The Pragmatics of Person and Imperatives in Sign Language of the Netherlands

We present new evidence against a grammatical distinction between second and third person in Sign Language of The Netherlands (NGT). More precisely, we show how pushing this distinction into the domain of pragmatics helps account for an otherwise puzzling fact about the NGT imperative: not only is it used to command your addressee, it can also express ‘non-addressee-oriented commands’

Foreign Accents in Polish: Non-native Speakers’ and Native Listeners’ Views

to draw implications for the phonetic training of foreigners who undertake to learn Polish

Mispronounced lexical items in polish English of advanced learners

The present study is a report on an experiment in which 20 English Department students, all advanced learners of English, were recorded having been asked to read a list of diagnostic sentences containing 80 words known to be problematic for Poles in terms of their pronunciation. This has been done in order to isolate and examine the major error types, to establish a hierarchy of difficulty among 8 sources of pronunciation errors, to compare the obtained results with the most common error types made by intermediate learners and to juxtapose the participants’ subjective evaluation of the phonetic difficulty of words with their actual phonetic performance. The final goal is to draw pedagogical implications for the phonetic training of advanced students of English

The perception of English-accented polish – a pilot study

•Does familiarity with a specific foreign language facilitate the recognition and identification of that accent in foreign-accented Polish

From Focus on Sounds to Focus on Words in English Pronunciation Instruction

The authors present a report on the experiment in which a group of 25 Polish secondary school pupils has undergone a special training in the pronunciation of 50 commonly mispronounced words with the use of special, teacher-designed materials. The effectiveness of the employed procedure as well as the pupils' reactions to it are examined and pedagogical conclusions are drawn

Morphology of the dorsal nasal, frontal and facial veins in adult gilts

Morphological examinations conducted on adult gilts indicate that the dorsal nasal, frontal and facial veins belong to the myoelastic type with a well-developed internal elastic lamina and a thick tunica media with elastic fibers. Smooth muscle cells in the tunica media are mainly arranged circularly. A characteristic feature of individual veins, and even their parts, was the difference in the distribution and number of elastic fibers and amount of collagen, both in the internal elastic lamina and tunica media. Slight thickening of the vessel walls and a decrease in the number of elastic fibers were observed in the distal part of the dorsal nasal vein and in the proximal parts of the frontal and facial veins. No valves were found in the frontal vein. The bundles of smooth muscle cells in the tunica media and elastic fibers surrounding them were rounded, not laminar like in the other veins. Characteristic, sandwich-like arranged smooth muscle bundles, elastic fibers and large amounts of collagen were observed in the tunica media of the distal part of the facial vein. A distinctive feature of the middle auricular and radial veins was the presence of a well-visible external elastic lamina in the adventitia. An evaluation of the luminous vein surface in a SEM shows that endothelial cells are elongated and arranged consistently with the direction of blood flow in almost all of the veins analyzed. Endothelial cells were less elongated in the distal part of the facial vein, and microvilli were present on them

A pilot study on Poles' attitudes to foreign-accented Polish and its users

Badania empiryczne nad percepcją obcojęzycznej wymowy przez rodzimych użytkowników danego języka, prowadzone od lat w krajach przyjmujących duże grupy imigrantów, takich jak Wielka Brytania, Stany Zjednoczone i Australia (np. Kalin i Rayko 1978; Lippi-Green 1997; Munro et al. 2006), pozwoliły na sformułowanie wielu międzykulturowych uogólnień dotyczących tego zjawiska. Na przykład Lindemann (2002, 2010) twierdzi, że postawy wobec cudzoziemców, kształtowane przez stereotypy i uprzedzenia kulturowe, odgrywają kluczową rolę w rozumieniu akcentowanej wymowy. Często podkreśla się również (np. Said 2006; Lev-Ari i Keysar 2010), że silny obcy akcent ma negatywny wpływ na postrzeganie cech mówiącego, takich jak wiarygodność, wykształcenie czy inteligencja. Co więcej, jak pokazuje Lippi-Green (1997), negatywna ocena akcentowanej mowy często prowadzi do dyskryminacji cudzoziemców. Współczesna Polska, gdzie obcokrajowcy mówiący po polsku ciągle jeszcze należą do rzadkości, stanowi ciekawy i do tej pory niezbadany obszar, na którym można dokonać weryfikacji prawdziwości powyższych twierdzeń w odniesieniu do relacji między kulturowymi uprzedzeniami Polaków a ich ewaluacją właściwości obcego akcentu oraz cech intelektualno-osobowościowych przypisywanych cudzoziemcom mówiącym po polsku. Niniejszy artykuł stanowi opis eksperymentu, w którym 40 polskich studentów oceniało 11 nagrań polszczyzny z obcym akcentem pod względem wymienionych dwóch grup cech. Głównym celem badania była próba określenia, czy stereotypy kulturowe oraz obecność informacji dotyczącej narodowości mówiącego ma wpływ na oceny dokonywane przez słuchających. Uzyskane wyniki wskazują, że narodowość mówiących nie wpływa znacząco na ocenę cech ich akcentu (tj. jego zrozumiałość, stopień nasilenia obcego akcentu i estetykę brzmienia). Związek taki zachodzi jednak w przypadku ewaluacji cech intelektualno-osobowościowych cudzoziemców, na którą, do pewnego stopnia, wpływa informacja dotycząca narodowości mówiącego oraz uprzedzenia kulturowe słuchających.Extensive research on native speakers' attitudes towards foreign accents and their users carried out in immigrant-receiving countries such as, for example, Great Britain, the United States and Australia (e.g. Kalin and Rayko 1978; Lippi-Green 1997; Munro et al. 2006), has allowed specialists to formulate several cross-cultural generalizations concerning the perception and evaluation of accented speech. For instance, according to Lindemann (2002, 2010), the listeners' attitude towards foreign speakers, shaped by cultural stereotypes and prejudices, plays a crucial role in comprehending accented speech. It is also often claimed (e.g. Said 2006; Lev-Ari and Keysar 2010) that a heavy foreign accent has a negative impact on the listeners' assessment of speakers' personality traits, such as credibility, intelligence and competence. Moreover, this negative accent-based social evaluation, as shown by Lippi-Green (1997), might even lead to various kinds of foreign speakers' discrimination. Contemporary Poland, where Polish-speaking foreigners are still a relative rarity, constitutes an interesting and yet unexplored ground for testing the universality of claims concerning the relationship between the listeners' cultural prejudices and their evaluations of foreign speakers' accents, as well as personality traits. In this paper we report on an empirical study in which 40 Polish university students assessed 11 samples of foreign-accented Polish, both in terms of accent features and personal characteristics ascribed to the speakers, in order to find out whether these judgements are affected by Polish listeners' attitudes towards the speakers' cultural background and knowledge of their nationality. The results of the study indicate that, on the whole, the speakers' nationality does not significantly affect the participants' evaluation of foreign speakers' accent features (i.e. comprehensibility, foreign-accentedness and acceptability). Such relationship can, however, be found in the attribution of personal characteristics to foreign speakers, which, to some extent, is influenced by the information concerning their nationality and listeners' cultural prejudices

English Pronunciation Teaching at Different Educational Levels: Insights Into Teachers’ Perceptions and Actions

The aim of the present paper is to reflect upon the place of pronunciation in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching at different educational levels in Poland. To collect the data, an on-line survey was conducted among EFL professionals teaching at primary, lower secondary, and higher secondary schools in Poland. The questions focused on the respondents’ beliefs about pronunciation, teachers’ competences regarding pronunciation and pronunciation teaching, and the pronunciation teaching techniques they use. The results depict the most and least frequently used pronunciation teaching techniques at each of the three educational stages, and the beliefs of EFL teachers in Poland regarding pronunciation teaching

Jakiej płci są Polak Kowalski i jego koledzy? O mało znanych aspektach generyczności rzeczowników męskosobowych

The paper examines a hitherto unadressed aspect of the generic function of the masculine personal nouns: Kowalski ‘surname, male’, Polak ‘Pole, male’ and kolega/koledzy ‘comrade(s), male’ in current Polish media and scholarly texts. In spite of their masculine dictionary definitions and prevailing male connotations, as well as their assignment to the ‘male only’ category in linguistic studies, these items frequently acquire a general meaning and can refer to both men and women. Such ambiguity of the nouns in question, of which text writers are often unaware, is particularly problematic for some scholarly studies as it affects negatively their clarity, cohesion and precision. In this paper masculine generics are approached from the perspective of the cognitive prototype theory.Autorka bada dotychczas pomijany aspekt generyczności rzeczowników męskoosobowych we współczesnej polszczyźnie, jakim jest użycie nazw: Kowalski, Polak oraz kolega/koledzy w bieżących tekstach medialnych i naukowych. Wymienione rzeczowniki, pomimo słownikowych męskich definicji, dominujących męskich konotacji, a także przypisania im w pracach językoznawczych wyłącznie referencji męskiej, w wielu wypadkach uzyskują znaczenie ogólne odnoszące się do obu płci. Taka dwuznaczność badanych wyrazów, z której piszący często nie zdają sobie sprawy, prowadzi do niejasności wielu tekstów, co jest szczególnie problematyczne w publikacjach naukowych, ponieważ zaburza ich spójność, precyzję i klarowność. W niniejszym artykule generyczność nazw męskich interpretowana jest z perspektywy kognitywnej teorii prototypów