Comparing Phonetic Characteristics of African American and European American Speech.

African American English (AAE) has been studied more heavily, by far, than any other forms of American English. Nevertheless, much of the emphasis has been placed on morphosyntactic variants and its phonetic characteristics are poorly known. We examined several variables to see how AAE differs phonetically from European American English (EAE) varieties in North Carolina. Forty interviews were drawn from the North Carolina Language and Life Project corpus at North Carolina State University from three North Carolina counties: Hyde, Robeson, and Warren. Speakers included ten older and ten younger African Americans and ten older and ten younger European Americans, balanced among the three counties and by sex. The interviews were all conversational. Tokens were measured with the Praat software using methods appropriate to the particular variable

The Prosodic Rhythm of Two Varieties of Native American English

Varieties of Native American English, especially those spoken by groups east of the Mississippi River, have been relatively underrepresented in the description of ethnolinguistic variation in American English, and almost completely disregarded in terms of prosody, arguably one of one of the most striking features of some ethnolinguistic varieties. This paper examines one aspect of prosody, rhythm, using the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) as applied previously to British and Singapore English (Low, Grabe, & Nolan 2001), African American and Southern English (Thomas & Carter 2006), and Hispanic English (Carter 2005). PVI, which normalizes for overall speaking rate, compares adjacent syllables, where a greater difference corresponds with a more stress-timed language and a smaller difference corresponds with a more syllable-timed language. The analysis focuses on Eastern Cherokee English as spoken in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Lumbee English as spoken in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina. Though both groups are primarily rural, their backgrounds vary. The Eastern Cherokee are a federally recognized tribe with knowledge of their ancestral language but small numbers (about 6,000). They are the only ethnic minority of note in their region surrounded by European Americans. The Lumbee, on the other hand, have much larger numbers (over 46,000), making them approximately equal in number to their African American and European American cohorts; they are also the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. The Lumbee have no current ancestral language, as they are most likely the result of an ethnogenic mix of several tribes decimated by disease and war after the arrival of Europeans. In fact, they were discovered in the 1730s speaking English. They are federally recognized without entitlements, placing them in an indeterminate position with respect to their status. Previous studies of these two groups (Anderson 1999, Coggshall 2006, Schilling-Estes 2000, Wolfram & Dannenberg 1999) have shown that, while the Eastern Cherokee differ little from their non-Indian cohorts in vowel quality and syntax, the Lumbee do differ from their non-Indian cohorts. The rhythm data, however, show a different pattern. Eastern Cherokee English is much more syllable-timed than European Americans, but Lumbee English does not differ from either their European or African American cohorts\u27 English, though there is a slight shift towards more syllable-timing in the younger speakers. The pattern among the Eastern Cherokee is most likely the result of a substrate influence from Cherokee passed down to the monolingual English generations. On the other hand, have not had a native speaker of the Lumbee language or languages for many generations and, indeed, we do not know the nature of the prosodic structure of such languages. Thus, the prosodic rhythm of Lumbee English is unsurprising. This initial inquiry into suprasegmental aspects of varieties of Native American English suggests that prosodic rhythm may be a locus of a pan-Native American English ethnolinguistic variety, much like the glottal stop as proposed by Rowicka (2005). The detailed comparison of these varieties further offers an enhanced understanding of issues such as substrate influence and dialect contact

Leaders in the Tumult: Schooling Innovations and New Perspectives From a Year Interrupted

This brief is the first of three briefs emerging from our conversations with members of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). This brief presents the principals' perspectives on the changes that their schools experienced and on the innovations that they led in their schools during 2020–2021. The second brief provides principals' perspectives on changes to their work, priorities, and profession; and the third brief provides principals' perspectives on policies that can advance student learning and heal schools and communities

Mucosal Damage and Neutropenia Are Required for Candida albicans Dissemination

Candida albicans fungemia in cancer patients is thought to develop from initial gastrointestinal (GI) colonization with subsequent translocation into the bloodstream after administration of chemotherapy. It is unclear what components of the innate immune system are necessary for preventing C. albicans dissemination from the GI tract, but we have hypothesized that both neutropenia and GI mucosal damage are critical for allowing widespread invasive C. albicans disease. We investigated these parameters in a mouse model of C. albicans GI colonization that led to systemic spread after administration of immunosuppression and mucosal damage. After depleting resident GI intestinal flora with antibiotic treatment and achieving stable GI colonization levels of C. albicans, it was determined that systemic chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide led to 100% mortality, whereas selective neutrophil depletion, macrophage depletion, lymphopenia or GI mucosal disruption alone resulted in no mortality. Selective neutrophil depletion combined with GI mucosal disruption led to disseminated fungal infection and 100% mortality ensued. GI translocation and dissemination by C. albicans was also dependent on the organism's ability to transform from the yeast to the hyphal form. This mouse model of GI colonization and fungemia is useful for studying factors of innate host immunity needed to prevent invasive C. albicans disease as well as identifying virulence factors that are necessary for fungal GI colonization and dissemination. The model may also prove valuable for evaluating therapies to control C. albicans infections

Utility of In Vivo Transcription Profiling for Identifying Pseudomonas aeruginosa Genes Needed for Gastrointestinal Colonization and Dissemination

Microarray analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa mRNA transcripts expressed in vivo during animal infection has not been previously used to investigate potential virulence factors needed in this setting. We compared mRNA expression in bacterial cells recovered from the gastrointestinal (GI) tracts of P. aeruginosa-colonized mice to that of P. aeruginosa in the drinking water used to colonize the mice. Genes associated with biofilm formation and type III secretion (T3SS) had markedly increased expression in the GI tract. A non-redundant transposon library in P. aeruginosa strain PA14 was used to test mutants in genes identified as having increased transcription during in vivo colonization. All of the Tn-library mutants in biofilm-associated genes had an attenuated ability to form biofilms in vitro, but there were no significant differences in GI colonization and dissemination between these mutants and WT P. aeruginosa PA14. To evaluate T3SS factors, we tested GI colonization and neutropenia-induced dissemination of both deletional (PAO1 and PAK) and insertional (PA14) mutants in four genes in the P. aeruginosa T3SS, exoS or exoU, exoT, and popB. There were no significant differences in GI colonization among these mutant strains and their WT counterparts, whereas rates of survival following dissemination were significantly decreased in mice infected by the T3SS mutant strains. However, there was a variable, strain-dependent effect on overall survival between parental and T3SS mutants. Thus, increased transcription of genes during in vivo murine GI colonization is not predictive of an essential role for the gene product in either colonization or overall survival following induction of neutropenia