Languages that allow free word order, such as Arabic dialects, are of significant difficulty for neural machine translation (NMT) because of many scarce words and the inefficiency of NMT systems to ...translate these words. Unknown Word (UNK) tokens represent the out-of-vocabulary words for the reason that NMT systems run with vocabulary that has fixed size. Scarce words are encoded completely as sequences of subword pieces employing the Word-Piece Model. This research paper introduces the first Transformer-based neural machine translation model for Arabic vernaculars that employs subword units. The proposed solution is based on the Transformer model that has been presented lately. The use of subword units and shared vocabulary within the Arabic dialect (the source language) and modern standard Arabic (the target language) enhances the behavior of the multi-head attention sublayers for the encoder by obtaining the overall dependencies between words of input sentence for Arabic vernacular. Experiments are carried out from Levantine Arabic vernacular (LEV) to modern standard Arabic (MSA) and Maghrebi Arabic vernacular (MAG) to MSA, Gulf–MSA, Nile–MSA, Iraqi Arabic (IRQ) to MSA translation tasks. Extensive experiments confirm that the suggested model adequately addresses the unknown word issue and boosts the quality of translation from Arabic vernaculars to Modern standard Arabic (MSA).
The paper studies the specifics of the linguistic reflection of the image of a person in the Nizhnekolymsk old-time dialects of Yakutia. Despite the available research, the issue of the preservation ...of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Arctic remains relevant in our time. It is of great interest in terms of geostrategic location, natural resources and human potential. The purpose is to describe the composition of the lexical-semantic unit “Man” in the Nizhnekolymsk old-time dialects of Yakutia. The source of the material was the four-volume Dictionary of Russian Old-Time Dialects on the Territory of Yakutia by M.F. Druzhinina. The method of continuous sampling was used to identify 95 lexical units that form the LSU “Man”.The structure of the unit includes the following lexical and semantic groups: physical, personal and social characteristics of a man. Intraunit systemic relations are characterized by the presence of a variety of paradigmatic connections: derivational synonyms, inflectional variants, phonemic doublets, antonymic and synonymous pairs, hypo-hyponymic and hyper-hyponymic relations, derivational series. The Nizhnekolymsk dialects are a monument of the Russian old-timers’ culture, which is a result of interethnic and cultural contacts between the newcomers and the local population, as well as the influence of natural conditions. The processes of globalization, integration and industrial development of the Arctic accelerate the assimilation of Russian old-timers from Nizhny Kolyma, which makes the problem of the preservation of their ethnocultural identity relevant.
This paper provides a historical overview of Albanian dialect classifications. Based on traditional linguistics, Gjinari (1963) has figured out 2 dialects, 4 groups of subvarietys and 6 subdialects, ...whereas in 1966, he distinguished 2 dialects, 4 subdialects and 6 groups of subvarietys. This classification was followed by Shkurtaj (2012), who expanded the number of subvariety groups to thirteen. Desnickaja (1968) distinguished two dialect regions, 5 dialect areas, 7 groups of subvariety regions and 44 subvarietys. In the ADGjSh (1990–2007) two major group divisions are distinguished: Gegëri and Toskëri, and further subdivisions: Kosovë, Myzeqe, Labëri, Çamëri. Beci (2002) distinguished two main dialects: Gheg in the North and Tosk in the South, as well as three smaller dialect units in Gheg and two smaller dialect units in Tosk Albanian; in 2016 he reclassified Albanian dialects again in 2 dialect regions, depending only on the presence or absence of specific dialect phenomena.
This book examines how youths at a martial arts club in an urban setting participate and interact in a recreational social community. The author relates analyses of their interactions to discussions ...of relevance to the sociology of sports, anthropology and education, ultimately providing an analytically nuanced contribution to the field.
Many bidialectal children grow up speaking a variety (e.g., a regional dialect) that differs from the variety in which they subsequently acquire literacy. Previous computational simulations and ...artificial literacy learning experiments with adults have demonstrated lower accuracy in reading contrastive words for which dialect variants exist compared with noncontrastive words without dialect variants. At the same time, exposure to multiple varieties did not affect learners' ability to phonologically decode untrained words; in fact, longer literacy training resulted in a benefit from dialect exposure as competing variants in the input may have increased reliance on grapheme-phoneme conversion. However, these previous experiments interleaved word learning and reading/spelling training, yet children typically acquire substantial oral language knowledge prior to literacy training. Here we used artificial literacy learning with adults to examine whether the previous findings replicate in an ecologically more valid procedure where word learning precedes literacy training. We also manipulated training conditions to explore interventions thought to be beneficial for literacy acquisition, such as providing explicit social cues for variety use and literacy training in both varieties. Our findings replicated the reduced accuracy for reading contrastive words in those learners who had successfully acquired the dialect variants prior to literacy training. This effect was exacerbated when literacy training also included dialect variation. Crucially, although no benefits from the interventions were found, dialect exposure did not affect reading and spelling of untrained words suggesting that phonological decoding skills can remain unaffected by the existence of multiple word form variants in a learner's lexicon.
No book has ever been published on tonal change and neutralization, two closely related topics in tonal phonology. This will be the first book to be devoted to both. The articles collected in this ...volume analyze a wide range of data concerning tonal change and neutralization, including post-lexical neutralization which represents a new topic in prosodic research. The volume as a whole covers a wide range of tone and pitch-accent languages in Asia, Africa and Europe, with a main focus on Asian languages/dialects many of which are endangered now. In addition to presenting novel data and analyses about individual languages, it provides typological perspectives on tonal change and neutralization. This volume will serve as an indispensable source of data and analyses for a wide range of linguists interested in phonetics, phonology, prosody, historical linguistics, language typology, endangered languages, Japanese linguistics, and Chinese linguistics.
How do children acquire African American English? How do they develop the specific language patterns of their communities? Drawing on spontaneous speech samples and data from structured elicitation ...tasks, this book explains the developmental trends in the children's language. It examines topics such as the development of tense/aspect marking, negation and question formation, and addresses the link between intonational patterns and meaning. Lisa Green shows the impact that community input has on children's development of variation in the production of certain constructions such as possessive -s, third person singular verbal -s, and forms of copula and auxiliary be. She discusses the implications that the linguistic description has for practical applications, such as developing instructional materials for children in the early stages of their education.
Purpose: Using data from children who spoke various nonmainstream dialects of English and who were classified as either children with specific language impairment (SLI) or typically developing (TD) ...children, we examined children's marking of infinitival TO by their dialect and clinical status. Method: The data came from 180 kindergartners (91 speakers of African American English, 60 speakers of Southern White English, 29 speakers of +Cajun); 53 were children with SLI, and 127 were TD children. Data included 4,537 infinitival TO contexts extracted from language samples; each was coded as zero or overtly marked and by preceding verb context (i.e., verbs of motion vs. other). Results: Across dialects, overall rates of zero marking differed by the children's clinical status (SLI > TD), and other verb contexts accounted for this result. Across the TD and SLI groups, dialect variation was evident for verbs of motion contexts, and the effect was stronger for the TD than for the SLI groups, particularly if the TD children's dialects were classified as +Cajun. Conclusion: Children's marking of infinitival TO can be affected by both their dialect and clinical status. Results support language assessments that include context-specific rate-based measures of infinitival TO and other contrastive structures when they prove useful for understanding the linguistic profile of SLI within a dialect.
The study explores the extent to which linguistic globalisation and the ever increasing dominance of English shapes the perceptions of linguistic diversity in traditional sociolinguistic milieus. We ...set out to investigate the attitudes of 142 respondents from Vorarlberg, an Austrian province, towards their home dialects, High German, a local standardised variety, and English. While drawing on a verbal guise test (VGT) and a questionnaire as the main methods of study, we show that local dialects are viewed as badges of local identities, whereas standard German is appreciated for its utilitarian value. Remarkably, English emerges as a language of enormous social prestige with high levels of social attractiveness. English is further seen as a language allowing the inhabitants of Vorarlberg to connect to the larger world and become part of the global dialogue. We argue that rather than eroding the local cultures, English adds to the sociolinguistic fabric of traditionally diglossic societies, rendering their linguistic texture even more complex and enriched, not impoverished.
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