engleski

Speaker recognition from the island of Brač

Local speeches of the island of Brač can be divided into four language groups: a) central Čakavian settlements, b) west Čakavian settlements, c) east Čakavian settlements with Štokavian influence and d) east Štokavian settlement Sumartin (Sujoldžić et al., 1988 ; Šimunović, 2009) (Figure 1). Previous sociophonetic researches of the speaker recognition of Croatian varieties (Kalogjera, 1984 ; Mildner, 1997 ; Varošanec-Škarić and Kišiček, 2009 ; Kišiček, 2012) have included urban varieties and the assessment of listeners’ attitude towards urban and rural speakers. Kalogjera (1985) explored attitudes of city speakers of Korčula toward the speeches of villages on the island of Korčula. He stated that ''the average inhabitant of the city of Korčula is capable of detecting fine distinctions in the speech of villagers such that he can identify the village of each speaker with a minimal error ; villagers have the same ability.'' (Kalogjera, 1985: 97). Two researches of Croatian urban varieties recognition showed that the listeners had a problem assessing the exact city of origin but were more successful in connecting the speaker with the region. Mildner (1997) stated that when recognizing speakers, the listeners are more influenced by word stress, while Kišiček (2012) concluded that the listeners are more influenced by the segmental level. To test these conclusions on rural inhabitants, 30 speakers from five settlements on the island of Brač were recorded, with six speakers from each – Supetar, Pučišća, Bol, Sumartin and Pražnica. The criteria for selecting the speakers were: 1) that they originate from the settlement under study, 2) that they have been living there for the past 10 years, and 3) that they are at least second generation inhabitants from the settlement. Speakers were divided according to age groups: younger (N=2 ; 18 - 39 years), middle-aged (N=2 ; 40 - 59 years) and older (N=2 ; over 60 years), and by gender (N F =3, N M =3). Based on five minutes of spontaneous speech of each speaker, 23–second samples were created and played randomly for recognition. All toponyms and other indicators that could reveal the origin of the speaker were cut out from the samples. Apart from speakers from Brač, two speakers from Split (Čakavian – Štokavian speech), were also included in the recognition, to examine if the listeners distinguish the speech of Split from the speeches of Brač. The listeners (N F =6, N M =8) were native speakers from Brač, who were born and live there as well. They were divided into three age groups to check the common topos that the older listeners are better at recognizing native speakers. The listeners needed to decide if the speaker is from Brač or Split. If they chose Brač, they had to write the exact settlement. Hypothesis: 1. The listener’s recognition will be influenced by the segmental level, therefore they will be better at recognizing speeches whose pronunciation of vowels and consonants contains specific features, e.g. diphthongs in the speech of Pučišća. 2. Since diphthongs are less frequent in the speech of Bol than in the speech of Pučišća, listeners will classify those speakers from Bol whose speech contains diphthongs as speakers from Pučišća. 3. Speech of Pražnica will have a higher rate of recognition due to specific tonal intonation. A middle-aged woman was the most successful in recognition (82%), while the second best was the youngest listener (18 years). One of the older speakers had the worst result. In total, the best achievements were those of the middle- aged (66%) and the younger groups (65%). Unexpectedly, the older group (50%) was the worst. Overall, it can be concluded that native listeners recognize only those settlements whose speeches have very noticeable segmental features in dialectal pronunciation. It is considerably harder for them to recognize speakers only by word stress, apart from the speech of Pražnica which they recognize well due to specific tonal intonation. The listeners mistook the speech of Bol for that of Pučišća 16 times. Because of the Štokavian influence on Čakavian speech of Supetar, listeners did poorly in differentiating the speech of Supetar from that of Sumartin, as well as differentiating both of them from the speech of Split. The speech of Sumartin had the lowest rate of recognition, since the settlers who founded Sumartin preserved a lot of Štokavian features (Hraste, 1940). Listeners mistook the speech of Sumartin with the speeches of Supetar and Split a total of 50 times. Split was recognized only in 54% of cases. With these results in mind, recognition is planned to be carried out with a native expert.

sociophonetic ; speaker recognition ; dialects ; island of Brač

nije evidentirano