First words and prosodic structures

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-121
Author(s):  
Marilyn May Vihman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
American English ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
British English ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Prosodic Structures ◽  
Language Influence ◽  
First Words

This chapter presents data from four to eight children each learning one of six languages, British English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Italian, and Welsh. As a basis for cross-linguistic comparison the chapter first considers similarities and differences in the target forms of the first words of these children. It then presents the children’s later prosodic structures, including American English in the comparison. The chapter considers the development changes apparent from comparing the first words with the later structures and quantifies the extent of variegation in first word targets and later child word forms. In concluding, it is found that common resources are strongly in evidence in the first words but by the later point there is good evidence of ambient language influence as well as of individual differences within the groups.

scholarly journals Contrastive Analysis of British and American English in Relation To Teaching English as a Foreign Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 2367-2372
Author(s):  
Novalina Sembiring
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Research Finding ◽  
American English ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
British English ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Descriptive Method

This research was a descriptive research which was aimed at finding out the similarities, dissimilarities and the contributions of the contrastive analysis on teaching English as a foreign language. The data of this research were collected through library and internet sources. The researchers use comparative descriptive method to analyse the data. The obtained results was the comparison of American and British English in vocabulary, grammar, spelling, pronunciation and the contributions of them in teaching English as a foreign language. The research finding shows that British and American English are very similar in many aspects. Even though British and American English are mostly similar, they also have some differences. The difference of British and American English can be found in terms of vocabulary, grammar, spelling and pronunciation. Among them, vocabulary is the largest one. It is suggested that lecturers and teachers aware of the similarities and differences between British and American English in teaching English as a foreign language so that it will lead to the successful teaching of English including its varieties.

Articulatory Complexity, Ambient Frequency, and Functional Load as Predictors of Consonant Development in Children

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie F. Stokes ◽  
Dinoj Surendran
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Functional Load ◽  
Physiological Constraints ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Language Effects ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Language Influence ◽  
Universal Pattern

The notion of a universal pattern of phonological development, rooted in basic physiological constraints, is controversial, with some researchers arguing for a strong environmental (ambient language) influence on phonological development or an interaction of both physiological constraints and ambient language effects. This research examines the relative value of articulatory complexity, ambient frequency, and functional load as predictors of consonant development in children. Three languages are investigated: Cantonese, American English, and Dutch. Regression analyses revealed that functional load accounted for 55% of the variance in age of emergence of consonants in 7 English-speaking children (8–25 months), while frequency of consonants in the ambient language accounted for 63% of the variance in age of emergence of consonants in 51 Cantonese-speaking children (15–30 months). Articulatory complexity accounted for 40% of the accuracy of production of consonants in 40 English-speaking children (25 months), and frequency accounted for 43% of the variance in accuracy of production of consonants in 5 Dutch-speaking children (24 months). Given cross-linguistic differences, further research is required.

Non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in English target words during the first-word period

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 1065-1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATSURA AOYAMA ◽  
BARBARA L. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Frequent Type ◽  
Sequence Patterns ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Language Characteristics ◽  
Production Capacities ◽  
Target Words

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to investigate non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In the spontaneous speech of eighteen participants, target words with a Consonant–Vowel–Consonant (C1VC2) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into nine types, categorized by place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal) of initial and final consonants (e.g.mom, labial–labial;mat, labial–coronal;dog, coronal–dorsal). The results indicated that some consonant sequences occurred much more frequently than others in early target words. The two most frequent types were coronal–coronal (e.g.dad) and labial–coronal (e.g.mat). The least frequent type was dorsal–dorsal (e.g.cake). These patterns are consistent with phonotactic characteristics of English and infants' production capacities reported in previous studies. This study demonstrates that infants' expressive vocabularies reflect both ambient language characteristics and their own production capacities, at least for consonant sequences in C1VC2word forms.

Phonological templates in development

2019 ◽  
pp. 122-162
Author(s):  
Marilyn May Vihman
Keyword(s):  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Consonant Harmony ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Prosodic Structures

This chapter presents cross-linguistic data from two children each from the language groups represented in Chapter 4. The child’s consonantal resources are evaluated, with examples of the child’s word forms. This is followed by an account of the child’s prosodic structures and their relative frequency of use. Active template use is evaluated, based in part on the extent to which the child adapts words to fit those structures. A correlation is found between the children’s production of consonant matches and the extent of variegation in their word forms. Finally, an overview is provided of template use in the 18 children whose patterns have been considered in detail. Consonant harmony is found to be the pattern most frequently deployed, but a VCV pattern is used by five of the children (French, Finnish, Italian, Welsh). The pattern is traced to accentual aspects of the ambient language.

Recent change in non-present perfect constructions in British and American English

Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Yao ◽  
Peter Collins
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.

scholarly journals Why Words Are Hard for Adults With Developmental Language Impairments

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 1845-1856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla K. McGregor ◽  
Ulla Licandro ◽  
Richard Arenas ◽  
Nichole Eden ◽  
Derek Stiles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Normal Development ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Language Impairments ◽  
Learning Problems ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Purpose To determine whether word learning problems associated with developmental language impairment (LI) reflect deficits in encoding or subsequent remembering of forms and meanings. Method Sixty-nine 18- to 25-year-olds with LI or without (the normal development [ND] group) took tests to measure learning of 16 word forms and meanings immediately after training (encoding) and 12 hr, 24 hr, and 1 week later (remembering). Half of the participants trained in the morning, and half trained in the evening. Results At immediate posttest, participants with LI performed more poorly on form and meaning than those with ND. Poor performance was more likely among those with more severe LI. The LI–ND gap for word form recall widened over 1 week. In contrast, the LI and ND groups demonstrated no difference in remembering word meanings over the week. In both groups, participants who trained in the evening, and therefore slept shortly after training, demonstrated greater gains in meaning recall than those who trained in the morning. Conclusions Some adults with LI have encoding deficits that limit the addition of word forms and meanings to the lexicon. Similarities and differences in patterns of remembering in the LI and ND groups motivate the hypothesis that consolidation of declarative memory is a strength for adults with LI.

The Norm Orientation of English in the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Dagmar Deuber ◽  
Stephanie Hackert ◽  
Eva Canan Hänsel ◽  
Alexander Laube ◽  
Mahyar Hejrani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
American English ◽  
Media Exposure ◽  
Quantitative Investigation ◽  
British English ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Newspaper Writing ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Do So

This study examines newspaper writing from ten Caribbean countries as a window on the norm orientation of English in the region. English in the former British colonies of the Caribbean has been assumed to be especially prone to postcolonial linguistic Americanization, on account of not just recent global phenomena such as mass tourism and media exposure but also long-standing personal and sociocultural links. We present a quantitative investigation of variable features comparing our Caribbean results not just to American and British reference corpora but also to newspaper collections from India and Nigeria as representatives of non-Caribbean New Englishes. The amount of American features employed varies by type of feature and country. In all Caribbean corpora, they are more prevalent in the lexicon than in spelling. With regard to grammar, an orientation toward a singular norm cannot be deduced from the data. While Caribbean journalists do partake in worldwide American-led changes such as colloquialization, as evident in the occurrence of contractions or the tendency to prefer that over which, the frequencies with which they do so align neither with American English nor with British English but often resemble those found in the Indian and Nigerian corpora. Contemporary Caribbean newspaper writing, thus, neither follows traditional British norms, nor is it characterized by massive linguistic Americanization; rather, there appears to be a certain conservatism common to New Englishes generally. We discuss these results in light of new considerations on normativity in English in the 21st century.

scholarly journals The Use of American and British Lexis in Brunei English

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Mohamad Nur Raihan
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
School Students ◽  
British English ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Power Point ◽  
Casual Speech ◽  
University Undergraduates ◽  
Age Range

In pronunciation, influenced by American English, a shift in Brunei English can be observed in the increasing use of [r] in tokens such as car and heard particularly among younger speakers whose pronunciation may be influenced by American English. In contrast, older speakers tend to omit the [r] sound in these tokens as their pronunciation may be more influenced by British English. However, it is unclear whether American English has influenced the vocabulary of Brunei English speakers as the education system in Brunei favours British English due to its historical ties with Britain. This paper analyses the use of American and British  lexical items between three age groups: 20 in-service teachers aged between 29 to 35 years old, 20 university undergraduates aged between 19 to 25 years old, and 20 secondary school students who are within the 11 to 15 age range. Each age group has 10 female and 10 male participants and they were asked to name seven objects shown to them on Power point slides. Their responses were recorded and compared between the age groups and between female and male data. The analysis is supplemented with recorded data from interviews with all 60 participants to determine instances of American and British lexical items in casual speech. It was found that there is a higher occurrence of American than British lexical items in all three groups and the interview data supports the findings in the main data. Thus, providing further evidence for the Americanisation of Brunei English and that Brunei English is undergoing change.

scholarly journals Indirectness in the Age of Globalization: A Social Network Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 930-949
Author(s):  
Marina Terkourafi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
British English ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

Indirectness has traditionally been viewed as commensurate with politeness and attributed to the speaker’s wish to avoid imposition and/or otherwise strategically manipulate the addressee. Despite these theoretical predictions, a number of studies have documented the solidarity-building and identity-constituting functions of indirectness. Bringing these studies together, Terkourafi 2014 proposed an expanded view of the functions of indirect speech, which crucially emphasizes the role of the addressee and the importance of network ties. This article focuses on what happens when such network ties become loosened, as a result of processes of urbanization and globalization. Drawing on examples from African American English and Chinese, it is argued that these processes produce a need for increased explicitness, which drives speakers (and listeners) away from indirectness. This claim is further supported diachronically, by changes in British English politeness that coincide with the rise of the individual Self. These empirical findings have implications for im/politeness theorizing and theory-building more generally, calling attention to how the socio-historical context of our research necessarily influences the theories we end up building.

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