Digitalized Dialect Studies: North-Western Romanian

Digitalized Dialect Studies: North-Western Romanian

Sheila M. Embleton, Dorin Uritescu & Eric S. Wheeler

York University, Toronto, Canada

Context

Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crisana Crisana region in

north-west Romania

Hard copy atlas by Stan and Uritescu (1996, 2003)

Digitize to make it more accessible

RODA: Romanian Online Dialect Atlas

Digitize and present hard copy atlas: Mostly graduate students

in Canada and Romania Enter data from maps into text files When complete, it will be posted to

the Internet for general use

Objective Use Information Technology to

permit a broad range of scholars to access the data, select the data appropriately, and present the data clearly;

and so gain greater understanding of its significance.

Other Digital Atlases

Other Digital Atlases Salzburg

H.Goebl • phonetic dialect atlas of Dolomitic Ladinian

(since 1985) Edgar Haimerl

• ‘Visual DialectoMetry’ (VDM) (ca 2000) Netherlands

Heeringa et al.; de Vriend et al.• Dialectometric and cartographic software

Other Dialect Atlases Japan

D. Long, others (http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/maps/perceptmaps.htm )• Japanese area maps

Related endeavours Google Earth

• Available mapping software• Images world-wide

Dialect studies with databases• e.g. Iran: National survey for 2009

Visualization software• e.g T. Pi. Atlas of Dialect Topography• http://dialect.topography.chass.utoronto.ca/dt_atlas.php

Overall challenges: Digitize data Accessible interface to data

Search Analyze

Presentation of data As data As maps

RODA as linguistic technology

The technology allows one to:

View the data Search for data and count it Interpret the data or the counts Analyze the data (e.g. MDS) See the results as maps

Save the maps as .jpg pictures Save the results for later use

Hear samples of the data

RODA: function Custom-defined maps

• You select the data• You see the result as a map

Programmable access to the whole set of digitized data• You ask about data spread over many maps• You can customize what you search for

(not just the editor’s choice)

RODA: selection of data Context of search becomes important

• Word-final vs non-final vs either• Plain character vs accented character• Character vs (superposed) alternate

Choice of fields to search• E.g. With nouns: sg. vs pl. entries• Variations heard by field workers• Flags to mark special situations (e.g.

hesitation)

Examples from RODA

Crisana, Romania

Crisana, Romania

(from RODA)

Seeing Words Change

Word-final /u/in Latin and non-Latin words

Word-final /u/ from Latin

Latin Romanian(standard and most

dialects)

Dialectal Variation

canto ‘I sing’ cânt cântu(vowel present)

cântu

(non-syllabic)

oculum ‘eye’ ochi ochiu ochiu

Is word-final /u/ random? Look for a geographic pattern over

all potential occurrences The maps for single examples such

as /ochi/ and others, are in the hard-copy dialect Atlas,

But total data for all examples is spread widely over many maps.

Word-final /u/

Data from:•407 maps•Field 1

Size of cross shows the number of occurrences

Horizontal= syllabic

Vertical = non-syllabic

Word-final,syllabic /u/

Data from:•407 maps•Field 1•word-final only•(horizontal = vertical)

Locations 137, 141, 146 show most examples


Can review the data


Data from:•selected maps•Field 1•word-final only•removed non-vocalic /u/ , def. art., some clusters +/u/.•(horizontal = vertical)

Locations 137, 141, 146 show most examples

/u/ Pattern There is a pattern:

Word final /u/ is retained in central, and north-eastern areas

It is syllabic mostly in parts of the central area

The locations with most frequent syllabic final /u/ do not form a continuous area

Raised word-final /e/

Raised, word-final /e/


Horizontal= vertical

Raised /e/ is wide-spread

Raised, word-final /e/ vs schwa


Raised /e/ (horizontal)

Raised schwa (vertical)

Raised schwa is also wide-spread but does not always coincide with raised /e/(cf. 158, 159)

High /e/ and schwa

High /e/ and schwa

Retained /u/versusRaised /e/

•Syllabic word-final /u/ (horizontal)

•Raised word-final /e/ (vertical)

•Zoom-in view of central area

137, 141, 146 have both

Retained /u/versusRaised schwa

•Syllabic word-final /u/ (horizontal)

•Raised word-final schwa (vertical)

•Zoom-in view of central area

137, 146 (not 141) have both

Conclusion The raising of final mid vowels and

the weakening of final high vowels are distinct natural lenition processes.

Non-palatalized dentals before front vowels


Crişana: dentals before front vowels are palatalized.

Are they restructured as palatals? If the process is no longer productive,

there may be non-palatalized dentals before front vowels.

If so, where, in what forms and what is the frequency?


•Examples everywhere.

•(As is well-known, dentals are not palatalized in Oaş, except for 220.)

•Map shows where and how many examples.

/st/ before front vowels

/t/ but not /st/ before /e/ and /i/

•407 maps, field 1

•/te/ (horizontal)

•/ti/ (vertical)

•values all scaled x 3 to make more visible

/t/ but not /st/ before /e/ and /i/

Shown as an interpretive map

•407 maps, field 1

•/te/ (red)

•/ti/ (black)

Map is automatically drawn from the previous searches

/t/ before /e/ or /i/

•See the examples that were found and counted.

•See the source map number and location number of each.

•Can delete “exceptions” from the count.


There are examples everywhere (not only in Oaş)

Here we establish a result with the location and frequency of examples.

Can view the examples that support the conclusion.

With digital data and tools, we easily discover significant patterns

Here, we see the conservation of front vowels after velarizing consonants.

We see frequency

and areas phonological

context

/e, i/ after /ts, z, s/

/e, i/ after /ts, z, s/

MDS

MDS process Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) uses

the “linguistic distance” between N+1 locations to place them in an N-dimensional space.

Then, the N-space is projected onto a 2-space (a map) such that the distances among the points are preserved as best as possible.

MDS and dialects Embleton and

Wheeler have used an MDS process on English dialects Finnish dialects

Dialect roughly correlates with geography

Dialect groupings Began with a hypothesis about

dialect groupings in Crisana Analyzed all data in 407 maps using

the MDS method Identity is exact match; any difference

is a difference of 1. Distance is sum of differences.

We see the groupings on a map.

MDS mapAll groups

South-east and South-west are distinct.

The rest are less so. Suggests

the dialect unity of the region

--> refine groupings

MDS mapRefined groupings

Still, considerable overlap or closeness

More groups that could be identified, e.g.:

Several divisions in West

Two areas in Oaş

Oaş is close to southern areas

Still, its distinctness is clear (cf. also Uritescu 1984a).



MDS For large quantities of data, MDS

needs RODA’s digitized data. MDS provides another

understanding of the data. MDS is only one of many possible

quantitative tools (e.g. factor analysis, cluster analysis).

Hear the Data

•Selected clips from source data in over 40 locations

•From map, pick location and play

•(Sound data is large; needs to be packaged separately for easy downloading)

Bigger challenge

Access to Data In the humanities,

Large amounts of data Diverse ways of selecting it

Information Technology Has the technology May not understand the needs

Need to learn how to apply IT to our discipline effectively

Development Process Requirements gathering

Prototypes Cycles of propose-and-revise

User testing Test versions on web User feedback is important

Explore technology Changes fast Much to learn

Bridging the Gap IT specialist: the challenge is to

make IT accessible to non-IT users Humanist: go after the technology

Plan for it. It needs careful thought Use it. It is powerful

Dialectologist and Romanist: RODA

Future Directions Digitalize future volumes (3-5) Create digital interpretive maps

from hard-copy Atlas Apply MDS

Enhance the sound and multimedia aspects of the online atlas Play sound and see a transliterated text

Summary Data will soon be available

You are invited to apply your techniques to the data

Digital data and IT methods permit: Widely accessible data Flexible searching and custom

presentation Repeatable processing

Contacts Sheila [email protected] Dorin [email protected] Eric [email protected]

Test sites: ericwheeler.ca/test

Documents

Digitalized Dialect Studies: North-Western Romanian