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SUMMARY:Quantifying dialect similarity by comparison of the lexical distri
 bution of phonemes - Dr. Warren Maguire (School of Philosophy\, Psychology
  &amp\; Language Sciences\, University of Edinburgh)
DTSTART:20090205T170000Z
DTEND:20090205T183000Z
UID:TALK14659@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Cumming
DESCRIPTION:Recent research has sought to quantify the relationships betwe
 en dialects (e.g. Nerbonne et al. 1999\, Nerbonne and Heeringa 2001\, McMa
 hon et al. 2007) by measuring phonetic similarity. As Wells (1982: 78-80) 
 discusses\, however\, the phonetic realisation of phonemes is only one dim
 ension on which varieties can differ. Another important dimension is the l
 exical distribution of phonemes\, regardless of their phonetic realisation
 s or underlying features. To give a well known example\, varieties in the 
 north of England share a similar lexical distribution of the phoneme /ʊ/ 
 (in words such as bush\, cut\, put\, rush) which marks them as different f
 rom varieties to the south (e.g. Cockney\, which has /ʊ/ in bush and put 
 but /ʌ/ in cut and rush)\, and from varieties further north (e.g. Scottis
 h Standard English\, which has /ʉ/ in bush and put and /ʌ/ in cut and ru
 sh). In this example\, Cockney and Scottish Standard English have the same
  lexical distribution of phonemes despite differences in realisation and s
 ymbolisation\, whilst northern Englishes have a different lexical distribu
 tion.\n\nIn this paper\, I address the question of how we might quantify s
 uch structural relations\, specifically with reference to varieties of Eng
 lish and Scots. A new method is proposed which compares lexical distributi
 ons of phonemes across strictly comparable data sets and which results in 
 similarity scores (expressed in percentage terms) for each pair of varieti
 es compared. The resultant similarity matrices can be used to construct vi
 sual representations\, such as trees\, networks and maps\, which reveal th
 e relationships\, in terms of lexical distribution of phonemes\, between t
 he varieties considered. It is hoped that this method\, which relies wholl
 y upon the lexical distribution rather than the phonetic realisation of ph
 onemes\, will give us new insights into the relationships between varietie
 s of English and Scots.\n\nNerbonne\, J.\, Heeringa\, W. and Kleiweg\, P. 
 (1999) “Edit Distance and Dialect Proximity”. In: David Sankoff and Jo
 seph Kruskal (eds.) Time Warps\, String Edits and Macromolecules: The Theo
 ry and Practice of Sequence Comparison. Stanford: CSLI Press\, v-xv.\n\nNe
 rbonne\, J. and Heeringa\, W. (2001) “Computational Comparison and Class
 ification of Dialects”. In: Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 9\, 69-83.\n
 \nMcMahon\, A.\, Heggarty\, P.\, McMahon\, R. and Maguire\, W. (2007) “T
 he Sound Patterns of Englishes: Representing Phonetic Similarity”. Engli
 sh Language and Linguistics 11(1)\, 113-142.\n\nWells\, J. (1982) Accents 
 of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.\n\n
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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