Dialect variation and phonological knowledge: Phonological representations and metalinguistic awareness among beginning readers who speak nonmainstream American English

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLE PATTON TERRY
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Reading Acquisition ◽  
Beginning Readers ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Phonological Knowledge ◽  
Dialect Variation

ABSTRACTChildren's spoken nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialect use and their knowledge about phonological representations of word pronunciations were assessed in a sample of 105 children in kindergarten through second grade. Children were given expressive and receptive tasks with dialect-sensitive stimuli. Students who produced many NMAE features in speech nonetheless demonstrated considerable knowledge of “standard” English forms on the tasks, and their phonological representations were not deficient. In regression analyses, an inverse relationship between NMAE use and reading skill was observed, but mediated by phonological awareness. The findings are inconsistent with the view that print–speech mismatches interfere with young NMAE speakers’ reading acquisition, and instead suggest that dialect variation among beginning readers reflects metalinguistic differences that influence reading acquisition.

scholarly journals Establishing a South African Honour Society of Nursing under auspices of Sigma Theta Tau International (Inc.)

Curationis ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Van der Wal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South African ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Standard English ◽  
The Us

The information on Sigma Theta Tau International (Inc.) which follows is reproduced from official STTI documentation with permission from the STTI Chapter Manager. This section should thus be read with the United States context in mind as certain words and concepts have different meanings in the US and SA contexts, eg under graduate, graduate, college and the like. In addition, certain words are also spelled differently in American English and standard English.

Word form retrieval in language production

2007 ◽  
pp. 470-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje S. Meyer ◽  
Eva Belke
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Knowledge Building ◽  
Word Production ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Lexical Selection ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Phonological Knowledge ◽  
Phonetic Code ◽  
Selection Of

Current models of word form retrieval converge on central assumptions. They all distinguish between morphological, phonological, and phonetic representations and processes; they all assume morphological and phonological decomposition, and agree on the main processing units at these levels. In addition, all current models of word form postulate the same basic retrieval mechanisms: activation and selection of units. Models of word production often distinguish between processes concerning the selection of a single word unit from the mental lexicon and the retrieval of the associated word form. This article explores lexical selection and word form retrieval in language production. Following the distinctions in linguistic theory, it discusses morphological encoding, phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. The article also considers the representation of phonological knowledge, building of phonological representations, segmental retrieval, retrieval of metrical information, generating the phonetic code of words, and a model of word form retrieval.

Profiling verb complementation constructions across New Englishes

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra C. Deshors ◽  
Stefan Th. Gries
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Random Forests ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
American English ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Matrix Verb

In this paper, we explore verb complementation patterns with to and ing in native English (British and American English) as compared to three Asian Englishes (Hong Kong, Indian, and Singaporean English). Based on data from the International Corpus of English annotated for variables describing the matrix verb and the complement, we run two random forests analyses to determine where the Asian Englishes have developed complementation preferences different from the two native speaker varieties. We find not only a variety of differences between the Asian and the native Englishes, but also that the Asian Englishes are more similar (i.e. ‘better predicted by’) the American English data. Further, as the first study of its kind to extend the MuPDAR approach from the now frequent regression analyses to random forests analysis, this study adds a potentially useful analytical tool to the often messy and skewed observational data corpus linguists need to deal with.

African American English–Speaking Students: A Longitudinal Examination of Style Shifting From Kindergarten Through Second Grade

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Giselle E. Kolenic ◽  
Stephanie L. Hensel
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
American English ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
African American English ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Style Shifting ◽  
Mainstream American English ◽  
Metalinguistic Skills

Purpose The purpose of this longitudinal study was twofold: to examine shifting from African American English (AAE) to mainstream American English (MAE) across the early elementary grades, when students are first exposed to formal instruction in reading; and to examine how metalinguistic and cognitive variables influenced the students' dialectal adaptations from AAE to MAE in a literacy context with higher expectations for MAE. Method Participants were 102 typically developing AAE-speaking students enrolled in public schools in the northern Midwest. They were enrolled in the project at kindergarten and tested 3 times a year, for 3 years. Approximately half were male and half female, and two-thirds were from low socioeconomic status homes. Results A style shifting coefficient (SSC) was created to measure amounts of dialect change between contexts and over time by individuals. Some students shifted to MAE in literacy contexts, and shifting was not related to grade. Metalinguistic skills and SSC predicted reading, and metalinguistic skills predicted the SSC at 2nd grade. The findings indicated that cognitive executive functions may contribute to the SSC. Conclusions The results provide strong support for the dialect shifting–reading achievement hypothesis and indicated that metalinguistic and perhaps executive functioning are important influences on this linguistic adaptation.

scholarly journals The pluperfect in native and non-native English: A comparative corpus study

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devyani Sharma
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Multidimensional Distribution ◽  
British English

One of the challenges in characterizing non-native varieties of English is accounting for variant uses of ostensibly standard English forms. The present corpus study examines both quantitative and qualitative aspects of pluperfect use in Indian English (IndE), British English (BrE), and American English (AmE). IndE is found to differ from native usage by associating had + V-ed with present perfect and preterite meanings. Licensing of pluperfect contexts by time adverbials is also found to be significantly lower in IndE. AmE shows the lowest overall use of the pluperfect and the highest use of disambiguating adverbials. Thus, AmE and IndE show distinct patterns of divergence from BrE. Variation within IndE exhibits a tendency for greater non-nativeness in regional (vs. national) press and in bureaucratic (vs. press) registers, suggesting a multidimensional distribution of IndE nonstandardness in India. These nonstandard uses are shown to convey new pragmatic meanings deriving from ambiguity in the native system and reinforcement from substrate languages. Finally, these changes are evaluated in relation to the broader tense–modality–aspect system of IndE as well as those of other non-native Englishes which exhibit similar characteristics.

scholarly journals Phonology and Writing: Can we look at written productions to “see the unseeable” in phonology?

Loquens ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 059 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Veloso
Keyword(s):  
School Children ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Phonological Knowledge ◽  
General Aspects ◽  
Generative Approach

Oral and written productions of language seem to correspond to ontologically separate entities. In this paper, we shall not argue against this basic assumption. However, it will be proposed that a careful examination of the writing systems and of particular written productions can provide phonologists with important information about the nature of phonological representations. Writing systems often originate in relevant intuitions about the nature of phonological units and phenomena and preserve the morphophonemic kinships between roots and words that are surfaced as phonetically distinct. The same can be said about the written productions of pre-school children and illiterate adults, strongly shaped by phonological intuitions rather than by orthographic convention. Bearing in mind that phonology, within the generative approach that is adopted here, is a form of knowledge, spelling can be accepted as a way of getting access to phonological knowledge. Therefore, our main point is that, in spite of the classical divide between spoken and written language, attention to writing can be useful for the understanding of the phonological level, too. The article includes two main parts: firstly, on Sections 2 and 3, we shall survey some general aspects of the relation between phonological and written representations; the second part consists mainly of Section 4 and attempts to illustrate some of the topics presented in Sections 2 and 3 with some data of a small-scale study with Portuguese pre-schoolers.

scholarly journals Collocates of 'great' and 'good' in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and Indonesian EFL textbooks

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-478
Author(s):  
Ikmi Nur Oktavianti ◽  
Japen Sarage
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Information ◽  
American English ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
General Reference ◽  
The Real ◽  
Efl Context ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Language Content

Previous studies have proven some discrepancies between language presented in EFL textbooks and the real use of English. This fact contradicts the teaching materials’ aim, which is intended to equip the learners to be communicatively competent. This study then investigates the use of adjectives, limited to ‘great’ and ‘good’ in terms of the frequent and strong co-occurrences, i.e., collocations, in a general reference corpus of Standard English to be compared with those in Indonesian EFL textbooks. The data were collected from both the corpus and the textbooks, but the analyses in the textbooks were generated based on the Mutual Information (MI) score of the collocates. Based on the comparison, it is evident that there are some similarities between adjective use in the textbooks and the corpus in terms of verb collocates of the adjectives. The mismatches, however, are quite remarkable, especially in terms of the variability of adverb collocates and the absence of prominent noun collocates in the textbooks. Pedagogically speaking, these results should be taken into consideration in writing the textbooks to enhance the quality of the language content prepared for the learners in the EFL context.

scholarly journals Vowel Variation Between American English and British English

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 350
Author(s):  
Afzal Khan ◽  
Soleman Awad Mthkal Alzobidy
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
British English ◽  
International Language ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The World

The English Language, being an international language, is spoken all over the world with many variations. These variations occur primarily due to environmental, cultural and social differences. The main reasons for these variations are intermingling of different races and strata in a society. In this regard prominent differences can be observed at phonological levels. These phonological variations produce different kinds of English, like British and American English. In these two there are differences in intonation, stress pattern, and pronunciation. Although South-Eastern British R.P. is known as Standard English but one cannot deny the existence and value of American English. The study attempts to highlight the vowel variation between British English and American English at phonological level.

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