LOID
LOID - Linguistic Origin IDentification
LOID pertains to that branch of biometrics concerned with profiling (as opposed to identification). While the purpose of speaker identification is to identify an individual speaker, speaker profiling seeks to identify the characteristics of an individual’s speech – such as dialectal features – which are shared by a group of individuals. Dialect attribution is thus a type of speaker profiling which focuses on attributing a person’s speech to a dialect or language and/or to a sociolinguistic community (or several).
The purpose of LOID is to test the hypothesis that an individual – that is, the subject of the linguistic analysis – speaks a language or dialect which is consistent with the given place of origin. The linguistic behaviour displayed by the subject on the recording is examined for consistency with the language variety shared by a sociolinguistic community given in a hypothesis.
Our methodology rests on three pillars:
- The cooperation between a linguist (i.e. a person who, after academic studies in linguistics, has successfully undergone internal, task-specific training) and an analyst (a native speaker who has also undergone testing and training).
- The reasoning behind the assessment must be transparently presented, so that the analysis is replicable and can be checked by anyone with knowledge in the field.
- Dialectal isoglosses and other information about dialects are to be extracted from published sources.
The object of LOID is dialect verification, which is the task of attributing a language variety that is consistent with the variety of the hypothesis to the language use of the person. Dialect identification, on the other hand, is the task of attributing a unique variety (among all possible varieties) to the language use displayed by the person. In cases where the hypothesis of LOID yields a negative conclusion, a second analysis can be initiated, which aims at identification.
References
Cambier-Langeveld, T. (2010). The validity of language analysis in the Netherlands. In K. Zwaan, M. Verrips, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Language and Origin: the role of language in European asylum procedures: a linguistic and legal survey (pp. 12-33). Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers.
IAFPA (International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics). (2009). IAFPA. Retrieved 02 19, 2016, from http://www.iafpa.net/langidres.htm