Comparative Analysis of Majority Language Influence on North Sámi Prosody Using WaveNet-Based modeling

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Phonetics

Background:

• Finnmark North Sámi is an endangered indigenous language variety spoken in Norway and Finland.
• Speakers are bilingual, regularly using Finnish or Norwegian alongside North Sámi.
• Understanding language contact influences on endangered languages is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate majority language influences on Finnmark North Sámi prosody.
• To identify specific prosodic characteristics affected by bilingualism.
• To associate these changes with intonational patterns of Finnish and Norwegian.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel methodology to automatically detect prosodic differences in speech.
• Utilized convolutional WaveNet speech synthesis models trained on North Sámi data.
• Employed conditioning embeddings to pinpoint words exhibiting the most significant prosodic variations.

Main Results:

• Prosodic differences were not uniform across all word types (part-of-speech).
• Identified specific intonational patterns showing variation between Finnmark North Sámi varieties.
• Found evidence suggesting differences reflect phrase-level prosodic features of majority languages.

Conclusions:

• Majority languages significantly influence the prosody of Finnmark North Sámi.
• Prosodic variations are linked to phrase-level characteristics of Finnish and Norwegian.
• This research offers insights into language contact phenomena in endangered minority languages.