Identification and social evaluation of dialectal Greek intonation

1. Identification and social evaluation of dialectal Greek intonation S. Gryllia A. Arvaniti M. Baltazani E. Adamou Univ. of Potsdam UC San Diego Univ. of Ioannina CNRS-Lacito M. Terkourafi N. Vergis S. Tsiplakou UIUC UIUC Open Univ. of Cyprus

2. Funding Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) research program, funded by the University of Illinois (2009-2010) Lost in intonation: The interaction of intonation and meaning in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers of Greek and its implications for cross-cultural communication and education Coordinator: Marina Terkourafi, UIUC

3. Intonation and varieties of Greek We use the term intonationto refer to the use of pitch to convey pragmatic meaning in a linguistically structured way (cf. Ladd 2008). Varieties of Greek we examine • Corfiot Greek • Cretan Greek (Heraclion) • Cypriot Greek • Heritage Greek from the USA • Heritage Greek from Germany • L3 Greek spoken by Roma trilinguals in Thrace These varieties are compared to Standard Greek (SG)

4. Research questions It is unclear • what role intonational variation plays in interactions between speakers of different varieties of the same language • whetherintonationis instrumental in identifyingthevarietyspoken • whetherintonationaffectslistenerattitudestowards a givenvariety

5. Experiments We address these issues by examining listener reactions to the six varieties of Greek mentioned earlier (Corfiot, Cretan, Cypriot, Heritage Germany, Heritage US, Roma) We investigated • whether Athenian listeners (speakers of Standard Greek) can use intonational cues to identify these varieties (identification experiment) • whether the differences affect listener attitudes towards the talkers (rating experiment)

6. Examples • Cretan • Germany heritage Greek • Cypriot • Corfu Greek • SG • Roma • US heritage Greek

7. Identification experiment Stimuli • 8 polar questions • 8 wh-questions • Few dialectal features other than intonation (as our production results show; Tsiplakou et al. 2011) • 8 polar & 8 wh-questions from Standard Greek as control • Total: 2 question types × 7 varieties × 8 exemplars = 112 stimuli • Participants • 24 students from the University of Athens (age range: 19-23) from each of the six varieties

8. Procedure • The participants listened to every stimulus twice and answered a forced-choice question about the dialect of the talker • They were given eight choices: • the six varieties under investigation • Standard Greek (SG) • Northern Greek (as control)

9. Results • Better than chance (12.5%) identification • some varieties, like Athenian and Cypriot Greek, were identified more successfully than others • some were not: Heritage Greek from Germany: 3.1% • Identification rates were not consistent across question types and varieties • e.g. Cypriot polar questions were more easily identified than Cypriot wh-questions • Non-random misidentifications • Heritage Greek from Germany misidentified as Standard Greek • Cretan misidentified as Ionian Greek , Athenian or Northern Greek

10. Polar questions SG

11. Wh-questions

12. Rating experiment Stimuli • Same 112 stimuli as in the identification experiment Procedure • Participants listened to each stimulus once and evaluated the talker using a 5-point scale • Friendly • Conservative • Educated • Sincere • Curt Participants • 11 students from the U. of Athens (age range: 19-23)

13. Results • The listeners rated the SG talkers more positively than dialectal talkers for all features except conservatism • SG talkers received high ratings for positive features (friendly, educated, sincere) and low ratings for negative features (conservative, curt) • Corfiot talkers were the most negatively evaluated, followed by the Roma who were rated least educated

14. Red squares: varieties that received significantly higher scores than others Blue squares: varieties that received significantly lower scores than others

15. Discussion: general • Intonational differences can be used to identify the variety spoken • This applies even when there are minimal segmental cues to the origin of the talkers • These differences serve not only to identify the talker; they also affect the evaluation of the talkers themselves

16. Discussion: non-random misidentifications • The results also show non-random mis-identifications, indicating perceptual maps of Greek dialectology that participants may have • e.g. identifying island speakers as a generic group (cf. results for Corfu and Crete)

17. Discussion: heritage speakers • Intonation was sufficient for better than chance identification in all cases except Heritage Greek from Germany • The low identification rates and misidentification with SG is supported by our production data: differences between the intonation of these and SG speakers were minimal (Tsiplakou et al. 2011) • The lack of accent of the heritage speakers from Germany may be due to their close links to Greece, where they visit regularly • Germany heritage speakers contrast with US heritage speakers who were most often taken for heritage speakers from Germany or for Cypriot speakers (i.e. they were perceived as “other”) • This could be due to their less extensive contact with Greece and markedly different melodies

18. Discussion: the role of melody • Not all melodies are equal: for some groups, polar questions led to better identification rates than wh-questions • This result is likely due to a greater degree of difference between SG melodies and dialectal ones for polar questions in some varieties and wh-questions in others • This result corroborates our claim that identification was indeed based on the melody and not on any segmental differences among varieties • Cypriot polar questions, in which the final rise-fall is aligned differently with the text than in SG, were clearly more easily identified as Cypriot than wh-questions, which show few if any differences from SG • US heritage Greek speakers seemed to have better acquired the SG polar question melody (which is quite distinct) but not the wh-question melody (which is closer to their English patterns)

19. Conclusion • Intonation plays a crucial role in variety identification and affects the evaluation of the talkers themselves, not just of their way of speaking • Understanding the role of intonation in sociolinguistic variation is therefore of importance • Further research is necessary with improvements on the present design: • More comparable – but still ecologically valid – stimuli across varieties • Elimination of segmental differences (to confirm results) by using synthesized dialectal melodies with SG segmentals • and dialectal segmental with SG melodies

20. References • Adamou, E. (2010). Bilingual speech and language ecology in Greek Thrace: Romani and Pomak in contact with Turkish. Language in Society 39: 147-171. • Ladd, D. R. (2008) Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press • Tsiplakou, S., A. Arvaniti, M. Baltazani, E. Adamou, S. Gryllia, M. Terkourafi, C. Themistocleous, N. Vergis, S. Armosti (2011). Intonational variation in polar and wh- questions across seven varieties of Greek. 6th ICLAVE, Freiburg, Germany.

21. Thank you for your attention

22. THE RESEARCH TEAM Stella Gryllia AmaliaArvaniti Mary Baltazani Evangelia Adamou Marina Terkourafi Nikos Vergis StavroulaTsiplakou

23. RESEARCH TEAM ADDRESSES • Stella Gryllia, Univ. of Potsdamgryllia@uni-potsdam.de • Amalia Arvaniti, UC San Diego aarvaniti@ucsd.edu • Mary Baltazani, Univ. of Ioanninamarybalt@gmail.com • Evangelia Adamou, CNRS-Lacitoadamou@vjf.cnrs.fr • Marina Terkourafi, UIUC mt217@illinois.edu • Nikos Vergis, UIUC vergis1@illinois.edu • Stavroula Tsiplakou, Open Univ. of Cyprusstavroula.tsiplakou@ouc.ac.cy