Dialectical Variation Flashcards
Who are monolinguals?
Speakers of one language
Who are Bilinguals?
Speaker of two languages
Who are Multilinguals?
speakers of three or more languages
About how many languages are there worldwide?
More than 7000 languages.
What are the top 10 languages?
Mandarin
Spanish
English
Arabic
Hindi
Bengali
Portuguese
Russian
Japanese
Western Punjabi/Lahnda
What is the spread of languages in Canada?
98% of Canadians have knowledge of one official language, but as an L1, it’s only 77%
English: 56%
French: 21%
Mandarin: 1.7%
Cantonese: 1.6%
Punjabi: 1.4%
Spanish: 1.3%
Tagalog: 1.2%
Arabic: 1.2%
German: 1.1%
Italian: 1.1%
An Indigenous Language: 1%
What are the roots of English?
We often hear English is a “Germanic” language, and it’s true there are many similarities, but it goes back much further than that. English is on the Proto-Indo-European language family tree (PIE).
What is a lingua franca?
A lingua franca is used when there are a variety of L1s – it’s the common language.
Right now, English is a common lingua franca
What is pidgin?
Pidgins are the combined elements of 2 or more languages to allow different language communities to communicate
What is creole?
Creole has background in multiple languages, but has a more clearly defined grammar and vocabulary.
Like a second generation of Pidgin sort of evolve form
What do Pidgins and Creoles?
Pidgins and Creoles are also forms of lingua franca
Can languages change?
Yes, and that’s O
Languages are continually evolving and changing. Some languages even die.
A language is said to be dead when no one speaks it. Do you think they have to be L1 speakers of that language? People speak Latin now – is it a dead language?
How is a language defined?
A community’s shared communication system of words and the rules for combining and producing those words.
Language is a rather loose term, really. It might just be the dialect with the most status in a community.
What are dialects?
Dialects are generally understood to be mutually intelligible variants of a language. They differ in linguistic properties and are spoken by subgroups.
Are some dialects more important than others?
There’s no difference in the intrinsic value of one dialect over another, and all dialects have the same linguistic complexity.
Societies often ascribe value, though, and enforce a hierarchy of prestige. It’s the most powerful dialect (politically or economically speaking) which gets to call itself the language.
Are some dialects more important than others?
There’s no difference in the intrinsic value of one dialect over another, and all dialects have the same linguistic complexity.
Societies often ascribe value, though, and enforce a hierarchy of prestige. It’s the most powerful dialect (politically or economically speaking) which gets to call itself the language.
Can dialects be mainly be mutually intelligible?
This can certainly be debated.
A lot of languages that are considered different can still be understood by each other’s speakers. (Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, for example.)
And a lot of dialects of the same language are not understood by each other’s speakers. Like English, Arabic has huge variability between dialects.
What are social dialects?
A subgroup of a dialect which is related to shared identities.
-ethnic
-cultural
-religious
-age
-social class
others?
What are the dialects of English?
There are many Englishes around the world. British colonization had a significant linguistic influence.
Standard Dialects UK: Received Pronunciation (RP), a Southern British accent, quite middle and upper class America: General American (GA), spoken by 2/3 of Americans, and what is now largely taught to EAL Learners
What is the English dialect variation like between the UK, America, and Canada?
Unlike the UK and America, dialect variation in Canada is much more limited.
What do we know about vowels around the world?
We’ve been learning about 15 vowels, including diphthongs but not rhotics.
There are big varieties of these vowels all over the world. Different productions may be considered phonemic in other languages when they may just be considered allophonic or co-articulatory in English
What creates Nasality?
on/off nasal valving with the velum
What makes Voicing?
Different vocal qualities
What makes vowel length?
single and geminate durations
What does it mean that English is a stress-times language?
Stressed syllables are louder/longer, and the unstressed syllables are reduced (shortened/weakened) to reserve a rather steady rhythm
What are syllable-times languages?
Syllable-timed languages tend to lack reduced vowels and give fairly even timing to all syllables. French, Italian, Mandarin, Turkish, many more.
What are mora-timed languages?
There’s also mora-timed languages, which is a much shorter list. Japanese is by far the most populous.
Each of the characters of the Japanese script is called a mora, and each mora gets the same duration. The morae are either V or CV, with /n/ or /m/ as the only C that can appear in the coda.
Vowels can be geminate, or doubled, so CV would take half as long as CVV.
What do we mean that some languages are maximally discriminable?
Languages with a small number of vowels tend to use the ones that are most perceptually different. They are maximally discriminable.
What is discrimination?
In speech perception, the ability to perceive two sounds as different.
What is the most common inventory of vowels? (5)
/a, i, u, e, o/.
Which language has a very small inventory of consonants?
/p, m, n, t~k, ʔ, h, w, l/ */t/ and /k/ are in free variation
What conclusions can we make from inspecting the vowel inventory of Mandarin Chinese and compare it with the vowel inventory of North American English?
We can make good predictions about what sounds will be substituted by an L1 Mandarin speaker when speaking English.
What is an accent?
Accent is one element of dialect. Accent involves pronunciation.
A unique way speech is pronounced by a group of people speaking the same language.
What is regional accent?
Same language, different pronunciation based on geography (e.g., Ontario vs. Newfoundland, Yorkshire vs. London).
What is a foreign accent (from the perspective of an English speaker)?
Speech produced by someone whose L1 is not English.
“foreign is in the eye of the beholder”
What is special about accents from every individual?
Everyone has an accent.
No accent is better than another.
Accents are neither speech nor language disorders.
Accents are neither speech nor language disorders.
Accents are neither speech nor language disorders.
Accents are neither speech nor language disorders
What can determine how different accents will sound?
There’s a constellation of factors which determine how different accents will sound.
-Similarities between English and L1?
-Age at which English was acquired?
-Formal instruction vs. immersion in a more natural environment
Also: how much a speaker identifies with the culture they’re immersed in can make the new language more natural, as well as personality (more outgoing, more practice speaking)
How do Accents Affect Communication? (4)
-There can be difficulty making oneself understood
-Possible avoidance of social interaction
-The frustration of repeating oneself
-Greater focus on accent than content of communication
Who pursues Accent Modification or Pronunciation Training within an SLP’s scope? (2)
Non-native English Speakers
Speakers of a regional dialect of English
Who pursues Accent Modification or Pronunciation Training not within an SLP’s scope? (2)
Professionals
Actors
What are the myths of accent modification? (2)
FALSE: The purpose of accent modification is to eliminate all traces of a “foreign” accent through pronunciation drills.
FALSE: Accent modification is impossible after critical period due to decreased plasticity and inability to modify speech behaviour.
What information can we get from practice and knowledge of a speaker’s language?
With practice and knowledge, a speaker’s L1 can sometimes be determined by the speaker’s accent.
Why can a speaker’s L1 sometimes be determined from the speaker’s accent with practice and knowledge?
Because certain sounds do not exist in speaker’s L1.
L1 phonotactics may be different, and prosodic characteristics may be different.
Remember, one’s native language also affects the ability to perceive sounds.
What is code-switching?
When a speaker alternates between two languages or elements of the languages, one can also code-switch between dialects and registers within the same language. It’s normal, non-disordered, and can be either conscious or unconscious.
E.g., Ferme the light. Close the light.
What are the most common English Vowel Challenges? (3)
- The low vowels /æ/ and /ɑ/ are often substituted, both by /a/, or ɛ/æ and ɔ/ɑ.
- Tense and lax pairs may not be defined in an L1, so beat and bit both use the /i/ vowel and Luke and look both use the /u/ vowel.
- Vowel length substitutions, so vowels that are typically elongated are clipped, and vice versa.
What are possible consonant challenges? (5)
Aspiration changes on the voiceless stops /p, t, k/, including changes to allophones of /t/
De-affrication, e.g., /tʃ/ –> /ʃ/.
Voicing and devoicing.
Consonant cluster reduction. e.g. “Halifass”
/ɹ/ omission or substitution
When discussing non-regional dialects or non-native English accents, there are 3 useful metrics to consider:
- Intelligibility
- Comprehensibility
- Accentedness
What is intelligibility?
The extent to which a speaker’s intended utterance is actually understood by a listener. This can be measured by transcription.
For example, one of the tools I have in the Accent Clinic is unfamiliar listeners (grad students). In the past, we’ve had unfamiliar listeners rate clients’ intelligibility before training and after 10 sessions.
I become a familiar listener, which is a fun clinical challenge
What is comprehensibility?
This is the degree of difficulty a listener experiences while trying to understanding the utterance.
Comprehensibility is highly correlated with intelligibility.
Think of it as the cognitive effort needed to understand a speaker.
What is accentedness?
This is a way to measure a listener’s perception of a non-native English accent.
This metric is not well correlated with intelligibility or comprehensibility. A listener can identify a speaker as having a “strong” accent, but still, be able to understand the message very well.
E.g.: a very marked “strong” Texan accent – likely still highly intelligible by most non-Texan English speakers
What can we say about accent-based discrimination?
A major problem for speakers of non-standard/non-local dialects. In-groups and out-groups are determined very quickly based on speech patterns.
The key is direct training in a workplace where discrimination is not tolerated, and where the plurality of voices is good for an organization.
Intelligibility should be the main concern, not accentedness.
Think back to NS’s distribution of language plurality.
What is the consonant phonotactic combination in English?
If you remember, English is (C3)V(C4). Some languages have very limited phonotactic combinations.
What is special about the consonant phonotactics of Japanese?
Japanese, for example, is (C1)(/j/)V(C1) and the only sounds allowed in the coda are /n/ and /m/. What this causes is epenthesis, where other sounds, in this case, vowels, are inserted between consonants.
Prince becomes purinsu, desk becomes desuku.
What do we know about grammatical endings and accents?
Think of how we pluralize and mark past tense in English.
Suffixes –s and –es, and –ed (for regular words). We’ve seen that this creates consonant clusters (e.g., old trusty “scrunched”).
This poses two challenges: a phonological one and a morphological one.
