Speaker Identification for Swiss German with Spectral and Rhythm Features

We present results of speech rhythm analysis for automatic speaker identification. We expand previous experiments using similar methods for language identification. Features describing the rhythmic properties of salient changes in signal components are extracted and used in an speaker identification task to determine to which extent they are descriptive of speaker variability. We also test the performance of state-of-the-art but simple-to-extract frame-based features. The paper focus is the evaluation on one corpus (swiss german, TEVOID) using support vector machines. Results suggest that the general spectral features can provide very good performance on this dataset, whereas the rhythm features are not as successful in the task, indicating either the lack of suitability for this task or the dataset specificity

On the development of a new standard norm in Italian

This chapter provides an overview of the main topics concerning the restandardization process of Italian. We will first discuss some general issues related to the Italian sociolinguistic situation, paying special attention to the status of Italo-Romance dialects and their relationship with Italian, the demotization process entailed by the twentieth century massive spread of the standard language, and the connection between neo-standard Italian and regional standards. The focus will then turn to neo-standard Italian: in particular, we will deal with some morphosyntactic features which were excluded from the standard literary norm (codified and established in the sixteenth century) but have survived over time in non-standard varieties. These features finally penetrated the standard usage, progressively giving rise to what is called neo-standard Italian. After a concise review of previous studies on neo-standard Italian, we will situate this variety within the current debate on the development of “new standards” in various European languages. In this respect, special consideration will be given to the notions of “destandardization”, “informalization” and “dehomogenization”. We conclude by presenting a brief outline of the chapters in this volume

Detecting Hate Speech in Social Media

In this paper we examine methods to detect hate speech in social media, while distinguishing this from general profanity. We aim to establish lexical baselines for this task by applying supervised classification methods using a recently released dataset annotated for this purpose. As features, our system uses character n-grams, word n-grams and word skip-grams. We obtain results of 78% accuracy in identifying posts across three classes. Results demonstrate that the main challenge lies in discriminating profanity and hate speech from each other. A number of directions for future work are discussed.Comment: Proceedings of Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP). pp. 467-472. Varna, Bulgari

Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201

The effect of L1 regional variation on the perception and production of standard L1 and L2 vowels

This study reports on the perception and production of Standard Dutch and Standard British English vowels by speakers of two regional varieties of Belgian Dutch (East Flemish and Brabantine) which differ in their vowel realizations. Twenty-four native speakers of Dutch performed two picture-naming tasks and two vowel categorization tasks, in which they heard Standard Dutch or English vowels and were asked to map these onto orthographic representations of Dutch vowels. The results of the Dutch production and categorization tasks revealed that the participants’ L1 regional variety importantly influenced their production and especially perception of vowels in the standard variety of their L1. The two groups also differed in how they assimilated non-native English vowels to native vowel categories, but no major differences could be observed in their productions of non-native vowels. The study therefore only partly confirms earlier studies showing that L1 regional variation may have an influence on the acquisition of non-native language varieties

THE INFLUENCE OF BAHASA MANDAR TOWARDS STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

Pronunciation is one of language elements which plays an important role. By having fluentpronunciation, it makes communication more intelligible. This research analyzes the influenceof Bahasa Mandar towards students’ English pronunciation. It focuses on the sound apects andtheir distribution. The objectives are to find out how BM affects students’ English pronunciation, why the students fail to pronunce certain English sounds, and what phonemes orsounds that students find them difficult to be pronunced. This reasearch is a case study researchand conducted in the second grade of Junior High School 1 Tinambung, West Sulawesi. Thetotal sample is 20 students. The researcher provides 50 words for students to be pronuncedtaken by oxford dictionary and Field Linguistics book. The results show that most students are affected of phonemes that BM has. The students change the sound they do not know into anothersound which exist in BM such as sound [z] into [s]. The students are not able to pronuncedouble consonant phonemes in final position, such as ‘sand’. They are failed in all vowelswhich are not exist in BM, alveolar-plosive sound [t] and [d], trill sound [r], and fricativesound [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ʃ]

The speech community

The speech community (SpCom), a core concept in empirical linguistics, is at the intersection of many principal problems in sociolinguistic theory and method. This paper traces its history of development and divergence, surveys general problems with contemporary notions, and discusses links to key issues in investigating language variation and change. It neither offers a new and correct definition nor rejects the concept (both are seen as misguided efforts), nor does it exhaustively survey the applications in the field (an impossibly large task)