Global accent in the portuguese speech of heritage returnees

The present study examined whether heritage speakers (HSs) of European Portuguese (EP) who were born or moved to a German-speaking country before the age of eight years were perceived as native speakers of EP. In particular, this study intended to determine whether a change of linguistic environment, length of residence in a migrant context, length of residence in the country of origin before migration and after remigration, and age at return could predict the degree of (non)native accent in the heritage language. Thirty native Portuguese speakers assessed the global accent of 20 Portuguese-German bilinguals, five Portuguese monolinguals and five highly proficient German speakers of Portuguese as a second language (L2). The group of HSs comprised 17 speakers who returned to Portugal. The results revealed that listeners perceived a strong global foreign accent in the speech of the L2 learners, while the monolingual Portuguese speakers were clearly perceived as being native speakers of EP. The HSs’ ratings were considerably closer to the monolingual average ratings, but they showed more variation, indicating that their accent may bear non-native traces. Further analyses showed that the age at which the HSs emigrated was the only significant predictor, while length of residence in the host country and in Portugal were less predictive.FC

Perceptual categorization of English vowels by native European Portuguese speakers

This study reports the results of a perceptual assimilation task (PAT) used to assess the degree of perceived cross-language (dis)similarity between the vowel inventories of European Portuguese (L1) and American English (L2) and, thus, predict difficulty in the perception and production of non-native vowels. Thirty-four native European Portuguese speakers completed a PAT, in which they mapped both L2 English and L1 Portuguese vowels to native vowel categories and rated them for goodness-of-fit to L1 vowels. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of cross-language perception and L2 speech learning (SLM, Flege, 1995, & PAM-L2, Best & Tyler, 2007). --- Original in English

Estudo acústico de /a/ acentuado na fala bracarense

Linguistic studies (Barbosa, 1965 and 1994; Gonçalves, 2008; Martinet, 1985) suggest that the spoken speech in the north of mainland Portugal shows a particular phonetic variation characterized by the dominance of the variant [a] in all contexts in which the vowel occurs in stressed and open syllable. In view of this theoretical assumption, this paper reports the results of an acoustic study aimed at examining the phonetic realizations of vowel /a/ and identify which of the variants ([a] or [ɐ]) characterizes the speech of the city of Braga. To test the hypothesis on the predominant occurrence of the open vowel ([a]) in this city, the realizations of the target vowel (/a/) adjacent to nasal and oral consonants were acoustically analyzed in terms of the spectral quality by measuring the frequencies of the first two formants (F1 and F2). Furthermore, given that level of education is likely to be a determining factor in the phonetic realization of vowel /a/ (Rodrigues, 2003; Votre, 2004), we analyzed the speech production of two groups of informants with different levels of education (basic education and higher education). Our results show that in Braga’s speech the production of vowel [a] tends to occur in all studied contexts and that level of education had no effect on the productions of /a/ since the two groups of informants with different levels of schooling tended to show similar formant configurations in the production of [a] and [ɐ]. Finally, our results suggest that the phonetic variant that characterizes Braga’s speech is in fact the open vowel [a]

Comparing the outcomes of early and late acquisition of european portuguese: an analysis of morpho-syntactic and phonetic performance

The present paper compares the linguistic competence of German-Portuguese bilinguals with upper-intermediate German L2 learners (L2ers) of EP (European Portuguese) and with monolingual Portuguese speakers. The bilingual speakers are heritage speakers (HSs), who were raised bilingually with EP as the minority language and German as the majority language. The aim of our comparison is to verify in which way different input sources and maturational effects shape the speakers’ linguistic knowledge. The findings of two studies, one focused on the morpho-syntactic knowledge of clitics and the other on global accent, corroborate the assumption that L2ers and HSs behave differently, despite superficial similarities observed in the morpho-syntactic study. In contrast to that of the L2ers’, the accent of the HSs is perceived as being native-like, whereas their morpho-syntactic competence is mainly shaped by their dominant exposure to colloquial Portuguese and reduced contact with formal registers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interacção conversacional do Talk Show televisivo: institucionalidade e género nas entrevistas de Late Night with Conan O'Brien e The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Dissertação de mestrado em Língua, Literatura e Cultura InglesasO presente trabalho, que se inscreve nas áreas de investigação da Análise Conversacional e da Sociolinguística, pretende investigar as estratégias discursivas e linguísticas que regem a organização da interacção conversacional das entrevistas dos talk shows televisivos. Partindo de um corpus de análise constituído por transcrições de vinte e quatro entrevistas dos talk shows nocturnos Late Night with Conan O’Brien e The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, transmitidos pelo canal norte-americano NBC entre Setembro de 2008 e Janeiro de 2009, pretende-se apresentar as especificidades desta interacção conversacional de natureza híbrida, através de uma análise comparativa de duas variáveis. Em primeiro lugar, as manifestações de institucionalidade em contraponto com as características particulares de uma interacção conversacional não-institucional. Em segundo lugar, as representações de género subjacentes ao discurso e ao comportamento interaccional dos intervenientes nas entrevistas em foco. Propomo-nos avaliar até que ponto estas duas dimensões de análise se reflectem numa heterogeneidade de aspectos específicos, quer das conversas espontâneas, quer das interacções conversacionais preparadas, nomeadamente nos padrões sequenciais da entrevista, nos mecanismos do sistema de alternância de vez, na gestão de tópico, na construção de narrativas, na escolha lexical e no posicionamento dos participantes na interacção comunicativa.This thesis, developed within the Conversational Analysis and Sociolinguistics frameworks, aims to investigate the discursive and linguistic strategies involved in the organization of the conversational interaction underlying the TV talk show interview. By focusing on a corpus of analysis which includes twenty-four interviews taken from two late night talk shows, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien, broadcast by the North-American channel NBC between September 2008 and January 2009, this study is intended to capture the defining features of this hybrid conversational interaction by comparing two variables. The first one is the institutional vs. the noninstitutional character of the conversational interaction. The second variable is the genderbased differences latent in the discourse and interactional behaviour of the interview participants. It is expected that the semi-institutional and gender-oriented nature of the talk of these interviews is displayed in the heterogeneity of the distinguishing features pertaining to both casual and monitored conversation in terms of sequence organization of the interview, turn-taking system, topic control, narrative construction, lexical choice and participants footing

Cross-language perception and production of English vowels by Portuguese learners: the effects of perceptual training

Doctoral Dissertation in Language Sciences Specialization in English LinguisticsSeveral studies have demonstrated that second/foreign language (L2/FL) speech learning is a challenge to late learners (i.e., adolescents or adults) in terms of perception and production of certain non-native phonemic and phonetic contrasts (Moyer, 2013). The interaction of different factors might explain learners’ difficulties, namely age of onset of learning (AOL), amount of native (L1) and non-native language (NNL) use over time, quantity and quality of NNL input, and the interference from the L1 phonological system (Piske, 2007). The Speech Learning Model (SLM), proposed by Flege (1995), hypothesizes that difficulties in perceiving and, consequently, in producing non-native contrasts are due to the (dis)similarities between the L1 and the NNL phonological systems. The L1 sound system is likely to hinder the formation of new non-native (L2/FL) phonological categories. However, a considerable number of cross-language studies has revealed that phonological learning is attainable for late learners, and their abilities in perceiving and producing segmental and suprasegmental non-native contrasts can improve, since the mechanisms used in the acquisition of the L1 sound system remain intact over the lifespan and can be applied to L2/FL learning (Flege, 1995). Experimental studies that investigated the effects of perceptual training on non-native speech sound perception and production reported its success not only in the modification of adult learners’ perceptual patterns, but also in the improvement of their pronunciation accuracy, confirming, thereby, the plasticity of L2/FL learners’ mature perceptual system (e.g., Aliaga-Garcia, 2013; Pereira & Hazan, 2013; Wang, 2008; Wang et al., 2003). Difficulties in the perception of non-native vowel contrasts have been widely described as a significant part of the problems learners have in L2/FL phonological acquisition/learning (Strange, 2007). Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of perceptual training on the learning of three English contrasts (/i/-/ɪ/; /ɛ/-/æ/; /u/-/ʊ/) by a group of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. This set of vowel contrasts was selected due to reported difficulties European Portuguese native speakers have in perceiving and producing them (Flege, 1994, as cited in Flege, 1995; Rato et al., 2013). The English phonological categories /ɪ/, /æ/ and /ʊ/ tend to be assimilated to the Portuguese vowel sounds /i/, /ɛ/ and /u/, respectively, and no distinction between the two vowels of each pair is made, due to their acoustic and articulatory proximity. Specifically, this study investigated (i) whether a high variability perceptual training, which included stimuli with different phonemic contexts produced by multiple native talkers, had a positive effect on the perception of the English target segments; (ii) if transfer of improvement to oral production was observed; (iii) whether perceptual learning generalized to identification of new words produced by novel talkers; and (iv) if long-term training effects remained. The participants’ perception was assessed three times with an identification test designed with natural stimuli: (1) before the auditory training – pretest; (2) immediately after the training was over – posttest; and (3) two months later – delayed posttest. The perceptual training program consisted of five sessions divided into two blocks, which included discrimination tasks and identification sequences followed by immediate feedback. Production was tested simultaneously in the three phases by means of a sentence-reading task with the target vowel segments. The results show that the Portuguese learners’ performance in the identification of the English vowels improved significantly, and perceptual gains were retained two months after completion of the training sessions. Moreover, the results of the generalization test indicate that there was robust learning of the two front vowel pairs. Acoustic analyses of spoken data revealed that phonological learning transferred to production. In sum, these results support the claim that perceptual learning can occur in a formal non-naturalistic environment within a short period of time and corroborate previous findings on the malleability of L2/FL adult learners’ perceptual systems.Vários estudos têm demonstrado que, na aprendizagem de uma língua não materna (LNM), a perceção e a produção de determinados contrastes fonológicos e fonéticos não nativos são um desafio para aprendentes tardios (adolescentes ou adultos) (Moyer, 2013). Diversos fatores podem explicar essas dificuldades, tais como a idade do início da aprendizagem, a frequência de uso, a quantidade e a qualidade de exposição à LNM e a influência do sistema fonológico da língua materna (L1) (Piske, 2007). O Speech Learning Model (SLM), desenvolvido por Flege (1995), explica que as dificuldades percetivas e, consequentemente, produtivas se devem ao facto de o sistema de sons linguísticos da L1 impedir a formação de novas categorias fonológicas para a segunda língua ou língua estrangeira (L2/LE). No entanto, um número considerável de estudos tem revelado que aprendentes tardios podem aprender a perceber e a produzir contrastes segmentais e suprassegmentais não nativos, uma vez que os mecanismos usados para aprender o sistema de sons da L1 são ativados na aprendizagem de uma LNM e permanecem intactos durante toda a vida (Flege, 1995). Estes estudos empíricos, que investigaram os efeitos do treino percetivo na perceção e produção de sons não nativos, reportaram a sua eficácia não somente na modificação de padrões percetivos, mas também na melhoria da capacidade produtiva dos mesmos, confirmando assim a plasticidade do sistema percetivo dos aprendentes de LNMs (por exemplo, Aliaga- Garcia, 2013; Pereira & Hazan, 2013; Wang, 2008; Wang et al., 2003). Os resultados de extensa investigação indicam que as dificuldades na perceção de contrastes vocálicos não nativos são uma parte significativa dos problemas que os aprendentes revelam na aquisição/aprendizagem fonológica de uma L2/LE (Strange, 2007). Portanto, no presente estudo, investigaram-se os efeitos do treino percetivo na aprendizagem de três contrastes vocálicos da língua inglesa (/i/-/ɪ/; /ɛ/-/æ/; /u/-/ʊ/) por um grupo de aprendentes de inglês como LE. Estes três contrastes foram escolhidos devido às dificuldades percetivas e produtivas que falantes nativos de português europeu revelam na sua aprendizagem (Flege, 1994, citado em Flege, 1995; Rato et al., 2013). As categorias fonológicas /ɪ/, /æ/ e /ʊ/ da L2/LE tendem a ser assimiladas como sons da L1, /i/, /ɛ/ e /u/, respetivamente, não se verificando qualquer distinção entre as vogais dos três contrastes, devido à sua proximidade acústica e articulatória. Especificamente, pretendeu-se (i) observar o efeito de um treino percetivo de alta variabilidade, que incluiu estímulos produzidos por vários locutores nativos em diferentes contextos fonológicos, na melhoria da capacidade percetiva dos segmentos-alvo; (ii) averiguar a transferência da melhoria para a produção oral; (iii) verificar a generalização para novos contextos e novos falantes; e (iv) analisar os efeitos do treino a longo prazo. A perceção dos participantes foi testada três vezes com uma tarefa auditiva de identificação com estímulos naturais: (1) antes do treino – pré-teste; (2) imediatamente depois do treino – pós-teste; e (3) dois meses mais tarde – teste de retenção. O programa de treino consistiu em cinco sessões, divididas em dois blocos, que incluíram tarefas de identificação e de discriminação auditivas seguidas de correção imediata. A produção foi testada, igualmente, em três fases, através da leitura de frases veículo, contendo palavras com os segmentos vocálicos. Os resultados demonstram que os aprendentes portugueses melhoraram significativamente na identificação das vogais-alvo e essa melhoria da sua competência percetiva manteve-se dois meses após o término do treino. Para além disso, os resultados do teste de generalização indicam que houve uma aprendizagem robusta dos dois contrastes vocálicos anteriores. As análises acústicas das produções dos informantes revelaram também uma transferência da aprendizagem para a produção oral. Estes resultados suportam a afirmação de que a aprendizagem ao nível da perceção de fala pode ocorrer em contextos formais, num curto período de tempo, e corroboram resultados anteriores sobre a maleabilidade dos sistemas percetuais fonológicos de aprendentes adultos de uma LNM

O impacto de um programa de sensibilização à linguagem escrita nas competências de literacia em crianças de idade pré-escolar

A compreensão do princípio alfabético inicia-se muito antes da frequência do 1º ano de escolaridade. Vários são os estudos que apontam para a importância de se desenvolverem programas em idade pré-escolar que integrem atividades de escrita inventada, indicando que estes contribuem para evoluções das concetualizações da criança sobre a linguagem escrita e progressos na consciência fonológica (Albuquerque & Alves Martins, 2015;Alves Martins, Albuquerque, Salvador, & Fernández, 2017; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017). Também as atividades de consciência fonológica têm impacto nas competências de literacia em crianças pré-leitoras. Este estudo pretende compreender o impacto de um programa que contempla atividades estruturadas de escrita inventada e jogos fonológicos na evolução das concetualizações precoces da linguagem escrita e da consciência fonológica em crianças em idade pré-escolar. Este programa integra 121 crianças de 5 anos de idade que não sabiam ler nem escrever. As crianças foram submetidas a uma avaliação inicial e final de consciência silábica e fonémica, bem como do seu conhecimento relativo à escrita tendo-lhes sido pedido que escrevessem 8 palavras como soubessem. O programa contemplou 10 sessões de escrita inventada intercaladas com 10 sessões de consciência fonológica, desenvolvidas ao longo do ano letivo. Após implementação do programa verificou-se que um maior número de crianças apresentou níveis superiores de consciência fonológica, bem como evolução nas concetualizações sobre a linguagem escrita, onde as hipóteses de escrita apresentadas pelas crianças estavam mais próximas das características das escritas alfabéticas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Perception of nonnative sounds: methodological issues and the use of Praat and TP software

O objetivo deste artigo é informar pesquisadores sobre alguns procedimentos metodológicos necessários para desenvolver testes de percepção e tarefas de treinamento perceptual. Após apresentar uma breve explicação sobre testes de discriminação e identificação, o artigo mostra como elaborar um teste perceptual em dois software livres diferentes: Praat e TP. Embora o Praat seja uma ferramenta excelente para elaborar experimentos de percepção, pode não ser um software amigável para pesquisadores que não se sintam confortáveis com a linguagem de programação e/ou com o inglês técnico utilizado no seu manual. Como uma alternativa, o TP foi criado para oferecer um software para testes/treinamento de percepção (áudio e audiovisual) que fornece feedback imediato e cuja configuração intuitiva segue a estrutura utilizada em aplicativos do Microsoft Windows.This paper aims at providing researchers with information about some methodological procedures to develop perception tests and perceptual training tasks. After presenting a brief explanation about identification and discrimination tests, the paper shows how to design a perceptual test in two different free applications: Praat and TP. Although Praat is an excellent tool to design perceptual experiments, it might not be a user-friendly software for researchers who are not comfortable with programming and/or the technical English language used in its manual. As an alternative, TP was designed to provide users with a software to test/train (audio and audiovisual) perception that gives immediate feedback and whose intuitive configuration follows the structure adopted in Microsoft Windows apps

Does phonological overlap of cognate words modulate cognate acquisition and processing in developing and skilled readers?

Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency, and by using two variants of the word-association learning paradigm (auditory learning method vs. auditory + written method). Eighty participants (forty children and forty adults, native speakers of European Portuguese [EP]), learned a set of EP-Catalan cognate words and non-cognate words. Among the cognate words, the degree of orthographic and phonological similarity was manipulated. Half of the children and adult participants learned the new words via an L2 auditory and written-L1 word association method, while the other half learned the same words only through an L2 auditoryL1 word association method. Both groups were tested in an auditory recognition task and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results revealed a disadvantage for children in comparison to adults, which was reduced in the auditory learning method. Furthermore, there was an advantage for cognates relative to non-cognates regardless of the age of participants. Importantly, there were modulations in cognate word processing as a function of the degree of O and P overlap which were restricted to children. The findings are discussed in light of the most relevant bilingual models of word recognition.This research was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013. The study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the EP Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). It has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PCIN-2015-165-C02-02).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PERCEPTUAL ASSIMILATION OF STOPS BY CHINESE LEARNERS OF EUROPEAN PORTUGUESE

Os aprendentes chineses de português europeu (PE) tendem a evidenciar dificuldades de perceção e produção das consoantes oclusivas orais da L2, nomeadamenteno que respeita à distinção de vozeamento (Shu 2014). O presente estudo visa analisar a semelhança interlinguística entre os sons oclusivos orais da L1 e os da L2, tal como percecionada por estes aprendentes, procurando explicar as dificuldades na aprendizagem fonético-fonológica do PE reportadas na literatura (Batalha 1995; Martins 2008; Shu 2014). Assim, 11 participantes macaenses, falantes nativos de cantonês, realizaram uma tarefa de assimilação percetiva, identificando o som do cantonês que mais se assemelhava à consoante inicial de estímulos CV, produzidos por falantes nativos de PE, e procedendo à avaliação da sua qualidade numa escala de sete pontos. Os resultados, interpretados à luz do Perceptual Assimilation Model L2 (Best & Tyler 2007), sugerem que este grupo de aprendentes não reconhece diferenças fonéticas entre os sons /p/ e /b/ da L2, ouvidos como exemplares igualmente bons de uma única categoria nativa (/p/). A mesma tendência se evidencia com /t/-/d/ e /k/-/g/ do português, ainda que pareça haver uma maior facilidade de percecionar diferenças fonéticas entre os elementos destes pares à medida que o ponto de articulação recua.Perceiving and producing L2 oral stops is difficult for Chinese learners of European Portuguese (EP), namely the voicing distinction between these sounds (Shu 2014). The aim of the present study is to examine the degree of cross-linguistic similarity between the L1 and the L2 oral stops, in an attempt to shed light on the challenges Chinese learners of EP face when learning the L2 phonology (Batalha 1995; Martins 2008; Shu 2014). Eleven Macanese participants, native speakers of Cantonese, performed a perceptual assimilation task in which they were asked to identify the L1 sound that was closest to the initial consonant in CV syllables produced by native speakers of EP. The participants then rated the goodness-of-fit of the L2 sound as an exemplar of the L1 category on a seven-point scale. Interpreted within the theoretical framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model L2 (Best & Tyler 2007), results suggest that these L2 learners do not recognize phonetic differences betweenthe L2 sounds /p/ and /b/, which are heard as equally good exemplars of a single L1 category (/p/). A similar pattern of results was found for /t/-/d/ and /k/-/g/ in the L2, although it seems easier for participants to discern phonetic dissimilarities between the elements of the stop pairs as place of articulation moves from the front to the back position in the vocal tract