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arXiv · 2402.17914

Extracting Lexical Features from Dialects via Interpretable Dialect Classifiers

Roy Xie·Orevaoghene Ahia·Yulia Tsvetkov·Antonios Anastasopoulos
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Abstract

Identifying linguistic differences between dialects of a language often requires expert knowledge and meticulous human analysis. This is largely due to the complexity and nuance involved in studying various dialects. We present a novel approach to extract distinguishing lexical features of dialects by utilizing interpretable dialect classifiers, even in the absence of human experts. We explore both post-hoc and intrinsic approaches to interpretability, conduct experiments on Mandarin, Italian, and Low Saxon, and experimentally demonstrate that our method successfully identifies key language-specific lexical features that contribute to dialectal variations.

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Roy Xie, Orevaoghene Ahia, Yulia Tsvetkov, Antonios Anastasopoulos. 2024-02-27. Extracting Lexical Features from Dialects via Interpretable Dialect Classifiers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17914

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