Polish Speakers Research Articles

Diphthongs in the repopulated vowel space

The study examined 8 British English diphthongs produced by Polish learners of English, testing the diphthongs’ quality, duration, nasalization, and occurrence of glottal stops before the diphthongs. There were twelve conditions in which the diphthongs were tested: word-initial, word-final, before a voiced obstruent, before a voiceless obstruent, before a nasal consonant, and before a nasal consonant followed by a fricative, and each of these conditions was tested in a stressed and unstressed position. The diphthongs were tested in real words, embedded in sentences, controlled for the stress position, rhythmic units, and length. The sentences were read by 8 female and 8 male Polish learners of English and control subjects. The aim of the phonetic analysis done with Praat, and employing the methodologies used by Flege (1995) for SLA and Peeters (1991) and Jacewicz, Fujimara, and Fox (2003) for diphthongs, is to examine the shape of the restructured vowel space (Liljencrants and Lindblom 1972; Stevens 1989). The approach taken here is termed Vowel Space Repopulation to emphasize that the vowel space of Polish speakers of English is re-structured by new categories in complex ways which are not adequately captured by traditional notions such as ‘‘transfer,’’ ‘‘interference,’’ or ‘‘interlanguage.’’

Meibomian Gland Dysfunction in Computer Vision Syndrome

This paper presents a multilingual news surveillance system applied to tele-epidemiology. It has been shown that multilingual approaches improve timeliness in detection of epidemic events across the globe, eliminating the wait for local news to be translated into major languages. We present here a system to extract epidemic events in potentially any language, provided a Wikipedia seed for common disease names exists.The Daniel system presented herein relies on properties that are common to news writing (the journalistic genre), the most useful being repetition and saliency. Wikipedia is used to screen common disease names to be matched with repeated characters strings. Language variations, such as declensions, are handled by processing text at the character-level, rather than at the word level. This additionally makes it possible to handle various writing systems in a similar fashion.As no multilingual ground truth existed to evaluate the Daniel system, we built a multilingual corpus from the Web, and collected annotations from native speakers of Chinese, English, Greek, Polish and Russian, with no connection or interest in the Daniel system. This data set is available online freely, and can be used for the evaluation of other event extraction systems.Experiments for 5 languages out of 17 tested are detailed in this paper: Chinese, English, Greek, Polish and Russian. The Daniel system achieves an average F-measure of 82% in these 5 languages. It reaches 87% on BEcorpus, the state-of-the-art corpus in English, slightly below top-performing systems, which are tailored with numerous language-specific resources. The consistent performance of Daniel on multiple languages is an important contribution to the reactivity and the coverage of epidemiological event detection systems.Most event extraction systems rely on extensive resources that are language-specific. While their sophistication induces excellent results (over 90% precision and recall), it restricts their coverage in terms of languages and geographic areas. In contrast, in order to detect epidemic events in any language, the Daniel system only requires a list of a few hundreds of disease names and locations, which can actually be acquired automatically. The system can perform consistently well on any language, with precision and recall around 82% on average, according to this paper's evaluation. Daniel's character-based approach is especially interesting for morphologically-rich and low-resourced languages. The lack of resources to be exploited and the state of the art string matching algorithms imply that Daniel can process thousands of documents per minute on a simple laptop. In the context of epidemic surveillance, reactivity and geographic coverage are of primary importance, since no one knows where the next event will strike, and therefore in what vernacular language it will first be reported. By being able to process any language, the Daniel system offers unique coverage for poorly endowed languages, and can complete state of the art techniques for major languages.

El sistema verbal de la interlengua de los aprendices polacos de español

The article analyses the verbal system of Polish learners of Spanish interlanguage at three different levels of communicative competence. We also expound on how the description of interlanguage can influence the syllabus on which the courses of Spanish as a foreign language addressed to speakers of Polish are based.

Rules or schemas? Evidence from Polish

At least three factors—regularity, type frequency, and phonological heterogeneity—have been claimed to be implicated in determining the likelihood that a particular inflection will be applied to new stems. The role of these factors in determining Polish speakers’ productivity with genitive and dative inflections was investigated using nonce word production tasks and spontaneous child language data. Both children and adults freely generalised genitive masculine inflections, which are irregular but apply to large classes of phonologically heterogeneous nouns. However, speakers were only weakly productive with genitive neuter and dative neuter inflections, in spite of the fact that they are almost completely regular. This is attributed to the fact that the neuter class is relatively small, and that most nouns are clustered in a few densely populated phonological neighbourhoods. Thus, type frequency and phonological heterogeneity appear to be much better predictors of productivity than regularity. These findings are discussed in the context of single and dual mechanism approaches to morphological productivity.

The Computer as a Tool for Teaching Grammar: The Program Grampol—Gramatyka Polsha

This is a detailed description of the computer program Grampol ver. 3.0 for Windows, which was designed as an aid in teaching Polish to adult students, as well as non-native speakers of Polish who wish to grasp the rules of grammar. The program covers the areas of phonetics, spelling, word formation, inflection and syntax. The program’s lessons are the most important aspect of Grampol. They address the peculiarities of Polish and its most difficult grammar rules, providing students with an effective tool for analysis and synthesis of oral and/or written texts.

Phonetic motivation for phonological stop assibilation

This article examines the motivation for phonological stop assibilations, e.g. /t/ is realized as [ts], [s] or [tʃ] before /i/, from the phonetic perspective. Hall & Hamann (2003) posit the following two implications: (a) Assibilation cannot be triggered by /i/ unless it is also triggered by /j/, and (b) Voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. In the following study we present the results of three acoustic experiments with native speakers of German and Polish which support implications (a) and (b). In our experiments we measured the friction phase after the /t d/ release before the onset of the following high front vocoid for four speakers of German and Polish. We found that the friction phase for /tj/ was significantly longer than that of /ti/, and that the friction phase of /t/ in the assibilation context is significantly longer than that of /d/.

The Production System's Formulation of Relative Clause Structures: Evidence From Polish

In this study, we focused on the formulation of relative clauses with preposition and genitive pied-piping. Thirty child (5;9 to 8;4) and 30 adult Polish speakers were given an elicited production task and a grammaticality judgment task. Almost all of the children accepted preposition pied-piping, but only half of them produced it. We suggest that the difficulty for the sentence formulator has to do with properties of the structure. We also consider why the structure seems easier to produce in Polish than in some other languages and suggest that a second type of difficulty, which does not occur in Polish, stems from the use of the complementizer as a relative marker. The children did not correctly produce any relativized genitives and accepted them only around half of the time. We claim that case marking complicates the formulation of the genitive construction and that the marginal possibility of genitive stranding delays the acquisition of genitive pied-piping for reasons relating to economy.

Affricate gemination in the English of Polish speakers: A study in second language variability

This study investigates the nature of the acoustic variation in sequences of identical affricates produced by Polish learners of English. In both English and Polish sequences of identical affricates occur across word boundaries, but only in Polish do such sequences also occur root internally and across morpheme boundaries. In Polish sequences of identical affricates are manifested variably both by rearticulation of both affricates and by articulation of a single affricate but with lengthened duration of either the stop or the fricative. To investigate their English, the subjects performed two tasks: repetition of 12 English sentences and orally responding to 17 multiple choice questions. The task produced significant cross-speaker differences in the phonetics of the geminates, differences correlated with differences in their proficiency levels in English. The more Polish-like singly articulated long affricates were produced by 22% of the intermediate speakers but by 48% of the advanced speakers, the opposite of what one might expect. The intermediate speakers appear to have paid more attention to the phonetics of the English cues, thus producing more fully rearticulated affricates; the more advanced speakers appear to have paid less attention to the phonetics of the cues, thus reverting more to the norms of Polish pronunciation.

The Recognition of Gender-Marked Nouns and Verbs in Polish-Speaking Aphasic Patients

In the present study, we investigated the on-line recognition of gender-marked lexical items by three aphasic patients and eighteen matched control participants, all native speakers of Polish. Polish is unique in that it allows investigating grammatical gender across the major categories of nouns and verbs. Patients and their controls were tested using a simple visual lexical decision paradigm in which gender, number and grammatical category were manipulated. Results show that, while response latencies were markedly slower for aphasic patients, gender did not yield differential results in either grammatical category, for both patients and control participants. Plural forms, on the other hand, showed significantly slower response latencies than singular forms in both brain-damaged and unimpaired participants, but only for nouns. We interpret these findings in terms of the inherent vs. contextual, i.e. underspecified, nature of gender and number in the two grammatical categories. This study suggests that while gender can be impaired in off-line performance in aphasia, on-line recognition patterns parallel the performance of non-brain-damaged individuals, confirming the preservation of access procedures in automatic word recognition.

Languages of the Jewish communities in Polish Silesia (1922–1939)

Polish Silesia, between 1922 and 1939 was the locus for a model confrontation between three distinct cultural groups of Central European Jews: Jews assimilated to German language and culture, traditional, Yiddish speaking, Orthodox Jews, and still other Jews assimilated to cultures that competed with the originally dominant German one: in the case of Upper Silesia, Polish culture. The linguistic changes these groups experienced are indicative of cultural assimilation and change. All three groups had to respond to a significant emigration of German oriented Jews in the early 1920s, the immigration of Jews assimilated to Polish culture and Yiddish speakers coming from the former Polish Kingdom and Galicia, and an increase in Polish anti-Semitic propaganda in Upper Silesia. A fourth factor was the growing distancing between these Jews and the German state and its direct cultural influences, especially after 1933. A first, and most visible, result of these factors was a rapid rise in declarations of the use of Polish language matched by a rapid fall in declared Germanophones. Initially these declarations were politically motivated: the number declaring Polish its language exceeded by far the actual number of Polish-speakers. By the late 1930s, however, the change was real. Silesian Jews had become essentially Polish speakers, and, on occasion, they had adopted other Polish cultural forms as well. Change of language is thus an important signifier of broader cultural change.

El adjetivo calificativo Español y su posición dentro del sintagma nominal

With this little paper we intend to draw the attention of Polish speakers of Spanish to the problem of word order of qualifying adjectives in a noun phrase. In our opinion, this grammatical issue should be tackled successfully only by carrying out an in-depth semantic study of the contents of these noun determiners. For this purpose we are putting forward a general semantic classification of this category of words demonstrating that the meaning of a given item is closely connected with its syntactic position

Obstruent Voicing in English and Polish. A Pedagogical Perspective.

'Voicing' in English voiced obstruents has been defined in terms of 'full' vs. 'partial'. When teaching English pronunciation to native speakers of Polish, where voiced sounds can be only fully voiced, it is diffcult to make the students aware of the phonation strategy to be used to obtain 'partially voiced' sounds, especially in plosives. The accessability of digital speech analysis computer software has made it possible to visualize the acoustic properties of speech sounds which can facilitate the teaching of English pronunciation to Poles, providing a visual feedback in class and at home. This is necessary for obtaining the correct phonation control that functions with utmost precision measured in centiseconds. Yet speech visualisation for the purpose of teaching English phonetics in Poland is employed only at the author's institution, and the remaining hundreds of schools and universities do not take advantage of the possibilities modem technology offers. The 'pedagogical perspective' of the paper aims at exerting an encouraging impact both on teachers of phonetics and on students of English. The article also provides a description of Polish voicing rules and a detailed comparison of voicing in English and Polish obstruents based on the concept of Voice Onset Time.

Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius kultūrų sampynose

The article explores multiple cultural activities of Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius (1813-1846) and their specific character. L.A.Jucevičius is considered to be an intermediary between literature written in Polish, on the one hand, and written in Lithuanian, on the other. His aim is to bring together Lithuanian and Polish speakers by trying to acquaint Polish speakers with ethnic Lithuanian culture in such fields as ethnography, mythology, folklore, and literature. A related task is to impart Polish cultural experience to Lithuanian speakers through translations into Lithuanian the poetical works of Polish authors Adam Mickiewicz, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Bogdan Zaleski, and Jozef Ignacy Krazsewski.

Voicing in Contemporary Hebrew in Comparison with Other Languages

As some scholars believe that voicing is only an accompanying, non-phonemic feature and that the essential characteristic in Hebrew is the force of articulation, we were encouraged to check the phonetic voicing in Hebrew. Since final sounds cannot be measured with an ordinary VOT method, we used also the "Voice into Closure" (ViC) method. Measurements of fourteen Hebrew subjects revealed that in every voiced stop the phonetic voicing extends longer than in its voiceless counterpart Comparing our VOT findings to those in twelve other languages, revealed that in a "voiced" sound there is always longer voicing than in its voiceless counterpart. Some characteristics that differentiate between languages are reported (e.g., Hebrew speakers resemble Spanish and Polish speakers with a large span of VOT, in comparison to the nine other languages checked). Perception tests of synthesized words (on English, Spanish, Thai, and Hebrew listeners) demonstrated that the voice timing cue by itself suffices to differentiate between the voiced-voiceless categories. While the hypothesis of "force" could not be supported, "voice timing" was found to be an actual physical feature, and it is reasonable to assume that this feature is the main cause of a categorical differentiation in all the languages.

Solving the actuation problem: Merger and immigration in eastern Pennsylvania

ABSTRACTData from fieldwork and a telephone survey is used to demonstrate that the merger of the vowels in words such as cot and caught, traditionally considered a defining characteristic of the speech of western Pennsylvania, is well established in the former anthracite mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania. Demographic and linguistic data indicate that the merger arose independently in the anthracite towns as a result of massive in-migration of speakers of Polish and other non-Germanic languages around the turn of the century. Having identified the proximate cause of the merger makes it possible to predict the presence or absence of the merger in various towns using demographic data alone.

Noun phrase production by agrammatic patients: A cross-linguistic approach

Abstract This paper reports a cross-linguistic study of noun phrase production by agrammatic aphasic speakers of Swedish, French, German, Polish, and English. The subjects were given comparable tests of contrastive naming for the different languages. The study demonstrates problems in noun phrase production, especially in structurally complex noun phrases, indicating increasing problems caused by an increasing processing load. The study further demonstrates great difficulties in the production of double adjectives in noun phrases. Recurring patterns found among the eleven agrammatic patients were: word order deviation (especially noun first), singular for plural (or singular first), use of quantifiers, production of some complex NP structures, and substitutions of grammatical markers, leading to agreement errors in complex NP structures. The findings are discussed in relation to possible strategies such as fragmentation of the noun phrase and/or use of topic-comment structure, as well as attempts to produ...

A formal model of learning L2 prosodic phonology

In this article I discuss the various components necessary for a formal model of the acquisition of the prosodic phonology of a second language. I outline a model that includes an explicit theory of the representation of metrical knowledge (Dresher and Kaye, 1990; Idsardi, 1992) and the necessary learn ing theory to account for how those representations can be acquired. The learning theory which mediates the interaction between Universal Grammar (UG) and the linguistic environment is composed of such elements as appro priate cues, indirect negative evidence and a principle of lexical dependency. Empirical investigations of the acquisition of English metrical parameters by native speakers of Polish, Hungarian and Spanish are reported. Group data as well as case studies are presented. The data suggest that, in the domain of prosodic phonology, both the representations (metrical structure) and processes (learning principles) evidenced in second language learners are the same as those proposed for native speakers. Interlanguage grammars can be seen as a combination of UG principles, correct L2 parameter set tings (from resetting) and incorrect L1 parameter settings (from L1 trans fer).

The Merging of Religious Elements with National Consciousness in the Historical Works of Jan Długosz

The fifteenth century was a very important period in the history of the Polish State and nation. It had a particular significance for the development of national consciousness. The union of the Polish kingdom with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1385) changed not only the boundaries of this new and unified state called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also created new and specific conditions for the development of the nation. The different nationalities of the jagiellonian state, Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians played an important role in the lively exchange of cultural experience on the basis of a sometimes uneasy partnership. Poland guaranteed privileges to the lords, both spiritual and temporal, to the gentry, and to the patricians, estates that had emerged in the course of the fourteenth century. These were united by common sentiment and desire for a strong political foundation. The urban and rural populations of both Polish and non-Polish speakers were bound together by loyalty to the Crown and its territory. Like other groups in late-medieval Europe they saw such a political union as advantageous.

The Categories of Tense, Aspect, and Aktionsart in Polish and Swedish

As pointed out by numerous researchers, only a limited degree of correspondence exists between Polish and Swedish concerning the use of tense and aspect. The discrepancies lead to several typical interference phenomena in Polish speakers learning Swedish. This article contains a contrastive analysis of forms and functions of tense and aspect in Polish and Swedish, where the main sources of interference phenomena are pointed out.

On the neutralizing status of Polish word-final devoicing

Within phonological theory a fundamental distinction is made between rules that are neutralizing and those that are non-neutralizing. Recent experimental research has examined a number of neutralization rules and found that underlying contrasts are, in fact, phonetically preserved. These findings have raised a number of questions about the character of neutralization rules. This paper examines the phonetic effects of word-final devoicing in Polish across different places and manners of articulation, in different phonetic contexts as produced by five different speakers. Fifteen pairs of words (distinguished by underlying voicing of the word-final obstruent) were recorded in two contexts (__# C and __# V). Measurements were obtained for the final consonant closure duration, voicing into closure, and preceding vowel duration. The results demonstrate that the rule of word-final devoicing in Polish is not neutralizing for the group of Polish speakers studied nor for any of the individual speakers. The underlying voice distinction is preserved phonetically. However, the manner in which it is preserved varies depending on phonetic context, place and manner of articulation, and individual speaker. This variation is, nonetheless, systematic and must be accounted for by phonetic implementation rules that are sensitive to abstract phonological distinctions.