Groups Of Speakers Research Articles

Korean Nasalization as L1 Interference on English Production by Korean EFL Learners

The present study aims to analyze how L1 interference of Korean nasalization processes influences English speech by Korean EFL speakers according to their English proficiency. 20 Korean EFL speakers (experimental group) and four native speakers of English (control group) participated in this study. Korean EFL speakers were divided into two groups of ten according to their English proficiency. This study measures the values of three factors: the frequency of nasalization processes, final stop release, and vowel insertion. Through this study, the following results were found. The English proficiency of Korean EFL speakers is found to influence the realization of nasalization processes and vowel insertion in their English speech in that they are realized more frequently by the group with lower English proficiency than the group with higher English proficiency. For final stop release, although no particular difference is found when comparing the frequency of the final stop release of the three speaker groups, it is found that the group with English native speakers has a higher frequency of final stop release than the two Korean speaker groups, and the group with higher English proficiency is likely to have a higher frequency of final stop release compared to the group with lower English proficiency in most cases. The findings suggest that the group with higher English proficiency speaks closer to English native speakers than the group with lower English proficiency.

More than a signboard: the name of a store in the speaker’s mental lexicon

Background. Forming a system of spatial, social and cultural landmarks, each speaker consciously/unconsciously records proper names which seem important. The most significant units are remembered, and it is they that determine the general idea of the entire set of marked objects. Since the system of linguistic units in the individual mental lexicon is regulated by a great number of subjective factors, it can be assumed that the tendencies of the reflection of reality in the mental lexicon common to a group of speakers open the way to the analysis of current social stereotypes. Shop and store names are one of the groups of commercial names, therefore, by their very nature, they are maximally oriented towards reflecting positive stereotypes of large social groups.Purpose. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the names of shops and stores are reflected in the mental lexicon of the women residents of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and to try to outline the connection between the proper names verbalization in speakers’ mental lexicon and their ideas about extralinguistic reality.Methods. The material for this study consists of 249 graphic variants of 160 names of clothing, footwear and food stores, collected by surveying 45 women residents of Kyiv. Descriptive, comparative, and quantitative methods were used in the research, and techniques of the structural method were occasionally involved.Results. Current store names in the capital of Ukraine create а very colorful linguistic landscape with its main feature – the predominance of foreign language components, both lexical and graphic. Among all this diversity, the speaker remembers 3 or 4 names оn average, which determine her idea of the general trends in the nomination of objects in this field and indirectly ‒ these objects themselves. The analysis of store and shop names active in the mental lexicon of Kyiv residents shows that the absolute majority of clothing and shoe stores (79 % and 81 %, respectively) are perceived by names identified with other cultural spaces. Not only the name’s origin, but primarily its graphic form is a clear indicator of belonging to some cultural space. The opposite case in the name system of grocery stores is recorded ‒ only 26 % of them were reproduced by respondents in Latin. The form in which the store or shop name is stored in the mental lexicon depends on a) the graphic code visualized on the signboard / in the advertisement and b) the sound form of the name commonly used in informal communication. The activity of the second factor directly depends on the symmetry of the sound and spelling of the barbarism name and the level of speaker’s foreign language competence. The result of the collision of different graphic codes in the speaker’s mind is mixing, which is manifested in the recording of the original form of the name from Latin to Cyrillic during memorization. Therefore, while keeping proper names in memory, speakers try to assimilate their form to the rest of the fixed units, and this often manifests itself in the transformation of the original form of proper name.Discussion. Oversaturation of Kyiv’s commercial ergonomics system with barbaric names forms a strong public stereotype about the attractiveness and progressiveness of other cultures in the consumption sphere and creates the illusion of the absence of national Ukrainian in it. Trying to master the system of store and shop names, Kyiv residents find themselves in a conflict situation: the dominant graphic code for them is the Cyrillic alphabet, while the Latin alphabet prevails in the visual space of Kyiv’s trade establishments. The way out of this situation is transformation ‒ recording of the original name with the help of a graphic system convenient for the speaker. In order to form a general idea about the reflection of the commercial proper names system in the mental lexicon of Ukrainians, it is necessary to involve in the study data from representatives of different age groups from different regions of the country.

The use of periphrasis for the expression of aspect by Greek heritage speakers

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the narrowing of register variation in the domain of verbal aspect in the production of aspect by two different age groups of Greek heritage speakers (HSs), adolescents and adults, which we compared to their monolingual peers. We first identify a previously undocumented case of register variation for the expression of perfective aspect in Greek. Both HSs and monolingual speakers have at their disposal synthetic and analytic forms, the latter built on the basis of light verbs, to express grammatical aspect, and specifically perfective aspect. While monolinguals make use of this alternation to signal register variation, with periphrastic constructions used in informal settings and in the oral mode, HSs behave differently. Both adolescent and adult HSs generalize periphrastic constructions across formal and informal communicative situations, thus showing a case of register variation narrowing. The fact that periphrastic constructions are associated with perfective aspect is due to aspect levelling: HSs overgeneralize the use of the perfective aspect.

Individuals' preference on reading pathways influences the involvement of neural pathways in phonological learning.

Existing behavioral and neuroimaging studies revealed inter-individual variability in the selection of the two phonological routes in word reading. However, it is not clear how individuals' preferred reading pathways/strategies modulate the involvement of a certain brain region for phonological learning in a new language, and consequently affect their behavioral performance on phonological access. To address this question, the present study recruited a group of native Chinese speakers to learn two sets of artificial language characters, respectively, in addressed-phonology training (i.e., whole-word mapping) and assembled-phonology training conditions (i.e., grapheme-to-phoneme mapping). Behavioral results showed that the more lexical pathways participants preferred, the better they performed on newly-acquired addressed characters relative to assembled characters. More importantly, neuroimaging results showed that participants who preferred lexical pathway in phonological access show less involvement of brain regions for addressed phonology (e.g., the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex and right pars triangularis) in the processing of newly-acquired addressed characters. These results indicated that phonological access via the preferred pathway required less neural resources to achieve better behavioral performance. These above results provide direct neuroimaging evidence for the influence of reading pathway preference on phonological learning.

The role of L1-L2 dissimilarity in L2 segment learning - Implications from the acquisition of English post-alveolar fricatives by Mandarin and Mandarin/Wu speakers.

This study examines how the concept of L1-L2 dissimilarity should be addressed from a two-way perspective in L2 segment learning, and how it relates to the learning outcomes. We achieved this by investigating the productions of the post-alveolar fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/ by Mandarin and Mandarin/Wu speakers, which were subsequently assessed by native English listeners. In the first experiment, we analyzed the spectral moments of /ʃ, ʒ/ produced by Mandarin monolingual and Mandarin/Wu bilingual speakers to find out how the two groups of speakers pronounced the target segments. In the second experiment, native English listeners were tasked with rating the accentedness of the Mandarin- and Mandarin/Wu-accented /ʃ, ʒ/. Results showed native English listeners scored Mandarin/Wu-accented /ʃ/ as having no accent and Mandarin-accented /ʒ/ as having a heavy accent, indicating that English natives perceived the 'native vs. nonnative' segment dissimilarity differently from Chinese learners of English, and that the L1-L2 dissimilarity perceived from both sides may work together in defining the L2 segment learning outcomes.

Acoustic Predictors of Ease of Understanding in Spanish Speakers With Dysarthria Associated With Parkinson's Disease.

The purpose of this study was to examine selected baseline acoustic features of hypokinetic dysarthria in Spanish speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and identify potential acoustic predictors of ease of understanding in Spanish. Seventeen Spanish-speaking individuals with mild-to-moderate hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to PD and eight healthy controls were recorded reading a translation of the Rainbow Passage. Acoustic measures of vowel space area, as indicated by the formant centralization ratio (FCR), envelope modulation spectra (EMS), and articulation rate were derived from the speech samples. Additionally, 15 healthy adults rated ease of understanding of the recordings on a visual analogue scale. A multiple linear regression model was implemented to investigate the predictive value of the selected acoustic parameters on ease of understanding. Listeners' ease of understanding was significantly lower for speakers with dysarthria than for healthy controls. The FCR, EMS from the first 10 s of the reading passage, and the difference in EMS between the end and the beginning sections of the passage differed significantly between the two groups of speakers. Findings indicated that 67.7% of the variability in ease of understanding was explained by the predictive model, suggesting a moderately strong relationship between the acoustic and perceptual domains. Measures of envelope modulation spectra were found to be highly significant model predictors of ease of understanding of Spanish-speaking individuals with hypokinetic dysarthria associated with PD. Articulation rate was also found to be important (albeit to a lesser degree) in the predictive model. The formant centralization ratio should be further examined with a larger sample size and more severe dysarthria to determine its efficacy in predicting ease of understanding.

The social lives of isolates (and small language families): the case of the Northwest Amazon.

The Americas are home to patches of extraordinary linguistic (genealogical) diversity. These high-diversity areas are particularly unexpected given the recent population of the Americas. In this paper, we zoom in on one such area, the Northwest Amazon, and address the question of how the diversity in this area has persisted to the present. We contrast two hypotheses that claim opposite mechanisms for the maintenance of diversity: the isolation hypothesis suggests that isolation facilitates the preservation of diversity, while the integration hypothesis proposes that conscious identity preservation in combination with contact drives diversity maintenance. We test predictions for both hypotheses across four disciplines: biogeography, cultural anthropology, population genetics and linguistics. Our results show signs of both isolation and integration, but they mainly suggest considerable diversity in how groups of speakers have interacted with their surroundings.

Realisation of remorse in EFL teachers: a cross-sectional interlanguage pragmatics studyage Pragmatics: A Cross-Sectional Study on the Realization of Remorse in a Group of Chilean Spanish-Speaking EFL Teachers.

The present cross-sectional study centres on interlanguage pragmatics and seeks to determine the manner in which a group of thirteen Chilean Spanish speaking teachers of English express remorse in English, in comparison with a group of thirteen native speakers of the English language. This comparison pursues to ascertain differences and/ or similarities in terms of linguistic expressions used, grammatical structures, and cultural authenticity. The data was gathered by means of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) containing fifteen situational prompts that elicit expressions of remorse by both groups of speakers. To establish whether cultural authenticity varies, i.e., if participants would utilise similar responses in similar everyday situations, a three-question questionnaire was attached to some of the situations. The findings show that both groups express remorse quite similarly in terms of linguistic utterances and grammatical structures but vary greatly when it comes to cultural authenticity; many of the speakers of the first group did not use swearing words or expressions in English, but said they would have in a similar and real situation. This study may contribute to a better understanding of how remorse is uttered and one of its results is a coding scheme for the most utilised realisations of remorse.

Contribution of semantic context to bilingual processing

Aims: This paper seeks to determine the degree to which bilinguals and monolinguals use the semantic information available to them to activate semantically related lexical associates and facilitate processing. Design: We conduct a visual word masked priming task with 300 pairs of words that differed in forward strength of association in English-dominant early-acquiring and late bilinguals and monolinguals. We measured the reaction time for participants who completed a semantic judgment. Data and Analysis: Reaction times from 34 college-aged bilinguals and 28 monolinguals were analyzed with a series of analyses of variance (ANOVAs). The coefficient of variation (CV), a measure of efficiency, was calculated and used to compare speaker groups. Conclusions: Results indicated bilinguals were generally slower than monolinguals and did not display a benefit of additional semantic context on reaction time speed. The increase of semantic information in highly associated word pairs compared to unassociated word pairs did not increase reaction time in bilinguals to the same degree as it did in monolinguals. Comparing CV values indicate that the speaker groups were processing semantic information with approximately equal efficiency, although both groups were processing at different speeds. Originality: This study expands on previous research exploring the effect of semantic relations across three word strengths conditions and using visual pairs in a masked priming paradigm using predominantly English-dominant bilinguals. Significance: The findings indicate that even early-acquiring bilinguals may not be using meaning-related information to activate semantic associates in the same way as monolinguals. Such differences with word-level processing and activation may contribute to bilinguals’ differences and delays in sentence processing tasks.

Oral Language Proficiency, Compensatory Strategies, Mother Tongue, and Academic Performance in English of Junior High School Learners in Northern Philippines

This study investigated the relationships between oral language proficiency level and oral compensatory strategies of the Grade 8 learners. It also described the possible association of compensatory strategies to academic performance in English, and their mother tongue. A total of 50 learners who were enrolled during the School Year 2021-2022 served as the participants in this study. The researcher used two (2) assessment tools to gather the needed data. The first was a questionnaire validated through an oral interview that consisted of 8-10 “Wh” questions related to their background. The second was the picture-cued narration. The researcher personally administered both the interview and the picture cued narration. The data gathered were computer processed using the software on Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results denote a considerably high level of Oral Language Proficiency with a grand mean of 3.70 in terms of accuracy and 3.63 on fluency which means that the participants belong to the group of advanced intermediate speakers. However, there was no significant relationship between oral language proficiency and compensatory strategies of the participants as well as on their academic performance in English and their mother tongue.

Video games lexicon included in Spanish language: a multiple case study

In our current society, the lexical treasure that Spanish has is made up of numerous words that recognize the expressions of a group of speakers. Due to technological development, this reality is present in the Internet space and among consumers of online content, who discover and learn, from this multimodal tool, new terms that arise daily, giving rise to new words. For this reason, in this dissertation, we aim investigate and treat those terms of Spanish and English origin and even neologisms that make up the world of video games, with a viewing of 50 youtubers and an experimentation of 3 successful video games from which it will be obtained, terms which will be later collated to see how they are treated in the different dictionaries. Thirdly, the percentage of these terms will be obtained through the words collected in the reference corpus of Spanish and English. It will also be addressed what attention video games receive recently as a didactic multimodal tool for learning vocabulary.

Intonational alignment in second language acquisition

This study examines whether proficient second language speakers of Belfast English and Northern Standard German accommodate on cross-linguistically different intonational phonological categories and their gradient phonetic implementation in a collaborative map task. Belfast English and Northern Standard German select two different intonation patterns for nuclear pitch accents in declarative utterances. Northern Standard German features a falling pitch accent pattern. In Belfast English, a rising intonation contour is realised. The experiment investigates the production of phonologically different pitch accents in declarative utterances, gradient acoustic characteristics of pitch range in utterance-final position and peak alignment in nuclear pitch accents. Evidence was found for accommodation for all three prosodic phenomena. However, the accommodation patterns were asymmetric in the Belfast English and the Northern Standard German groups of speakers. Furthermore, both phonologically contrastive characteristics and gradient phonetic acoustic detail appeared to be influenced by factors of linguistic function, perceptual salience and familiarity.

El concepto de la comunidad de práctica en el contexto de un grupo determinado de hablantes de a Fala de Xálima

The concept of community of practice in the context of a selected group of speakers of a Fala de Xálima The purpose of this paper is to study the current sociolinguistic situation of the language community of Xálima through the prism of the theory of community of practice. We define the community of practice as an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavour of preserving and promoting their vernacular language. The empirical material will be a series of anthropological observations and comments on the semi-directed interviews, made in situ by the authors, in which we will analyse the efforts towards the orthographic standardization and their possible effects. We aim to demonstrate that the methodological principle of community of practice is applicable and suitable to shed new light over sociolinguistic minorized contexts, especially when conducting research in the field of the so-called third wave of sociolinguistics.

Emotional factors of early vocabulary in Spanish as a second language

AbstractPrevious studies analysing the differences in emotionality in first and second language suggest that affective content of lexical items is modulated in certain contexts. This paper investigates the differences in valence and arousal ratings for 300 early words, in both oral and written modalities, through speakers’ subjective appraisal of words given by two immersion groups of Spanish late bilinguals (Chinese and European) compared with a group of native speakers. The main goal of our study is to identify the lexical areas where variability occurs, regarding to a set of affective (emotional charge and intensity), grammatical (nouns, adjectives and verbs) and semantic (concreteness) features of words. Our results show that valence is the dimension where the greatest variability is observed between native and bilinguals, although the influence of the independent factors differs considerably. Besides, arousal yields illuminating data regarding the grammatical category of words and differentiation between the groups of participants.

More insights into the interaction between age, exposure, and attitudes in language attrition and retention from the perspective of bilingual returnees

Aims and Objectives: The study investigates the effects of age, language use, and attitudes on Portuguese returnee bilinguals’ knowledge of German nominal morphology. We focused on language attrition. In addition, we compared whether the results of returnee bilinguals differ in relevant ways from the performance of L1 speakers of German and, if so, in which domains. Methodology: A background questionnaire and offline tasks that elicit lexical knowledge, case, gender, and plural marking in German were applied to a group of Portuguese–German bilingual returnees ( N = 20) and a group of German L1 speakers ( N = 20). Data and Analysis: The elicited data were analyzed through non-parametric tests (Mann–Whitney tests, Wilcoxon tests, and Spearman correlation tests), since not all the requirements for running mixed models could be fulfilled. Findings: The results show that bilingual returnees have very stable knowledge of the analyzed properties: parts of morphosyntactic knowledge are acquired and stabilized in childhood and remain highly invulnerable to loss of contact throughout the speakers’ lifetime. However, returnees’ knowledge of the German case system is constrained by age of input loss, language use, and attitudes. Ungrammatical plural marking is correlated with the speakers’ bonds to the German language and culture. No cross-linguistic influence from Portuguese was found in the domain of plural marking. Originality: This study resumes the question of differential attrition effects in returnee bilinguals by using a more controlled methodology. It extends the investigation to returnees’ performance in the lexical domain and with regard to case, gender, and number morphology in German, also quantifying other variables, such as the age of onset of bilingualism, the amount of contact with German after return, and the length of residence in Portugal. In addition, it focuses the less researched question regarding the role of the returnees’ attitudes toward both their languages. Significance/Implications: The study highlights the multi-dimensional factors that constrain language proficiency over a bilingual speaker’s lifetime.

A sociocultural analysis of the bereavement discourse: a cross-cultural study

Reactions to death have been examined in line with psychological, behavioral, and social perspectives (Zunin & Zunin, 2007). That being the case, the bereavement discourse has not been given sufficient attention appropriate to its communicative functions. This paper aims at investigating the bereavement discourse among Persian and English speakers, delving into the common communicative themes and extracting semantically meaningful categories. I also intend to make a cross-cultural comparison based on the common themes. The data of this study include 743 condoling sentences gathered through movie analysis, which can be a good source representing societal norms and cultural stereotypes (Pimentel, 2010). The bereavement discourse in movies was categorized under six general functions: (1) expressing regret; (2) offering condolence; (3) sharing feeling; (4) offering help; (5) extending sympathy; and (6) religious-oriented comments. The Chi-square test was conducted to find out whether the differences between these two groups of speakers are significant. I also discuss that the differences are meaningfully attributable to cultural conventions and social norms. Therefore, the relationship between micro and macro contexts is considered to make broader cultural inferences.

Prosodic Transfer in Contact Varieties: Vocative Calls in Metropolitan and Basaá-Cameroonian French

This paper examines the production of vocative calls in (Northern) Metropolitan French (MF) and Cameroonian French (CF) as it is spoken by native speakers of a tone language, Basaá. While the results of our Discourse Completion Task confirm previous descriptions of MF, they also further our understanding of the relationship between pragmatics and prosody across different groups of French speakers. MF favors the vocative chant in routine contexts and a rising-falling contour in urgent contexts. In contrast, context has little influence on the choice of contour in CF. A melody consisting of the surface realization of lexical tones is produced in both contexts. Regarding acoustic parameters, context only exerts a significant effect on the loudness of vocative calls (RMS amplitude) and has little effect on their F0 height, F0 range and duration. A target-use of vocative calls in CF thus does not amount to target-like use of the original standard target language, MF. Our results provide novel evidence for the transfer of lexical tones onto the contact variety of an intonation language. They also corroborate previous studies involving the pragmatics-prosody interface: the more marked a prosodic pattern is (here, the vocative chant), the more difficult it is to acquire.

Preface: 2022 International Conference on Economic Management and Foreign Trade (EMFT 2022)

This proceeding consists of the peer-reviewed papers from the 2022 International Conference on Economic Management and Foreign Trade (EMFT 2022), which was organized by the Zhejiang Normal University, China and University of Surrey, UK. However, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the conference was held online during September 10-11, 2022 in Edinburgh, UK.
 The main objective of EMFT 2022 is to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners from universities, academic institutions and industries to meet and share cutting-edge developments in the areas of economics management and foreign trade. This conference also provided an opportunity to exchange research evidence and innovative ideas and also the issues related to business and marketing management.
 This proceeding will include presentations on the latest research areas. EMFT 2022 had gathered an excellent group of keynote speakers from around the globe on different topics such as: Household Behavior and Family Economics, Public Administration and Small Business Entrepreneurship, Labor Relations & Human Resource Management, Business Performance Management, Development Planning and Policy, Corporate Finance and Governance, Marketing Theory and Applications, and How Business Technology Platform Accelerates Your Innovation. Looking forward to seeing you again next year.
 Scientific Committee of EMFT 2022
 Edinburgh, UK

Cognitive Sociolinguistic Variation in the Old Bailey Voices Corpus: The Case for a New Concept‐Led Framework

AbstractThe current paper contributes to a greater understanding of concepts in the context of cognitive sociolinguistic variation. We show how concepts, which we root in thesauri‐based units, co‐occur with other concepts and how they vary between and within groups of speakers as represented in historical transcripts from the Old Bailey court. In order to carry out distributional sociosemantic analysis at a conceptual level we have developed a tool which combines word sense disambiguation with dependency analysis, which we refer to as Conceptual Dependency Corpus. A case study of gendered concepts from the Old Bailey Voices Corpus demonstrates that there are differences in the usage of concepts both within and between sociodemographic groupings of speakers. In particular, the co‐occurrence distributions of the concepts MAN, WOMAN and CHILD vary according to a speaker's gender and role in the court. By introducing methodological innovations, we empirically elicit socioconceptual polysemy, that is different speakers using the same concept in different ways and propose a framework to analyse and interpret this phenomenon. The results also provide support for engaging computational semantics in researching cognitive and sociolinguistic phenomena.

Performance analysis of various fundamental frequency estimation algorithms in the context of pathological speech.

Reliable fundamental frequency (f0) extraction algorithms are crucial in many fields of speech research. The current bulk of studies testing the robustness of different algorithms have focused on healthy speech and/or measurements of sustained vowels. Few studies have tested f0 estimations in the context of pathological speech, and even fewer on continuous speech. The present study evaluated 12 available pitch detection algorithms on a corpus of read speech by 24 speakers (8 healthy speakers, 8 speakers with Parkinson's disease, and 8 with head and neck cancer). Two fusion methods' algorithms have been tested: one based on the median of algorithms and one based on the fusion between the best algorithm for voicing detection and the algorithm that generates the most accurate f0 estimations on voiced parts. Our results show that time-domain algorithms, like REAPER, are best for voicing detection while deep neural network algorithms, like FCN- f0, yield better accuracy for the f0 values on voiced parts. The combination of REAPER and FCN- f0 yields the best ratio performance/implementation complexity, since it generates less than 4% errors on voicing detection and less than 5% of gross errors in the estimation of the f0 values for all speaker groups.