scholarly journals Can filled pauses be represented as linguistic items? Investigating the effect of exposure on the perception and production of um

2021 ◽  
pp. 002383092110112
Author(s):  
Minna Kirjavainen ◽  
Ludivine Crible ◽  
Kate Beeching
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
British English ◽  
Sentence Recall ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
Accuracy Study ◽  
English Speaking

The current paper presents three studies that investigated the effect of exposure on the mental representations of filled pauses ( um/uh). In Study 1, a corpus analysis identified the frequency of co-occurrence of filled pauses with words located immediately before or after them in naturalistic spoken adult British English (BNC2014). Based on the collocations identified in Study 1, in Study 2, 22 native British English-speaking adults heard sentences in which the location of filled pauses and the co-occurring words were manipulated and the participants were asked to judge the acceptability of the sentences heard. Study 3 was a sentence recall experiment in which we asked 29 native British English adults to repeat a similar set of sentences as used in Study 2. We found that frequency-based distributional patterns of filled pauses (Study 1) affected the sentence judgments (Study 2) and repetition accuracy (Study 3), in particular when the filled pause followed its collocate. Thus, the current study provides converging evidence for the account maintaining that filled pauses are linguistic items. In addition, we suggest filled pauses in certain locations could be considered as grammatical items, such as suffixes.

Assessing the temporal reliability of rhythm metrics

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael-Anne Knight
Keyword(s):  
Current Paper ◽  
Empirical Measure ◽  
The Sun ◽  
British English ◽  
The North ◽  
North Wind ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Current Popularity ◽  
Temporal Reliability

Despite the current popularity of rhythm metrics, there has been relatively little work aimed at establishing their validity or reliability, important characteristics of any empirical measure. The current paper focuses on the stability, or temporal reliability, of rhythm metrics by establishing if they give consistent results for the same speakers, in the same task, on successive occasions. Four speakers of Southern British English were recorded reading ‘The North Wind and the Sun’ (NWS) passage on three consecutive days. Results indicated that some measures correlate more highly across time than others, and the choice of a measure that is both reliable and valid is discussed. It is suggested that the metric that best fits these criteria is formulated in terms of the proportion of vowels within an utterance (%V).

Phonological development: a normative study of British English‐speaking children

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 617-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARBARA DODD ◽  
ALISON HOLM ◽  
ZHU HUA ◽  
SHARON CROSBIE
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Development ◽  
Normative Study ◽  
British English ◽  
English Speaking

scholarly journals The cost of errors: confusion analysis and the mental representation of familiar and unfamiliar digits

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Michael Garrett ◽  
Murray Bennett ◽  
Zachary L Howard ◽  
Cheng-Ta ◽  
Daniel R. Little ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Dimensional Scaling ◽  
Small Set ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Mental Space ◽  
And Cluster Analysis ◽  
The Cost ◽  
External Stimuli

People express quantities using a remarkably small set of units – digits. Confusing digits could be costly, and not all confusions are equal; confusing a price tag of 2 dollars with 9 dollars is naturally more costly than confusing 2 with 3. Confusion patterns are intimately related to the distances between mental representations, which are hypothetical internal symbols said to stand for, or represent, ‘real’ external stimuli. The distance between the mental representations of two digits could be determined by their numerical distance. Alternatively, it could be driven by visual similarity. In an English speaking cohort, we investigated the mental representations of familiar and unfamiliar numbers (4 sets: Arabic, Chinese, Thai, and non-symbolic dots) through a set of identification experiments, using multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis. We controlled for undesired effects of response bias using Luce’s choice model. Our findings show Arabic, Chinese and Thai numerals were represented in the mental space by perceptual similarities. We also find non-symbolic dots were represented by perceptual and numerical similarities. This work is a novel contribution to the literature and lays the foundation for further investigations into the mental representation of numerals across cultures.

scholarly journals Social acquisition context matters: Increased neural responses for native but not nonnative taboo words

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Sendek ◽  
Grit Herzmann ◽  
Valeria Pfeifer ◽  
Vicky Tzuyin Lai
Keyword(s):  
Visual Recognition ◽  
American English ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
British English ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Late Positive Complex ◽  
Taboo Words ◽  
Native Dialect

AbstractThis study examined whether the context of acquisition of a word influences its visual recognition and subsequent processing. We utilized taboo words, whose meanings are typically acquired socially, to ensure that differences in processing were based on learned social taboo, rather than proficiency. American English-speaking participants made word/non-word decisions on American taboo (native dialect), British taboo (non-native dialect), positive, neutral, and pseudo- words while EEG was recorded. Taboo words were verified as taboo by both American and British English speakers in an independent norming survey. American taboo words showed a more positive amplitude of the Late Positive Complex (LPC), a neural correlate of emotionality and social processing, compared with British taboo words and all other word categories. Moreover, in an item-wise analysis, LPC amplitudes of American taboo words were positively correlated with their taboo ratings. British taboo words did not show this effect. This indicates that American participants, who had very limited social contact with British English, did not have the same perception of social threat from British taboo words as they had from American taboo words. These results point to the importance of social context of acquisition in establishing social-affective meaning in language.

Uprooted Speakers’ Grassroots English: Metalinguistic Perspectives of Asylum Seekers in Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-254
Author(s):  
Axel Bohmann
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
British English ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Differential Evaluation ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Group Functions ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Dancehall Culture

This chapter discusses metalinguistic discourse produced by asylum seekers from English-speaking West Africa in Germany, with a focus on the role of English in participants’ communicative environment and the values and affordances ascribed to different varieties of English. The chapter argues that, in this specific context, a) English loses much of its communicative range but retains important identity-related functions, and b) the values associated with different varieties of English reflect global relationships in the World system of Englishes. African varieties are linked to in-group functions and receive differential evaluation, with Nigerian English being constructed as more standard-distant than Ghanaian English, whereas the English of German interlocutors is associated with the prestige varieties American and British English. Particularly surprising is the frequent equation of Gambian English with Jamaican ways of speech, a pattern accounted for not in terms of linguistic similarity but of the global circulation of reggae and dancehall culture. The chapter thus contributes to the sociolinguistics of globalization and the study of language, mobility, and migration.

scholarly journals VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS AMERICAN AND BRITISH ACCENTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Huong Le Thu Phan
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
British English ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Inner Circle ◽  
Efl Classrooms ◽  
Received Pronunciation

English possesses different varieties due to its worldwide usage which challenges the tendency of favorite accents among EFL classrooms in non-English speaking countries. However, learners show more positive familiarity and preference for General American English (GA) and British English, Received Pronunciation (RP) which are grouped as the inner-circle of English. This study investigated 53 students in a university in southern part of Vietnam. They were asked to complete an online questionnaire which examined their evaluations of two accents on different traits of status and solidarity, their preference and familiarity. A verbal guise technique is employed with two female native speakers. The data was analyzed by SPSS with different T-tests and ANOVA. The study revealed that the respondents showed greater recognition and evaluations for GA which associated with prestige, familiarity and social attractiveness. Nearly two-thirds of participants revealed a preference to the American speaker although more than half of them did not recognize where she was from.

scholarly journals Gender Markers in the English Picture of the World

wisdom ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-113
Author(s):  
Iryna HUMENIUK
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
English Language ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Cultural Community ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking

Gender is determined as an ideological frame that assembles the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman in a certain culture, a non-linguistic category with linguistic ways of actualization. The article substantiates the key theoretical problems concerning gender-marking based on English phraseology and their influence on the formation of the gender picture of the world. The objective of the current paper is to analyze gender-marked phraseological units of the English language, which are the basic matrices of the phraseological picture of the world of a given cultural community, and to identify the frequency and impact of gender stereotypes on the development of the national picture of the English-speaking community, such as word, phraseology, paremia, text, which contain background knowledge and ways to reflect these meanings in the national picture of the world. The paper’s main conclusion is that the semantic basis of gender markers on the material of English phraseological units predominantly consists of stereotypical-associative units, which are perceived as social activity and characteristics of the images of both sexes with certain asymmetry for male denotata. The connotations of words can illustrate this inequality and the double standards between men and women.

scholarly journals Women and Da‘wah in the 20th Century: An Analysis of Maryam Jameelah's Contributions

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zohaib
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Economic Support ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Islamic Organizations ◽  
Literary Circles

Maryam Jameelah was a Jewish-American lady who, after embracing Islam, selected Pakistan as her adopted abode. Mostly her conversion to Islam and fierce criticism of western civilization became the topic of discussion among academics. However, her work for da‘wah, so evident since her childhood, did not find much attention in the literary circles. A study of her life and works can reveal answers to the questions such as how she engaged herself in this field, what is the methodology adopted by her, and how does her work is useful for the women interested in da‘wah. Analyzing her published books and articles along with the unpublished material found in her library, the current paper focuses on the practical aspects of her da‘wah activities. It is argued that being a convert, she was aware of the problems of people who either converted to Islam or had an interest in it. Thus, targeting an English-speaking audience, she did not only write a bulk of literature to disseminate her understanding of Islam in Euro-American communities, but also practically contributed to this field through her discussions with non-Muslims, correspondence, and economic support for Islamic organizations.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Based, Pilot Study of Lexical Stress Variation in American English

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 99-113
Author(s):  
Alice Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
American English ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Stress Variation ◽  
British English ◽  
Stress Patterns ◽  
Academic Resources ◽  
Free Variation

Phonological free variation describes the phenomenon of there being more than one pronunciation for a word without any change in meaning (e.g. because, schedule, vehicle). The term also applies to words that exhibit different stress patterns (e.g. academic, resources, comparable) with no change in meaning or grammatical category. A corpus-based analysis of free variation is a useful tool for testing the validity of surveys of speakers' pronunciation preferences for certain variants. The current paper presents the results of a corpus-based pilot study of American English, in an attempt to replicate Mompéan's 2009 study of British English.

scholarly journals The Phonological Variation of Pakistani English in comparison to Standard British English: A case study ofBaloch English speaking students in SBKWU, Quetta

Al-Burz ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Zainab Akram ◽  
Dr. Alia Ayub ◽  
Hina Arfeen ◽  
Mehwish Malghani
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
English Department ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
British English ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Convenience Sampling

With a small amount of language items i.e. words and one variable i.e. phonology, the present atudy aims to exploring the external and internal influences in language change in terms of phonology. The native Balochi speakers while speaking English as a second language face problems in producing some of English language sounds. The phonological differences were observed amongBalochi English speakers in terms of L1 impact on L2 and the influence of social surroundings have been studied in this paper. Employing qualitative mode of inquiry, the present study was conductedin SardarBahadur Khan Women University (SBKWU), Quetta. The population of this paper consisted of Balochi speaking undergraduate studentsfrom three main regions of Baluchistan, from the English Department. Exploiting convenience sampling, three students from each of the three Baloch regional groups and total of 9 students between ages 19 to 22, were selected as subjects of this study. A list of 20 English words based on problematic utterance of phonemes, was recorded while uttered by the students; transcribed and employing the contrastive analysis the results were displayed in a diagrams. First column displays the region, the second depicts the phonemes uttered by the participants and the third shows the Standard British English pronunciation (SBE). This enabled the researcher to trace the phonological variations, influence of L1 on L2 and the geographical influences on the phonological difference.

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