Quantifying lexical and pronunciation variation between three Arabic varieties

Mahmoud Abunasser, Elabbas Benmamoun

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper reports on computational measures of linguistic variation that quantify the lexical and pronunciation variation between three varieties of Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Gulf Arabic. We provide three measures of linguistic variation; all computed based on elicitation of the Swadesh list. The first measure is the lexical variation based on the percentage of noncognate words. The second is another lexical measure that takes into account a pronunciation aspect by considering the IPA transcription of the same word list. The third is a pronunciation measure that computes the variation of the IPA transcription of the cognate words in the Swadesh list. The results of the three measures show that geographically proximate languages are also linguistically closer to each other.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPerspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVII
Subtitle of host publicationPapers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013
EditorsStuart Davis, Usama Soltan
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages187-212
ISBN (Electronic)9789027267016
ISBN (Print)9789027200310
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 11 2016

Publication series

NameStudies in Arabic Linguistics
Volume3
ISSN (Print)2212-8042

Keywords

  • Arabic dialectology
  • linguistic distance between Arabic varietie
  • Lexical elicitation
  • Computational measures of linguistic variation

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