Pohjoissaamen ja viron kieliopillisten sijojen kontrastiivista morfofonologiaa

Tutkielmani käsittelee pohjoissaamen ja viron morfofonologiaa ja nominintaivutusta kontrastiivisesta näkökulmasta pohjautuen kirjakieleen ja keskeisten kielioppiteosten esityksiin (Erelt ym. 2007: Eesti keele käsiraamat ja Nickel & Sammallahti 2011: Nordsamisk grammatikk). Vertailtavat kielet ovat keskenään etäsukukieliä, minkä vuoksi ne ovat monilta ominaisuuksiltaan hyvin erilaisia. Nominintaivutuksessa esiintyvässä morfofonologisessa vaihtelussa on kuitenkin paljon taivutustypologisesti yhteneviä piirteitä, joita on tutkittu vielä suhteellisen vähän. Tutkimustavoitteenani on kartoittaa pohjoissaamen ja viron morfofonologisten vaihteluiden eroja ja yhtäläisyyksiä, sekä esitellä ja vertailla nominintaivutuksen ja vaihteluiden kuvaustapoja eri kielioppiteoksissa. Pohdin työssäni, mistä erot mahdollisesti johtuvat, millaisia morfologisen järjestelmän muutoksia on tapahtunut itämerensuomalaisissa ja saamelaiskielissä, ja miksi viron ja pohjoissaamen morfofonologisten vaihteluiden kuvaaminen on taivutustypologisista yhtäläisyyksistä huolimatta hyvin erilaista. Kontrastiivisessa kielentutkimuksessa on tavallisesti kyse kielten synkronisesta vertailusta. Etäsukukielten vertailussa on kuitenkin tärkeää käsitellä myös ilmiön historiallista taustaa ja kielen muutosta. Tärkeän näkökulman aiheeseeni tuovat morfologisen typologian kielityypin käsitteet, joista erityisesti agglutinatiivisuus ja flekteeraavuus ovat työni kannalta keskeisiä. Pohdin tästä näkökulmasta tutkimuskirjallisuudessa esitettyjä väitteitä siitä, että viro ja saame ovat uralilaisessa kielikunnassa poikkeuksellisia runsaan vartalonvaihtelunsa vuoksi. Tutkielmassani keskityn erityisesti viron ja saamen kieliopillisten sijojen, nominatiivin, genetiivin tai genetiivi-akkusatiivin ja partitiivin muotoihin ja funktioihin, joista sijapäätteet ovat historiallisen kehityksen kautta kuluneet pois. Näiden sijojen kohdalla merkitysten ja kieliopillisten suhteiden erottaminen keskittyy sijapäätteiden asemesta vartalonvaihteluun, joista merkittävin on astevaihteluilmiö. Sekä virossa että saamessa astevaihtelu on huomattavasti moniulotteisempaa kuin suomessa, jossa astevaihtelu koskee lähinnä klusiileja. Saamessa astevaihtelu on laajentunut koskemaan kaikkia konsonantteja ja konsonanttiyhtymiä. Virossa astevaihtelun kuvauksessa on otettu huomioon myös prosodiset piirteet, kuten paino ja sävelkulku, sillä astevaihtelu vaikuttaa koko sanavartaloon ja sen tavujen välisiin suhteisiin. Lisäksi molemmissa kielissä erotetaan toisistaan kolme kestoastetta, lyhyt, pitkä ja ylipitkä (vrt. suomessa lyhyt ja pitkä). Kolmea kvantiteettia (kestoastetta) ja niiden vaihtelua nominintaivutuksessa kuvataan virossa ja saamessa hyvin eri tavoin. Saamen kielioppikirjallisuuden astevaihtelutapaukset perustuvat nimittäin valtaosin konsonanttien kirjakieliseen vaihteluun, ja konsonanttikeskuksen vaikutuksesta ympäröiviin vokaaleihin on vain vähän tietoa (ks. Aikio 2005: 15). Saamen astevaihtelun foneettinen kuvaaminen olisikin jatkotutkimuksen kannalta tärkeää ja mielenkiintoista myös syvemmän kontrastiivisen tutkimuksen kannalta (ks. Markus ym. 2012)

Acoustic Features of Different Types of Laughter in North Sami Conversational Speech

Peer reviewe

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

Dialectal variation of duration patterns in Finnmark North Sámi quantity

Ternary length contrast is a rare phonological feature, investigated here both in terms of its realization and possible undergoing changes. In North Sami, a phonetically under-documented and endangered Fenno-Ugric language spoken by indigenous people in Northern Europe, the ternary quantity contrast is assumed to be signalled by a progressive lengthening of a consonant and a compensatory shortening of the previous vowel. This study evaluates this assumption and compares the realization of the length contrasts in two dialects, the Western and Eastern Finnmark North Sami. The results show that while the contrast between the short and the two longer quantities is robustly signaled regardless of the dialect, the durational differences between the two longer quantities are maintained only in the Eastern dialect. On the other hand, a vowel quantity contrast independent of the quantity of the following consonant is present in the Western but not in the Eastern dialect. Further, comparing the phonetic realization of the ternary quantity contrast for speakers of different ages presents evidence of a language change: the results indicate an ongoing neutralization of the ternary contrast in younger speakers, which points to a possible disappearance of this rare typological feature in Finnmark North Sami.Peer reviewe

Comparing languages using hierarchical prosodic analysis

Peer reviewe

Comparative analysis of majority language influence on North Sámi prosody using WaveNet-based modeling

The Finnmark North Sami is a variety of North Sami language, an indigenous, endangered minority language spoken in the northernmost parts of Norway and Finland. The speakers of this language are bilingual, and regularly speak the majority language (Finnish or Norwegian) as well as their own North Sami variety. In this paper we investigate possible influences of these majority languages on prosodic characteristics of Finnmark North Sami, and associate them with prosodic patterns prevalent in the majority languages. We present a novel methodology that: (a) automatically finds the portions of speech (words) where the prosodic differences based on majority languages are most robustly manifested; and (b) analyzes the nature of these differences in terms of intonational patterns. For the first step, we trained convolutional WaveNet speech synthesis models on North Sami speech material, modified to contain purely prosodic information, and used conditioning embeddings to find words with the greatest differences between the varieties. The subsequent exploratory analysis suggests that the differences in intonational patterns between the two Finnmark North Sami varieties are not manifested uniformly across word types (based on part-of-speech category). Instead, we argue that the differences reflect phrase-level prosodic characteristics of the majority languages.Peer reviewe

Mapping areal variation and majority language influence in North Sámi using hierarchical prosodic analysis

We present results of a statistical hierarchical analysis of areal variation in prosody of spoken North Sámi languages. The hierarchical analysis method compares unigram models using cross-entropy measure. The models depict distributions of delta-features of f0 and energy signals decomposed using Continuous Wavelet Transform. These signals are obtained from speech recordings of five areal North Sámi varieties recorded in sites in northern Finland and Norway. We evaluate three potential sources of areal variation in prosodic characteristics of these five areal varieties: (1) traditional dialectal analysis of North Sámi, (2) influence of the relevant majority languages, and (3) geographical distance. Our results show a significant positive correlation between cross-entropy distances between models and geographical distances between recording sites, demonstrating a viability of the method for typological analysis. Prosodic characteristics of the areal varieties are also influenced by majority languages, and, to a smaller degree, by differences between the North Sámi dialectal varieties.Peer reviewe

Low-Resource Active Learning of Morphological Segmentation

Peer reviewe

Mumbling through a wall : Clustering Slavic dialects using hierarchical statistical modeling of prosody

Non peer reviewe

Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence. However, it is debated whether vocalizations could have played a similar role. We report the first extensive cross-cultural study investigating whether people from diverse linguistic backgrounds can understand novel vocalizations for a range of meanings. In two comprehension experiments, we tested whether vocalizations produced by English speakers could be understood by listeners from 28 languages from 12 language families. Listeners from each language were more accurate than chance at guessing the intended referent of the vocalizations for each of the meanings tested. Our findings challenge the often-cited idea that vocalizations have limited potential for iconic representation, demonstrating that in the absence of words people can use vocalizations to communicate a variety of meanings.Peer reviewe