Cross-linguistic Similarities Research Articles

Online Assessment of Cross-Linguistic Similarity as a Measure of L2 Perceptual Categorization Accuracy

The effect of cross-linguistic similarity on the development of target-like categories in a second or additional language is widely attested. Research also shows that second-language speakers may access both their native and the second-language lexicons when processing second-language speech. Forty-three Catalan learners of English performed a perceptual assimilation task evaluating the perceived similarity between English and Catalan vowels and also participated in a visual world eye-tracking experiment investigating between-language lexical competition. The focus of the study was the English vowel contrasts /iː/-/ɪ/ and /æ/-/ʌ/. The perceptual task confirmed that English /iː/ and /æ/were perceptually closer to native Catalan categories than English /ɪ/ and /ʌ/. The results of the spoken word recognition task indicated that learners experienced greater competition from native words when the target words contained English /iː/ and /æ/, illustrating a close link between the two types of tasks. However, differences in the magnitude of cross-language lexical competition were found to be only weakly related to learners’ degree of perceived similarity to native categories at an individual level. We conclude that online tasks provide a potentially effective method of assessing cross-linguistic similarity without the concerns inherent to more traditional offline approaches.

Language transfers in third language acquisition of Chinese by intermediate level German and English native speakers: evidence from a behavioral experiment online.

The paper investigates language transfers in third language acquisition of Chinese by native German and English speakers at intermediate level. Subjects are divided into two groups and complete a Grammaticality Judgment and Correction Task through a behavioral experiment online. The results from multiple sources show that: (1) both L1 and L2 are sources of language transfers and the perceived crosslinguistic similarity of abstract structural properties serves as the main reason; (2) language transfers can be non-facilitative on L3 learning; (3) as L3 proficiency level improves, the less likely learners are to be affected by non-facilitative language transfers in L3 learning, but it may not disappear completely; (4) the background language with higher proficiency level is more likely to impose language transfers in L3 learning. The research suggests that language transfers in TLA are simultaneously regulated by a number of factors, such as similarities of abstract structural properties between background languages and L3, as well as language proficiency levels. At the end, we discuss the application of the results to Chinese language teaching.

The Spanish subjunctive mood and its English correspondences

Abstract Corpus-based contrastive studies have successfully addressed the empirical study of crosslinguistic similarities and differences and may also contribute to understanding complexity across languages. This paper aims at (dis)proving whether the Spanish subjunctive mood shows greater complexity than its English correspondences as translations or sources of the Spanish subjunctive forms. It also explores a trade-off between language levels, i.e., whether higher morphological complexity is linked to syntactic and lexical complexity. The data come from a bidirectional English-Spanish corpus, and the word-alignment-based metric system has been used to quantify morphological complexity. Syntactic and lexical complexity were also investigated and computed using tests of statistical significance. Results corroborate that Spanish presents higher complexity in this verbal area in all three levels, morphological, syntactic, and lexical: the hypothesized trade-off between higher morphological complexity on the one hand, and lower syntactic and lexical complexity on the other is not validated by our data.

Spatial Concepts within Syntactic Structures: The Topology-Imagery Hypothesis

The aim of this study is the creation and implementation of a groundbreaking syntactic structure typology, anchored in fundamental cognitive processes. This involves an in-depth classification and analysis of a variety of sentence types, integrating imagistic and spatial categories. This methodology promotes an in-depth comparative analysis, facilitating the discovery of distinctive syntactic features among the languages examined. The research is dedicated to a thorough exploration of sentence structure's topological aspects, scrutinizing the configuration and interplay of linguistic elements. It places particular emphasis on sentences within three diverse linguistic frameworks: Russian, Chinese, and English, thus enabling a comprehensive analysis and the identification of both cross-linguistic similarities and distinctions. This research adopts a multifaceted approach, combining theoretical analysis with comparative study. Such integration of methodologies allows for a nuanced comparison of sentence structures and their semantic roles in Russian, Chinese, and English, highlighting linguistic and cultural differences between these languages. The novelty of this study lies in the cognitive approach to sentence structure analysis and the development of a classification based on three cognitive models: (i) a single main container, (ii) dual main containers without a defined trajectory, and (iii) multiple main containers with distinct trajectories. A key principle of this classification is the integration of topological and imagery elements, underscoring the diversity of syntactic structures against a backdrop of a unified cognitive base, shaped by cultural and linguistic specifics. The findings reveal that sentences in Russian, English, and Chinese exhibit both shared and unique syntactic characteristics, reflecting cultural-cognitive differences, including the Chinese cultural concept of harmonizing opposites, the Russian cultural notion of segmenting the whole into parts, and the English cultural stance situated between these extremes.

The intricate construction of projection in news reports

Abstract This paper looks at projection in the discourse of news reports in English and Spanish. The analysis reveals the extent to which projection pervades these texts, not only at clause complex level – the traditional object of study of projection – but also below the clause complex, at clause simple and at group level. The discussion of a number of examples from English and Spanish news reports serves to answer the three research questions guiding this research, which concern (a) the preferred types of projection in news reports, (b) the preferred realizations of the different types of projection in news reports, and (c) the main cross-linguistic similarities and contrasts of projection in news reports. The answers to these issues ultimately contribute to a broader understanding of the concept of projection.

Sharing travel experiences on TripAdvisor: A genre analysis of negative hotel reviews written in French, Spanish and Italian

The advent of the Web 2.0 brought about a significant transformation in the tourist experience and in its modes of communication. One of the prevailing genres in today's digital tourism discourse is represented by online reviews, produced and consumed daily by millions of users on global platforms such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com or Airbnb. Online tourist reviews are mainly used to share a personal (travel) experience with service providers and fellow travelers, at the same time they offer an evaluation of tourism services.The aim of the present case study is to provide an in-depth investigation of how tourists are sharing their post-trip experiences online from a linguistic and pragmatic standpoint. Specifically, we focused on negative hotel reviews posted on TripAdvisor and we adopted a cross-linguistic perspective. Building on previous work, we now focused on a different set of languages, considering reviews written in Spanish, Italian and French (N100 for each language, for a total of N300) posted between 1st of January 2021 and 31st December 2022. Ultimately, the aim was to verify whether users writing in different languages share their experiences adopting uniform linguistic norms and communicative habits or display different discursive preferences. In order to reach this goal, we analyzed not only which topics tourists include in their reviews, but also which communicative moves they adopted to share their experiences and opinions. Results indicate a tendency towards a cross-linguistic similarity. This finding seems to point toward a potential standardization process of how travel experiences are shared online in different languages, within the highly popular genre of online reviews.

Metaphorical events in translation: Does language type matter?

Speakers across different languagesstructure a similar set of target domains (e.g., emotions, time, ideas) as spatial motion, relying on the same metaphorical mappings (abstract concept as moving entity; abstract concept as location). These crosslinguistic similarities co-occurwith crosslinguistic differences in the lexicalization of the source domain, with some languages encoding manner more frequently than others (e.g., English vs. Spanish). But do these patterns ofsimilarities and differences extend to translations of written texts?In this study, we analyzed metaphorical motion expressions from novels written in typologically distinct (German vs. Spanish) vs. typologically similar languages (German vs. Polish) and their translations into a language from the opposite (German vs. Spanish) or the same typological group (German vs. Polish). We observed strong crosslinguistic similarities in target domains and metaphorical mappings and systematic crosslinguistic differences in the lexicalization of the source domain, with translations largely adhering to the patterns of the target language. Our findings thus suggest that translations of metaphorical motion events to a target language—be it of a similar or a different typological group—followthe same patterns in the target and source language in structure (mappings) but adhere to the patterns of the target language in the lexicalization of the metaphorical event.

Feature-driven new sound category formation: computational implementation with the L2LP model and beyond

One of the primary questions of second language (L2) acquisition research is how a new sound category is formed to allow for an L2 contrast that does not exist in the learner's first language (L1). Most models rely crucially on perceived (dis)similarities between L1 and L2 sounds, but a precise definition of what constitutes “similarity” has long proven elusive. The current study proposes that perceived cross-linguistic similarities are based on feature-level representations, not segmental categories. We investigate how L1 Japanese listeners learn to establish a new category for L2 American English /æ/ through a perception experiment and computational, phonological modeling. Our experimental results reveal that intermediate-level Japanese learners of English perceive /æ/ as an unusually fronted deviant of Japanese /a/. We implemented two versions of the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model with Stochastic Optimality Theory—one mapping acoustic cues to segmental categories and another to features—and compared their simulated learning results to the experimental results. The segmental model was theoretically inadequate as it was unable explain how L1 Japanese listeners notice the deviance of /æ/ from /a/ in the first place, and was also practically implausible because the predicted overall perception patterns were too native English-like compared to real learners' perception. The featural model, however, showed that the deviance of /æ/ could be perceived due to an ill-formed combination of height and backness features, namely */low, front/. The featural model, therefore, reflected the experimental results more closely, where a new category was formed for /æ/ but not for other L2 vowels /ɛ/, /ʌ/, and /ɑ/, which although acoustically deviate from L1 /e/, /a/, and /o/, are nonetheless featurally well-formed in L1 Japanese, namely /mid, front/, /low, central/, and /mid, back/. The benefits of a feature-based approach for L2LP and other L2 models, as well as future directions for extending the approach, are discussed.

Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings

Abstract This study investigates how distance-invoked difficulty, proficiency level and cross-linguistic similarity affect error occurrences by analysing 240 English compositions from Chinese and Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Dependency distance was used as a metric to measure distance-invoked difficulty and four major types of dependency relations were investigated. The findings reveal that low- and middle-level Chinese and Japanese EFL learners have higher error rates with long-distance dependency relations, but high-level learners can overcome the distance-invoked difficulty and make fewer errors. Chinese and Japanese EFL learners make more errors in long-distance adverbial and relative clauses than in short-distance ones, which are L1-dissimilar dependency relations. They make fewer errors in L1-similar relations, i.e., long-distance subject-predicate dependency relations. Japanese EFL learners, however, showed no significant differences in error rates between long- and short-distance predicate-object dependency relations. The results indicate the complex interaction between the EFL learners’ cognition, proficiency and L1.

Exploring audiovisual speech perception in monolingual and bilingual children in Uzbekistan

This study aimed to investigate the development of audiovisual speech perception in monolingual Uzbek-speaking and bilingual Uzbek–Russian-speaking children, focusing on the impact of language experience on audiovisual speech perception and the role of visual phonetic (i.e., mouth movements corresponding to phonetic/lexical information) and temporal (i.e., timing of speech signals) cues. A total of 321 children aged 4 to 10 years in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, discriminated /ba/ and /da/ syllables across three conditions: auditory-only, audiovisual phonetic (i.e., sound accompanied by mouth movements), and audiovisual temporal (i.e., sound onset/offset accompanied by mouth opening/closing). Effects of modality (audiovisual phonetic, audiovisual temporal, or audio-only cues), age, group (monolingual or bilingual), and their interactions were tested using a Bayesian regression model. Overall, older participants performed better than younger participants. Participants performed better in the audiovisual phonetic modality compared with the auditory modality. However, no significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children was observed across all modalities. This finding stands in contrast to earlier studies. We attribute the contrasting findings of our study and the existing literature to the cross-linguistic similarity of the language pairs involved. When the languages spoken by bilinguals exhibit substantial linguistic similarity, there may be an increased necessity to disambiguate speech signals, leading to a greater reliance on audiovisual cues. The limited phonological similarity between Uzbek and Russian might have minimized bilinguals’ need to rely on visual speech cues, contributing to the lack of group differences in our study.

What the development of gesture with and without speech can tell us about the effect of language on thought

AbstractAdults display cross-linguistic variability in their speech in how they package and order semantic elements of a motion event. These differences can also be found in speakers’ co-speech gestures (gesturing with speech), but not in their silent gestures (gesturing without speech). Here, we examine when in development children show the differences between co-speech gesture and silent gesture found in adults. We studied speech and gestures produced by 100 children learning English or Turkish (n = 50/language) – equally divided into 5 age-groups: 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, and 11–12 years. Children were asked to describe three-dimensional spatial event scenes (e.g., a figure crawling across carpet) first with speech and then without speech using their hands. We focused on physical motion events that elicit, in adults, cross-linguistic differences in co-speech gesture and cross-linguistic similarities in silent gesture. We found the adult pattern even in the youngest children: (1) Language shaped co-speech gesture beginning at age 3 years, showing an early effect of language on thinking for speaking (as measured by gestures that occur during the speech act). (2) Language did not affect silent gesture at any age, highlighting early limits on the effects language has on thinking and revealing a language of gesture that shows similarities across languages.

Tertiary language didactics 2.0

AbstractThe article proposes a remodeling of Tertiary Language Didactics (TLD) against the backdrop of empirical findings from German-speaking areas and the notions of translanguaging and compétence plurilingue.TLD as a multilingual didactics approach for the initial stages of L3 learning developed in the 1990s in the field of “German as a foreign language after English” (DaFnE) as a response to the specificity of L3 learning conditions (age, intellectual development, different domains of prior knowledge in other languages). Later, the approach, with its overarching principle of cognitive learning and teaching, was generalized to other language constellations (Hufeisen & Neuner, 2003; Neuner et al., 2009).By reviewing selected studies from the 1980s up to 2021, our remodeling highlights the importance of transfer not only in L3 reception, but also in L3 production and practice. In order to economize L3 learning, TLD 2.0 proposes to focus on cognates in reception and production (perceived and assumed cross-linguistic similarities) and streamlined grammar teaching (deduction-practice combinations, parallel exercises). Informed by the discourses of translanguaging and compétence plurilingue, we also discuss the role of less “visible” knowledge stores that bi- or plurilingual L3 learners may have and the possibility of activating skills in previously learned or acquired languages (two-language tasks) in pursuit of education goals beyond L3 learning.

Using a contrastive hierarchy to formalize structural similarity as I-proximity in L3 phonology

Abstract In this paper I argue that cross-linguistic similarity in third language acquisition is determined by a structural hierarchy of contrastive phonological features. Such an approach allows us formalize a predictive notion of I-proximity which also provides an explanatory model of L2, and L3 phonological knowledge (represented in an integrated I-grammar). The metrics of phonological similarity (i.e., structural not acoustic) are analogous to morphosyntactic similarity in that both morphosyntactic and phonological approaches can compare the outcomes of parsing the L3 input by the L1 hierarchy and by the L2 hierarchy. From this starting point I propose a conservative, incremental learning theory to guide subsequent reconstruction of the L3 grammar. Under this model, it can be argued that phonology is part of Faculty of Language Narrow (FLN). The (gradient) phonetic material comes from outside the FLN but the linguistic computational system converts it to discrete abstract elements that can be manipulated by the learner.

Cross-linguistic influence and language co-activation in acquiring L3 words: What empirical evidence do we have so far?

Third language (L3) lexical acquisition is still underexplored. In this article I overview theoretical and empirical evidence on L3 lexical acquisition and the role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in learning L3 words. I explain the mechanism of CLI as resulting from language co-activation in the multilingual learner’s/user’s mind. Consequently, I aim to ground L3 lexical studies in previous research on second language (L2) word processing and learning, and to emphasize the role of cross-linguistic similarity (cognates and false cognates) in the process. While capitalizing upon similarity predominantly facilitates acquiring L2 and L3 words, the precise mechanisms of L3 lexical acquisition are still obscured. It is unclear whether any overlap of an L3 form with the native or L2 form suffices to boost learning, or whether all previous languages influence L3 lexical acquisition cumulatively. To seek answers to this issue, I review empirical evidence for CLI and cross-linguistic similarity in L3 vocabulary acquisition from three research strands: L3 word processing experiments, L3 cognate guessing tasks, and L3 word learning experiments. Overall, this article aims to bridge the gap between psycholinguistic and applied linguistic research on L3 lexical acquisition, and argues for controlling an array of variables modulating research outcomes.

Speakers of different L1 dialects with acoustically proximal vowel systems present with similar nonnative speech perception abilities: Data from Greek listeners of Dutch

Previous evidence suggests that nonnative speech perception is modulated by the speakers’ first language (L1) dialect. This study aims (a) to examine the discrimination of Dutch vowel contrasts by Greek listeners , and (b) to determine whether listeners' L1 Greek dialectal background, namely, Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and Cypriot Greek (CG), affects the discrimination of nonnative contrasts. It has been proposed that crosslinguistic similarity between L1 and nonnative sounds can predict the perception of the latter sounds. For that purpose, discrimination predictions were developed using a linear discriminant analysis (LDA), which was based on the acoustic similarity between SMG/CG and Dutch vowels and which provided quantification of the classification of nonnative vowels in terms of the listeners' L1 categories. The participants of the perceptual study were adult Greek (SMG and CG) listeners of Dutch who completed an AXB test on a PC script. The results of the discrimination test showed that three out of four contrasts signaled good discrimination, while one contrast signaled less good discrimination. Although crosslinguistic acoustic similarity was a relatively good predictor of the listeners’ nonnative discrimination patterns, it failed to provide accurate predictions for some contrasts. Another important finding was that SMG listeners did not differ from CG listeners in the discrimination of Dutch vowel contrasts. Probably, the high acoustic proximity between the vowel systems of the two varieties led listeners to employ similar acoustic properties to discriminate nonnative sounds.

The effects of cross-linguistic similarity on phrase-level language switching: evidence from high-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals.

Previous research on language switching has debated whether high-proficient bilinguals exhibit symmetrical costs and one underlying reason for which may be the potential influence of cross-linguistic characteristics. The previous conflicting findings suggest their impact on language switching needs to be further investigated. In this study, we recruited 36 high-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and investigated the effect of cross-linguistic similarity on the switching of quantifier expressions under three switch conditions. The results showed that switch costs were significantly greater when the quantifier expression was similar between Chinese and English than when it was different. Larger switch costs were found in the alternate switch condition than those in the non-switch or random switch conditions. In addition, participants exhibited larger switch costs when switching to the first language than when switching to the second language. The results suggest that the similarity of quantifier expressions between the first language and the second language would create more competition and thus induce larger switch costs in phrase-level language switching, which may be derived from the inner word recognition system of the mental lexicon. This study further improves the relevant theories on the origin of switch costs by supporting the Language Non-Specific Selection Hypothesis.

‘Common nighthawk’ (Chordeiles minor) in Algonquian and Siouan languages

AbstractSome North American indigenous languages have names for ‘common nighthawk’ (Chordeiles minor)’, ‘robin’, and ‘bird’ that are strikingly similar phonetically and have served to advocate long-distance genetic relationships among language families. While the Algonquian proto-form for ‘nighthawk’ has a rather straightforward pedigree, this is not the case for Siouan languages. Despite their phonetic resemblance, the ornithonyms for ‘nighthawk’ in half a dozen Siouan languages are unrelated; some are mimetic innovations and others are borrowed. This article analyses how and why ornithonyms are problematic in the application of the comparative method, a reality that affects the validity of long-distance claims, and offers alternative ways to deal with this issue. While ornithonyms can be inherited and undergo all the regular sound changes (or not) like other words, they are also problematic in many respects. First, they can be onomatopoetic and imitate the cry or call of the bird in question – a feature that accounts for their cross-linguistic similarity. Second, they can undergoad hocmimetic reshaping or become lexically contaminated based on phonetic similarity with other ornithonyms or words with which they are associated culturally. Third and last, they can be borrowed internally or externally. However, despite these comparative pitfalls (i.e., that some phonetically similar forms in a language family are not cognates), the analysis shows that our understanding of ornithological nomenclature can be enhanced by considering elements of ornithology, mythology, ethnographic knowledge, sayings, and puns pertaining to birds.

Examining the potential influence of crosslinguistic lexical similarity on word-choice transfer in L2 English.

We examined whether and how L1-L2 crosslinguistic formal lexical similarity influences L2 word choice. Our sample included two learner subcorpora, containing 8,500 and 6,390 English texts, written in an educational setting, by speakers of diverse L1s in the A1-B2 CEFR range of L2 proficiency. We quantified similarity based on phonological overlap between L1 words and their L2 (English) translations. This similarity relates to psycholinguistic cognancy, which occurs when words and their translations share a high level of formal similarity, often due to historical cognancy from shared etymology or language contact. We then used mixed-effects statistical models to examine how this similarity influences the rate of use of the L2 words; essentially, we checked whether L2 words that are more similar to their L1 translations are used more often. We also controlled for potential confounds, including the baseline L1 frequency of the English words. The type of crosslinguistic similarity that we examined did not influence learners' choice of L2 words in their writing in the present sample, which represents a type of educational setting that many learners encounter. This suggests that the influence of such similarity is constrained, and that communicative needs can override transfer from learners' L1 to their L2, which raises questions regarding when and how else situational factors can influence transfer.

The rhetoric of negation in research articles: A cross-disciplinary analysis of appraisal resources

Research on negation has generally explored the cross-linguistic similarities and differences of a host of widely spoken languages with little attention to its nuances within academic genres and disciplines. Accordingly, and given the co-articulation of negation with various interpersonal and evaluative resources, this study examined appraisal subsystems in 360 research articles on astrophysics, chemistry, geology, psychology, linguistics, and political science (60 papers from each discipline) published between 2018 and 2020. Comparative analyses of appraisal resources revealed significantly greater employment of total engagement and graduation, acknowledge, concede, counter, denial, distance, entertain, pronounce, justifying, affect, judgment, positive polarity of attitude, force, and softening devices in soft disciplines. However, hard sciences allowed denser employment of appreciation, neutral polarity of attitude, and sharpening resources. The results of the text/pragmatic analysis of denial further indicated a stronger preference for disalignment, cautious detachment, and unfulfilled expectations functions in soft sciences and varying negation patterns across both subcorpora. The line-by-line annotations revealed either the independent use of denial markers or their co-articulation with other appraisal options. An important implication of this study is awareness-raising about the rhetorical conventions of maintaining an authorial stance and promoting a sense of disciplinary community.

General Extenders in Spanish Interactions: Frequent Forms, Pragmatic Functions y todo eso

The majority of Spanish discourse analysts do not consider general extenders as a type of discourse marker (a position this paper adheres to) and as a result, not many studies have been devoted to determining their characteristics. This paper presents a description of the principal forms, semantic nature and discourse functions performed by general extenders in European Spanish. The analysis is based on a large amount of data (3 700 000 tokens from two spoken corpora, Corpes XXI and Val.Es.Co. Corpus) and considers different text types and discourse genres. The research focuses on two types of pragmatic functions attributed to general extenders that are the result of semantic bleaching, i.e., they have lost their original referential meaning in order to highlight common ground in interactions: interactive functions (politeness, hedging, intensification) and metadiscourse functions (delimitation, marking transitional relevance places and forward planning). Spanish data support the hypothesis that strong cross-linguistic similarities exist at both a formal and functional level. Further lines of research in the field of Spanish linguistics are highlighted in the final considerations.