South African Speakers Research Articles

Motion event categorisation in a nativised variety of South African English

The present study seeks to expand the current focus on acquisition situations in linguistic relativity research by exploring the effects of nativisation (the process by which a L2 is acquired as a L1) on language-specific cognitive behaviour. Categorisation preferences of goal-oriented motion events were investigated in South African speakers who learnt English as a L1 from caregivers who spoke English as a L2 and Afrikaans as a L1. The aim of the study was to establish whether the categorisation patterns found in the nativised English variety: (1) resemble patterns of L2 speakers of English with Afrikaans as a L1, (2) resemble patterns of L1 English speakers of a non-nativised English variety and (3) do not pattern with either of the above, but instead exhibit a distinct behaviour. It was found that simultaneous, functional bilinguals (Afrikaans and nativised English) patterned with L1 Afrikaans speakers, but the extent to which they did so was modulated by their frequency of use of Afrikaans. Functionally monolingual speakers of nativised English, on the other hand, patterned with L1 speakers of British English. This suggests that bilingualism, rather than nativisation, was a reliable predictor of event categorisation preferences.

Message from the Chairman of the South African Online User Group

The South African Online User Group was founded in April 1979, with twenty members. In December that year the International Online Information Meeting was in its third year. From our geographically‐remote position at the southern tip of the African continent, attendance at the International On‐line Information Meeting in London has remained, for most members, a dream. As our membership has grown (now almost 400) and the scope and depth of the International Online Information Meeting has expanded, attendance — and even active participation — has become a desirable goal for an increasing number of our online professionals. Of the 59 papers delivered at the Fourteenth International Online Information Meeting in December 1990, five were presented by South African speakers, whilst a further nine delegates from South Africa attended the Meeting.

Stop Epenthesis in English

Some phonologists have claimed that the insertion of a stop between a sonorant and a fricative consonant in syllable-final sonorant–fricative clusters follows from universal constraints on the human speech perception and production mechanism. Others have claimed that the intrusive stops are products of language or dialect specific phonological rules that are stated in the grammar. In this experiment we examined the production of sonorant–fricative and sonorant–stop–fricative clusters by two groups of English speakers. One spoke a South African dialect and the other an American mid-western dialect. The words tested ended in clusters of [n] or [l] plus [s] or [ts] and their voiced counterparts. Spectrographic analysis revealed that the South African speakers maintained a clear contrast between sonorant–fricative and sonorant–stop–fricative clusters. The American speakers always inserted stops after the sonorant if the fricative was voiceless, but when the fricative was voiced, they more often omitted the stop in underlying clusters containing a stop (/ldz/ or /ndz/) but sometimes inserted a stop in clusters such as /nz/ or /lz/. Measurements of the durations of the vowels, sonorants, stops and the final fricatives were made from the spectrograms. The inserted stop in the American productions was significantly shorter than the underlying one and its presence also affected the duration of the preceding nasal. This incomplete neutralization is similar to other cases reported in the literature. It is proposed here that cases of incomplete neutralization result from the application of language-specific rules that we call phase rules which govern articulatory timing. These rules sometimes appear to yield results very similar to those of segmental phonological rules.