Pronunciation Differences
Instructors: Charlotte Gooskens, Wilbert Heeringa, John Nerbonne and
Martijn Wieling
Contact
e-mail:
c.s.gooskens@rug.nl, wilbert.heeringa@meertens.knaw.nl, j.nerbonne@rug.nl, wieling@gmail.com
LOT Winter School 2012, Tilburg
Seminar room:
Mon. Jan.9.- Fri., Jan.13 14:15-16:15
Announcements
- On Mon. Jan.9, John Nerbonne will present the first hour, and
Wilbert Heeringa the second.
Course level
Introductory
Course description
This course will focus on using edit
distance as a measure of pronunciation difference and especially on
its use in dialectology. We will present the basic procedure and
variants, show how to analyze the differences we find, and briefly
introduce Gabmap, a web application for dialectology (day 1). We will
then examine a more extended dialectological analysis (of Norway)
using Gabmap, reflecting on what it is to measure something, and
considering what questions to ask of a putative measure (day 2).
Next, we examine a second dialectological case (Dutch) more
extensively and place edit-distance-inspired work in an historical
context (day 3). We then explore an attempt to refine the measure
and, simultaneously its application to foreign accents (day 4).
Finally we close the week by considering the relation of
'different sounding' to comprehensibility as well as noting what
more needs to be done to understand pronunciation differences (day 5).
Note that the course requires the use of computers equipped with web
browsers and Google Earth.
Our objectives in this course are that students learn to use software
for analyzing pronunciation (transcription) differences and to
understand it critically.
Day-to-day program, Slides
Monday
John Nerbonne, Introduction to measuring pronunciation
differences, application in dialectometry. Slides
avail. here.
Wilbert Heeringa, Gabmap film, brief walk-through. Exercise on
Norwegian
Tuesday
Wilbert Heeringa, Validation. Slides
avail. here. Gabmap exercise on Dutch
Wednesday
John Nerbonne, Analyzing Linguistic Distances. Slides
avail. here.
Thursday
Martijn Wieling (& John Nerbonne), Segment Distances
& Foreign Accents. Slides
avail. here. Sound files avail. here.
Friday
Charlotte Gooskens, Intelligibility of dialects and
related languages.Slides
avail. here.
Reading materials
1. Wikipedia
'Dialect' and also
Wikipedia
'Dialectology'
2. John Nerbonne
(2009) Data-Driven
Dialectology Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1),
175-198. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818x2008.00114.x
3. John Nerbonne, Rinke Colen, Charlotte Gooskens, Peter Kleiweg
and Therese Leinonen. (2011)
Gabmap — A Web Application for
Dialectology. Dialectologia. Special Issue II,
65-89. (Spec. Iss. Production, Perception and Attitude ed. by John
Nerbonne, Stef Grondelaers, Dirk Speelman & Maria-Pilar Perea)
4. John Nerbonne and Wilbert Heeringa (2010)
Measuring Dialect
Differences. In: Jürgen Erich Schmidt and Peter Auer (eds.)
Language and Space: Theories and Methods in series Handbooks of
Linguistics and Communication Science. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter,
Chap. 31, 550-567.
5. Martijn Wieling, Wilbert Heeringa and John Nerbonne (2007)
An
Aggregate Analysis of Pronunciation in the Goeman-Taeldeman-van
Reenen-Project Data. In Taal en Tongval 59(1), 2007. 84-116.
6. Martijn Wieling, Eliza Margaretha and John Nerbonne (in
press). Inducing
phonetic distances from dialect variation. Computational
Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal, 1, 2011. 109-118.
7. Sebastian Kürschner, Charlotte Gooskens & Renèe van
Bezooijen (2008).
Linguistic
determinants of the intelligibility of Swedish words among
Danes International Journal of Humanities and Arts
Computing, 2 (1-2), 83-100.
8. Charlotte Gooskens, Karin Beijering & Wilbert Heeringa
(2008). Phonetic
and lexical predictors of intelligibility. International
Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 2 (1-2), 63-81.
Course readings
Lecture 1: Wikipedia articles; Nerbonne, (2009)
'Data-driven dialectology'
Lecture 2: Nerbonne et al. (2011) 'Gabmap'
Lecture 3: Nerbonne & Heeringa (2010) 'Measuring
...', Wieling et al. (2007)
Lecture 4: Wieling et al. (in press) 'Inducing
...'
Lecture 5: Kürschner et al. (2008), Gooskens et
al. (2008)
Background and further readings
1. John Nerbonne (2010)
Measuring the Diffusion of Linguistic Change. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365,
3821-3828. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0048.
2. John Nerbonne (accepted) How much does Geography Influence
Language Variation?. Submitted (12/2010) to Peter Auer, Martin
Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.) Proc. of the
Freiburg (FRIAS) language and space workshops. Mouton de Gruyter:
Berlin.
3. Charlotte Gooskens (2005) Traveling time as a predictor of
linguistic distance. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, 13.
4. Charlotte Gooskens and Wilbert Heeringa (2004) Perceptive
evaluation of Levenshtein dialect distance measurements using
Norwegian dialect data. Language variation and Change, 16 (3),
189-207.
5. Nathan Sanders and S. B. Chin (2009) Phonological distance
measures. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 16(1), 96-114.
Literature
A more comprehensive
literature list.
Some Useful Links
- Gabmap home page.
- See Therese Leinonen's
tutorial.
- See also the easy-to-follow
demo.
- LAMSAS home page
- Dialectometric
work on LAMSAS at the University of Groningen
- An online demo
of how Levenshtein distance works.
- Hans Goebl's Dialectometry
Project.
Exercises
Are available here.
John Nerbonne
Last modified: Mon Jan 2 16:52:19 CEST 2012