A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 521 82347 1 hardback ISBN 0 521 53032 6 paperback Contents List of tables page vii Preface to the second edition ix Preface to the first edition xii 1 Why a global language? 1 What is a global language? 3 What makes a global language? 7 Why do we need a global language? 11 What are the dangers of a global language? 14 Could anything stop a global language? 25 A critical era 27 2 Why English? The historical context 29 Origins 30 America 31 Canada 36 The Caribbean 39 Australia and New Zealand 40 South Africa 43 South Asia 46 Former colonial Africa 49 Southeast Asia and the South Pacific 54 A world view 59 v Contents

English as a global language

EXPANDING DEFINITIONS OF GIFTEDNESS: THE CASE OF YOUNG INTERPRETERS FROM IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES. Guadalupe Valdés (with Heather Brookes, Christina Chávez, Claudia Angelelli, Kerry Enright, Dania García, and Marisela González). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 226. $65.00 cloth, $24.50 paper. As Valdés explains in the introduction, this book is about youngsters who carry out the very hard work of interpreting and translating when they are selected by their families to mediate communication between themselves and the outside world [and the] … skills that young interpreters develop in order to mediate and broker communication between members of majority and minority communities. (p. xvii)

Expanding definitions of giftedness: the case of young interpreters from immigrant communities

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies have become increasingly popular both with clinicians and researchers as they are capable of providing unique insights into brain function. However, multiple technical considerations (ranging from specifics of paradigm design to imaging artifacts, complex protocol definition, and multitude of processing and methods of analysis, as well as intrinsic methodological limitations) must be considered and addressed in order to optimize fMRI analysis and to arrive at the most accurate and grounded interpretation of the data. In practice, the researcher/clinician must choose, from many available options, the most suitable software tool for each stage of the fMRI analysis pipeline. Herein we provide a straightforward guide designed to address, for each of the major stages, the techniques and tools involved in the process. We have developed this guide both to help those new to the technique to overcome the most critical difficulties in its use, as well as to serve as a resource for the neuroimaging community.

/pdf/a-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-functional-magnetic-resonance-3stip51emk.pdf

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Most current theories of reading and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base: research on English and a handful of other European alphabets. Furthermore, the two dominant theoretica...

Writing System Variation and Its Consequences for Reading and Dyslexia.

L1 and L2 processing in the bilingual brain: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.

Two primed naming experiments tested the orthographic depth hypothesis in skilled biliterate readers of Hindi and Urdu. These languages are very similar on the spoken level but differ greatly in script; Hindi is a highly transparent script, whereas Urdu is more opaque. It was accordingly hypothesized that form-based priming would be greater for Hindi than Urdu, reflecting greater reliance on a phonological assembly route in the more transparent Hindi script. Proficient Hindi/Urdu biliterate readers were presented with primes either in Hindi or Urdu script (Exp. 1), or in Roman transcription (Exp. 2), while targets were always in blocks of Hindi or Urdu. Across both experiments, form-based priming was observed only in Hindi. Additionally, target words were named significantly faster and better in Hindi than in Urdu. The results are taken as support for the hypothesis of differential reliance on phonological assembly as a function of script transparency. Further, the greater graphemic complexity of Urdu script relative to Hindi appears to have contributed to slower and less accurate overall single word reading for Urdu than Hindi, despite the fact that Urdu was the first learned script.

/pdf/orthographic-characteristics-speed-hindi-word-naming-but-106bo1ujhs.pdf

Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates

Visuospatial complexity modulates reading in the brain

'Cost in transliteration': the neurocognitive processing of Romanized writing.

Previous work has shown that prior experience in language brokering (informal translation) may facilitate the processing of meaning within and across language boundaries The present investigation examined the influence of brokering on bilinguals’ processing of two word collocations with either a literal or a figurative meaning in each language Proficient Spanish-English bilinguals classified as brokers or non-brokers were asked to judge if adjective+noun phrases presented in each language made sense or not Phrases with a literal meaning (eg, stinging insect) were interspersed with phrases with a figurative meaning (eg, stinging insult) and nonsensical phrases (eg, stinging picnic) It was hypothesized that plausibility judgments would be facilitated for literal relative to figurative meanings in each language but that experience in language brokering would be associated with a more equivalent pattern of responding across languages These predictions were confirmed The findings add to the body of empirical work on individual differences in language processing in bilinguals associated with prior language brokering experience

/pdf/bilinguals-plausibility-judgments-for-phrases-with-a-literal-npruvthfcp.pdf

Bilinguals' Plausibility Judgments for Phrases with a Literal vs. Non-literal Meaning: The Influence of Language Brokering Experience

Among biscriptal readers do script-specific orthographic properties in one language affect the processing of words in their other language? This question was examined with respect to the seriality effect, a phenomenon first reported by Vaid and Gupta (Brain Lang 81:679–690, 2002). In this effect, native readers of Hindi are slower to name words whose written and spoken order is misaligned (e.g., the word win is written I-W-N), as compared to words containing letters whose written order is congruent with their spoken order. The present study examined whether the seriality effect is restricted to stimuli presented in the original script (Hindi) or carries over to affect processing in a structurally similar but visuospatially different script (Kannada) which does not have the same misalignment. In a lexical decision task, slower responses to misaligned than to aligned Hindi words were observed in both readers of Hindi and in Kannada–Hindi biliterates; however, biliterates’ responses were not slower to cognates of Hindi misaligned words presented in Kannada script. These findings suggest that processing costs associated with orthographic conventions of a particular script do not carry over to another script, even when the scripts in question share similar design principles. More generally, our findings suggest that the processing of orthographic knowledge relating to the sequencing of sounds and letters is script-specific.

Chaitra Rao

Papers

Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates

Visuospatial complexity modulates reading in the brain

'Cost in transliteration': the neurocognitive processing of Romanized writing.

Bilinguals' Plausibility Judgments for Phrases with a Literal vs. Non-literal Meaning: The Influence of Language Brokering Experience

The processing cost for reading misaligned words is script-specific: evidence from Hindi and Kannada/Hindi readers