetic-phonological and 36 ethnographic variables, statistical methods such as multidimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis (CA) are employed. The results show only limited overlap between the linguistic and ethnographic data, with cultural patterns appearing more fragmented and small-scale. Geographical proximity is more indicative of cultural than linguistic similarity. MDS and CA reveal clear geographical patterns for the linguistic data that align with traditional dialect classifications. In contrast, the cultural data show less distinct clustering and only small-scale regions that do not coincide with the linguistic ones. This article discusses potential reasons for these differences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dialectal Dynamics)
Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 5029 KiB  
Article
A Comparative Analysis of Declarative Sentences in the Spontaneous Speech of Two Puerto Rican Communities
by Piero Visconte, Sandro Sessarego and Rajiv Rao
Languages 2024, 9(3), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9030090 - 8 Mar 2024
Viewed by 2904
Abstract
This paper applies the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) model of intonation phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices (Sp_ToBI) annotation conventions to compare the intonational contours of declarative sentences in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish: (1) San Juan Spanish, spoken in the [...] Read more.
This paper applies the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) model of intonation phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices (Sp_ToBI) annotation conventions to compare the intonational contours of declarative sentences in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish: (1) San Juan Spanish, spoken in the capital city of San Juan, and (2) Loíza Spanish, an Afro-Hispanic vernacular spoken in Loíza. The geographical proximity between these two municipalities entails constant contact within a shared linguistic space. However, speakers from San Juan perceive Loíza as a municipality that has its own peculiar way of speaking. The acoustic and phonological analysis was carried out with PRAAT to verify whether pitch accents coincide in the spontaneous speech of the two analyzed varieties. The data we examined contain an overall predominance of the bitonal pitch accents L*+H and L+<H* in San Juan Spanish, and L+H* in Loíza Spanish. Findings show both similarities and differences within the two speech communities, as well as with intonational patterns in other (Afro-)Hispanic varieties. These results provide new information on spontaneous declarative intonation in (Afro-)Puerto Rican Spanish by offering a new perspective on the origin of a set of the prosodic phenomena found in these two varieties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prosody in Shared Linguistic Spaces of the Spanish-Speaking World)
Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 3147 KiB  
Article
Segmental and Prosodic Evidence for Property-by-Property Transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa
by John Archibald
Languages 2022, 7(1), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010028 - 6 Feb 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3041
Abstract
In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of [...] Read more.
In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of their spontaneous production data in the domains of consonants, vowels, stress, and rhythm. The L3 phonology shows evidence of influence from both L1 Arabic and L2 French, with mixed influences found both within and across segmental and prosodic domains. The vowels are French-influenced, while the consonants are Arabic-influenced; the stress is a mixture of Arabic and French influence while the rhythm is French. I argue that these data are explained if we adopt a Contrastive Hierarchy Model of feature structure with the addition of parsing theories such as those proposed by Lightfoot. These data provide further evidence in support of the Westergaard’s Linguistic Proximity Model. I conclude by showing how this approach can allow us to formalize a measure of linguistic I-proximity and thus explain when the L1 or L2 structures will transfer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Diversity in Patterns of L3 Phonological Acquisition)
Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 21135 KiB  
Article
Phonological Proximity in Costa Rican Sign Language
by Luis Naranjo-Zeledón, Mario Chacón-Rivas, Jesús Peral and Antonio Ferrández
Electronics 2020, 9(8), 1302; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9081302 - 13 Aug 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3156
Abstract
The study of phonological proximity makes it possible to establish a basis for future decision-making in the treatment of sign languages. Knowing how close a set of signs are allows the interested party to decide more easily its study by clustering, as well [...] Read more.
The study of phonological proximity makes it possible to establish a basis for future decision-making in the treatment of sign languages. Knowing how close a set of signs are allows the interested party to decide more easily its study by clustering, as well as the teaching of the language to third parties based on similarities. In addition, it lays the foundation for strengthening disambiguation modules in automatic recognition systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind for Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its Spanish acronym), and forms the basis for one of the modules of the already operational system of sign and speech editing called the International Platform for Sign Language Edition (PIELS). A database of 2665 signs, grouped into eight contexts, is used, and a comparison of similarity measures is made, using standard statistical formulas to measure their degree of correlation. This corpus will be especially useful in machine learning approaches. In this work, we have proposed an analysis of different similarity measures between signs in order to find out the phonological proximity between them. After analyzing the results obtained, we can conclude that LESCO is a sign language with high levels of phonological proximity, particularly in the orientation and location components, but they are noticeably lower in the form component. We have also concluded as an outstanding contribution of our research that automatic recognition systems can take as a basis for their first prototypes the contexts or sign domains that map to clusters with lower levels of similarity. As mentioned, the results obtained have multiple applications such as in the teaching area or the Natural Language Processing area for automatic recognition tasks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Artificial Intelligence)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop