A Computational Model for the Assessment of Mutual Intelligibility Among Closely Related Languages

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Hauptverfasser: Nieder, Jessica, List, Johann-Mattis
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Nieder, Jessica
List, Johann-Mattis
author_facet Nieder, Jessica
List, Johann-Mattis
contents Closely related languages show linguistic similarities that allow speakers of one language to understand speakers of another language without having actively learned it. Mutual intelligibility varies in degree and is typically tested in psycholinguistic experiments. To study mutual intelligibility computationally, we propose a computer-assisted method using the Linear Discriminative Learner, a computational model developed to approximate the cognitive processes by which humans learn languages, which we expand with multilingual semantic vectors and multilingual sound classes. We test the model on cognate data from German, Dutch, and English, three closely related Germanic languages. We find that our model's comprehension accuracy depends on 1) the automatic trimming of inflections and 2) the language pair for which comprehension is tested. Our multilingual modelling approach does not only offer new methodological findings for automatic testing of mutual intelligibility across languages but also extends the use of Linear Discriminative Learning to multilingual settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_02915
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Computational Model for the Assessment of Mutual Intelligibility Among Closely Related Languages
Nieder, Jessica
List, Johann-Mattis
Computation and Language
Closely related languages show linguistic similarities that allow speakers of one language to understand speakers of another language without having actively learned it. Mutual intelligibility varies in degree and is typically tested in psycholinguistic experiments. To study mutual intelligibility computationally, we propose a computer-assisted method using the Linear Discriminative Learner, a computational model developed to approximate the cognitive processes by which humans learn languages, which we expand with multilingual semantic vectors and multilingual sound classes. We test the model on cognate data from German, Dutch, and English, three closely related Germanic languages. We find that our model's comprehension accuracy depends on 1) the automatic trimming of inflections and 2) the language pair for which comprehension is tested. Our multilingual modelling approach does not only offer new methodological findings for automatic testing of mutual intelligibility across languages but also extends the use of Linear Discriminative Learning to multilingual settings.
title A Computational Model for the Assessment of Mutual Intelligibility Among Closely Related Languages
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.02915