20,023 research outputs found
Language Experience and Phonetic Training as Factors Influencing Timing Organisation in Polish Learners of English
The paper investigates the dynamics of speech rhythm in Polish learners of English and, specifically, how rhythm measurements revealing durational characteristics of vocalic and consonantal intervals through the measures (%V, ĪV, ĪC, VarcoV, VarcoC and nPVI) change along the process of second language acquisition as a result of language experience and phonetic training, and influence rhythmic characteristics of L2 English. The data used for the analysis come from 30 Polish first-year students of the University of ÅĆ³dÅŗ recorded reading two texts (English and Polish) during two recording sessions separated by a 7-month period of language studies and compared to the data obtained from the recordings of native speakers of English. The experiment aims at verifying whether the participants achieve progress in the rhythm measure scores under the influence of language experience and phonetic training, as it has already been confirmed that general proficiency of non-native speakers of English is a key factor contributing to the successful production of rhythmic patterns in English (Waniek-Klimczak 2009, Roach 2002). The results have shown no substantial and consistent progress for the whole group and across all the measures. Statistical tests, however, have revealed significant changes in the subjects' performance with respect to the vocalic measures ĪV and VarcoV. This may reflect the effect of the type of phonetic training the students are offered, which is segment-based with particular emphasis on vowels
Recommended from our members
Effects Of Length, Complexity, And Grammatical Correctness On Stuttering In Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children
Purpose: To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Method: Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables, total number of clauses, utterance complexity (i.e., containing no clauses, simple clauses, or subordinate and/or conjoined clauses), and grammatical correctness (i.e., the presence or absence of morphological and syntactical errors) in stuttered and fluent utterances were compared. Results: Findings revealed that stuttered utterances in Spanish tended to be longer and more often grammatically incorrect, and contain more clauses, including more subordinate and/or conjoined clauses. However, when controlling for the interrelatedness of syllable number and clause number and complexity, only utterance length and grammatical incorrectness were significant predictors of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of these Spanish-speaking children. Use of complex utterances did not appear to contribute to the prediction of stuttering when controlling for utterance length. Conclusions: Results from the present study were consistent with many earlier reports of English-speaking children. Both length and grammatical factors appear to affect stuttering in Spanish-speaking children. Grammatical errors, however, served as the greatest predictor of stuttering.Communication Sciences and Disorder
Empirical relationships between health literacy and treatment decision making : A scoping review of the literature
Copyright Ā© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship awarded to Leslie J. Malloy-Weir by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors would like to thank Maureen Rice for her help with the literature search strategy and Dr. Malcolm Weir for his help with the relevance screening.Peer reviewedPostprin
Recommended from our members
Simulating the referential properties of Dutch, German and English Root Infinitives in MOSAIC
Children learning many languages go through an Optional Infinitive stage in which they produce non-finite verb forms in contexts in which a finite verb form is required (e.g. āThat go thereā instead of āThat goes thereā). MOSAIC (Model of Syntax Acquisition in Children) is a computational model of language learning that successfully simulates the developmental patterning of the Optional Infinitive (OI) phenomenon in English, Dutch, German and Spanish (Freudenthal, Pine, Aguado-Orea & Gobet, 2007). In the present study, MOSAIC is applied to the simulation of certain subtle but theoretically important phenomena in the cross-linguistic patterning of the OI phenomenon that are typically assumed to require a more complex formal analysis. MOSAIC is shown to successfully simulate 1) The Modal Reference Effect: the finding that Dutch and German children tend to use Root Infinitives in modal contexts, 2) The Eventivity constraint: the finding that Dutch and German Root Infinitives refer predominantly to actions rather than static situations, and 3) The absence or reduced size of these effects in English. These results provide strong support for input-driven explanations of the Modal Reference Effect as well as MOSAICās mechanism for producing Root Infinitives, and the wider claim that it is possible to explain key aspects of childrenās early multi-word speech in terms of the interaction between a resource-limited distributional learning mechanism and the surface properties of the language to which children are exposed
Recommended from our members
Testing the double phonetic standard in bilinguals
textSpeech sounds are typically perceived categorically. The acoustic information in speech sounds is perceptually grouped into phonetic categories. It is widely known that language influences the way speech sounds are categorized. That is, one's native language influences where category boundaries are placed. However, it is less understood how bilingual listeners categorize speech sounds. There is evidence showing that bilinguals have different category boundaries from monolinguals, but there is also evidence suggesting that bilinguals have different category boundaries depending on the language they are using at the moment. This phenomenon has been referred as the double phonetic boundary. The goal of this investigation was to verify the existence of the double phonemic boundary in bilingual listeners. As has been done in other studies, bilingual speakers of Spanish and English were asked to identify the speech sound /ta/ from a 10-token speech continuum ranging in VOT from /da/ to /ta/ in two language contexts. In this study, however, two additional procedures were carried out. First, English monolinguals were asked to identify the continuum in two language contexts. It was expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show a double phonetic boundary. Second, while participants' behavioral measures were assessed, electrophysiological measures [event-related potentials, (ERPs)] also were recorded. This was done in order to observe how speech sounds are represented in the brain. It as expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show different ERP amplitudes across language contexts. The behavioral results showed that phonemic boundaries did not differ across language contexts for either bilinguals or monolinguals. Further analyses showed bilinguals, but not monolinguals, perceived specific speech sounds--in the "ambiguous zone"--differently across language contexts. The electrophysiological results showed that the ERPs of bilinguals, but not monolinguals, differed across language contexts. Interestingly, behavioral measures correlated significantly with electrophysiological measures only in bilinguals. This result showed that the ERP amplitude was in accordance with the number of sounds perceived as 'ta' across language contexts. The challenges of testing the double phonemic boundary are discussed, along with the limitations of the methodology used in this study.Communication Sciences and Disorder
Recommended from our members
Mandarin morphosyntax development in bilingual Mandarin-English children with and Without SLI
textOver the past decade, there have been diverse theoretical perspectives and increasing empirical literature on bilingualism and specific language impairment (SLI), some of which highlighted the complex nature of accurately diagnosing SLI in bilingual populations. The goal of the current study is to enhance our understanding of morphosyntax development in an understudied bilingual population - Mandarin-English children who are growing up in an L2-dominant environment (English) in the United States. The study included a total of 55 bilingual Mandarin-English children between the ages of four and seven years, including 53 typically developing (TD) children and 2 children diagnosed with SLI. Using a newly developed screening test - the Bilingual English-Mandarin Oral Screener (BEMOS), we compared Mandarin performance in both TD and SLI children on 7 morphosyntax tasks which respectively measure passive -bei, possessive -de, prepositional phrases, noun classifiers, quantifier and scope, aspects (imperfective ā-zaiā and perfective ā-leā), and sentence repetition. Our analysis of TD bilingual children revealed a trend towards a significant age effect in the total score and a near-significant effect in the preposition and the aspect sub-sections of the screener. When age was considered, perceived Mandarin proficiency by parents was associated with TD bilingual childrenās performance. All students performed poorly on the classifier section, but our error analysis showed a predominant response pattern of imitation, suggesting bilingual children have growing sensitivity and are attentive to semantic similarity of nouns. Overgeneralized use of the general classifier āgeā was also observed in the errors. Both children with SLI scored lower overall compared to their age- and gender-matched TD peers, especially in the classifier and quantifier & scope sections. Reliable clinical markers were not identified due to the two SLI childrenās distinct performance. Clinical implications and future research needs were also discussed.Communication Sciences and Disorder
Native Speaker Perceptions of Accented Speech: The English Pronunciation of Macedonian EFL Learners
The paper reports on the results of a study that aimed to describe the vocalic and consonantal features of the English pronunciation of Macedonian EFL learners as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different standard variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A specially designed computer web application was employed to gather two types of data: a) quantitative (frequency of segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis points out to three most frequent markers of foreign accent in the English speech of Macedonian EFL learners: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch
Deconstructing comprehensibility: identifying the linguistic influences on listeners' L2 comprehensibility ratings
Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listenersā perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutorsā communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scalesāfor example, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)āshortcomings of existing scales (e.g., vague descriptors) reflect limited empirical evidence as to which linguistic aspects influence listenersā judgments of L2 comprehensibility at different ability levels. To address this gap, a mixed-methods approach was used in the present study to gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects underlying listenersā L2 comprehensibility ratings. First, speech samples of 40 native French learners of English were analyzed using 19 quantitative speech measures, including segmental, suprasegmental, fluency, lexical, grammatical, and discourse-level variables. These measures were then correlated with 60 native English listenersā scalar judgments of the speakersā comprehensibility. Next, three English as a second language (ESL) teachers provided introspective reports on the linguistic aspects of speech that they attended to when judging L2 comprehensibility. Following data triangulation, five speech measures were identified that clearly distinguished between L2 learners at different comprehensibility levels. Lexical richness and fluency measures differentiated between low-level learners; grammatical and discourse-level measures differentiated between high-level learners; and word stress errors discriminated between learners of all levels
Narrative comprehension and production in children with SLI: An eye movement study
This study investigates narrative comprehension and production in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twelve children with SLI (mean age 5; 8 years) and 12 typically developing children (mean age 5; 6 years) participated in an eye-tracking experiment designed to investigate online narrative comprehension and production in Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children with SLI. The comprehension task involved the recording of eye movements during the visual exploration of successive scenes in a story, while listening to the associated narrative. With regard to production, the children were asked to retell the story, while once again looking at the scenes, as their eye movements were monitored. During narrative production, children with SLI look at the most semantically relevant areas of the scenes fewer times than their age-matched controls, but no differences were found in narrative comprehension. Moreover, the analyses of speech productions revealed that children with SLI retained less information and made more semantic and syntactic errors during retelling. Implications for theories that characterize SLI are discussed
- ā¦