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Applying language technology to detect shift effects

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Abstract

We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically and to detect syntactic differences between two varieties of Finnish Australian English, one spoken by the first generation and the other by the second generation. The technique utilizes frequency profiles of trigrams of part-of-speech categories as indicators of syntactic distance between the varieties. We then examine potential shift effects in language contact. The results show that we can attribute some interlanguage features in the first generation to Finnish substratum transfer. However, there are other features ascribable to more universal properties of the language faculty or to “vernacular” primitives. We also conclude that language technology provides other techniques for measuring or detecting linguistic phenomena more generally.

Abstract

We discuss an application of a technique from language technology to tag a corpus automatically and to detect syntactic differences between two varieties of Finnish Australian English, one spoken by the first generation and the other by the second generation. The technique utilizes frequency profiles of trigrams of part-of-speech categories as indicators of syntactic distance between the varieties. We then examine potential shift effects in language contact. The results show that we can attribute some interlanguage features in the first generation to Finnish substratum transfer. However, there are other features ascribable to more universal properties of the language faculty or to “vernacular” primitives. We also conclude that language technology provides other techniques for measuring or detecting linguistic phenomena more generally.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Ethnolects as a multidimensional phenomenon 7
  6. Applying language technology to detect shift effects 27
  7. Generational differences in pronominal usage in Spanish reflecting language and dialect contact in a bilingual setting 45
  8. Personal pronoun variation in language contact 63
  9. Turkish in the Netherlands 87
  10. The reflection of historical language contact in present-day Dutch and Swedish 103
  11. The impact of German on Schleife Sorbian 119
  12. Detecting contact effects in pronunciation 131
  13. Language contact and phonological contrast 155
  14. Translating cultures within the EU 181
  15. Name index 219
  16. Subject index 223
Language Contact
This chapter is in the book Language Contact
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.28.03ner

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Ethnolects as a multidimensional phenomenon 7
  6. Applying language technology to detect shift effects 27
  7. Generational differences in pronominal usage in Spanish reflecting language and dialect contact in a bilingual setting 45
  8. Personal pronoun variation in language contact 63
  9. Turkish in the Netherlands 87
  10. The reflection of historical language contact in present-day Dutch and Swedish 103
  11. The impact of German on Schleife Sorbian 119
  12. Detecting contact effects in pronunciation 131
  13. Language contact and phonological contrast 155
  14. Translating cultures within the EU 181
  15. Name index 219
  16. Subject index 223
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