Are words easier to learn from infant- than adult-directed speech? A quantitative corpus-based investigation

We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than in ADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: the IDS lexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than the ADS counterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result, IDS word forms are still globally less discriminable than ADS word forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role of IDS is to improve language learnability.Comment: Draf

Listening experience and phonetic-to-lexical mapping in L2

In contrast to initial L1 vocabularies, which of necessity depend largely on heard exemplars, L2 vocabulary construction can draw on a variety of knowledge sources. This can lead to richer stored knowledge about the phonology of the L2 than the listener's prelexical phonetic processing capacity can support, and thus to mismatch between the level of detail required for accurate lexical mapping and the level of detail delivered by the prelexical processor. Experiments on spoken word recognition in L2 have shown that phonetic contrasts which are not reliably perceived are represented in the lexicon nonetheless. This lexical representation of contrast must be based on abstract knowledge, not on veridical representation of heard exemplars. New experiments confirm that provision of abstract knowledge (in the form of spelling) can induce lexical representation of a contrast which is not reliably perceived; but also that experience (in the form of frequency of occurrence) modulates the mismatch of phonetic and lexical processing. We conclude that a correct account of word recognition in L2 (as indeed in L1) requires consideration of both abstract and episodic information

English as common legal language: Its expansion and the effects on civil law and common law lawyers

English has become the common language in a globalized legal world. However, the far-reaching consequences of the domination of key areas of the international practice of law by legal English are not yet fully understood and analysed. This article is concerned with an analysis of the expansion of legal English in global legal practice. This area has also been described as the ‘Law Market’, i.e. the area of activities of global lawyers in coping with the regulatory and legal frameworks in which international businesses function.’2 Much of the existing research into legal English as a common language is concerned with the development of legal English as a vehicle language for non-native English speakers in the sense of a lingua franca.3 The discussion is divided into either promoting the use of legal English as global language4 or pointing to its limitations ‘in that its legal terminology is premised on the tools of the (minority) common law system’5. This article aims to assess the interface and dynamics between lawyers using legal English as a common language as well as foreign languages in their legal work. This includes lawyers trained in the common law and/or civil law. Its aim is to gain a better understanding of global lawyering and communication in law and business relationships and to develop strategies for the internationalization of legal education and training in the UK

Effects of first and second language on segmentation of non-native speech

Do Slovak-German bilinguals apply native Slovak phonological and lexical knowledge when segmenting German speech? When Slovaks listen to their native language, segmentation is impaired when fixed-stress cues are absent (Hanulíková, McQueen & Mitterer, 2010), and, following the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC; Norris, McQueen, Cutler & Butterfield, 1997), lexical candidates are disfavored if segmentation leads to vowelless residues, unless those residues are existing Slovak words. In the present study, fixed-stress cues on German target words were again absent. Nevertheless, in support of the PWC, both German and Slovak listeners recognized German words (e.g., Rose "rose") faster in syllable contexts (suckrose) than in single-consonant contexts (krose, trose). But only the Slovak listeners recognized, for example, Rose faster in krose than in trose (k is a Slovak word, t is not). It appears that non-native listeners can suppress native stress segmentation procedures, but that they suffer from prevailing interference from native lexical knowledge.peer-reviewe

English as common legal language: Its expansion and the effects on civil law and common law lawyers

English has become the common language in a globalized legal world. However, the far-reaching consequences of the domination of key areas of the international practice of law by legal English are not yet fully understood and analysed. This article is concerned with an analysis of the expansion of legal English in global legal practice. This area has also been described as the ‘Law Market’, i.e. the area of activities of global lawyers in coping with the regulatory and legal frameworks in which international businesses function.’2 Much of the existing research into legal English as a common language is concerned with the development of legal English as a vehicle language for non-native English speakers in the sense of a lingua franca.3 The discussion is divided into either promoting the use of legal English as global language4 or pointing to its limitations ‘in that its legal terminology is premised on the tools of the (minority) common law system’5. This article aims to assess the interface and dynamics between lawyers using legal English as a common language as well as foreign languages in their legal work. This includes lawyers trained in the common law and/or civil law. Its aim is to gain a better understanding of global lawyering and communication in law and business relationships and to develop strategies for the internationalization of legal education and training in the UK

In thrall to the vocabulary

Vocabularies contain hundreds of thousands of words built from only a handful of phonemes; longer words inevitably tend to contain shorter ones. Recognising speech thus requires distinguishing intended words from accidentally present ones. Acoustic information in speech is used wherever it contributes significantly to this process; but as this review shows, its contribution differs across languages, with the consequences of this including: identical and equivalently present information distinguishing the same phonemes being used in Polish but not in German, or in English but not in Italian; identical stress cues being used in Dutch but not in English; expectations about likely embedding patterns differing across English, French, Japanese

The perception of English front vowels by North Holland and Flemish listeners: acoustic similarity predicts and explains cross-linguistic and L2 perception

We investigated whether regional differences in the native language (L1) influence the perception of second language (L2) sounds. Many cross-language and L2 perception studies have assumed that the degree of acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds predicts cross-linguistic and L2 performance. The present study tests this assumption by examining the perception of the English contrast between /e{open}/ and /æ/ in native speakers of Dutch spoken in North Holland (the Netherlands) and in East- and West-Flanders (Belgium). A Linear Discriminant Analysis on acoustic data from both dialects showed that their differences in vowel production, as reported in and Adank, van Hout, and Van de Velde (2007), should influence the perception of the L2 vowels if listeners focus on the vowels' acoustic/auditory properties. Indeed, the results of categorization tasks with Dutch or English vowels as response options showed that the two listener groups differed as predicted by the discriminant analysis. Moreover, the results of the English categorization task revealed that both groups of Dutch listeners displayed the asymmetric pattern found in previous word recognition studies, i.e. English /æ/ was more frequently confused with English /e{open}/ than the reverse. This suggests a strong link between previous L2 word learning results and the present L2 perceptual assimilation patterns