The role of duration and pitch in signaling quantity in Finnmark North Sámi

Ternary quantity opposition is a cross-linguistically extremely rare typological feature. One of the languages using ternary opposition of consonants to signal linguistic contrasts is North Sámi, an endangered language spoken in several countries in the northernmost Scandinavia. Previous studies have shown that while the contrast between the two shorter quantity degrees is phonetically robustly realized using segmental durations, phonetic differences between the two longer degrees are much more subtle and show a considerable regional variation. In this work we investigate other prosodic means that might be used to mark the contrast alongside duration, namely f0 movement and range. We show that the North Sámi speakers that are also native speakers of Norwegian use pitch to co-signal the differences between the two higher quantity degrees, while speakers that are Finnish-North Sámi bilinguals use primarily durational cues. Interpreting these findings in the light of prosodic characteristics of the majority languages (Finnish and Norwegian) we argue that these regional differences reflect the majority language influence which can be a source of the ongoing dialectal divergence, and potential language change.Peer reviewe

Applying corpus and computational methods to loanword research : new approaches to Anglicisms in Spanish

Understanding both the linguistic and social roles of loanwords is becoming more relevant as globalization has brought loanwords into new settings, often previously viewed as monolingual. Their occurrence has the potential to impact speech communities, in that they have the capacity to alter the semantic relationships and social values ascribed to individual elements within the existing lexicon. In order to identify broad patterns, we must turn towards large and varied sources of data, specifically corpora. This dissertation aims to tackle some of the practical issues involved in the use of corpora, while addressing two conceptual issues in the field of loanword research – the social distribution and semantic nature of loanwords. In this dissertation, I propose two methods, adapted from advances in computational linguistics, which will contribute to two different stages of loanword research: processing corpora to find tokens of interest and semantically analyzing tokens of interest. These methods will be employed in two case studies. The first seeks to explore the social stratification of loanwords in Argentine Spanish. The second measures the semantic specificity of loanwords relative to their native equivalents.Spanish and Portugues

Creation of Shared Language Resource Repository in the Nordic and Baltic Countries

Proceeding volume: 8The META-NORD project has contributed to an open infrastructure for language resources (data and tools) under the META-NET umbrella. This paper presents the key objectives of META-NORD and reports on the results achieved in the first year of the project. META-NORD has mapped and described the national language technology landscape in the Nordic and Baltic countries in terms of language use, language technology and resources, main actors in the academy, industry, government and society; identified and collected the first batch of language resources in the Nordic and Baltic countries; documented, processed, linked, and upgraded the identified language resources to agreed standards and guidelines. The three horizontal multilingual actions in META-NORD are overviewed in this paper: linking and validating Nordic and Baltic wordnets, the harmonisation of multilingual Nordic and Baltic treebanks, and consolidating multilingual terminology resources across European countries. This paper also touches upon intellectual property rights for the sharing of language resources.Peer reviewe

Towards structured neural spoken dialogue modelling.

195 p.In this thesis, we try to alleviate some of the weaknesses of the current approaches to dialogue modelling,one of the most challenging areas of Artificial Intelligence. We target three different types of dialogues(open-domain, task-oriented and coaching sessions), and use mainly machine learning algorithms to traindialogue models. One challenge of open-domain chatbots is their lack of response variety, which can betackled using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We present two methodological contributions inthis regard. On the one hand, we develop a method to circumvent the non-differentiability of textprocessingGANs. On the other hand, we extend the conventional task of discriminators, which oftenoperate at a single response level, to the batch level. Meanwhile, two crucial aspects of task-orientedsystems are their understanding capabilities because they need to correctly interpret what the user islooking for and their constraints), and the dialogue strategy. We propose a simple yet powerful way toimprove spoken understanding and adapt the dialogue strategy by explicitly processing the user's speechsignal through audio-processing transformer neural networks. Finally, coaching dialogues shareproperties of open-domain and task-oriented dialogues. They are somehow task-oriented but, there is norush to complete the task, and it is more important to calmly converse to make the users aware of theirown problems. In this context, we describe our collaboration in the EMPATHIC project, where a VirtualCoach capable of carrying out coaching dialogues about nutrition was built, using a modular SpokenDialogue System. Second, we model such dialogues with an end-to-end system based on TransferLearning

Bilingualism : Advantages and Disadvantages in Cognitive Processing, Language and Reading Comprehension

PhD thesis in Reading researchThe overall aim of this study is, as suggested by Bialystok (2009), to investigate whether bilingual learners have an advantage in executive functions and a disadvantage in language compared to monolingual learners. In addition, the thesis examines whether the theory holds true for different groups of bilingual learners and different aspects of language and cognitive domains. The study has a multi-method approach. It consists of a meta-analysis investigating the bilingual advantage theory in executive functions (EF) and two studies based on data from the longitudinal study The Stavanger Project—The Learning Child (The Stavanger Project). Study 2 uses data from the first wave of The Stavanger Project. The study investigates Norwegian language comprehension in a monolingual control group and three different groups of bilingual children at 2 years and 9 months. The three bilingual groups had different amounts of exposure to Norwegian. The third article is based on data from the fourth wave of The Stavanger Project and investigates different aspects of Norwegian language and reading skills across bilingual learners and a monolingual control group of 5th graders. The sample in Study 3 is a subsample of the participants in Study 2; thus, the bilingual learners had been systematically exposed to Norwegian by early childhood education and care (ECEC) attendance and schools from at least the age of 2. The thesis contributes three main findings. The first article provides little support for a bilingual advantage in overall EF. Moderator analysis targeting sample characteristics of bilingual subgroups that are theorized to have the largest bilingual advantage in EF shows no relation to the overall outcome of the analysis of differences in executive functions between bilingual and monolingual learners. Furthermore, there is limited evidence for a bilingual advantage in any EF domain. There is an advantage in switching, but not for all populations of bilingual learners. he second article shows that bilingual toddlers have weaker second language comprehension skills than monolingual toddlers, but the differences in second language skills between different groups of bilingual learners are not fully explained by the time on task hypothesis. Bilingual children with mostly first language (L1) input at home had poorer Norwegian language comprehension than the two other bilingual groups. Bilingual toddlers with both first and second language input at home and bilingual toddlers with mostly second language input at home had equivalent second language skills. It therefore seems likely that a threshold value exists for the amount of second language input necessary to develop good second language skills rather than a direct relationship between the amount of input and language skills. The third article shows that even after long and massive exposure to the second language, early bilingual 5th graders have lower vocabulary depth, listening comprehension and reading comprehension in their second language than their monolingual peers. The difference cannot be explained by differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Their decoding and text cohesion vocabulary skills are equal to those of monolingual learners. In contrast to some other studies, the strength of the predictive path between different aspects of language skills and reading comprehension was found to be equal across language groups. In total, these findings contribute to the knowledge base of what is typical development of language, reading skills and executive functions for different groups of bilingual learners. Without information of what is typical development for different bilingual groups, it is difficult to identify atypical development. Hence, the knowledge this thesis provides can support educators in identifying bilingual learners with learning disabilities earlier and with greater certainty, thereby reducing the risk of both over- and under-identifying bilingual learners in need of special needs education