Zezuru Shona (Niger-Congo)
Shona is a term for several languages of Zimbabwe, which differ primarily in their inventories of complex segments. We focus on Zezuru Shona, which is the dialect described by Fortune and which has been the focus of some debates (see the Kadenge and Maddieson works cited in our paper). Our paper only summarizes the main results concerning the segments with the most complexity, but as you can see from the simulation details below, there is quite a lot more to say about Shona.
The source of our data is the excellent ALLEX project, which hosts a digital version of Chimhundu's dictionary. We converted the orthography into transcriptions following Fortune (1980); the script and all the materials are on GitHub.
Simulation data at a glance
Click on simulation name to view additional simulation details.
| Simulation name | Initial state Learning Data | Initial state features |
|---|---|---|
| only version | LearningData.txt | Features.txt |
Simulation details for Shona
| Iteration | Learning Data produced | Features produced | Inseparability | New Segments added | Segments removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LearningData.txt | Features.txt | [download] [view] | pf, tʃ, dz, dʒ, mb, nd, ŋg | None |
| 2 | LearningData.txt | Features.txt | [download] [view] | ts, tʂ, kw, bw, bʋ, dʐ, gw, ɦw, nz, nʐ, ɲdʒ, dʒg, mbʒ | None |
| 3 | LearningData.txt | Features.txt | [download] [view] | pkw, tkw, skw, ʃw, mw, mʋ, nw, ɲŋ, rw, tʃk, dzgw, ŋgw, tskw, nzgw, ɲdʒg | None |
| 4 | LearningData.txt | Features.txt | [download] [view] | st, zgw, ŋw, tʃkw, dʒgw, ndw | None |
| 5 | No new learning data | No new features | [download] [view] | None | None |
