{"title":"Mapping the linguistic landscapes of the Marshall Islands","authors":"I. Buchstaller, S. Alvanides","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.4","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines code choices in the written linguistic landscape of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Due to a history of language imposition, the Marshall Islanders have long been denied the opportunity to express their linguistic identity in the public domain. A recently proposed bilingual language policy, which requires all public signs to be Marshallese-English bilingual, aims to change this status quo. We map language choices in the linguistic landscape of the RMI at the cusp of this policy with an eye on the stakeholders, production processes, and audiences involved in the creation and reception of the linguistic landscape. State-of-the-art geographical and regression analyses model the factors that govern code choices in the linguistic landscape of the RMI. Our findings allow us to pinpoint niches—both geographical as well as social—where the Marshallese assert their linguistic identity in the public realm.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"67 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.4","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47249723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The relationship between label-based and speech-based perceptual evaluations: The case of Enshi Mandarin regional varieties","authors":"Qingyang Yan","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.7","url":null,"abstract":"The current study explored the relationship between participants’ label-based evaluations of six regional varieties in Enshi Prefecture, China, and their speech-based evaluations of talkers from these varieties using a label ranking task and a speaker evaluation task. The results revealed that under correct identification of talker dialect, participants’ evaluations of real talkers based on speech samples were different from their evaluations of ‘imagined’ county-based dialects, suggesting that speech-based talker evaluations are not solely governed by ideological values associated with dialects. Focusing on a small, understudied community in China, this study contributes to our understanding of the local language attitudes, and language use and maintenance in Enshi Prefecture. An integrated approach is needed to build a model of talker evaluation, which must include a complex set of linguistic, social cognitive, and situational objects. The current results suggest that the object(s) that primarily drives talker evaluations is not the talker’s dialect itself.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"131 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.7","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46770474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A perceptual dialectological approach to linguistic variation and spatial analysis of Kurdish varieties","authors":"E. Eppler, J. Benedikt","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the results of the first investigation into Kurdish linguistic varieties and their spatial distribution. Kurdish dialects are used across five nation states in the Middle East and only one dialect, Sorani, has official status in one of these nation states. The study employs the “draw-a-map” task established in Perceptual Dialectology; the analysis is supported by Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The results show that, despite the geolinguistic and geopolitical situation, Kurdish respondents have good knowledge of the main varieties of their language (Kurmanji, Sorani, and the related variety Zazaki) and where to localize them. Awareness of the more diverse Southern Kurdish varieties is less definitive. This indicates that the Kurdish language plays a role in identity formation, but also that smaller isolated varieties are not only endangered in terms of speakers, but also in terms of their representations in Kurds’ mental maps of the linguistic landscape they live in.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"109 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.6","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47188127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P. Jeszenszky, P. Stoeckle, Elvira Glaser, R. Weibel
{"title":"Exploring global and local patterns in the correlation of geographic distances and morphosyntactic variation in Swiss German","authors":"P. Jeszenszky, P. Stoeckle, Elvira Glaser, R. Weibel","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.5","url":null,"abstract":"Using data from a Swiss German dialect syntax survey, this study aims to explore, in a spatially differentiated manner, the correlation between dialectal variation and geographic distances. A linguistic distance was expressed by a measure aggregated from 60 survey questions. To operationalize the possibility of language contact, Euclidean distance, as well as travel times in 2000, 1950 and 1850 between survey sites were used. Going beyond previous work by others, we also explore the covariation of geographic and linguistic distances at the local level, focusing on spatial subsets and individual survey sites, thus being able to paint a more differentiated picture. With the diverse physical landscape of Switzerland making an impact on potential language contact, we find that travel times are a better predictor than Euclidean distance for the syntactic variation in Swiss German dialects. However, on the local scale the difference is not always significant, depending on prevalent topography.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"86 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.5","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44802066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investigating geospatial models of the diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations: The Welsh strong second-person singular pronoun chdi","authors":"David Willis","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.1","url":null,"abstract":"Morphosyntactic dialect variation, once a neglected area of dialect research, has recently witnessed a large growth in interest. Various methods from geospatial data analysis have been applied to morphosyntactic data. To date, the focus has largely been on analyzing the distribution of stable patterns of variation. This article extends this work to examine patterns of ongoing change. It uses a body of data from the Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects and the Siarad Corpus of spoken Welsh to examine the innovation and diffusion of a new second-person singular pronoun, chdi, testing the usefulness of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) as a method for identifying and modeling patterns of ongoing syntactic change. It is shown that GWR provides plausible models of the diachronic development of changes that are still in progress. Furthermore, it allows us to test whether rates of change are constant across geographical space, allowing us to test whether the Constant Rate Hypothesis (that diffusion of change proceeds at the same rate in different environments) holds between dialects.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"41 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45830380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identification of regional French accents in (northern) France, Belgium, and Switzerland","authors":"M. Avanzi, Philippe Boula de Mareüil","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.3","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates whether European Francophone subjects are able to distinguish between regional French accents from (northern) France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and at what level of granularity. In total, samples from 120 speakers (from five different areas in each country under study) were presented to hundreds of native French listeners from these three countries. In a first set of experiments, listeners were asked to identify the speakers’ country of origin: they achieved 60% correct identification on average, with significant effects of listeners’ region of origin, speakers’ age, socioeconomic status, and region of origin. In a second set of experiments, listeners from Belgium, France, and Switzerland were asked to identify the speakers’ region of origin within each country (5-alternative forced choice). Results, albeit above chance, proved to be poorer than they were in the first set of experiments (31% correct identification on average). Complementary analyses were conducted to evaluate the role of listeners’ region of origin, speakers’ age, speakers’ region of origin, and their interaction. They showed asymmetrical response patterns across the three countries under investigation: France (or, within France, Paris, which represents the norm) seems to act as a magnet and a catalyst of unification. Younger generations, especially, are more often associated with its way of speaking when their accent is not clearly identifiable. Switzerland, though, resists this homogenizing process better than Belgium does.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"17 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45903214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Folk Perception of African American English Regional Variation","authors":"David S. B. Mitchell, M. Lesho, Abby Walker","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2017.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2017.2","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to previous “sociolinguistic folklore” that African American (Vernacular) English has a uniform structure across different parts of the US, recent studies have shown that it varies regionally, especially phonologically (Wolfram, 2007; Thomas & Wassink, 2010). However, there is little research on how Americans perceive AAE variation. Based on a map-labeling task, we investigate the folk perception of AAE variation by 55 participants, primarily African Americans in Columbus, Ohio. The analysis focuses on the dialect regions recognized by the participants, the linguistic features associated with different regions, and the attitudes associated with these beliefs. While the perceived regional boundaries mostly align with those identified by speakers in previous perceptual dialectology studies on American English, the participants consistently identified linguistic features that were specific to AAE. The participants recognized substantial phonological and lexical variation and identified “proper” dialects that do not necessarily sound “white”. This study demonstrates the value of considering African Americans’ perspectives in describing African American varieties of English.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"5 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2017.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48297775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analyzing geospatial variation in articulation rate using crowdsourced speech data","authors":"A. Leemann","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2016.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2016.11","url":null,"abstract":"Most recent studies on the geographical distribution of acoustic features analyze comparatively few speakers and localities, both of which may be unrepresentative of the diversity found in larger or more spatially fragmented populations. In the present study we introduce a new paradigm that enables the crowdsourcing of acoustic features through smartphone devices. We used Dialäkt Äpp, a free iOS app that allows users to record themselves, to crowdsource audio data. Nearly 3,000 speakers from 452 localities in German-speaking Switzerland provided recordings; we measured articulation rates for these speakers using a metric based on duration intervals between consecutive vowel onsets. Results revealed distinct regional differences in articulation rate between major dialect regions and individual localities. The specification of 452 localities enabled analyses at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Results further revealed a robust effect of gender, with women articulating significantly more slowly than men. Both the geographical patterns and the effect of gender found in this study corroborate similar findings on Swiss German previously reported in a very limited set of localities, thus verifying the validity of the crowdsourcing framework. Given the application of this new framework, a large bulk of the discussion is devoted to discussing methodological caveats.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"4 1","pages":"76 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2016.11","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56923351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Portuguese or Portuñol? Language contact in Misiones, Argentina","authors":"John M. Lipski","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2016.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2016.12","url":null,"abstract":"In the extreme northeastern Argentine province of Misiones, vernacular Portuguese is the primary language of many rural communities, in bilingual contact with Spanish. The present study examines data from Misiones Portuguese and Spanish for evidence of morphosyntactic convergence in the absence of formal schooling in either language or sociolinguistic pressures to produce canonical varieties. Data from a corpus of vernacular Misiones Portuguese and the results of a speeded translation task reveal that even in this sociolinguistically permissive environment bilingual speakers maintain distinct morphosyntactic systems for Portuguese and Spanish (exemplified by nominal plural marking and first-person plural verbal inflection). The data also suggest that bilingual contact alone does not yield the degree of convergence required for the hybrid Portuguese-Spanish morphosyntaxis that has been reported, for example, in northern Uruguay.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"4 1","pages":"47 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2016.12","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56923413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Regional differences in the perception of a consonant change in progress","authors":"Anne-France Pinget, R. Kager, Hans Van de Velde","doi":"10.1017/jlg.2016.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2016.13","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims at testing whether there are regional differences in the perception of the labiodental fricative contrast in Dutch. Previous production studies have shown that the devoicing of initial labiodental fricatives is a change in progress in the Dutch language area. We present the results of a speeded identification task in which fricative stimuli were systematically varied for two phonetic cues, voicing and duration. Listeners (n=100) were regionally stratified, and the regions (k=5) reflect different stages of this sound change in progress. Voicing turned out to be the strongest categorization cue in all regions; duration only played a minor role. Regional differences showed up in the perception of the consonantal contrast that matched regional differences in production reported in previous studies. The addition of random slopes in the mixed model regression showed the importance of within-regional variation.","PeriodicalId":93207,"journal":{"name":"Journal of linguistic geography","volume":"4 1","pages":"65 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/jlg.2016.13","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56923648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}