Crosslinguistic Phonological Development: An International Collaboration

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
pp. 21-29
Author(s):  
Barbara May Bernhardt ◽  
Joseph Paul Stemberger ◽  
Daniel Bérubé

An international study is investigating phonological development in 12 languages: Romance (Canadian French, Granada, Mexican and Chilean Spanish, and European Portuguese); Germanic (German, English, Swedish, and Icelandic); Semitic (Kuwaiti Arabic); Asian (Japanese, Mandarin); South Slavic (Bulgarian, Slovene). Additional phonological assessment materials have been created for Anishinaabemowin (Algonquian, Canada), Brazilian Portuguese, European French, Punjabi, Tagalog, and Greek. The study has two purposes: (a) to investigate crosslinguistic patterns in phonological development; and (b) to develop assessment tools and treatment activities. Equivalent crosslinguistic methodologies include: (a) single word lists for elicitation that reflect major characteristics of each language; (b) data collection and transcription by native speakers; (c) participant samples of 20–30 preschoolers (ages 3 to 6) with typical versus protracted phonological development; and (d) data analysis supported by Phon, a phonological analysis program. The current paper provides an overview of the study and introduces a website that offers free tutorials and materials for speech-language pathologists (SLPs).

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Renata Sabrinne Souza de Carvalho ◽  
Mahayana Cristina Godoy

Resumo: Nesse trabalho, construímos um corpus com predicados de causalidade implícita para o Português Brasileiro (PB). A causalidade implícita é uma propriedade de uma classe de predicados verbais cuja causa para o evento que denotam tende a recair, para alguns verbos, no sujeito da oração (“enfurecer”, “decepcionar”) e, para outros, em seu objeto (“parabenizar”, “admirar”). Nosso objetivo foi registrar o viés de causalidade de 50 predicados. Para isso, realizamos um experimento de continuação de sentenças com 34 participantes, falantes nativos de português brasileiro. Nossas análises identificaram 24 verbos com viés de causalidade associado ao sujeito e 22 verbos com viés de causalidade associada ao objeto. Esses resultados expandem um corpus já existente em português europeu (COSTA, 2003). Que saibamos, este é o primeiro estudo normativo para a construção de um corpus de causalidade implícita que tem como alvo falantes de português brasileiro. O resultado é um conjunto de verbos que podem ser usados em futuros estudos em psicolinguística ou psicologia que lidem com relações de causalidade. Palavras-chave: psicolinguística; causalidade implícita; verbos; português brasileiro.Abstract: In this paper, we built an implicit causality corpus for Brazilian Portuguese (BP) verbal predicates. Implicit causality is a property of some verbal predicates that strongly associate their causality with their subject (for verbs such as “enrage”, “disappoint”) or their object (for verbs like “congratulate”, “admire”). Our goal was to measure the causality bias of 50 predicates. In order to do so, we carried out a sentence continuation experiment with 34 participants, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Our results identify 24 verbs with a causal bias associated with the subject of the clause, and 22 verbs with a causal bias associated with its object. These results expand a corpus that already exists in European Portuguese (Costa, 2003). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first normative study for the construction of a corpus of implicit causality that targets Brazilian Portuguese speakers. The result is a set of verbal predicates that can be used in future studies in psycholinguistics or psychology that aims at investigating causal relationships.Keywords: psycholinguistics; implicity causality; verbs; Brazilian portuguese.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Post Silveira

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.


Author(s):  
Norma Schifano

Chapter 3 extends the investigation of verb placement to other Romance varieties, in order to expand the macro- and micro-typologies identified in Chapter 2. It starts with a description of the placement of the present indicative verb across a selection of varieties of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, European Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese. Following the methodology of Chapter 2, the remainder of the discussion is devoted to the description of cases of microvariation attested across the varieties above, which emerge once a selection of structural and interpretative distinctions are considered, such as lexical and auxiliary verbs, ‘have’ and ‘be’ auxiliaries, finite and non-finite verbs (cf. participle and infinitive), as well as a selection of modally, temporally, and aspectually marked forms (e.g. subjunctive, conditional, past, future, imperfect).


1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-400
Author(s):  
Mark Davies

This study is the first comprehensive, data-based examination of subject raising in Portuguese, and is based on 4500+ tokens in more than 26,500,000 words of text from both the written and spoken registers of Brazilian and European Portuguese. We have suggested that there are important differences in raising between the spoken and written registers, which are related to presumably universal production strategies for the two registers. Evidence suggests that morphological factors such as subject-verb agreement play an important role in determining whether raising occurs with first, second, and third person subjects. In terms of differences between the European and Brazilian dialects, we find that split agreement (eles parece saberem) and obligatory coreference {me parece ver um fantasma) are both more common in European Portuguese. Finally, these last two facts, along with a number of related phenomena, suggest that there are important differences in the underlying clause structure of European and Brazilian Portuguese, which can further be extended to include other languages such as Spanish.


Author(s):  
Luiz Carlos Schwindt

AbstractThis paper deals with the underlying representation of [w]-final words in Brazilian Portuguese, usually spelled with <l> and pronounced as [w] and occasionally as [ɫ] (e.g., papel / [paˈpɛw] ~ [paˈpɛɫ] ‘paper’). It focuses on non-verbs derived by a vowel-initial suffix preceded by [l] (e.g., papel+eiro ‘paper+suffix’ / [papeˈlejɾʊ] ‘papermaker’; cliente+ismo ‘client+suffix’ / [kliẽnteˈlizmʊ] ‘patronage’). The results from a pseudoword task answered by 219 participants contrasted to lexicon data from Corpus Brasileiro show that native speakers associate such derived forms with bases already containing [l] in the last syllable, either in the onset or the coda position. This observation is interpreted in a constraint-based approach, with the assumption that a demand for alignment between vowel-initial suffixes and roots closed by /l/, along with the requirement for phonological correspondence between base and derivative, is highly ranked in a grammar that accounts for learning morphophonological representations in the language.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Conti

ABSTRACT Cognitive impairment is a common dysfunction after neurological injury. Cognitive assessment tools can help the therapist understand how impairments are affecting functional status and quality of life. Objective: The aim of the study was to identify instruments for cognitive assessment that Occupational Therapists (OT) can use in clinical practice. Methods: The instruments published in English and Portuguese between 1999 and 2016 were systematically reviewed. Results: The search identified 17 specific instruments for OT not validated in Brazilian Portuguese, 10 non-specific instruments for OT not validated in Brazilian Portuguese, and 25 instruments validated for Portuguese, only one of which was specific for OT (Lowenstein Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment). Conclusion: There are few assessment cognitive tools validated for use in the Brazilian culture and language. The majority of the instruments appear not to be validated for use by OT in clinical practice.


Author(s):  
Tammer Castro ◽  
Jason Rothman ◽  
Marit Westergaard

The present study examines anaphora resolution in two groups of speakers exposed to Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP, respectively), considering the different null subject distribution in these languages. Our research question is whether late BP-EP bilinguals (age of EP onset: 29.1) and heritage BP speakers raised in Portugal (age of EP onset 5.6), tested in both dialects, will pattern like the native controls or display some effects of EP in their native BP or vice-versa. This is an interesting question in light of the Interface Hypothesis, which claims that external interfaces should be subject to general bilingualism effects irrespective of language pairing and age (Sorace, 2011). The results show that age has an effect, as the heritage speakers do not perform like the late learners, and that the high degree of typological proximity between the two languages could hinder bidialectal acquisition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (8) ◽  
pp. 1060-1071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Paciello Yamashita ◽  
Elisabet Borg ◽  
Svante Granqvist ◽  
Anette Lohmander

Objective: To compare reliability in auditory-perceptual assessment of hypernasality for 3 different methods and to explore the influence of language background. Design: Comparative methodological study. Participants and Materials: Audio recordings of 5-year-old Swedish-speaking children with repaired cleft lip and palate consisting of 73 stimuli of 9 nonnasal single-word strings in 3 different randomized orders. Four experienced speech-language pathologists (2 native speakers of Brazilian–Portuguese and 2 native speakers of Swedish) participated as listeners. After individual training, each listener performed the hypernasality rating task. Each order of stimuli was analyzed individually using the 2-step, VISOR and Borg centiMax scale methods. Main Outcome Measures: Comparison of intra- and inter-rater reliability, and consistency  for each method within language of the listener and between listener languages (Swedish and Brazilian–Portuguese). Results: Good to excellent intra-rater reliability was found within each listener for all methods, 2-step: κ = 0.59-0.93; VISOR: intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.80-0.99; Borg centiMax (cM) scale: ICC = 0.80-1.00. The highest inter-rater reliability was demonstrated for VISOR (ICC = 0.60-0.90) and Borg cM-scale (ICC = 0.40-0.80). High consistency within each method was found with the highest for the Borg cM scale (ICC = 0.89-0.91). There was a significant difference in the ratings between the Swedish and the Brazilian listeners for all methods. Conclusions: The category-ratio scale Borg cM was considered most reliable in the assessment of hypernasality. Language background of Brazilian–Portuguese listeners influenced the perceptual ratings of hypernasality in Swedish speech samples, despite their experience in perceptual assessment of cleft palate speech disorders.


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