Phonetic Variation and Language Attitudes in Northern Catalonia

Abstract Linguistic and cultural diversity is becoming an inherent feature of most schools in Europe. This is specially so in contexts such as the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, where the presence of two official languages (Basque and Spanish) is complemented by the early teaching of English, which sets out as early as the age of four in the majority of schools. Nevertheless, the low foreign language command of Spanish students in general and the Basque students in particular has led to the implementation of CLIL experiences, which have been mushrooming in the last decade. Some voices have been raised though against the ever increasing presence of English due to its probable negative impact on language attitudes, especially on attitudes towards Basque. Many efforts have been made to normalize the situation of Basque at school and some scholars consider that these achievements can be jeopardized if the minority language yields too much space to the two international languages (Spain and English). In this paper the effect of CLIL programmes on attitudes towards trilingualism is examined through a holistic questionnaire completed by 277 secondary students. The results obtained demonstrate that CLIL can help to boost positive attitudes towards trilingualism at school, a matter of the utmost importance due to the ever increasing number of multilingual educational systems in Europe.

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Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation

10.21832/9781853598876 ◽

2006 ◽

Cited By ~ 183

Author(s):

Zoltán Dörnyei ◽

Kata Csizér ◽

Nóra Németh

Keyword(s):

Language Attitudes

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The Effect of Perceptions: Instructor–Student Dynamics in the Spanish Heritage Classroom

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages6010046 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 46

Author(s):

Patricia González Darriba ◽

Benjamin Kinsella ◽

Crystal Marull ◽

Nathan Campbell

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Learning Spaces ◽

Heritage Speakers ◽

Learning Space ◽

Classroom Dynamics ◽

Five Dimensions ◽

University Courses ◽

The Us ◽

Attitudes And Perceptions

The rising population of heritage speakers (HS) in university courses in the US has increased the need for instructors who understand the linguistic, social, and cultural profiles of their students. Recent research has discussed the need for specialized courses and their differentiation from second-language (L2) classes, as well as the intersection between HS and language attitudes. However, prior studies have not examined HS students’ language attitudes toward the sociolinguistic background of the instructors and their effect on classroom interactions. Therefore, this study explores HS students’ overall language attitudes and perceptions of their instructors’ sociolinguistic background. In a survey, HS university students (N = 92) across the US assessed four instructor profiles along five dimensions. Results showed that students rated more favorably instructors born and raised in Latin America, followed by those from Spain. Furthermore, HS favored these two profiles over HS or L2 profiles as their course instructors. However, preferences were less marked in the online context. These findings demonstrate that to design supportive learning spaces with—rather than for—HS students, programs must first acknowledge how classroom dynamics are shaped by the perspectives brought into the learning space and by the context of the learning space itself.

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Phonetic Variation Modeling and a Language Model Adaptation for Korean English Code-Switching Speech Recognition

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11062866 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. 2866

Author(s):

Damheo Lee ◽

Donghyun Kim ◽

Seung Yun ◽

Sanghun Kim

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Language Model ◽

Reduction Rate ◽

Code Switching ◽

Training Data ◽

Target Domain ◽

Phonetic Variation ◽

Language Model Adaptation ◽

Imbalanced Training Data ◽

Lm Adaptation

In this paper, we propose a new method for code-switching (CS) automatic speech recognition (ASR) in Korean. First, the phonetic variations in English pronunciation spoken by Korean speakers should be considered. Thus, we tried to find a unified pronunciation model based on phonetic knowledge and deep learning. Second, we extracted the CS sentences semantically similar to the target domain and then applied the language model (LM) adaptation to solve the biased modeling toward Korean due to the imbalanced training data. In this experiment, training data were AI Hub (1033 h) in Korean and Librispeech (960 h) in English. As a result, when compared to the baseline, the proposed method improved the error reduction rate (ERR) by up to 11.6% with phonetic variant modeling and by 17.3% when semantically similar sentences were applied to the LM adaptation. If we considered only English words, the word correction rate improved up to 24.2% compared to that of the baseline. The proposed method seems to be very effective in CS speech recognition.

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An assessment of language attitudes as a mediator in the stereotypes–L2 motivation linkage

Linguistics Vanguard ◽

10.1515/lingvan-2020-0019 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Larisa Nikitina ◽

Fumitaka Furuoka

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Applied Linguistics ◽

Statistical Procedure ◽

Motivational Factor ◽

Mediating Role ◽

L2 Motivation ◽

Context Of Learning

AbstractApplied linguists and language educators have long acknowledged the prominent role that language attitudes play in the process of selecting and learning an additional language. The current study examines a mediating role of language attitudes in the Stereotypes–L2 motivation linkage in the context of learning a foreign language, an area which remains comparatively underexplored. It provides a detailed description of – and rationale for – applying a statistical procedure based on the Baron–Kenny method, which is rarely used in applied linguistics research. The findings indicate that stereotypes and language attitudes had a positive impact on L2 motivation when the former two variables were examined separately in two different analyses. However, when all the three variables were analysed together, language attitudes were found to remain a motivational factor while the stereotypes ceased to be such. This suggests that stereotypes had an indirect effect on L2 motivation through language attitudes. Hence, language attitudes were a mediating variable in the Stereotypes–L2 motivation linkage assessed by the Baron–Kenny method. These findings have some pedagogical implications.

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Cognate similarity and intervocalic /d/ production in Riverense Spanish

International Journal of Bilingualism ◽

10.1177/1367006921996807 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136700692199680

Author(s):

Michael Gradoville ◽

Mark Waltermire ◽

Avizia Long

Keyword(s):

Language Contact ◽

Mixed Effects ◽

Frequency Effect ◽

Acoustic Measurements ◽

Linear Mixed Effects Model ◽

Phonetic Variation ◽

Linear Mixed Effects ◽

Contact Language ◽

The Relationship ◽

Phonetic Realization

Aims and objectives: While previous research has shown that phonetic variation in language contact situations is affected by whether a word has a cognate in the contact language, this paper aims to show that such an effect is not monotonic. According to the usage-based model, items in memory are organized according to similarity, thus we anticipated that formally more similar cognates would show a stronger cognate effect. Methodology: This variationist sociophonetic study investigates the relationship between cognate similarity and phonetic realization. We examined this relationship in the bilingual community of Rivera, Uruguay, in which both Portuguese and Spanish are spoken with regularity. Specifically, we focused on intervocalic /d/, which in monolingual Spanish is realized as an approximant [ð̞] or phonetic zero, but in monolingual Brazilian Portuguese is produced as a stop [d] or, in most varieties, an affricate [ʤ] before [i]. Data and analysis: We analyzed a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews of the Spanish spoken in Rivera. Acoustic measurements were taken from approximately 60 tokens each from 40 different speakers. Using a linear mixed-effects model, we examined the relationship between several predictors and the degree of constriction of intervocalic /d/. Findings/conclusions: While there is an overall frequency effect whereby more frequent words exhibit less constriction of intervocalic /d/, as both frequency and cognate similarity increase, less constriction of intervocalic /d/ obtains. Therefore, frequent cognates in Portuguese that have very similar forms affect the production of intervocalic /d/ more so than other cognates. Originality: No previous study has demonstrated that the cognate effect on phonetic variation in a situation of language contact is regulated by form similarity between cognate pairs. Significance/implications: The data support the usage-based model in that similar cognates have more lexical connections and can therefore show greater influence on phonetic realization than can cognates that share less phonetic material.

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L2 learners' language attitudes and their assessment

Foreign Language Annals ◽

10.1111/flan.12498 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tatiana Artamonova

Keyword(s):

Language Attitudes ◽

L2 Learners

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Phonological contrast and phonetic variation: The case of velars in Iwaidja

Language ◽

10.1353/lan.2020.0042 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 96 (3) ◽

pp. 578-617

Author(s):

Jason A. Shaw ◽

Christopher Carignan ◽

Tonya G. Agostini ◽

Robert Mailhammer ◽

Mark Harvey ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Phonetic Variation ◽

Phonological Contrast

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Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

International Journal of the Sociology of Language ◽

10.1515/ijsl-2020-2109 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Gerald Stell

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Power Relations ◽

African Country ◽

Language Ideologies ◽

Ethnically Diverse ◽

Official Language ◽

Phonetic Variation ◽

Variation Patterns ◽

Standard Models

AbstractThis study generally looks at indigenization in languages historically introduced and promoted by colonial regimes. The case study that it presents involves Namibia, a Subsaharan African country formerly administered by South Africa, where Afrikaans was the dominant official language before being replaced by English upon independence. Afrikaans in Namibia still functions as an informal urban lingua franca while being spoken as a native language by substantial White and Coloured minorities. To what extent does the downranking of Afrikaans in Namibia co-occur with divergence from standard models historically located in South Africa? To answer this question, the study identifies variation patterns in Namibian Afrikaans phonetic data elicited from ethnically diverse young urban informants and links these patterns with perceptions and language ideologies. The phonetic data reveal divergence between Whites and Non-Whites and some convergence among Black L2 Afrikaans-speakers with Coloured varieties, while suggesting that a distinctive Black variety is emerging. The observed trends generally reflect perceived ethnoracial distinctions and segregation. They must be read against the background of shifting inter-group power relations and sociolinguistic prestige norms in independent Namibia, as well as of emergent ethnically inclusive Black urban identities.

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