Native Categories Research Articles

Compactness of Native Vowel Categories in Monolingual, Bilingual, and Multilingual Speakers: Is Category Compactness Affected by the Number of Languages Spoken?

Phonetic category compactness pertains to the degree of variation or dispersion within a specific category. Previous research has shown that more compact native (L1) categories in production have been related to the discrimination of non-native sounds in perception and production. The understanding of the factors influencing L1 category compactness remains limited. Some proposals suggest that compactness may be influenced by individual differences in cognitive processes. Alternatively, category compactness could be linked to linguistic factors, such as the number of languages spoken or the density of the phonological system. This study investigates the latter hypothesis. This study examined category compactness in perception for three L1 Spanish vowels /i/, /e/, and /a/ across four participant groups: 12 monolinguals, 31 functional monolinguals, 24 bilinguals, and 19 multilinguals. To measure compactness in perception, the study employed a perceptual categorization task consisting of synthesized variants of /i/, /e/, and /a/. Participants were asked to label these variants as either acceptable or unacceptable members of their L1 /i/, /e/, and /a/ categories. The findings revealed significant differences in category compactness between monolingual and bi/multilingual speakers. More specifically, bilingual and multilingual speakers had larger/less compact L1 vowel categories than monolinguals. The substantial variability in compactness across all groups suggests that compactness may be influenced by a range of other individual differences, besides the number of languages spoken.

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.

Variability in cross-language and cross-dialect perception. How Irish and Chinese migrants process Australian English vowels.

We investigate how three adult groups- experienced L2 English listeners; experienced D2 (second dialect) listeners; and native L1/D1 listeners- categorise Australian English (AusE) lax front vowels /ɪ e æ/ in /hVt/, /hVl/ and /mVl/ environments in a forced-choice categorisation task of synthesised continua. In study 1, AusE listeners show predictable categorisations, with an effect of coarticulation raising the vowel in perception for nasal onset stimuli, and a following lateral lowering the vowel in perception. In study 2, Irish (D2) and Chinese listeners (L2) have different categorisations than AusE listeners, likely guided by their D1/L1. Coarticulation influences the D1/D2 groups in similar ways, but results in more difficulty and less agreement for the Chinese. We also investigate the role of extralinguistic factors. For the Chinese listeners, higher proficiency in English does not correlate with more Australian-like categorisation behaviour. However, having fewer Chinese in their social network results in more Australian-like categorisation for some stimuli. These findings lend partial support to the role of experience and exposure in L2/D2 contexts, whereby categorisation is likely still driven by native categories, with increased exposure leading to better mapping, but not to a restructuring of underlying phonetic categories.

Ação política em saúde de pessoas trans em Manaus, Amazonas, Brasil

Abstract This article describes the political action repertoire mobilized in the construction of public health policy for trans persons in the Manaus, capital city of the state of Amazonas, in northern Brazil. It is based on ethnographic research combining participant observation in the multiple sites where these policies are constructed and interviews with members of two transgender rights organizations in Manaus, between January 2016 and July 2018. Four modes of political action were reconstructed, as ideal types, named after native categories: those of confrontation, others of “articulation”, the ones seeking visibility and others collaboration. Each mode has the local society as public and agents of the municipal and state Judiciary, Legislative and Executive bodies sometimes as adversaries, sometimes as allies.

Political action in the health of transgender people in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil.

This article describes the political action repertoire mobilized in the construction of public health policy for trans persons in the Manaus, capital city of the state of Amazonas, in northern Brazil. It is based on ethnographic research combining participant observation in the multiple sites where these policies are constructed and interviews with members of two transgender rights organizations in Manaus, between January 2016 and July 2018. Four modes of political action were reconstructed, as ideal types, named after native categories: those of confrontation, others of "articulation", the ones seeking visibility and others collaboration. Each mode has the local society as public and agents of the municipal and state Judiciary, Legislative and Executive bodies sometimes as adversaries, sometimes as allies.

Native Ontological Framework Guides Causal Reasoning: Evidence from Wichi People

Abstract Causal cognition – how we perceive, represent and reason about causal events – are fundamental to the human mind, but it has rarely been approached in its cultural specificity. Here, we investigate this core concept among Wichi people, an indigenous group living in Chaco Forest. We focus on the Wichi, because their epistemological orientations and explanatory frameworks about ecosystem differ importantly from those documented among most Western majority-culture populations. We asked participants to reason about causes of events that involve the hunhat lheley (inhabitants of the earth: humans, non-human animals, plants and spiritual beings) and other entities of their ecosystem (e.g., lagoon). We find a native ontological framework that encompasses three interacting organizing principles. This new evidence highlights ways in which native categories guide causal reasoning. Our research challenge long-held assumptions that dichotomies – nature-culture or natural-supernatural – are universal features of the human mind.

A cotidianidade do cuidado na vida de mulheres familiares de crianças atendidas em um CAPSi de Santos

Abstract Children’s mental health has gained notorious space in Brazilian and international research. It’s known that childcare, besides requiring certain specificities, requires a consolidated support network, and one of these caregivers is the family. In the care provided by the family, a process of feminization is noticed: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, or other family members are markedly more present in groups for family members offered by the CAPSi (Children’s Psychosocial Attention Center). This article presents some results of a scientific initiation research, whose objectives were to identify and understand which are the daily care practices performed by women family members, caregivers of children assisted in a CAPSi in the municipality of Santos and the support received inside and outside the service. The qualitative research used as technique in-depth interviews, with semi-structured script, carried out by telephone, for listening to these women, identified from the information given by professionals of the service. In the women’s reports, we identified native categories related to care: routine, normal, and support. These categories were mentioned by the women to define the daily care of the children. We noticed that the daily routine of care characterizes it as “normal” for these women, and is not considered a burden in their lives or even problematized.

The effects of individual differences in native perception on discrimination of a novel non-native contrast

Native (L1) phonetic categories can constrain the perception of non-native contrasts which deviate from the listener’s L1 (Best & Tyler, 2007; Flege, 1995). Yet, some individuals are remarkably successful at accurately perceiving non-native sounds (e.g., Bongaerts, van Summeren, Planken, & Schils, 1997). We hypothesize that compact L1 categories give an initial advantage in distinguishing non-native contrasts. Sixty-eight Spanish monolinguals were tested on the degree of compactness of their native category /i/, measured through a goodness-of-fit rating task. Participants listened to synthesized variants of the Spanish /i/ vowel (differing in F1, F2, or both) and rated them as either good or bad exemplars of their representation of this category. An individual /i/ compactness index was calculated for each participant and related to the individual perceived dissimilarity score for the novel Russian contrast /i – ɨ/. The Russian contrast /i – ɨ/ is a problematic contrast to perceive for Spanish speakers due to the absence of /ɨ/ in the Spanish vowel inventory, a sound acoustically very similar to /i/. In this study, the compactness of the L1 category /i/ weakly predicted perceptual sensitivity (dissimilarity scores) for the Russian contrast /i – ɨ/.

Assimilation patterns predict L2 identification accuracy of English initial consonants

Abstract A large range of studies has generated predictions of second language (L2) speech learning problems from perceptual assimilation patterns of nonnative sounds to native (L1) categories. The present study extends our knowledge of assimilation patterns as a predictor of L2 speech perception by examining the relationship between perceptual assimilation and L2 identification. Specifically, we examine how nonnative listeners’ perceptual assimilation of the full range of English initial consonants predicts their identification accuracy. Four groups of non-native listeners, differing orthogonally with regard to their L1 (Danish, Finnish) and English-language immersion experience (immersion, non-immersion) participated. As predicted, assimilation patterns interacted with L2 experience in accounting for how the L2 learners identified English consonants for some assimilation types, while the predictions were less successful for other assimilation types.

“Forest medicines,” Kinship Alliances, and Equivocations in the Contemporary Dialogues between Santo Daime and the Yawanawá

AbstractIn this paper, we describe the spiritual and kinship alliances between heads of an urban Santo Daime church from Rio de Janeiro and some leaders of the Yawanawá people from the Amazonian region. We suggest that these alliances involve exchanges and dialogical relationships that hold different meanings for the diverse social actors that take part in them. Further, we argue that equivocation and functional misunderstandings have an important role in these multidirectional dialogues. Based on this case study, we approach the Yawanawá strategies for capturing otherness, and the insertion of the daimistas in the indigenous sociality networks. We focus especially on the Yawanawá mode of producing kin by capturing non‐indigenous people and their participation in exchange networks that encompass multiple regimes of value. From the daimista point of view, we describe these relationships using the native category of “eclecticism.” We suggest that the daimistas attempt to translate the Yawanawá shamanic knowledge and the consumption of the “forest medicines,” experiencing the performance of “becoming indigenous.”

Гендерное разнообразие в индийском обществе: различие в идентичности между хиджрой и трансгендером

Ethnomethodological explanation of the social construction of gender highlighted the natural attitude of society towards binary gender categories (men-women); gender groups other than men and women are socially and culturally rejected. Gender in everyday life is a kind of displaying appearances and behaviour in the forms of masculinity and femininity. Gender is also described as the performanceof individuals in their everyday life. The binary gender system (men-women) is perceived as normal or socially acceptable because of the “natural attitude” (preconceived notion regarding gender) regarding certain fixed social roles and behaviour of men and women. The paper has examined how the social construction of gender contradicts gender diversity. There are four gender categories in Indian society: Men, women, transgender and third gender (Hijra). It has shown the distinction between transgender and third gender identity in Indian society. Hijra is a native third gender category in India, thatstructurally contradicted the compulsory binary gender system but transgender or transsexuals arein favour of fluidity of sexual orientation or sexual preferences.

“Human rights” in dispute: State violence and demands for justice in a comparative perspective

This paper proposes a reflection on the “human rights” category, as a native category, endowed with local and specific meanings. Therefore, it utilizes a comparative perspective by contrast on the uses and meanings of the “state violence” category and the building of processes demanding justice in Rio de Janeiro, in comparison to Buenos Aires. Specifically, it focuses on the ethnography produced after the murder of Rio's alderwoman Marielle Franco, to propose the notion of “attack on human rights”, showing how the category has been built through an antagonistic logic in Rio de Janeiro.

Perception of English and Catalan vowels by English and Catalan listeners: A study of reciprocal cross-linguistic similarity.

This study reports the results of two experiments aimed at assessing the perceived similarity between English and Catalan vowels and diphthongs. Perceived similarity judgements were elicited from speakers of both languages involved and were compared to first language identification data from the same speakers. In experiment 1, a group of 27 naive Catalan listeners performed a perceptual assimilation task in which they were asked to identify Catalan and English vowels in terms of native categories and provide a goodness of fit rating. In experiment 2, a group of native speakers of Southern British English performed an adaptation of the same task. The results showed that most non-native vowels were consistently perceived as instances of a given native category, with varying degrees of goodness of fit. In a few cases, assimilation scores were very high in both experiments, pointing to the possibility of near-identical or shared categories. A few asymmetrical mappings were found, which were linked to the influence of language-specific cues such as the role of vowel duration in English. These results emphasize the importance of contrasting native and non-native perception and the potential of reciprocal approaches for making predictions about non-native perception and second language development.

Rapid Ethnonutrition Assessment Method Is Useful to Prototype Dietary Assessments with a Focus on Local Biodiverse Food Plants

ABSTRACT Ethnonutrition is the study of diets in the context of food systems of different peoples and cultures. Its scope comprises native or local categories used to classify food, and also includes biodiverse food availability, local culinary techniques, seasonality, and cultural perceptions related to diet with nutritional implications. Here, we describe a method useful for gathering ethnonutrition data to design dietary interventions or assessments, the Rapid Ethnonutrition Assessment (REA). REA is a tool that offers food and nutrition research a broad biocultural view of diets, considering food system-level, by prototyping dietary assessments with high efficiency. This method permits us to prevent misinterpretations that lead to wrong conclusions in nutritional research.

NOT EVEN THE SKY IS THE LIMIT: THE MEANINGS OF CONSUMPTION AND THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL MOBILITY ON THE @blogueiradebaixarenda PROFILE ON INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUBE

Abstract The article sets out to explore the meanings surrounding consumption on the @blogueiradebaixarenda profile on the Instagram and YouTube online social networks, considering the perceptions of materiality and their articulations with the dynamics of social mobility. It analyses the elements making up the “low-income lifestyle” as a native category within the context of “digital influencers.” Through online observational research, the posts, hashtags and comments on both social media platforms were analysed, seeking to explore how consumption practices appear as mediators of social dynamics and identity constructs. Among the results, the articulations between materiality and social mobility, the idea of minimalism within the “low-income lifestyle” and the blogger’s status as a cultural mediator are highlighted.

Native phonological and phonetic influences in perceptual assimilation of monosyllabic Thai lexical tones by Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners

A cross tone-language perceptual assimilation study investigated native categorisations and goodness ratings of non-native Thai tones by Thai-naive listeners differing in their native tone systems: Mandarin, Northern Vietnamese and Southern Vietnamese. We derived hypotheses from the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995), which considers both native phonological and phonetic influences on perceptual assimilation of non-native speech contrasts. Mandarin listeners reliably categorised the Thai mid level tone to their single native level tone category, reflecting a native phonological effect, but they also showed high residual phonetic sensitivity to differences between the non-native tone and the native tone it was assimilated to, indicated by low category-goodness ratings. Native phonological and phonetic differences in tones of the two Vietnamese dialects also affected perceptual assimilation of the Thai high level and rising tones. In addition, categorisation responses were faster overall for Categorised than Uncategorised assimilations, revealing the processing cost of perceptual uncertainty due to phonological competition among and/or phonetic discrepancies from multiple native categories. This indicates, furthermore, a more focused and thus stronger native phonological contribution for Categorised than Uncategorised assimilations. PAM principles thus extend to non-native tone assimilations and indicate the importance of both native phonological and phonetic contributions to non-native speech perception.

Turismo penitenciário e arranjos institucionais de mercado

A partir de pesquisa realizada em um município do extremo oeste do estado de São Paulo e convertido em complexo penitenciário, foi possível analisar as especificidades do sistema prisional paulista mediante o que se configurou como turismo penitenciário. O objetivo do artigo é analisar à luz da Sociologia Econômica os efeitos do encarceramento em massa a partir do recorte de mercado. O método consistiu em etnografia e entrevistas semi-estruturadas. A pesquisa conclui que o fluxo das visitantes, identificadas pela categoria nativa mulher de preso, reconverte não só o comércio local como já observado por outras pesquisas como igualmente seus significados, conforme observa Zelizer. Se os presos situam-se num lugar a parte, a política de interiorização dos presídios e sua respectiva dinâmica de mercado inserem as suas famílias num lugar a parte e aprofundam desigualdades. 
 Palavras-chave: Prisões. Turismo penitenciário. Estado. Mercado. Consumo.

Rural Development Projects, Schooling and Territorial Transformations: A Case Study in Indigenous Communities of Andean Argentina

This article analyzes, in four Andean indigenous communities in northwestern Argentina, the dynamics of transformation of pastoral territoriality that are occurring in recent times. A conceptual device developed by another author – the distinction between two-dimensional and zero-dimensional forms of tenure (Ingold 1987) – is used to identify the demarcation criteria underlying different native terms to designate the domestic group places. The territorial transformations that are taking place today are identified fundamentally in two family investment priorities: in building new houses, or in installing fences for the enclosure of plots. Both investment targets point to the growing economic role of rural schools as a factor that drives local economical circulations. For domestic groups with schooled children, the priority becomes to get employment at school. For domestic groups in the fission stage, the priority is to intensify local agricultural and livestock production in order to take profit of the money circulation circuits and input demands of local schools. In both cases, territorial dynamics tend to focus livestock mobility in more circumscribed and less strenuous transfer ranges, and these dynamics are expressed through modifications in the native categories used to name spaces and places.

Follow the Actors: Ethnographic Keys for Understanding Legal Activism for Criminal Justice Reform in Argentina

This article presents the research backroom about the legal activism in the criminal justice system reform following the ethnographic strategy. In particular, it addresses the “struggle” for “accusatory” criminal procedural reform at the federal level in Argentina since the end of the last dictatorship (1976-1983). Specifically it is about: a) participation in public events as an entrée to the field; b) native etnographer; c) native categories and theoretical concepts; d) the cause-based “partisanism” (militancia) and legal activism; and e) reform flags as cosmologies of social order. Finally, the article offers an analysis of the benefits of ethnographic research with legal activists in the field of human rights.

Synthesis of biomedical Ti-25Ni-15Si-10HA alloy by mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering

In this research approach, a β-phase titanium alloy was produced successfully employing mechanical alloying and consolidated with spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. Herein, Ni, Si and HA powders with varied weight percentage were used to fabricate the Ti alloy. The influence of HA addition on microstructure of the alloy was assessed using optical microscopy route and further amplified using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The elemental composition and phase of Ti-alloy was investigated using x-ray diffractometer. Vicker hardness (HV) tester was employed to estimate the micro hardness of the specimen surface. During the FESEM analysis, it was observed that within the sintering process, alloy exhibits complex reactions with HA, which leads to the progress of bioactive compounds (CaO, TiO2, Ca3 (PO4)2, Ti2Ni, CaTiO3 and CaTiSiO5) enhancing the bioactivity of the Ti alloy. The fabricated Ti alloy (Ti-25Ni-15Si-10HA) exhibited superior microhardness (∼458HV) at 900°C, comparative to the other alloys of the native category. Based upon the current investigation, Ti-25Ni-15Si-10HA alloy could find applications as bioimplants in dental and orthopedic areas.