Linguistic relativity in motion events in Spanish and English : a study on monolingual and bilingual children and adults

PhD ThesisThe research investigates the relation between language and cognition, focusing specifically on dynamic motion events (MEs) of path, manner and causation. This dissertation studies differences in lexicalization patterns of MEs in monolingual and bilingual adults, children, and adolescents, speakers of English and Spanish, and the possible effect of language patterns of MEs on cognition (i.e. the linguistic relativity hypothesis).The study additionally seeks to determine developmental aspects of MEs in language and cognition and to measure the impact of speaking an additional language on linguistic and cognitive processing. Participants´ linguistics patterns and cognitive performances are assessed with two experiments: i) a verbal description task of videos and ii) a similarity judgment task that measured categorization preferences. In total, participants are 124 adults and 221 children and adolescents. The research reveals that adults´ performance is different from that of children in both tasks. It also confirms that MEs are conveyed differently in monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Most importantly it shows that categorization of MEs is constrained by the language-specific patterns in adults in the adult population. Additionally, the knowledge of a second language in adults influences language performance: A bidirectional cross-linguistic influence from L2 to L1 and L1 to L2 is observed. The study of lexicalization patterns in children reveals developmental changes that suggest that learning motion events patterns in one’s language takes longer than previously reported. The performance of monolingual and bilingual children and adolescents does not yield effect of language on the categorization of MEs. This research is a contribution to the studies of linguistic relativity. It helps to explain the contradictory results in the area. It reveals that language seems to affect other non-linguistic cognitive processes and support the hypothesis that language may be interconnected to other cognitive functions in monolinguals´ and bilinguals´ brain. Furthermore, it contributed to the studies of language acquisition in L1 and L2 by assessing bilingual adults and children in their encoding of motion events and its relation to cognition

"Belarus in Brief"

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫКРЕСПУБЛИКА БЕЛАРУСЬУЧЕБНЫЕ ПОСОБИЯУчебное пособие знакомит студентов 1 курса ФПИГ с историей, природными ресурсами, городами, населением, обычаями и традициями, политической жизнью Республики Беларусь. Пособие состоит из четырех частей

English as a global language in China

Mestrado em Estudos InglesesO objectivo desta tese é a análise do desenvolvimento e funcionamento da Língua Inglês na China de uma perspectiva histórica no âmbito da globalização económica e cultural. Tomando em consideração a relação com as políticas, economia e pedagogia na China, exemplificamos alguns problemas no ensino de inglês na China. Por um lado, examinamos o desenvolvimento das políticas educativas em relação às línguas estrangeiras; por outro, analisamos o desenvolvimento do ensino/aprendizagem do Inglês. Os papéis e estatutos do Inglês na China, bem como questões pedagógicas relacionadas com o ensino do Inglês são analisados através de questionários de várias províncias da China. Finalmente consideramos diferentes variedades de Inglês na China, questões de identidade e cultura e o futuro do Inglês como língua global na China.This thesis addresses the question of English as a Global language in China from a historical angle in the context of economic and cultural globalization. Considering the relationship between politics, economics and pedagogy, it exemplifies some problems in China’s English education. On the one hand, it analyzes the development of foreign language learning; on the other hand, it looks at the development of the teaching of English as a foreign language. The role and status of English in China, as well as pedagogical issues related to the teaching of English are analyzed through questionnaires from different provinces of China. Finally, it considers different varieties of English in China, questions of identity and the future of English as a global language in China

Gesture and Speech in Interaction - 4th edition (GESPIN 4)

International audienceThe fourth edition of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) was held in Nantes, France. With more than 40 papers, these proceedings show just what a flourishing field of enquiry gesture studies continues to be. The keynote speeches of the conference addressed three different aspects of multimodal interaction:gesture and grammar, gesture acquisition, and gesture and social interaction. In a talk entitled Qualitiesof event construal in speech and gesture: Aspect and tense, Alan Cienki presented an ongoing researchproject on narratives in French, German and Russian, a project that focuses especially on the verbal andgestural expression of grammatical tense and aspect in narratives in the three languages. Jean-MarcColletta's talk, entitled Gesture and Language Development: towards a unified theoretical framework,described the joint acquisition and development of speech and early conventional and representationalgestures. In Grammar, deixis, and multimodality between code-manifestation and code-integration or whyKendon's Continuum should be transformed into a gestural circle, Ellen Fricke proposed a revisitedgrammar of noun phrases that integrates gestures as part of the semiotic and typological codes of individuallanguages. From a pragmatic and cognitive perspective, Judith Holler explored the use ofgaze and hand gestures as means of organizing turns at talk as well as establishing common ground in apresentation entitled On the pragmatics of multi-modal face-to-face communication: Gesture, speech andgaze in the coordination of mental states and social interaction.Among the talks and posters presented at the conference, the vast majority of topics related, quitenaturally, to gesture and speech in interaction - understood both in terms of mapping of units in differentsemiotic modes and of the use of gesture and speech in social interaction. Several presentations explored the effects of impairments(such as diseases or the natural ageing process) on gesture and speech. The communicative relevance ofgesture and speech and audience-design in natural interactions, as well as in more controlled settings liketelevision debates and reports, was another topic addressed during the conference. Some participantsalso presented research on first and second language learning, while others discussed the relationshipbetween gesture and intonation. While most participants presented research on gesture and speech froman observer's perspective, be it in semiotics or pragmatics, some nevertheless focused on another importantaspect: the cognitive processes involved in language production and perception. Last but not least,participants also presented talks and posters on the computational analysis of gestures, whether involvingexternal devices (e.g. mocap, kinect) or concerning the use of specially-designed computer software forthe post-treatment of gestural data. Importantly, new links were made between semiotics and mocap data

The role of language and culture in face and scene processing and description strategies

Face perception is important in a variety of human social interactions, allowing us to keep track of individuals’ identities, recognise emotional expressions and intentions and make judgements about variables such as age, ethnicity and health. While early research assumed that face recognition strategies were universal, more recent studies have shown that East Asian and White Caucasian observers use different looking strategies to recognise faces, with East Asian participants focusing more on the centre of the face, which has been interpreted as representing a configural processing strategy, while White Caucasian observers fixate more on the eyes and mouth, which has been interpreted as representing a more featural processing strategy. Debate continues over the reasons behind this difference, with some researchers arguing that it represents an extension of more holistic cognition in the more collectivist East Asian cultures, and more analytic cognition in individualist Western cultures. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that cognition is bound by language, and there have been studies showing changes in response patterns in tasks conducted by bilingual participants in their different languages. Others argue that these differences in face processing are driven instead by different salient diagnostic features of faces of different ethnicity. In this thesis, I present the results of five studies examining the role of culture and facial appearance in determining the looking strategy of East Asian and White Caucasian observers. In Chapter 2, we attempted to use a Navon task to prime featural or configural processing in Malaysian Chinese observers engaged in a face recognition and description task of East Asian and White Caucasian faces. While the Navon task failed to elicit a change in either looking or description strategy, it was noted that the features fixated on most were not the features described most frequently. Further, the race of the face impacted on the looking strategy used to recognise faces, with participants fixating more on Caucasian hair than Asian hair, suggesting that the different diagnostic features may drive differences in looking strategies. It was also casually observed that observers with stronger Asian accents made more configural descriptions. In Chapter 3, I investigate the strategies used by Malaysian Chinese and White Caucasian observers when recognising and describing East Asian and White Caucasian faces. A linguistic/cultural priming paradigm was used in an attempt to induce featural or configural processing in observers. In Study 1, the East Asian observers’ eye movements were impacted by the race of the faces, making more fixations on Caucasian hair and eyes than on Asian hair and eyes. Again, patterns of looking and description were very different. Also, the description patterns differed by language, with participants making more descriptions of hair when speaking English and more descriptions of noses when speaking Chinese, suggesting that descriptions may be constrained by language. In Study 2, White Austrian Caucasian observers again showed very different description and fixation patterns. Observers again showed different fixation patterns for Asian and Caucasian faces, fixating more on Caucasian hair than Asian hair, suggesting that fixation pattern may be driven by the diagnostic features of the faces. Observers made more descriptions in German than in English, but did not show a difference in the pattern of describing different facial features depending on either the language spoken or the race of face, suggesting that the more similar German and English languages have similar constraints. Asian observers have been previously shown to direct more attention to contextual information in images of scenes than Caucasian observers, possibly due to a more holistic/configural cognitive style. Since it is known that faces are processed in a different way to other stimuli, in Chapter 4, I report the results of two studies investigating the impact of linguistic/cultural priming on participants’ eye movements and descriptions when describing street scenes. The Malaysian Chinese participants made more fixations on, and descriptions of, nonfocal than focal objects in Asian street scenes and when speaking Chinese, but not when describing European scenes in English. The White Austrian Caucasian observers did not show any difference in fixation or description patterns depending on linguistic condition, other than making more descriptions overall in German than in English. This suggests that, in a non-face description task, linguistic/cultural priming was successful in eliciting cultural “frame shifting” in Malaysian Chinese participants speaking English and Chinese, but not in Austrian Caucasian participants speaking the culturally more similar English and German. We conclude that culture/language does impact on description patterns in face and scene stimuli, possibly reflecting the constraints of different languages. Further, an impact of linguistic/cultural priming was found on fixation patterns in street scene stimuli. However, in face perception tasks, race of face, but not cultural/linguistic condition, impacted on fixation patterns. We conclude that, while language and culture may have an impact on cognition, and place constraints on descriptions, the diagnostic features of faces appear to primarily determine the fixation patterns on face stimuli

European Approaches to Japanese Language and Linguistics

In this volume European specialists of Japanese language present new and original research into Japanese over a wide spectrum of topics which include descriptive, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and didactic accounts. The articles share a focus on contemporary issues and adopt new approaches to the study of Japanese that often are specific to European traditions of language study. The articles address an audience that includes both Japanese Studies and Linguistics. They are representative of the wide range of topics that are currently studied in European universities, and they address scholars and students alike

The acquisition of gender agreement in L2 Portuguese by adult L1 Hungarian speakers

This study investigates the knowledge of adult Hungarian L1 speakers of gender agreement in Portuguese L2. According to the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis and other theoretical accounts, difficulty with the acquisition of L2 grammatical gender by an L1 speaker of a language that does not exhibit gender features (Hungarian) is due to a critical period effect on one hand, and to the failure to reset options or set new parameters that are already fixed in the L1 on the other hand. Therefore, these accounts predict that adult Hungarian L1 speakers will not be accurate with L2 Portuguese gender agreement. Thirty-six L1 Hungarians with L2 Portuguese and thirty Portuguese L1 speakers were tested on their gender assignment accuracy with determiners and adjectives via an online cloze test. Based on the existing literature, we formulated six hypotheses to test in this study. We wanted to investigate whether the level of proficiency of the L2 Portuguese participants, the distance between the noun and the adjective, the default/non-default word markers and the left/right position of the target item (determiner/adjective) have an effect on gender assignment accuracy. The L2 Portuguese speakers were also divided into subgroups, based on whether they spoke another Romance language or not, and whether they spent more than 3 months living in an immersion context in a Portuguese-speaking country or not. These subgroups were investigated in terms of transfer from the other Romance L2 to the L3 (Portuguese) and the effects of naturalistic input received in an immersion context