Trick or treat? Adaptation to Italian-accented English speech by native English, Italian, and Dutch listeners

English is spoken worldwide by both native (L1) and nonnative (L2) speakers. It is therefore imperative to establish how easily L1 and L2 speakers understand each other. We know that L1 listeners adapt to foreign-accented speech very rapidly (Clarke & Garrett, 2004), and L2 listeners find L2 speakers (from matched and mismatched L1 backgrounds) as intelligible as native speakers (Bent & Bradlow, 2003). But foreign-accented speech can deviate widely from L1 pronunciation norms, for example when adult L2 learners experience difficulties in producing L2 phonemes that are not part of their native repertoire (Strange, 1995). For instance, Italian L2 learners of English often lengthen the lax English vowel /I/, making it sound more like the tense vowel /i/ (Flege et al., 1999). This blurs the distinction between words such as bin and bean. Unless listeners are able to adapt to this kind of pronunciation variance, it would hinder word recognition by both L1 and L2 listeners (e.g., /bin/ could mean either bin or bean). In this study we investigate whether Italian-accented English interferes with on-line word recognition for native English listeners and for nonnative English listeners, both those where the L1 matches the speaker accent (i.e., Italian listeners) and those with an L1 mismatch (i.e., Dutch listeners). Second, we test whether there is perceptual adaptation to the Italian-accented speech during the experiment in each of the three listener groups. Participants in all groups took part in the same cross-modal priming experiment. They heard spoken primes and made lexical decisions to printed targets, presented at the acoustic offset of the prime. The primes, spoken by a native Italian, consisted of 80 English words, half with /I/ in their standard pronunciation but mispronounced with an /i/ (e.g., trick spoken as treek), and half with /i/ in their standard pronunciation and pronounced correctly (e.g., treat). These words also appeared as targets, following either a related prime (which was either identical, e.g., treat-treat, or mispronounced, e.g., treek-trick) or an unrelated prime. All three listener groups showed identity priming (i.e., faster decisions to treat after hearing treat than after an unrelated prime), both overall and in each of the two halves of the experiment. In addition, the Italian listeners showed mispronunciation priming (i.e., faster decisions to trick after hearing treek than after an unrelated prime) in both halves of the experiment, while the English and Dutch listeners showed mispronunciation priming only in the second half of the experiment. These results suggest that Italian listeners, prior to the experiment, have learned to deal with Italian-accented English, and that English and Dutch listeners, during the experiment, can rapidly adapt to Italian-accented English. For listeners already familiar with a particular accent (e.g., through their own pronunciation), it appears that they have already learned how to interpret words with mispronounced vowels. Listeners who are less familiar with a foreign accent can quickly adapt to the way a particular speaker with that accent talks, even if that speaker is not talking in the listeners’ native language

A Die-Hard Aristocracy: Competitive Balance in Italian Soccer, 1929-2009

We present two measures of competitive balance in professional soccer, one based on the historical rankings of the club and one based on the points in the season. We illustrate their characteristics and calculate them for the Italian first division (Serie A) since 1929 until 2009. Using the cumulated rankings gained by the 60 teams which have taken part to Serie A we show that Italian soccer is characterized by a self-reinforcing mechanism of dominance that makes up a very strong aristocracy composed of at most 10 teams. We also show that increasing the number of promoted clubs has an innovative impact. Our results imply that each season is fiercely fought, and it might be even more so with a smaller number of clubs, given an appropriate turnover of promoted clubs. However, this policy would imply a dilemma between the desire to foster competitive balance in the season versus reducing the number of matches –a source of revenue. We comment upon one feature of the new sharing rule on television revenues, while awaiting for more extensive empirical research. Our results cast a doubt on the weight given to historical competitive balance in the sharing rule effective from season 2010-11. The relevance given to the club’s history does not contrast the aristocracy; hence, giving seasonal competitive balance more space inside the sharing rule could hamper the dominance of bigger clubs

You Can Even Walk Alone: Stadium Attendance and Professional Soccer Clubs’ Social Role

The purpose of the paper is to suggest a new perspective on the social role in the community for Italian professional soccer clubs. Our findings loosen the knot between hooligans and clubs and could have important consequences on the club’s corporate social responsibility and marketing strategies. After investigating the impact of stadium attendance on team performance for Serie A and B in seasons 2004/05 through 2006/07, we conclude that crowd plays no role in the winning performance of soccer teams at home. Our proposal consists of two policies hinting at a reconciliation between social and educational role of the sport with the club’s commercial interests. The first policy is to establish an umbrella association whose membership is granted only to fans with a clear history as regards to crimes committed inside the arena and in the surrounding area, therefore hooligans are excluded. The umbrella association is administered by the club and embeds every supporters’ associations. The second policy uses ticket price fixing to discriminate against bad behaviour, excluding violent supporters from the stadium. Very high prices are imposed to non-member fans (presumably, all the bad guys) and to wealthy people requesting more comfort and additional services. Members in the umbrella association are allowed high discounts on the tickets as an incentive receive for being scrutinized. Popular prices or free tickets can be offered to other social relevant stakeholders such as grassroots, youngsters and for social policies aimed at inclusion. Key words: professional team sports; home advantage; 12th man; ticket pricing fixing strategies; corporate social responsibility; panel dat

Lexical learning and dysgraphia in a group of adults with developmental dyslexia

We investigated the ability to learn new words in a group of 22 adults with developmental dyslexia/dysgraphia and the relationship between their learning and spelling problems. We identified a deficit that affected the ability to learn both spoken and written new words (lexical learning deficit). There were no comparable problems in learning other kinds of representations (lexical/semantic and visual) and the deficit could not be explained in terms of more traditional phonological deficits associated with dyslexia (phonological awareness, phonological STM). Written new word learning accounted for further variance in the severity of the dysgraphia after phonological abilities had been partialled out. We suggest that lexical learning may be an independent ability needed to create lexical/formal representations from a series of independent units. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. © 2005 Psychology Press Ltd

Treack or trit: Adaptation to genuine and arbitrary foreign accents by monolingual and bilingual listeners

Two cross-modal priming experiments examined two questions about word recognition in foreign-accented speech: Does accent adaptation occur only for genuine accents markers, and does adaptation depend on language experience? We compared recognition of words spoken with canonical, genuinely-accented and arbitrarily-accented vowels. In Experiment 1, an Italian speaker pronounced vowels in English prime words canonically, or by lengthening /ɪ/ as in a genuine Italian accent (*/tri:k/ for trick), or by arbitrarily shortening /i:/ (*/trɪt/ for treat). Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words showed different priming effects in three listener groups. Monolingual native English listeners recognized variants with lengthened but not shortened vowels. Bilingual nonnative Italian-English listeners, who could not reliably distinguish vowel length, recognized both variants. Bilingual nonnative Dutch-English listeners also recognized both variants. In Experiment 2, bilingual Dutch-English listeners recognized Dutch words with genuinely- and arbitrarily-accented vowels (spoken by a native Italian with lengthened and shortened vowels respectively), but recognized words with canonical vowels more easily than words with accented vowels. These results suggest that adaptation to genuine accent markers arises for monolingual and bilingual listeners alike and can occur in native and nonnative languages, but that bilinguals can adapt to arbitrary accent markers better than monolinguals

Sulle orme del consumatore affinity analysis e knowledge visualization per il processo decisionale

L\u2019articolo analizza i reali comportamenti di acquisto dell\u2019acquirente all\u2019interno del punto vendita e individua i pattern latenti pi\uf9 significativi attraverso un\u2019analisi di affinit\ue0 di 128.364 scontrini estratti da un dataset di 715.662 transazioni effettuate in un anno. Lo studio individua le strutture associative pi\uf9 ricorrenti relativamente alla singola merceologia. Attraverso la tecnica della Market Basket Analysis \ue8 stato possibile individuare le categorie merceologiche che creano \u201cpoli d\u2019attrazione\u201d sul punto vendita stimolando acquisti di altre categorie. In particolar modo, applicando le regole associative sul punto vendita \ue8 stato possibile identificare le \u201caree calde\u201d e le \u201caree fredde\u201d. L\u2019articolo evidenzia quindi alcune riflessioni sulle strategie che possono adottare gli store manager

Report 2014 sull'andamento dell'economia provinciale

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Electricity demand forecasting for rural communities in developing countries: Calibrating a stochastic model for the Bolivian case

The world crusade to close the electrification gap is coming to an end in most regions of the world. In recent years the research in the area has concentrated on the development of planning methods to minimise the cost of implementation. Although successful, the lack of focus on the complex dynamics that govern electricity demand lead to over/under-sizing of technical solutions resulting in waste of resources and missed developing opportunities. In this sense, this paper aims to propose an electricity demand model for rural communities in Bolivia, based on an open-source bottom-up stochastic tool for load profile computation. The “energy sufficiency” concept is used to ensure that people’s basic needs for energy are met in all the analysed cases. Information from various sources, such as on-site surveys, databases and national reports were used to characterise the main geographical areas in Bolivia and the relative specific categories of users. Specific load curves generated with the model were used as inputs in a micro-grid sizing tool and the results were compared with an approach using a demand analysis in less detail. Main results show that the model obtained is capable of generating stochastic demand curves for single or multiple rural communities according to contextual particularities. Notably, the geographic location and the socioeconomic characteristics have a significant impact in the peak loads and the total demand. Considering small industries as an income generating activity can increase in the peak load by about 45%, consequently, there is an economic impact when investing in the solution.Tailored energy system models for energy planning in Bolivia7. Affordable and clean energ

The Role of Financial and Managerial Variables on the Policy Towards Home-Grown Players in English Soccer

The training and development of young players both as athletes and individuals is one of the task soccer governing bodies assign to professional soccer team in order to fully exploit the social aspects of sport activities. Recently UEFA imposed new rules to improve the use of home-grown players. We analyze a panel data of English Premier and Championship league clubs for the seasons 2001-02 to 2005-06 in order to understand what clubs characteristics lead to the employment of young players in the team during official matches. Sport commercialization and the employment of star players have been considered harmful to this role. Our findings suggest that, counter-intuitively, economic and commercial aspects of clubs are not important for the development of home-grown players, for example well paid players do not crowd-out home-growns. Managerial policies play a significant role. Major clubs in the Premier league deploy home-grown less often; leasing them to the Championship league could be a solution. Attendance favors home-grown players, which hints at a more active communication policy for the clubs in order to nurture the link with the local community. These results suggest social responsible strategies for Premier League clubs in order to improve their perceived social role and to avoid invasive interventions from national and international governing bodies in their managerial decisions on the clubs