95 research outputs found
Bilinguals Produce Pitch Range Differently in Their Two Languages to Convey Social Meaning.
We investigated whether expression of social meaning operationalized as individual gender identitity and politeness moderated pitch range in the two languages of female and male Japanese-English sequential bilinguals. The bilinguals were resident in either London (UK) or Tokyo (Japan) and read sentences to imagined addressees who varied in formality and sex. Results indicated significant differences in the pitch range of the two languages of the bilinguals, and this was confirmed for female and male bilinguals in London and Tokyo, with the language differences being more extreme in the London bilinguals than in the Tokyo bilinguals. Interestingly, self-attribution of masculine gender traits patterned with within-language variation in the English pitch level of the female bilinguals, whereas self-attribution of feminine gender traits patterned with within-language variation in the English pitch level of the male bilinguals. In addition, female and male bilinguals significantly varied their pitch range in Japanese, but not in English, as a function of the imagined addressees. Findings confirmed that bilinguals produce pitch range differently in their languages and suggest that expression of social meaning may affect pitch range of the two languages of female and male bilinguals differently
When your native language sounds foreign: A phonetic investigation into first language attrition
The research presented in this thesis comprises two experiments which investigated
whether the domain of phonetics can undergo first language attrition, or be lost, when a
second language is acquired in adulthood in a migrant context.
Experiment I investigated the native speech of 57 German migrants to Anglophone
Canada and the Dutch Netherlands. The bilingual migrants had grown up in a monolingual
German environment and moved abroad in adolescence or adulthood. Their semispontaneous
German speech was globally assessed for foreign accent by native German
speakers in Germany. It was revealed that 14 bilingual migrants were perceived to be
non-native speakers of German. Age of arrival to Canada or the Netherlands and contact
with one's native language played the most significant roles in determining whether the
German speech of the migrants was assessed to be foreign accented. Crucially, it was not
only the amount of contact, but also the type of contact which influenced foreign accented
native speech. Monolingual settings, in which little language mixing was assumed to occur,
were most conducive to maintaining non-foreign accented native German speech.
These findings prompted Experiment II, in which the speech of 10 German migrants
to Anglophone Canada was examined in fine phonetic detail. The participants in this
experiment had similarly grown up in a German speaking environment and migrated to
Canada in late adolescence or adulthood. Segmental and prosodic elements of speech,
which generally differ between German and English, were selected for acoustic analyses.
Given that each phonetic element was measured according to two dimensions, it was possible
to determine that in the lateral phoneme /l/, the frequency of F1 was more likely to
evidence first language attrition than the frequency of F2; and that in the prenuclear rise,
the alignment of the start of the rise was more likely to display first language attrition than
the alignment of the end. In addition to intrapersonal variation within the same phonetic
variable, interpersonal variation was observed. Two participants evidenced no first language
attrition, whilst one participant realised both dimensions of the lateral phoneme /l/
and prenuclear tonal alignment according to the Englishmonolingual norm in his German.
When extralinguistic variables were investigated, age of arrival (and neither amount nor
type of language contact) had a significant impact on determining first language attrition,
although this effect was only observed in the alignment of the prenuclear rise.
While the experiments revealed stability in the native speech of late consecutive bilingual
migrants, first language attrition in the domain of phonetics was observed at both the
level of perception and performance. Taken together, these findings challenge the traditional
concept of native speech by revealing that indeed native speakers diverge from the
norms of native (monolingual) speech.sub_shsunpub119_ethesesunpu
Global foreign accent in native German speech
The results of this study suggest that German
monolingual listeners were more likely to perceive
a global foreign accent in the native German
speech of consecutive bilinguals in Anglophone
Canada and the Dutch Netherlands than in the
speech of a control group of monolingual Germans
in Germany.
The results furthermore suggest that contact
with the native German language may have a more
significant effect on predicting global foreign
accent in native speech than age of arrival or
length of residence. More specifically, for both
English and Dutch second language groups, a
global foreign accent was more likely to be
perceived in immigrants who had less contact with
their native German language than in those who
had more contact, although this effect was more
evident in consecutive bilinguals who immigrated
after 22 years of age.casl[1] Field, A. 2000. Discovering Statistics Using SPSS.
London. Sage Publications.
[2] Flege, J. E. 1987. The production of new- and
similar- phones in a foreign language: Evidence for
the effect of equivalence classification. Journal of
Phonetics 15, 47 - 65.
[3] Flege, J. E., Fletcher, K. L. 1992. Talker and listener
effects on degree of perceived foreign accent.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91,
370-389.
[4] Jaspaert, K., Kroon, S. 1989. Social determinants of
language loss. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics
83/84, 75-98.
[5] Major, R.C. 1992. Losing English as a first
language. Modern Language Journal 76, 190-208.
[6] Moyer, A. 1999. Ultimate Attainment in L2
Phonology: The Critical Factors of Age, Motivation,
and Instruction. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition 21, 81-108.
[7] Piske, T., MacKay, I., Flege, J. E. 2001. Factors
Affecting Degree of Foreign Accent in an L2: A
Review. Journal of Phonetics 29, 191-215.
[8] Sancier, M. L., Fowler, C. A. 1997. Gestural drift in
a bilingual speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and
English. Journal of Phonetics 25, 421 - 436.
[9] Yamur, K. 1997. First language Attrition Among
Turkish Speakers in Sydney. Tilburg: Tilburg
University Press.pub50pu
Prospective longitudinal study on fear of cancer recurrence in patients newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer:Course, trajectories, and associated factors
Background: This study assessed the course of fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) in patients newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer (HNC), identified FCR trajectories and factors associated with FCR trajectories. Methods: Six hundred and seventeen HNC patients from the NET-QUBIC cohort study completed the Cancer Worry Scale-6 at diagnosis, 3 and 6 months post-treatment. FCR trajectories were identified using Latent Class Growth Analysis. Associations were explored between FCR trajectories and baseline demographic and medical variables, coping and self-efficacy. Results: Overall, FCR decreased slightly between baseline and 3 months post-treatment and remained stable up to 6 months. Two FCR trajectories were identified: “high stable” (n = 125) and “low declining” (n = 492). Patients with high stable FCR were younger, reported more negative adjustment, passive coping, and reassuring thoughts, and less avoidance. Conclusions: The majority of HNC patients have low declining FCR after diagnosis, but one in five patients experience persistent high FCR up to 6 months post-treatment
Epidemiology, Prehospital Characteristics and Outcomes of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in The Netherlands:The BRAIN-PROTECT Study
Objective: A thorough understanding of the epidemiology, patient characteristics, trauma mechanisms, and current outcomes among patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is important as it may inform potential strategies to improve prehospital emergency care. The aim of this study is to describe the prehospital epidemiology, characteristics and outcome of (suspected) severe TBI in the Netherlands. Methods: The BRAIN-PROTECT study is a prospective observational study on prehospital management of patients with severe TBI in the Netherlands. The study population comprised all consecutive patients with clinical suspicion of TBI and a prehospital GCS score ≤ 8, who were managed by one of the 4 Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS). Patients were followed-up in 9 trauma centers until 1 year after injury. Planned sub-analyses were performed for patients with “confirmed” and “isolated” TBI. Results: Data from 2,589 patients, of whom 2,117 (81.8%) were transferred to a participating trauma center, were analyzed. The incidence rate of prehospitally suspected and confirmed severe TBI were 3.2 (95% CI: 3.1;3.4) and 2.7 (95% CI: 2.5;2.8) per 100,000 inhabitants per year, respectively. Median patient age was 46 years, 58.4% were involved in traffic crashes, of which 37.4% were bicycle related. 47.6% presented with an initial GCS of 3. The median time from HEMS dispatch to hospital arrival was 54 minutes. The overall 30-day mortality was 39.0% (95% CI: 36.8;41.2). Conclusion: This article summarizes the prehospital epidemiology, characteristics and outcome of severe TBI in the Netherlands, and highlights areas in which primary prevention and prehospital care can be improved
Illusory vowels in Spanish-English sequential bilinguals: Evidence that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production
Spanish native speakers are known to pronounce onset /sC/ clusters in English with a prothetic vowel, as in esport for sport, due to their native language phonotactic constraints. We assessed whether accurate production of e.g. spi instead of espi was related to accurate perceptual discrimination of this contrast in second language (L2) speech of Spanish–English sequential bilinguals. A same–different discrimination task in stimulus pairs such as spi–espi assessed speech perception and a phonemic verbal fluency task elicited speech production. Logistic mixed model regressions revealed significant differences in accuracy between the bilinguals and the English monolinguals, although some bilinguals performed within the monolingual range. For the production task, but not for the perception task, bilinguals with more exposure to English and greater grammatical knowledge of English performed significantly more accurately than those with less exposure and lower grammatical knowledge. There was no significant correlation between production accuracy and perception accuracy. Through examining phonotactic constraints, these results expand a growing body of research into single sounds which suggests dissociations between L2 perception and production. In contrast to predictions made by L2 speech models, the findings indicate that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production, and instead are interpreted to indicate that the two capacities recruit different executive control mechanisms and are acquired – at least to a certain extent – independently in L2 acquisition.Peer Reviewe
Rapid whole exome sequencing in pregnancies to identify the underlying genetic cause in fetuses with congenital anomalies detected by ultrasound imaging
Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the diagnostic yield and clinical utility of trio-based rapid whole exome sequencing (rWES) in pregnancies of fetuses with a wide range of congenital anomalies detected by ultrasound imaging. Methods: In this observational study, we analyzed the first 54 cases referred to our laboratory for prenatal rWES to support clinical decision making, after the sonographic detection of fetal congenital anomalies. The most common identified congenital anomalies were skeletal dysplasia (n = 20), multiple major fetal congenital anomalies (n = 17) and intracerebral structural anomalies (n = 7). Results: A conclusive diagnosis was identified in 18 of the 54 cases (33%). Pathogenic variants were detected most often in fetuses with skeletal dysplasia (n = 11) followed by fetuses with multiple major fetal congenital anomalies (n = 4) and intracerebral structural anomalies (n = 3). A survey, completed by the physicians for 37 of 54 cases, indicated that the rWES results impacted clinical decision making in 68% of cases. Conclusions: These results suggest that rWES improves prenatal diagnosis of fetuses with congenital anomalies, and has an important impact on prenatal and peripartum parental and clinical decision making
IPP-rich milk protein hydrolysate lowers blood pressure in subjects with stage 1 hypertension, a randomized controlled trial
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Milk derived peptides have been identified as potential antihypertensive agents. The primary objective was to investigate the effectiveness of IPP-rich milk protein hydrolysates (MPH) on reducing blood pressure (BP) as well as to investigate safety parameters and tolerability. The secondary objective was to confirm or falsify ACE inhibition as the mechanism underlying BP reductions by measuring plasma renin activity and angiotensin I and II.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled, double blind, crossover study including 70 Caucasian subjects with prehypertension or stage 1 hypertension. Study treatments consisted of daily consumption of two capsules MPH1 (each containing 7.5 mg Isoleucine-Proline-Proline; IPP), MPH2 (each containing 6.6 mg Methionine-Alanine-Proline, 2.3 mg Leucine-Proline-Proline, 1.8 mg IPP), or placebo (containing cellulose) for 4 weeks.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In subjects with stage 1 hypertension, MPH1 lowered systolic BP by 3.8 mm Hg (P = 0.0080) and diastolic BP by 2.3 mm Hg (P = 0.0065) compared with placebo. In prehypertensive subjects, the differences in BP between MPH1 and placebo were not significant. MPH2 did not change BP significantly compared with placebo in stage I hypertensive or prehypertensive subjects. Intake of MPHs was well tolerated and safe. No treatment differences in hematology, clinical laboratory parameters or adverse effects were observed. No significant differences between MPHs and placebo were found in plasma renin activity, or angiotensin I and II.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MPH1, containing IPP and no minerals, exerts clinically relevant BP lowering effects in subjects with stage 1 hypertension. It may be included in lifestyle changes aiming to prevent or reduce high BP.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00471263</p
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