University of Groningen Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area Golubovic, Jelena IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2016 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Golubovic, J. (2016). Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area. University of Groningen. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license. More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne- amendment. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 04-10-2021 Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area Jelena Golubović The work in this thesis was carried out under the Graduate school of the humanities (GSH) from the University of Groningen and the Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG). The work described in this thesis was carried out withing the project Mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in Europe: linguistic and non-linguistic determinants financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics 152 ISSN: 0928-0030 ISBN: 978-90-367-8804-5 Printed by: MapioPublishing (www.mapiopublishing.com) Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area PhD thesis to obtain the degree of PhD at the University of Groningen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. E. Sterken and in accordance with the decision by the College of Deans. This thesis will be defended in public on Monday 2 May 2016 at 14.30 hours by Jelena Golubović born on 19 April 1988 in Belgrade, Serbia Supervisors Prof. J. Nerbonne Prof. V.J.J.P. van Heuven Co-supervisor Dr. C.S. Gooskens Assessment committee Prof. T. Avgustinova Prof. C.L.J. de Bot Prof. J. Navracsics Acknowledgements 11 Chapter 1: Introduction 15 1. General concepts 15 2. The MICReLa project 19 3. The Slavic language family 21 4. Thesis overview 25 Chapter 2: Linguistic distances among six Slavic languages 29 1. Introduction 29 2. Previous research into linguistic distances 32 2.1. Lexical distance 32 2.2. Phonetic distance 32 3. The data 34 3.1. Text data for lexical, orthographic, morphological and syntactic comparisons 34 3.2. List data for phonological comparisons 37 3.3. A note on orthographic systems 38 4. Linguistic distance measures 38 4.1. Lexis 38 4.2. Orthography 39 4.3. Stems and affixes 41 4.4. Phonology 42 4.5. Syntax 43 5. Results 46 5.1. What are the linguistic distances among Czech, Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian? 46 5.1.1. Lexis 47 5.1.2. Orthography 48 5.1.3. Morphology/Affix distances 49 5.1.4. Phonology 51 5.1.5. Syntax 52 5.2. How do the different linguistic levels correlate with each other? 53 5.3. Which linguistic distance measurement best represents the relationships established in historical linguistics? 54 6. Discussion and conclusion 58 5 Chapter 3: Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages 63 1. Introduction 63 2. Aims, research questions and hypotheses 64 3. Previous research 66 3.1. Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area 66 3.2. Languages of the study 67 3.3. How to measure mutual intelligibility? 68 4. Method 70 4.1. Testing material 70 4.2. Experimental design 71 4.3. Word translation task 72 4.4. Cloze test 72 4.5. Picture task 73 4.6. Scoring 74 4.7. The issue of Bulgarian Cyrillic 75 4.8. Participants 75 5. Results 76 5.1. What is the level of intelligibility among Czech, Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian? 76 5.1.1. The word translation task 77 5.1.1.1. Written word translation task 77 5.1.1.2. Spoken word translation task 78 5.1.2. The cloze test 79 5.1.2.1. Written cloze test 79 5.1.2.2. Spoken cloze test 81 5.1.3. Picture task 82 5.1.3.1. Written picture task 82 5.1.3.2. Spoken picture task 83 5.2. Is the level of intelligibility between language pairs symmetric or asymmetric? 84 5.3. Do all three tests give a similar pattern of results? 86 6. Discussion 87 7. Conclusion and future directions 89 Chapter 4: Linguistic factors determining mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area 91 1. Introduction 91 2. Method 95 6 2.1. Measuring intelligibility 95 2.1.1. Testing material 95 2.1.2. Participants 95 2.1.3. Procedure 96 2.1.4. Intelligibility scores 97 2.2. Measuring linguistic distances 97 3. Results 97 4. Discussion and conclusions 101 Chapter 5: Linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors of intelligibility among six Slavic languages 105 1. Introduction 105 2. Previous research 106 3. Aims and hypotheses 110 4. Measuring intelligibility 111 4.1. The word translation task 111 4.1.1. Method 111 4.1.2. Participants 112 4.1.3. Procedure 113 4.2. The cloze test 114 4.2.1. Method 114 4.2.2. Participants 114 4.2.3. Procedure 115 5. Linguistic predictors 115 5.1. Lexical distances 115 5.2. Orthographic distances 117 5.3. Stem and affix distances 118 5.4. Phonological distances 118 5.5. Syntactic distances 119 6. Extra-linguistic predictors 119 6.1. Language attitudes 119 6.2. Language exposure 119 7. Results 120 7.1. Tests and predictors 120 7.2. Language level vs. participant level 122 7.3. Single predictors of intelligibility 122 7.4. Multiple regression analyses 123 8. Discussion and conclusions 125 7 Chapter 6: Mutual intelligibility of Czech and Croatian: A didactic approach 133 1. Introduction, aims and research questions 133 2. Method 139 2.1. Experimental design 139 2.2. Background questionnaire 139 2.3. The pre-test and the post-test 140 2.4. Participants 141 2.5. Teaching material 142 2.6. Teaching intervention 144 3. Results 144 3.1. Functional intelligibility 144 3.2. Perceived intelligibility 146 3.2.1. Written language 146 3.2.2. Spoken language 147 3.3. Perceived distance and language attitudes 148 4. Discussion and conclusions 149 Chapter 7: “Their language sounds aggressive”: a matched guise study with Serbian and Croatian 153 1. Historical background 153 2. The bigger picture: language attitudes and conflict 155 3. Zooming in: Serbian-Croatian attitudes and stereotypes 156 4. Aims and hypotheses 158 5. Method 159 5.1. Stimulus material 159 5.1.1. The recordings 159 5.1.2. The questionnaire 161 5.1.3. Bilingual speaker/voice parade 162 5.2. Participants 163 5.3. Procedures 163 6. Results 164 6.1. Data coding 164 6.2. What are the attitudes of the speakers of Serbian and Croatian to the “other” language compared to their attitudes to their native language? 164 6.3. Are the attitudes towards the neighboring language symmetric or asymmetric? 165 6.4. How do the attitudes to the native and the neighboring language vary across different age groups? 166 8 6.5. What is the relationship between the amount of exposure and attitudes to the neighboring language? 168 7. Discussion and conclusion 169 Chapter 8: General discussion and conclusions 173 References 179 Appendix A: The four texts used as the “text data” when measuring linguistic distances and as the testing material for the cloze test 193 English 193 Croatian 195 Slovene 196 Bulgarian 198 Czech 200 Slovak 202 Polish 204 Appendix B: The word lists used as the “list data” when measuring linguistic distances and as the testing material for the translation task 206 English 206 Croatian 207 Slovene 208 Bulgarian 209 Czech 210 Slovak 211 Polish 212 Appendix C: Slavic consonant and vowel inventory 213 Appendix D: An overview of the MICReLa experiment 214 Appendix E: A screenshot from the MICReLa app showing one of the written cloze tests 215 Appendix F: The four sets of pictures used for the picture task 216 9 Appendix G: Detailed information on the participants 218 Appendix H: Correlation matrices 221 Appendix I: Details on coefficients, adjusted R² change and AICs values for each model 223 Appendix J: The picture sets that were used in spot-the-differences task 227 Appendix K: Lesson plans 228 Appendix L: The non-cognates which were taught 229 Appendix M: Testing material (all the differences between the two languages are marked in bold) 231 Nederlandse samenvatting 232 Groningen dissertations in linguistics (Grodil) 235 About the author 242 Acknowledgements A PhD project is a journey of pushing the limits of current knowledge, but also a journey of self-dis- covery. I would like to thank everyone who helped along the ride. I am grateful to my supervisor Charlotte Gooskens for giving me this amazing opportunity in the first place. She always had the time to listen to my ideas and provide feedback.