Recognising Groups among Dialects

Abstract

In this paper we apply various clustering algorithms to the dialect pronunciation data. At the same time we propose several evaluation techniques that should be used in order to deal with the instability of the clustering techniques. The results have shown that three hierarchical clustering algorithms are not suitable for the data we are working with. The rest of the tested algorithms have successfully detected two-way split of the data into the Eastern and Western dialects. At the aggregate level that we used in this research, no further division of sites can be asserted with high confidence.