Validating Dialectometry of Southesat Caspian Sea via Hoppenbrouwers’ Vowel Frequency Method

Authors

Abstract

As pioneer trends in Iranian computational dialectology, the Levenshtein algorithm applied to Mazandarani dialect data - extracted from LAI – revealed regional dialect in the northern range of the Alborz Mountains. Current synchronic fieldwork aimed to determine vowels responsible for regional variation, and likewise reliability and validity of the research findings, through vowel frequency method. The linguistic material consisted of 113 interviews with NORM Speakers of 36 years old and primary level of education in average, 38% of whom were female. Representative and interpretive dialect maps validate the results obtained in previous studies with 0.84 Cronbach’s α, emphasize manifestation of regional dialect, and illustrate the front vowels / i / and / a / verses central vowel / ə /, impose uttermost difference index on regional variations.

Keywords