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Showing papers in "Research in Language in 2016"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a set of correlations between scores on the Freiburg Personality Inventory scales that are known to be indicative of self-destructive behaviour and text variables (average sentence length, lexical diversity etc.) have been calculated.
Abstract: Abstract Authorship profiling, i.e. revealing information about an unknown author by analyzing their text, is a task of growing importance. One of the most urgent problems of authorship profiling (AP) is selecting text parameters which may correlate to an author’s personality. Most researchers’ selection of these is not underpinned by any theory. This article proposes an approach to AP which applies neuroscience data. The aim of the study is to assess the probability of self-destructive behaviour of an individual via formal parameters of their texts. Here we have used the “Personality Corpus”, which consists of Russian-language texts. A set of correlations between scores on the Freiburg Personality Inventory scales that are known to be indicative of self-destructive behaviour (“Spontaneous Aggressiveness”, “Depressiveness”, “Emotional Lability”, and “Composedness”) and text variables (average sentence length, lexical diversity etc.) has been calculated. Further, a mathematical model which predicts the probability of self-destructive behaviour has been obtained.

14 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from the study of a child simultaneously acquiring Indonesian and German between the ages of 12 months - 20 months, with Indonesian as the dominant language.
Abstract: Abstract Current research in bilingual children’s language development with one language dominant has shown that one linguistic system can affect the other. This is called Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI). This paper explores whether CLI is experienced by a bilingual child raised in two typologically distinct languages in terms of phonological development. It uses data from the study of a child simultaneously acquiring Indonesian and German between the ages of 12 months - 20 months, with Indonesian as the dominant language. The sound segments developed by the child showed universal tendencies, with the appearance of bilabials prior to alveolar sounds, followed by velar sounds. The sounds were produced mostly in the form of stops, nasals and glides. Three phonological processes were displayed by the child: substitution, assimilation and syllable structures. The front rounded vowel [ʏ], which exists in German but not in the Indonesian sound system, was systematically replaced by the palatal approximant [j]. This approximant exists in the Indonesian sound system but not in the German phonemic inventory. This provides evidence that, in terms of phonological development, the child experienced CLI, but only for certain sound transfers.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of L1 and L2 vowel perception by Polish learners of English was conducted, where listeners were presented with different portions of a vowel, and a force choice identification task was carried out.
Abstract: This paper presents a study of L1 and L2 vowel perception by Polish learners of English. Employing the Silent Center paradigm (e.g. Strange et al. 1983), by which listeners are presented with different portions of a vowel, a force choice identification task was carried out. Due to differences in the vowel systems of the two languages, it was hypothesized that stimulus type should have minimal effects for L1 Polish vowel perception since Polish vowels are relatively stable in quality. In L2 English, depending on proficiency level, listeners were expected to adopt a more dynamic approach to vowel identification and show higher accuracy rates on the SC tokens. That is, listeners were expected to attend more to dynamic formant cues, or vowel inherent spectral change (VISC; see e.g. Morrison and Assmann 2013) in vowel perception. Results for identification accuracy for the most part were consistent with these hypotheses. Implications of VISC for the notion of cross-language phonetic similarity, crucial to models of L2 speech acquisition, are also discussed.

10 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an online survey was conducted among English as a foreign language (EFL) professionals teaching at primary, lower secondary, and higher secondary schools in Poland to reflect upon the place of pronunciation in EFL teaching at different educational levels in Poland.
Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to reflect upon the place of pronunciation in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching at different educational levels in Poland. To collect the data, an on-line survey was conducted among EFL professionals teaching at primary, lower secondary, and higher secondary schools in Poland. The questions focused on the respondents’ beliefs about pronunciation, teachers’ competences regarding pronunciation and pronunciation teaching, and the pronunciation teaching techniques they use. The results depict the most and least frequently used pronunciation teaching techniques at each of the three educational stages, and the beliefs of EFL teachers in Poland regarding pronunciation teaching.

9 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the first and second formants of L1 Polish vowels of three groups of multilinguals were compared and the majority of predictions regarding the convergence or divergence of the particular diaphone were supported by the data.
Abstract: Although L1 has been treated as a rigid system which is more likely to act as a sender than a receiver of CLI in bilinguals and multilinguals, recent studies have provided some evidence of the influence of both L2 and L3 on L1. The study is aimed at shedding further light on how Lns can influence the native language and how these changes can be explained by means of the Speech Learning Model. The first and second formant of L1 Polish vowels of three groups of multilinguals were compared. Evidence of a systemic influence of L2 on L1 was observed in the raising and backing of L1 Polish vowels due to L2 English and lowering and backing or fronting of L1 Polish vowels due to L2 German. No systemic influence of L3 on L1 was observed. The predictions derived from equivalence classification of SLM were tested for the Polish vowel /ɛ/ and the closest vowels from Lns. The majority of predictions regarding the convergence or divergence of the particular diaphone were supported by the data.

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the results of a questionnaire and recording-based study on production and recognition of a sample of 60 items from Sobkowiak's (1996:294) ‘words commonly mispronounced by 143 first-year BA students majoring in English.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of a questionnaire and recording-based study on production and recognition of a sample of 60 items from Sobkowiak’s (1996:294) ‘words commonly mispronounced’ by 143 first-year BA students majoring in English. 30 lexical items in each task represent 27 categories defined by Porzuczek (2015), each referring to one aspect of English phonotactics and/or spelling-phonology relations. Our aim is to provide evidence for the occurrence of local and globalised errors in Polglish speech. This experiment is intended to examine what types of errors, that is, seriously deformed words, whether avoidable, ‘either-or’ or unavoidable ones, as classified in Porzuczek (2015), are the most frequent in production and recognition of words. Our goal is to check what patterns concerning letter-to-sound relations, are not respected in the subjects’ production and recognition of an individual word and what rules should be explicitly discussed and practised in a phonetics course. The results of the study confirm the necessity for explicit instruction on the regularity rather than irregularity of English spelling in order to eradicate globalised and ‘either-or’ pronunciation errors in the speech of students. The avoidable globalised errors which have turned out to be the most numerous in a production task include such areas of English phonotactics as: the letters and , ‘mute consonant letters’, ‘isolated errors’ and two categories related to the reduction of unstressed syllables: ‘reduce the vowel in stress-adjacent syllables and in syllables following the stressed one to /ə/ or /ɪ/’ and ‘reduce , , and in nouns and adjectives.’ The hope is also expressed that once introducing spelling-to-sound relations becomes a routine procedure in pronunciation training, the strain on part of the students of memorizing a list of true local errors, phonetically challenging pronunciation exceptions, will be reduced to the absolute minimum.

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present acoustic data on the dynamic properties of the FLEECE and TRAP vowels in the speech of two groups of Polish users of English, and find that the more proficient group users, made up of teachers and professors with professional-level proficiency in English, produce more dramatic patterns of formant movement, reminiscent of native productions, than first year students.
Abstract: This paper presents acoustic data on the dynamic properties of the FLEECE and TRAP vowels in the speech of two groups of Polish users of English. Results reveal that the more proficient group users, made up of teachers and professors with professional-level proficiency in English, produce more dramatic patterns of formant movement, reminiscent of native productions, than first year students. It is argued that vowel inherent spectra change (VISC) is an inherent aspect of English phonology, originated in interactions between vowels and neighboring consonants, and later generalized to the vowel system as a whole. By contrast, Polish is a language with a minimal role of VISC. Consequently, successful acquisition of L2 English vowels involves not only the mastery of vowels in F1-F2 space, but also formant trajectories over time.

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the production and perception of English words with a fortis vs. lenis obstruent in the syllable coda and find that the Czech speakers did not sufficiently exploit duration to cue the identity of the word-final obstrument.
Abstract: This study focuses on the production and perception of English words with a fortis vs. lenis obstruent in the syllable coda. The contrast is mostly cued by the duration of the preceding vowel, which is shorter before fortis than before lenis sounds in native speech. In the first experiment we analyzed the production of 10 Czech speakers of English and compared them to two native controls. The results showed that the Czech speakers did not sufficiently exploit duration to cue the identity of the word-final obstruent. In the second experiment we manipulated C and V durations in target words to transplant the native ratios onto the Czech-accented speech, enhancing the fortis–lenis contrast, and vice versa. 108 listeners took part in a word-monitoring task in which reaction times were measured. The hypothesized advantage to items in which the target word (with a fortis or lenis obstruent) was semantically congruent with the following context was not confirmed, and subsequent analyses showed that the words’ frequency of use and the collocations they enter into strongly affect speech processing and correlate to a large degree with the reaction times.

6 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored the acquisition of definiteness and article use in written Swedish by Finnish-speaking teenagers (n=67) during the three years in secondary school and found that the most central types of NPs build an acquisition explainable by a complexity hierarchy between the different types of nouns.
Abstract: This study explores the acquisition of definiteness and article use in written Swedish by Finnish-speaking teenagers (n=67) during the three years in secondary school The studied grammatical phenomena are problematic for all L2 learners of Swedish and are especially difficult for learners, such as Finns, whose L1 lacks expressive definiteness morphologically The informants produce complex NPs already in their first narratives The form of NPs poses significantly more problems than the choice of a correct form of definiteness Hence, it is possible that previous knowledge in English helps informants in the choice of definiteness The common nominator for problematic expressions is simplification, in both formal aspects and in the relation between form and meaning Previous research in Sweden has made similar findings The most central types of NPs build an acquisition explainable by a complexity hierarchy between the different types of NPs The informants master best NPs without definiteness markers Definite singulars containing an ending are significantly easier than indefinite singulars, the indefinite article of which is notoriously difficult for Finns learning Swedish as an L2 This acquisition order, however, profoundly differs from the traditional order of instruction of their compendiums

5 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article investigated the application of coalescent assimilation in American English to see a) what factors increase the likelihood of its application for each of the four alveolar obstruents, and b) what is the allophonic realization of plosives /t, d, s, z/ if the CA does not apply.
Abstract: Coalescent assimilation (CA), where alveolar obstruents /t, d, s, z/ in word-final position merge with word-initial /j/ to produce postalveolar /tʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ/, is one of the most wellknown connected speech processes in English Due to its commonness, CA has been discussed in numerous textbook descriptions of English pronunciation, and yet, upon comparing them it is difficult to get a clear picture of what factors make its application likely This paper aims to investigate the application of CA in American English to see a) what factors increase the likelihood of its application for each of the four alveolar obstruents, and b) what is the allophonic realization of plosives /t, d/ if the CA does not apply To do so, the Buckeye Corpus (Pitt et al 2007) of spoken American English is analyzed quantitatively As a second step, these results are compared with Polish English; statistics analogous to the ones listed above for American English are gathered for Polish English based on the PLEC corpus (Pezik 2012) The last section focuses on what consequences for teaching based on a native speaker model the findings have It is argued that a description of the phenomenon that reflects the behavior of speakers of American English more accurately than extant textbook accounts could be beneficial to the acquisition of these patterns

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigated the perception of devoicing of English /w, r, j, l/ after /p, t, k/ as a word-boundary cue by Polish listeners.
Abstract: The study investigates the perception of devoicing of English /w, r, j, l/ after /p, t, k/ as a word-boundary cue by Polish listeners. Polish does not devoice sonorants following voiceless stops in word-initial positions. As a result, Polish learners are not made sensitive to sonorant devoicing as a segmentation cue. Higher-proficiency and lower-proficiency Polish learners of English participated in the task in which they recognised phrases such as buy train vs. bite rain or pie plot vs. pipe lot. The analysis of accuracy scores revealed that successful segmentation was only above chance level, indicating that sonorant voicing/devoicing cue was largely unattended to in identifying the boundary location. Moreover, higher proficiency did not lead to more successful segmentation. The analysis of reaction times showed an unclear pattern in which higher-proficiency listeners segmented the test phrases faster but not more accurately than lower-proficiency listeners. Finally, #CS sequences were recognised more accurately than C#S sequences, which was taken to suggest that the listeners may have had some limited knowledge that devoiced sonorants appear only in word-initial positions, but they treated voiced sonorants as equal candidates for word-final and word-initial positions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigated the use of lexical elements of cohesion in the essay writing of students of English as a Second Language (EASL) and found that students tended to use more of repetitions and made minimal use of synonyms and lexical sets to achieve cohesion in writing.
Abstract: Abstract This study investigated the use of lexical elements of cohesion in the essay writing of students of English as a Second Language. Two hundred essays of final year students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka were collated and analyzed by the researchers in order to identify the lexical elements used to achieve cohesion in writing. The result showed that students used three lexical elements as postulated by Gutwinski in varying degrees in their writings. These include: repetition, synonyms, and lexical sets (collocations). Students tended to use more of repetitions and made minimal use of synonyms and lexical sets to achieve cohesion in writing. This has led to poorly written essays by students. It also implies that lexical cohesion elements should be taught in schools to enable students use them appropriately in writing.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a picture-sentence verification task was used to investigate the processing of different types of quantifiers in Croatian, and the results showed that non-universal and null quantifiers, as well as negations were processed significantly slower compared to affirmative sentences.
Abstract: Abstract Studies from English and German have found differences in the processing of affirmative and negative sentences. However, little attention has been given to quantifiers that form negations. A picture-sentence verification task was used to investigate the processing of different types of quantifiers in Croatian: universal quantifiers in affirmative sentences (e.g. all), non-universal quantifiers in compositional negations (e.g. not all), null quantifiers in negative concord (e.g. none) and relative disproportionate quantifiers in both affirmative and negative sentences (e.g. some). The results showed that non-universal and null quantifiers, as well as negations were processed significantly slower compared to affirmative sentences, which is in line with previous findings supporting the two-step model. The results also confirmed that more complex tasks require a longer reaction time. A significant difference in the processing of same-polarity sentences with first-order quantifiers was observed: sentences with null quantifiers were processed faster and more accurately than sentences with disproportional and non-universal quantifiers. A difference in reaction time was also found in affirmatives with different quantifiers: sentences with universal quantifiers were processed significantly faster and more accurately compared to sentences with relative disproportionate quantifiers. These findings indicate that the processing of quantifiers follows after the processing of affirmative information. In the context of the two-step model, the processing of quantifiers occurs in the second step, along with negations.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article reported a perceptual evaluation of the meanings conveyed by the acoustic components of "nasal grunts", i.e., non-lexical conversational sounds realised with a nasal feature (e.g., fall-rises express that the speaker implies something).
Abstract: This paper reports a perceptual evaluation of the meanings conveyed by the acoustic components of “nasal grunts” (Chlebowski and Ballier 2015), i.e., non-lexical conversational sounds realised with a nasal feature (e.g. , , ). This study follows the experimental investigation conducted by Chlebowski and Ballier (2015) on the acoustic components of such sounds in the PVC project (Milroy et al. 1997), which is part of the NECTE corpus (Allen et al. 2007). In accordance with current claims in the literature, they ascribed meanings to these acoustic features, e.g. fall-rises express that the “speaker implies something” (Wells 2006: 27), and verified their validity through an analysis of the context surrounding the “nasal grunts”. Nonetheless, to avoid problems of circularity and ad hoc categories, the present study includes a perceptual evaluation by four participants. To verify the meanings ascribed to the features of “nasal grunts”, three native speakers of American English were recorded in short casual conversations and three perception tests were created using these recordings, with Praat software (Boersma and Weenink 2009). The first two tests aim to check whether different acoustic features: 1) are perceived as different when presented in pairs; 2) can be identified by the participants (as falls or rises) in isolation. The last test aim to determine whether each feature bears the same meaning: 1) in isolation, 2) in a given context, or 3) in scripted conversations likely to trigger the meanings ascribed by Chlebowski and Ballier (2015). Results suggest that acoustic components of “nasal grunts” in Geordie English do convey specific attitudinal meanings, and raise the possibility of a perceptual hierarchy of those components.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of intonation in the perception of foreign-accented speech and found that Czech English was more difficult to process than native English, although the listeners were Czech.
Abstract: The current paper examines the role of intonation in the perception of foreign-accented speech. In order to assess how difficult it is to mentally process native, non-native and modified speech melodies, four conditions were analyzed and compared: native English, native English with Czech melody, Czech English with native melody and Czech English. The method of reaction times measurement in a word monitoring task was employed, in which 108 Czech listeners heard English sentences in the explored conditions and pressed a button when hearing a target word. Speech melody turned out to have a relatively weak but discernible impact on perceptual processing. Interestingly, Czech English proved to be more difficult to process than native English, although the listeners were Czech. The implementation of English F0 contours on Czech English speech slightly alleviated the cognitive load, however, the second hybrid, native English with Czech melody, pointed to the opposite direction. The causes of this discrepancy were investigated, particularly higher degrees of collocability in certain expressions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the effect of Negotiation of form instruction on the learning of connected speech by Japanese learners of English, finding that the progres achieved with NF was more significant than for the traditional treatment.
Abstract: Abe (2010) argues that the Negotiation of Form (NF) instruction exerts positive effects on learning of connected speech by Japanese learners of English, finding that the progres achieved with NF was more significant than for the traditional treatment. The study reported here seeks to uncover the acquisitional value of NF in a Polish classroom. The study hypothesizes that NF, in comparison with the deductive teaching method, effectively promotes learning of assimilation, elision and weak forms. The hypothesis was tested by investigating production and perception of 50 Polish students of English. As for evaluating the effects of the two types of instructions, a classic pretest-posttest design was used. With regard to methodology, acoustic analysis was performed. The results demonstrate that in general, NF proved more effective than NNF. With regard to individual processes of connected speech, NF was more effective in production, whereas no such effect was found for perception.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between productive fluency and the use of formulaic sequences in the speech of highly proficient L2 learners was performed, and the results showed significant differences between baseline and post-removal fluency scores for both learners.
Abstract: Abstract This study is a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between productive fluency and the use of formulaic sequences in the speech of highly proficient L2 learners. Two samples of learner speech were randomly drawn and analysed. Formulaic sequences were identified on the basis of two distinct procedures: a frequency-based, distributional approach which returned a set of recurrent sequences (n-grams) and an intuition and criterion-based, linguistic procedure which returned a set of phrasemes. Formulaic material was then removed from the data. Breakdown and speed fluency measures were obtained for the following types of speech: baseline (pre-removal), formulaic, non-formulaic (post-removal). The results show significant differences between baseline and post-removal fluency scores for both learners. Also, formulaic speech is produced more fluently than non-formulaic speech. However, the comparison of the fluency scores of n-grams and phrasemes returned inconsistent results with significant differences reported only for one of the samples.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The prediction that native listeners would judge the code-switched English productions as more foreign-accented than the L2-only productions was tested, and whether more native-like VOT values would correlate with improved accentedness scores was tested.
Abstract: Abstract Recent studies of short-term phonetic interference suggest that code-switching can lead to momentary increases in L1 influence on L2. In an earlier study using a single acoustic measure (VOT), we found that Czech EFL learners’ pronunciation of English voiceless stops had shorter, i.e. more L1-Czech-like, VOTs in code-switched compared to L2-only sentences. The first aim of the current study was to test the prediction that native listeners would judge the code-switched English productions as more foreign-accented than the L2-only productions. The results provide only weak support for this prediction. The second aim was to test whether more native-like VOT values would correlate with improved accentedness scores. This was confirmed for sentence-initial stops.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the distribution of nasal consonants is shown to be the result of coda neutralization, and it is argued that generalizations made for root and word level are disproportionate and cannot be explained through the means of rulebased phonology.
Abstract: Abstract This article investigates nasal assimilation in Classical Nahuatl. The distribution of nasal consonants is shown to be the result of coda neutralization. It is argued that generalizations made for root and word level are disproportionate and cannot be explained through the means of rule-based phonology. It is shown that the process responsible for nasal distribution can only be accounted for by introducing derivational levels in Optimality Theory

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new view on feature valuation is offered, as well as the connection between the Narrow Syntax and the C-I interface, defined in terms of recursive typing taking place at the interface.
Abstract: The paper, assuming the general framework of Chomsky’s (2013a, 2015b) current version of the Minimalist syntax, investigates the syntax of quotation in light of ellipsis. I show that certain unexpected effects arising for quotational ellipsis are problematic for the standard feature valuation system and, especially, for the theory of phases. I discuss some effects of two possible interpretations of such ellipsis, as well as a constraint following from deviant antecedents, to show that the standard view on the internal syntax of quotational expressions should be reconsidered. The paper offers a new view on feature valuation, as well as the connection between the Narrow Syntax and the C-I interface, defined in terms of recursive typing taking place at the interface.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate whether adding a real interlocutor to elicitation techniques would result in requests that are different from those gathered through versions with a hypothetical inter-locutor.
Abstract: This study investigates whether adding a real interlocutor to elicitation techniques would result in requests that are different from those gathered through versions with a hypothetical interlocutor. For this purpose, a written method is chosen. One group of 40 students receive a written discourse completion task (DCT) with two situations that ask respondents to write emails on paper to an imaginary professor. This data is compared to earlier data collected from 27 students, where a group of students composed emails for the same situations and sent them electronically to their professor. Thus, while one group write emails to a hypothetical professor, the other group is provided with a real interlocutor. The data is analyzed for the inclusion of opening and closing moves, density, the level of directness and the choices of moves in the opening and closing sequences, as well as the choices of supportive moves. Results indicate significant differences in (the) level of directness, and the choices of moves in the opening and closing sequences. The other analyses do not show significant differences. The findings reveal that the addition of a real interlocutor does make a difference, albeit not a drastic one. The results have implications for the design of elicitation techniques that aim to simulate real life.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of professional competence of EFL learners on their academic writing is analyzed through analyzing learners' competence in specific knowledge domains - knowledge of terms and specific concepts, represented as conceptual metaphors.
Abstract: The article presents the study of the influence of professional competence of EFL learners on their academic writing. The task was approached through analyzing learners’ competence in specific knowledge domains - knowledge of terms and specific concepts, represented as conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphor models were analyzed in the English written texts produced by Russian students with different competences in economics – at both non-professional and professional levels of academic discourse (NPAD and PAD respectively). Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU) was applied to metaphor identification, and alternative metaphor and preferential conceptualization analysis was performed to compare the scope of source and the range of target in NPAD and PAD. Findings highlight the areas of commonality as well as divergence in terms of students’ professional competence represented in conceptual metaphors in L2 writing. The main differences in the scope of the source analysis are quantitative rather than qualitative. The range of target comparison between NPAD and PAD indicates a significantly larger range of targets for the professional level students, a lower level of metaphorization for the non-professional level, and inclusive strategies across the two levels. Practical recommendations suggest an improved research methodology for studying metaphor production in EAP and ESP as well as a deeper understanding of ESP content and its structure.