Joint morphological-lexical language modeling for processing morphologically rich languages with application to dialectal Arabic

Language modeling for an inflected language such as Arabic poses new challenges for speech recognition and machine translation due to its rich morphology. Rich morphology results in large increases in out-of-vocabulary (OOV) rate and poor language model parameter estimation in the absence of large quantities of data. In this study, we present a joint morphological-lexical language model (JMLLM) that takes advantage of Arabic morphology. JMLLM combines morphological segments with the underlying lexical items and additional available information sources with regards to morphological segments and lexical items in a single joint model. Joint representation and modeling of morphological and lexical items reduces the OOV rate and provides smooth probability estimates while keeping the predictive power of whole words. Speech recognition and machine translation experiments in dialectal-Arabic show improvements over word and morpheme based trigram language models. We also show that as the tightness of integration between different information sources increases, both speech recognition and machine translation performances improve

How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

Background Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. Aims It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. Methods & Procedures Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. Outcomes & Results Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were significantly inversely related to the amount of exposure to English. Conclusions & Implications Typically developing 2;6-year-olds who are bilingual in English and an additional language and who hear English 60% of the time or more, perform equivalently to their typically developing monolingual peers

Analyzing Use of Thanks to You: Insights for Language Teaching and Assessment in Second and Foreign Language Contexts

This investigation of thanks to you in British and American usage was precipitated by a situation at an American university, in which a native Arabic speaker said thanks to you in isolation, making his intended meaning unclear. The study analyzes use of thanks to you in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus to gain insights for English language instruction /assessment in the American context, as well as English-as-a-lingua-franca contexts where the majority of speakers are not native speakers of English or are speakers of different varieties of English but where American or British English are for educational purposes the standard varieties. Analysis of the two corpora revealed three functions for thanks to you common to British and American usage: expressing gratitude, communicating "because of you" positively, and communicating "because of you" negatively (as in sarcasm). A fourth use of thanks to you, thanking journalists/guests for being on news programs/talk shows, occurred in the American corpus only. Analysis indicates that felicitous use of thanks to you for each of these meanings depends on the presence of a range of factors, both linguistic and material, in the context of utterance

PROBLEMATYKA OGÓLNA I LOKALNA W LINGWISTYCE SĄDOWEJ NA PRZYKŁADZIE JĘZYKA ARABSKIEGO

This paper is concerned with four main aspects or parts of forensic linguistics: Forensic linguistics in speech mode and in writing, the special status of Arabic, linguistic problems and possibilities of translation for forensics, and Language Analysis for Determination of Origin (LADO). After presenting these issues in the introduction, we describe the language situation of Arabic, mainly in Israel, in the context of these four issues. The discussion is based on the literature concerning problems of translation and LADO in courts of justice in various countries, including Israel. We consider LADO as a developing field of forensic linguistics, and demonstrate by examples some problems that may rise from speech recordings of Arabic speaking asylum seekers. Based on this survey, we point out in the conclusion some research needs of general forensic linguistics and Arabic related forensic linguistics.Artykuł koncentruje się na czterech aspektach lingwistyki sądowej: lingwistyka sądowa jako sposób formułowania treści mówionych i pisanych, szczególny status języka arabskiego, problemy lingwistyczne i możliwości tłumaczenia w sądach, zastosowanie analizy językowej do ustalenia pochodzenia. Po przedstawieniu tych kwestii opisana zostanie w ich kontekście sytuacja języka arabskiego, głównie w Izraelu

Investment in and use of English: a case study of Egyptian Twitter users

The rise of popularity in Social Network Platforms has led language researchers to explore the effectiveness of Social Network Sites (SNS) in providing learners with opportunities for language practice and learning. In the literature, there has been a consensus towards the usefulness of SNS tools in language learning and practice (Reinhardt, 2019). On the other hand, coined in the 90s by Bonny Norton, investment has been a growing concept in SLA. Investment in L2 learning has been demonstrated through qualitative studies exploring the intersection of socio-economic factors and language learning in different contexts. To refine the notion of investment to better accommodate the constant changes of globalization and digital platforms, Darvin and Norton (2015) developed a model of investment to encompass ideology, capital, and identity, emphasizing the role of these aspects in affording learners with ways to position themselves in their communities. While most of the literature explores investment in L2 learning in ESL contexts, studies on investment in EFL contexts are limited. The present qualitative study explores four Egyptian Twitter users’ use of English to better position themselves and express their identities on Twitter. Approximately 3000 tweets are gathered from Twitter and coded in relation to the topics they tweet about and the language they tweet in. After coding the tweets, interviews were conducted with the participants to further triangulate the data exploring their experiences in relation to the topics they tweet about and the languages they tweet in. Results show that while Arabic is their native language, using English has afforded them a different identity, one that offers opportunities for self-expression and acceptance of change and other cultures. The implication of this study highlights how the L2 can afford learners opportunities to position themselves inside and outside the language classroom, which may affect their investment in their L2

Uporaba strategij odzivanja na pohvale iranskih ucencev anglescine: raziskovanje sogovornikove relativne moci polozaja in spola

This article reports on a study that set out to investigate how Iranian EFL learners respond to compliments in English. The data were collected using a discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of a variety of situations that required the participants, 26 EFL learners (13 males and 13 females) to respond to compliments directed at them. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. To this end, the participants’ responses were coded according to a coding scheme adopted from Yu (2004) which identified six compliment response strategies (CRSs). The findings indicated that, regardless of or concerning gender and power (–P and =P), the first three most frequent CR strategies included “Acceptance”, “Combination” and “Amendment”. These findings were then analyzed in light of previous similar studies that revealed that the participants had followed their first cultural norms not only in using the strategies mentioned above but also in employing very infrequently such strategies as “Face Relationship”, “No acknowledgment”, and “Non-acceptance”. As regards the role of gender, a Chi-square test was run which showed that males and females differed significantly in their use of CRSs. Furthermore, males used more CR strategies compared to females. The qualitative analysis of the semantic formulas of the CR strategies also revealed that, by accepting a compliment, Iranian EFL learners sought agreement and consequently relied on positive politeness to foster rapport and solidarity. (DIPF/Orig.