Igbo Phonological Interferences in the Acquisition of English Phonemes /ʌ/ and /eɪ/ in Charity Ekezie’s Contents

This study investigates the production of /θ/ and /ð/ at initial, medial and final positions by Cameroonian ESL (CamESL) students using the acoustic analysis method. The words theme, something, mouth, them, without and with were put on a list and read by 26 undergraduate CamESL learners from the University of Maroua. Their productions were recorded and analysed using PRAAT version 6.3.11 of 17 July 2023. The analysis revealed that at initial and medial positions, the majority of learners were able to accurately render the sounds while at the final position, both /θ/ and /ð/ were systematically substituted with /f/ and the unreleased stops /t ̚/ and /d ̚ /. It was also discovered that the choice of substituting phonemes depends on the linguistic environment sounds since unreleased stops never occurred at initial and medial word positions, and the normal stops /t/ and /d/ also rarely occurred at the final position. It can be concluded that success and deviation in the production of interdental fricatives by CamESL learners depend on the location of the sound.

Filipino and Indonesian belong to the Austronesian language family and this explains why they exhibit many linguistic similarities and numerous cognates. This study aims to further compare the two languages and establish their connection through phonology. The researchers use the cognates to compare the Filipino and Indonesian monophthong vowels. Qualitative method is utilized. The result shows that Filipino and Indonesian have a very similar vowel system with the exception of Indonesian having /ə/ phoneme. It was also found out that most of the changes in monophthongs between the two languages appear in medial position. Moreover, most changes are from the mid back rounded vowel /o/ in Filipino to high back rounded vowel /u/ in Indonesian. Lastly, the changes in the unrounded vowels in Filipino usually appear in the initial and medial position whereas in the rounded vowels in Filipino, changes only appear in either the medial or final position.

Rannsóknir á hljóðþróun íslenskumælandi barna eru á fremur þröngu aldursbili eða komnar til ára sinna. Nauðsynlegt er að afla viðmiða m.a. til að skera úr um hvort börn fylgi aldursbundnum framburðarþroska eða hvort þau séu með frávik í framburði málhljóða. Upplýsingar um hljóðþróun geta auk þess gagnast í rannsóknum og vinnu í tengslum við hljóðvitund, hljóðkerfisvitund og lestrartileinkun. Markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að skoða hljóðþróun á breiðu aldursbili og kanna á hvaða aldri börn tileinka sér samhljóð og samhljóðaklasa, m.a. til að afla viðmiða um dæmigerðan framburðarþroska. Þátttakendur voru 437 börn á aldrinum 2;6-7;11 ára. Gögnum var safnað með því að leggja fyrir Málhljóðapróf ÞM. Helstu niðurstöður voru þær að stígandi er í málhljóðatileinkun barna en þó gætir rjáfuráhrifa fyrir fjögurra ára aldurinn, þ.e. börn hafa náð 90% allra stakra samhljóða strax á aldursbilinu 3;6-3;11 ára. Samhljóðaklasar eru seinna á ferðinni og var 90% markinu ekki náð fyrr en börnin voru á sjöunda ári. Börn tileinka sér fyrst /m/, /n/, /b/, /d/, /l/ og /h/ en þau hljóð sem birtast einna síðast í máli barna eru /r/, /s/, /þ/, [?] og [n?]. Þegar samhljóðin eru flokkuð eftir myndunarhætti ná börn fyrst tökum á nefhljóðum (ef frá er talið [n?] í framstöðu orða) en lokhljóð og hliðarhljóð fylgja fast á eftir. Börn eru lengur að tileinka sér önghljóð og sveifluhljóð. Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar sýna glögglega hvernig greina má milli barna með dæmigerða hljóðþróun og jafnaldra sem þurfa á talþjálfun að halda. Jafnframt leggja þær grunn að frekari athugunum á tengslum málhljóðamyndunar og lestrartengdra þátta eins og að tengja málhljóð við bókstaf.

This study examined the effects of prosodic position on duration and F0 of the six tones in Si-Xien Hakka. Each of the tones was placed in the initial, medial, and final positions of a three-syllable phrase/clause, which constituted the first part of a sentence with the [δδδ, δδδ] structure. The results showed that F0 lowering and lengthening were found at domain final position. The final lengthening allowed the offset of the low-rising tones to reach a higher F0 target, not attainable by those in other prosodic positions. Also in this final position the high level tones exhibited a real flap shape due to the greater coarticulation resistance caused by the following boundary breaks. Furthermore, the F0 decreasing rate of the falling tones was found to vary according to domain position: the F0 descended the fastest at domain medial position and the slowest at final position, except for the high checked tones, which showed the same rate at domain-initial and –final positions. This reveals that the vibration of the vocal folds, reflected by the F0 decreasing rate, started from the initial position, gradually speeded up to the highest rate at medial position and then slowed down till the pre-boundary domain-final one.

Abstract: Discourse Markers can be defined as expressions which relate discourse segments. Discourse markers analyzed and compared in this study are lexical cohesions in political speeches of the American and Indonesian presidents. In this study, the writer used descriptive qualitative method. The method includes collecting, arranging, classifying, analyzing, and interpreting the data. The data for the English political speeches were taken from Washingtonpast.com and Federal News Service, and those for the Indonesian political speeches were taken from suara Surabaya.net and TEMPO.CO.JAKARTA. The result of this study shows that the lexical cahesions as discourse markers in both languages are generally similar except the position where they accur. In English, lexical cohesions might accur in three positions in a sentence: Initial, medial and final positions with special meaning for each position, while lexical cohesions in Indonesian language might not do as they accur only in the initial and medial positions, and not in the final position. In addition, it also shows that lexical cohesions in English political speeches are used more frequently than those in Indonesian political speeches.

Phonological acquisition in 3- to 5-year-old Kurdish-Speaking children in Iran

The problem of phonological interference, which is a key contributor to incorrect pronunciation of English as a foreign language, is still a problem in English language instruction, especially in the area of pronunciation and phonology. Therefore, it's crucial to look into how native language influences how English sounds are produced by EFL students. This study brought to light the phonological errors that Buginese students make when pronouncing English sounds. This study used a qualitative approach, particularly in the form of case studies, to address the objective. 10 second-semester students who are originally from different Buginese regions participated in this research at State University of Makassar. The researcher tested students' pronunciation of English consonants to gather information about the students' phonological interference. The test recording was then translated and examined in light of the students' pronunciation errors. It was discovered that eight consonants were mispronounced by Buginese students, which areconsonants /f/, /v/, /θ/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, and /ð/. Buginese pupils make the closest sounds that are present in Buginese to pronounce these eight consonants. The study's findings were useful in that they helped identify certain English sounds that Buginese pupils had trouble pronouncing, which the English lecturer might use to help the students' pronunciation.

This paper investigates the use of reported speech (RS) and reporting clauses (RC) in the novel Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996) from a linguistic and stylistic perspective in the context of discourse analysis. Alias Grace is a multiple viewpoint novel. The author uses the technique of dual (“split”) narrative: first-person and third-person narrators alternate chapters to construct the story of Grace Marks, a young Irish immigrant convicted of murder, and her interactions with Simon Jordan, a doctor interested in mental illnesses. The proportion of final, medial and front RCs varies significantly from one chapter to another and sometimes even within a single chapter. These variations create a “quilt pattern” reminiscent of the patchwork quilts that Grace sews throughout the novel. The paper focuses on first-person chapters, where the narrator is Grace herself. She gives precise and unlikely detail of past conversations but the frontiers between different types of RS can nevertheless be blurred in the absence of quotation marks, hence the extensive use of RCs.RCs of DS in final and medial positions—within or after the quote—are mostly found in written communication and can be used, in the context of fiction, as a means of creating the illusion of oral speech in writing (Salvan 2005). Paradoxically, oral “real life” conversations typically require that reported speakers be mentioned first, with a higher frequency of reporting clauses in front position (she said, “I will”) or of indirect speech (She said that she would). In the novel’s first-person chapters, reporting clauses in medial, final and front positions as well as direct and in indirect speech alternate in a way that reveals Grace’s split personality even before it starts showing in what she actually recounts, RCs being the visible stitches of her split character.

In Old Swedish, the placement of the subject was tied to its function in the information structure of the clause: rhematic subjects, which are semantically indefinite and introduce a new referent to the text, were most often postverbal. The study analyses such subjects in Old Swedish legal language in relation to the order of constituents in the clause, the position of the clause in the text, and the structure of the subject. Three questions are posed: 1. What order of constituents is found in clauses with semantically indefinite subjects? 2. Do these clauses appear in initial, medial, or final position in paragraphs and subparagraphs? 3. What structure does a semantically indefinite subject have? The corpus consists of all main clauses (n=210) and subordinate clauses (n=28) with indefinite subjects in three sections of the Law of Uppland. An indefinite subject seldom (5.2%) appears in the preverbal position in main clauses, while this is common in subordinate clauses (71.4%). In over 93% of main clauses, the subject appears postverbally as the second or third constituent, but placement as the fourth constituent is rare. The main clauses are often verb-initial conditional clauses in which the preverbal position is not a possibility. The clauses tend to appear in initial or medial position in the text, in the introduction to a paragraph or a subparagraph. The subjects are mainly short, bare nouns, but they can also be combined with numerals, pronouns, or relative clauses.


 Articulation tests record and analyze children’s speech and they are used to determine which sounds children can or cannot say or if the speech errors the children produce are developmentally appropriate or they are delayed. The aim of this study was to develop an articulation test for Bahdini Kurdish preschool children. For this purpose, a picture-naming test was designed to elicit spontaneous single-word responses representing 26 consonants in initial, medial and final positions and 8 vowels in medial positions. Seven experts were asked to review the test and complete a questionnaire. Then, it was presented to 65 normal Bahdini Kurdish speaking children. They were 38 males and 27 females from three different age groups: 3, 4, and 5 years old. The children’s responses were recorded and then scored for each correct utterance and picture identification. The results show that there are no significant differences among the experts’ responses which reflect their approval for the test to be a valid tool for collecting the phonetic inventory of the children. There is a significant and high correlation between correct word utterances and picture identification which prove the content validity of the test. Finally, there are no significant differences between males and females which indicates that the test is suitable for both genders, while significant differences were found among age groups in which old children performed better than younger ones. Thus, the test is a valid and a reliable tool that can be applied to collect the phonetic inventory of Bahdini Kurdish speaking children.

Yemeni Arabic (YA) has a significant number of consonant clusters in word initial, medial, and final positions. However, their frequency of usage is not uniform. This study aims to investigate the patterns of consonant clusters in word initial, medial, and final positions in YA and also to find out the most and least frequent clusters in terms of their percentage. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in data analysis in this study. All the words were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). There are features of consonant clusters in Yemeni Arabic which differ from Modern Standard Arabic and some other Arabic dialects. In Yemeni Arabic, there are 29 consonants and 10 vowels, 5 long and 5 short vowels. The maximum number of onset cluster is three (e.g. /∫tsu:q/ “she will drive” while coda cluster is two (e.g. /satˤħ/ “roof”). Furthermore, the maximum number of medial clusters are also two (e.g. /muχ.lsˤu/ “sincere”. The analysis undertaken will throw light on the frequency and percentages of the occurrences of the consonant clusters on the basis of a word list, which is justified with the help of statistical support.

English has been widely used all around the world, either as the first, second, or foreign languages. As foreign language of Japan, English is not daily used, however, since immigration to English speaking countries for educational or business purposes has been common in Japan, more and more people used English within those contexts. A case on the use of English by Japanese is a vlogger Rion Ishida whose speech frequently used uvular [ɴ] for English alveolar /n/. This study examined the interference of Japanese uvular [ɴ] which is not common in English in the speech production of English alveolar /n/. The finding shows that at ending distribution, English alveolar /n/ has been pronounced as uvular [ɴ] in more-than-one-syllable words. In this case, actual phoneme substitution occurs as a result of phonological interference. This is partly caused by the position of the words containing /n/ in the speech and another is caused by the interference of Japanese phonological system which regulates alveolar /n/ to be realized as uvular [ɴ] at final or ending distribution. Thus, three factors causing phonological interferences consisting (1) the competing phonemic categories, (2) their allophonic membership, and (3) their distributions are all evident in this study.

The paper provides an account of the research on the acquisition of English as the first foreign language and Croatian as the mother tongue among young learners in Croatia. Children become polyglot at the earliest age; they start going to school by speaking their home idiom, and then they learn standard Croatian and the foreign language. English and Croatian, belonging to different language groups, feature different linguistic features, but they still have mutual aspects that can enhance language learning. This hypothesis is examined in the research by observing English and Croatian classes and school success. There are external and internal factors that influence language acquisition, in the paper pupils' attitudes towards language learning are emphasized. The hypothesis is that pupils who are positively oriented towards language learning are more successful when acquiring the language. Research results show that acquisition of both English and Croatian at young age is more or less equally successful, while it decreases in higher grades. It has been indicated that the positive attitude toward language learning can affect successful language acquisition. Therefore it is important to constantly research ways to improve language competence and performance. The school as an important factor has a major role in it.

This research aims at analyzing the first language interference toward students’ English speaking as foreign language made by sixth semester students in course design subject, such as phonological interference (pronunciation), grammatical (morphological and lexical), and lexical interference (vocabulary), and the factors that caused interference of the first language. This research is descriptive qualitative. The findings of the research explained that students made three types of interference categorized as phonological interference such as pronounce the word incorrectly (vowel, diphthong, consonan, and allophonic variation), grammatical interference such as in morphological (singular-plural agreement) and syntactical (subject-verb agreement, phrase, comparative adjective, possessive adjective, and parallel structure), and lexical interference such as in vocabulary (combining between Indonesian and the English language). The data showed that students often make error in phonological aspect. The factors that caused first language interference are lack of knowledge, Indonesian transfer, and lack of vocabularies of foreign language that mastered by students or respondents.

English learning and teaching have taken many forms in the last years. It is studied as a foreign language and a second language, and with specific purposes in technical fields of knowledge. However, in a broader context, English has become the lingua franca of communication and business. This new paradigm has impacted how teachers and learners see the acquisition of English. While some people prefer native or native-like English learning models, others are getting away from it. That is, some prefer intelligible communication rather than native-likeness. Therefore, this quantitative non-experimental study examined international MA TESOL students' perspectives about their awareness of English as a lingua franca and investigated their aspirations and preferences as English learners. The sample was composed of 20 non-native English teachers. Data were collected through an online survey that examined teachers' preferred models of English, beliefs about the most conducive environments for learning English, aspirations for correctness, intelligibility, and fluency. The findings provided empirical evidence that non-native English teachers are aware of the different English varieties and that they recognize these varieties as valid forms of English. This study found that participants put a higher emphasis on intelligibility than on grammatical accuracy if they thought that certain utterances would not impede communication. However, the results revealed a dual orientation in participants' aspirations, where their strong preferences paradoxically contradicted their awareness of the diversity of English varieties and their emphasis on intelligibility for native-like models of pronunciation and lexical knowledge. The implications of this study suggest that TESOL teacher education programs should provide spaces for analysis of the role of ELF in international learning milieus.