Arabic-L:LING:Mutual Intelligibilty Research

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 19 Sep 2013
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Mutual Intelligibilty Research
2) Subject: Mutual Intelligibilty Research

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1)
Date: 19 Sep 2013
From: "Slavomír Čéplö" <bulbulthegreat at gmail.com>
Subject: Mutual Intelligibilty Research

Dear Rasha,

as far as I'm aware, there has so far been no research published which
would rigurously test the mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects.
There has been plenty of studies testing the mutual intelligibility of
related varieties of other languages (Dutch and Frisian, Scandinavian
Germanic languages, topolects of Chinese) and there is a large-scale
project going on which attempts to do the same for closely related
languages in Europe (http://www.let.rug.nl/gooskens/project/), but
nothing on Arabic.
Which is why I put together a grant proposal for a pilot project to
test the mutual intelligibility of three varieties of Arabic using the
methodology employed by one of the studies on topolects of Chinese
(essentially listening comprehension tests, see
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384108001678).
The three varieties in question are Maltese, Libyan (Benghazi) Arabic
and Tunisian Arabic, the primary reasons for the selection being that
a) my research focus is currently on Maltese and there the issue of
mutual intelligibility is even more tricky, and b) me and my research
partners believe the best way to test the methodology would be to
focus on one region. I'm happy to report that the grant proposal went
through and we are currently in the final stages of preparation with
the first part of field tests scheduled for November. The completion
is scheduled for March 2014, but until then, I'd be happy to answer
any other questions you may have.

Yours sincerely,

Slavomír

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2)
Date: 19 Sep 2013
From: Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com>
Subject: Mutual Intelligibilty Research

It'd be interesting to set up a comprehension test with texts in a number
of broad dialects (Gulf, Iraqi, Yemeni, Maghrebi, Egyptian, Levantine) and
tried to correlate them with an information-theoretic measure like Mutual
Information.

The experimental design alone would be fun... so, for example, you'd want
to avoid boundary dialects (e.g., in comparing Egyptian and Levantine, you
might want to go with Damascene, rather than Gazan). If the dialect maps
are laid out geometrically, you may want to choose a central point like in
a Voronoi tessellation.

If anyone wants to talk about this, I'd be interested in continuing the
conversation.

Cheers,

-Dan.

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End of Arabic-L: 19 Sep 2013
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