Categorical perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese bilinguals

1981 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine S. MacKain ◽  
Catherine T. Best ◽  
Winifred Strange
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
English Language ◽  
Categorical Perception ◽  
American English ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Absolute Identification ◽  
Perceptual Training ◽  
Intensive Training ◽  
Japanese Group

ABSTRACTCategorical perception of a synthetic /r/-/l/ continuum was investigated with Japanese bilinguals at two levels of English language experience. The inexperienced Japanese group, referred to as Not-experienced, had had little or no previous training in English conversation. The Experienced Japanese group had had intensive training in English conversation by native American-English speakers. The tasks used were absolute identification, AXB discrimination, and oddity discrimination. Results showed classic Categorical perception by an American-English control group. The Not-experienced Japanese showed near-chance performance on all tasks, with performance no better for stimuli that straddled the /r/-/l/ boundary than for stimuli that fell in either category. The Experienced Japanese group, however, perceived /r/ and /l/ categorically. Their identification performance did not differ from the American-English controls, but their overall performance levels on the discrimination tests were somewhat lower than for the Americans. We conclude that native Japanese adults learning English as a second language are capable of Categorical perception of /r/ and /l/. Implications for perceptual training of phonemic contrasts are discussed.

Predictors of reading comprehension in deaf and hearing bilinguals

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Deborah M. Cates ◽  
Matthew J. Traxler ◽  
David P. Corina
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Vocabulary Comprehension ◽  
Reading Volume

Abstract This study investigates reading comprehension in adult deaf and hearing readers. Using correlational analysis and stepwise regression, we assess the contribution of English language variables (e.g., vocabulary comprehension, reading volume, and phonological awareness), cognitive variables (e.g., working memory (WM), nonverbal intelligence, and executive function), and language experience (e.g., language acquisition and orthographic experience) in predicting reading comprehension in deaf and hearing adult bilinguals (native American Sign Language (ASL) signers, non-native ASL signers, and Chinese–English bilinguals (CEB)), and monolingual (ML) controls. For all four groups, vocabulary knowledge was a strong contributor to reading comprehension. Monolingual English speakers and non-native deaf signers also showed contributions from WM and spoken language phonological awareness. In contrast, CEB showed contributions of lexical strategies in English reading comprehension. These cross-group comparisons demonstrate how the inclusion of multiple participant groups helps us to further refine our understanding of how language and sensory experiences influence reading comprehension.

scholarly journals Which Phonetic Features Should Pronunciation Instructions Focus on? An Evaluation on the Accentedness of Segmental/Syllable Errors in L2 Speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Zhiyan Gao ◽  
Steven Weinberger
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
English Language ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
American English ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Language Instructors ◽  
Phonetic Features

Many English language instructors are reluctant to incorporate pronunciation instruction into their teaching curriculum (Thomson 2014). One reason for such reluctance is that L2 pronunciation errors are numerous, and there is not enough time for teachers to address all of them (Munro and Derwing 2006; Thomson 2014). The current study aims to help language teachers set priorities for their instruction by identifying the segmental and structural aspects of pronunciation that are most foreign-accented to native speakers of American English. The current study employed a perception experiment. 100 speech samples selected from the Speech Accent Archive (Weinberger 2016) were presented to 110 native American English listeners who listened to and rated the foreign accentedness of each sample on a 9-point rating scale. 20 of these samples portray no segmental or syllable structure L2 errors. The other 80 samples contain a single consonant, vowel, or syllable structure L2 error. The backgrounds of the speakers of these samples came from 52 different native languages. Global prosody of each sample was controlled for by comparing its F0 contour and duration to a native English sample using the Dynamic Time Warping method (Giorgino 2009). The results show that 1) L2 consonant errors in general are judged to be more accented than vowel or syllable structure errors; 2) phonological environment affects accent perception, 3) occurrences of non-English consonants always lead to higher accentedness ratings; 4) among L2 syllable errors, vowel epenthesis is judged to be as accented as consonant substitutions, while deletion is judged to be less accented or not accented at all. The current study, therefore, recommends that language instructors attend to consonant errors in L2 speech while taking into consideration their respective phonological environments.

The Production of New and Similar Vowels by Adult German Learners of English

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ocke-Schwen Bohn ◽  
James Emil Flege
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Positive Effect

The study reported in this paper examined the effect of second language (L2) experience on the production of L2 vowels for which acoustic counterparts are either present or absent in the first language (L1). The hypothesis being tested was that amount of L2 experience would not affect L1 German speakers' production of the “similar” English vowels /i, l, ∈/, whereas English language experience would enable L1 Germans to produce an English-like /æ/, which has no counterpart in German. The predictions were tested in two experiments that compared the production of English /i, l, ∈, æ/ by two groups of L1 German speakers differing in English language experience and an L1 English control group. An acoustic experiment compared the three groups for spectral and temporal characteristics of the English vowels produced in /bVt/ words. The same tokens were assessed for intelligibility in a labeling experiment. The results of both experiments were largely consistent with the hypothesis. The experienced L2 speakers did not produce the similar English vowels /i, l, ∈/ more intelligibly than the inexperienced L2 speakers, not did experience have a positive effect on approximating the English acoustic norms for these similar vowels. The intelligibility results for the new vowel /æ/ did not clearly support the model. However, the acoustic comparisons showed that the experienced but not the inexperienced L2 speakers produced the new vowel /æ/ in much the same way as the native English speakers.

scholarly journals Behavioral Pattern Analysis between Bilingual and Monolingual Listeners’ Natural Speech Perception on Foreign-Accented English Language Using Different Machine Learning Approaches

Technologies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Md Tanvir Ahad ◽  
Md Manjurul Ahsan ◽  
Ishrat Jahan ◽  
Redwan Nazim ◽  
Munshi Md. Shafwat Yazdan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Native American ◽  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Accented English

Speech perception in an adverse background/noisy environment is a complex and challenging human process, which is made even more complicated in foreign-accented language for bilingual and monolingual individuals. Listeners who have difficulties in hearing are affected most by such a situation. Despite considerable efforts, the increase in speech intelligibility in noise remains elusive. Considering this opportunity, this study investigates Bengali–English bilinguals and native American English monolinguals’ behavioral patterns on foreign-accented English language considering bubble noise, gaussian or white noise, and quiet sound level. Twelve regular hearing participants (Six Bengali–English bilinguals and Six Native American English monolinguals) joined in this study. Statistical computation shows that speech with different noise has a significant effect (p = 0.009) on listening for both bilingual and monolingual under different sound levels (e.g., 55 dB, 65 dB, and 75 dB). Here, six different machine learning approaches (Logistic Regression (LR), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), Naïve Bayes (NB), Classification and regression trees (CART), and Support vector machine (SVM)) are tested and evaluated to differentiate between bilingual and monolingual individuals from their behavioral patterns in both noisy and quiet environments. Results show that most optimal performances were observed using LDA by successfully differentiating between bilingual and monolingual 60% of the time. A deep neural network-based model is proposed to improve this measure further and achieved an accuracy of nearly 100% in successfully differentiating between bilingual and monolingual individuals.

An historical analysis of species references in American English

Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-349
Author(s):  
Craig Frayne
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
American English ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Google Books

This study uses the two largest available American English language corpora, Google Books and the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), to investigate relations between ecology and language. The paper introduces ecolinguistics as a promising theme for corpus research. While some previous ecolinguistic research has used corpus approaches, there is a case to be made for quantitative methods that draw on larger datasets. Building on other corpus studies that have made connections between language use and environmental change, this paper investigates whether linguistic references to other species have changed in the past two centuries and, if so, how. The methodology consists of two main parts: an examination of the frequency of common names of species followed by aspect-level sentiment analysis of concordance lines. Results point to both opportunities and challenges associated with applying corpus methods to ecolinguistc research.

scholarly journals 400 - Effects of Computerized Cognitive Training with an Elderly Community Sample

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (S1) ◽  
pp. 116-116
Author(s):  
M Pires ◽  
A Antunes ◽  
C Gameiro ◽  
C Pombo
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Depression Symptoms ◽  
Intensive Training ◽  
Before And After

Community-focused programs that promote active and healthy aging can help preserve cognitive capacities, prevent or reverse cognitive deficits. Computer-based cognitive training (CCT) is a promising non-pharmacological, cost -effective and accessible intervention to face the effects of age-related cognitive decline. Previous studies proved CCT to have equal or better efficacy compared to traditional interventions. This comparative multifactorial study aims to test the efficacy of a CCT in a non-randomized community sample of 74 older adults: G1-CCT Experimental group (n=43) (Mean age M=72.21, SD=12.65) and G2- Paper-Pencil Control group (n=31; M=77.94, SD=10.51). Pensioners (97.3%), mostly women (83.8 %) with basic education (51.4%) and without dementia diagnosis, completed a cognitive training program of 17 or 34 group sessions (twice a week). G2 undertook a classic cognitive paper-pencil stimuli tasks. G1, performed, additionally, individual CCT with COGWEB® in a multimodal format (intensive training of attention, calculation, memory, gnosis, praxis, executive functions). Both groups completed Portuguese versions of Mini -Mental State Examination (MMSE),Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA); Geriatric Depressive Scale (GDS); Mini Dependence Assessment (MDA); WHOOQL 5 and Social Support Satisfaction Scale (ESSS) before and after participating in the program. Both groups reported better post-test scores on basic cognitive functions (MMSE, MOCA), Depression symptoms (GDS-30), subjective well-being and quality of life (WHOOQL-5). G1 presented higher MOCA and lower GDS scores before and after CCT, although, group differences become less expressive when interaction effects are considered. Results are in line with findings from past studies, CCT supported by the new technologies, is as a relevant cost-effective therapeutic tool for health professionals working with older adults. Particularly for preventive purposes of neuro-cognitive disorders.

scholarly journals The effect of prosody teaching on developing word recognition skills for interpreter trainees: An experimental study

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1101-1107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmood Yenkimaleki ◽  
Vincent J. van Heuven
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Control Group ◽  
State University ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Instruction Time ◽  
Experimental Group

The present study investigates the effect of the explicit teaching of prosodic features on developing word recognition skills with interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were composed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level at the State University of Arak, Iran. Participants were categorized into two groups at random, but with equal division between genders (9 female and 9 male students in each group). No significant differences in English language skills (TOEFL scores) could be established between the groups. Participants took a pretest of word recognition skill before starting the program. The control group received exercises in listening comprehension, while the experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation and practical exercises developing conscious knowledge of prosodic features of English, such as word stress. The total instruction time was the same for both groups, i.e. 8 hours. Students then took a posttest of word recognition skills. The results show that prosodic feature awareness training did yield a statistically significant improvement of word recognition skills. The result has pedagogical implications for researchers in the field of second language teaching, instructors, curriculum designers, conductors of interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in language study and pedagogy.

scholarly journals The acoustic characteristics of non-native American English vowels

Linguistica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Biljana Čubrović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Language Background ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Native Speech

This study aims at discussing the phonetic property of vowel quality in English, as exercised by both native speakers of General American English (AE) and non-native speakers of General American English of Serbian language background, all residents of the United States. Ten Serbian male speakers and four native male speakers of AE are recorded in separate experiments and their speech analyzed acoustically for any significant phonetic differences, looking into a set of monosyllabic English words representing nine vowels of AE. The general aim of the experiments is to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of AE vowels, with particular attention to F1 and F2 values, investigate which vowels differ most in the two groups of participants, and provide some explanations for these variations. A single most important observation that is the result of this vowel study is an evident merger of three pairs of vowels in the non-native speech: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.

scholarly journals Explicit Instruction of Memory vs Cognitive Strategies and Reading Comprehension: An Empirical Study with IELTS Candidates

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Jahanbakhsh Nikoopour ◽  
Roozbeh Kargar ◽  
Nadimeh Esfandiari
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Moderator Variable ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Memory Strategies ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
English Language Institute ◽  
The Impact

<p><em>Research in reading comprehension associates the assumption that readers’ attributes may influence reading comprehension; different readers may process the same text in different ways, depending on their purposes, motivation, attitudes, interests, background knowledge, and the strategies they use. The present study attempted to investigate the impact of teaching cognitive and memory strategies on male and female IELTS candidates’ reading comprehension. To carry out the study, the researcher selected a sample of 88 male and female EFL learners, who attended IELTS preparation classes in Afarinesh English Language Institute regularly. The participants were randomly assigned into three groups; namely, two experimental groups and a control group. Eight memory and cognitive strategies were taught explicitly in the two experimental groups respectively during the treatment, whereas the current usual techniques were being used in the control group. The results showed that the experimental groups outperformed the control group in reading comprehension. The difference between the mean scores of the two experimental groups was not statistically significant. That is, instructing cognitive and memory strategies have had somehow similar impact on the IELTS candidates’ reading comprehension. Finally, the participants’ gender as a moderator variable did not make a significant difference in their reading comprehension.</em></p>

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