Therese Leinonen

Inducing Sound Segment Differences Using Pair Hidden Markov Models

Pair Hidden Markov Models (PairHMMs) are trained to align the pronunciation transcriptions of a large contemporary collection of Dutch dialect material, the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen-Project (GTRP, collected 1980--1995). We focus on the question of how to incorporate information about sound segment distances to improve sequence distance measures for use in dialect comparison. PairHMMs induce segment distances via expectation maximisation (EM). Our analysis uses a phonologically comparable subset of 562 items for all 424 localities in the Netherlands. We evaluate the work first via comparison to analyses obtained using the Levenshtein distance on the same dataset and second, by comparing the quality of the induced vowel distances to acoustic differences.

Factor Analysis of Vowel Pronunciation in Swedish Dialects

In this study 91 local Swedish dialects were analysed based on vowel pronunciation. Acoustic measurements of vowel quality were made for 18 vowels of 1,014 speakers by means of principal component analysis of vowel spectra. Two principal components were extracted explaining more than

Evidence of language loss in progress? Mother tongue proficiency among students in Finland and Sweden

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A tale of two cities (and one vowel): Sociolinguistic variation in Swedish

of the total variance in the vowel spectra. Plotting vowels in the PC1-PC2 plane showed a solution with strong resemblance to vowels in a formant plane. Per location averages of all speakers were calculated and factor analysis was run with the 91 locations as data cases and the two acoustic component of the 18 words as variables. Nine factors were extracted corresponding to distinct geographic distribution patterns. The factor scores of the analysis revealed co-occurrence of a number of linguistic features.

An Acoustic Analysis of Vowel Pronunciation in Swedish Dialects

Abstract In this article we present some results from a study of Swedish language proficiency among young Swedish-speaking Finns and Swedes. The aim of the study was to find potential signs of language loss in the Swedish-speaking community in Finland. The participants were first-year university students representing four educational programs. We measured language proficiency using two different tests: an idiomatics test and a cloze test. In both tests the Swedish-speaking Finnish students showed poorer results than the students from Sweden. The results in the idiomatics test for the students from Finland were dependent on the variables language use, bilingualism, and geographical region. These variables show that a more extensive use of Swedish and more opportunities to use the language lead to a better mastery of idiomatic language. Some Swedish-speaking Finns living in areas dominated by Finnish do not automatically get these opportunities to develop their language skills in Swedish. Our conclusion is that there are signs of language loss within the Finland-Swedish minority group.

Gabmap – A web application for dialectology.

Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /e:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm there are no significant social differences and the allophonic difference appears to have been neutralized. Gothenburg speakers are divided into three groups, based on speaker origin and sex, each of which orients toward different norms. Our conclusions appeal to dialectal diffusion and the desire to mark ethnic identity in a diverse sociolinguistic context. These results demonstrate that not only language contact but also dialect change should be considered together when investigating language variation in modern-day cities.