T-LICS · Transfer of Linguistic Intonation in Contact Situations
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-10-01 → 2022-09-30
- EU contribution
- €172,932
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Transfer of Linguistic Intonation in Contact Situations
Languages often come into contact, as witnessed by the wide spread of bilingualism across the world. Whenever language contact takes place, there emerges the possibility of features from one language being transferred to the other one. This transfer is often illustrated by loanwords, but it can involve any aspect of a language, like syntactic or phonological patterns; a visible, though often ignored, aspect of language transfer involves changes in linguistic intonation. This melodic aspect of language is employed by speakers to convey sentence-level meanings, such as differences between an affirmative statement and a question. The project, hence, devotes its empirical core to a notable case of intonation contact, where a previously-homogeneous sub-dialect of Basque is coming into increasing contact with two Romance languages: French and Spanish. I conduct fieldwork and analyse how the intonation system of younger (vs older) speakers is diverging at each side of the political border. These kinds of ongoing linguistic change are a direct reflection of changes in society, ways of life, and ways of interaction. Hence, an apparently minor aspect of our daily lives, the kind of tune we use to ask a yes/no question, is a perfect illustration of current social transformations.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Languages often come into contact, as witnessed by the wide spread of bilingualism across the world. Whenever language contact takes place, there emerges the possibility of features from one language being transferred to the other one. This transfer is often illustrated by loanwords, but it can involve any aspect of a language, like syntactic or phonological patterns. In this context, the T-LICS project will develop a general theory of how intonation features are transferred, through meta-analysing previous studies and original fieldwork. Although every language uses pitch in a conventional way in order to convey sentence-level meanings, such as the contrast between statements and questions, intonation is rarely recorded in written texts, and is underrepresented in descriptive grammars. The project, hence, devotes its empirical core to a notable case of intonation contact, where a previously-homogeneous sub-dialect of Basque is coming into increasing contact with French or Spanish. I will conduct fieldwork and analyse how the intonation system of younger (vs older) speakers is diverging at each side of the political border. By further comparing these patterns to their French/Spanish intonation, I will identify which features from their Basque intonation are attributable to transfer from the other language. Beyond standard phonetic/phonological analysis, I will also exploit machine learning techniques to quantify the extent of the intonation divergence between the two generations of speakers (using classification accuracy), and the extent of intonation overlap within these bilingual speakers (using clustering techniques). In order to complement and expand the field data, I will also crowdsource intonation patterns using a mobile app, a recent and successful tool in dialectology which has not been employed yet to study intonation.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBERTSITATEA · LeioaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union