scholarly journals Order among chaos: Cross-linguistic differences and developmental trajectories in pseudoword reading aloud using pronunciation Entropy

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0251629
Author(s):  
Elisabetta De Simone ◽  
Elisabeth Beyersmann ◽  
Claudio Mulatti ◽  
Jonathan Mirault ◽  
Xenia Schmalz
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Orthographic Depth ◽  
Pseudoword Reading ◽  
Item Characteristics

In this work we propose the use of Entropy to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthographic depth were tested. We predicted that Entropy values will increase with increasing orthographic depth. Moreover, higher Entropy was expected for younger than older children, as reading experience improves the knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). We also tested if interference from a second language would lead to higher Entropy. Results show that orthographic depth affects Entropy, but only when the items are not strictly matched across languages. We also found that Entropy decreases across age, suggesting that GPC knowledge becomes refined throughout grades 2-4. We found no differences between bilingual and monolingual children. Our results indicate that item characteristics play a fundamental role in pseudoword pronunciation variability, that reading experience is associated with reduced variability in responses, and that in bilinguals’ knowledge of a second orthography does not seem to interfere with pseudoword reading aloud.

scholarly journals Order among Chaos: cross-linguistic differences and developmental trajectories in pseudoword reading aloud using pronunciation Entropy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta De Simone ◽  
Elisabeth Beyersmann ◽  
Claudio Mulatti ◽  
Jonathan Mirault ◽  
Xenia Schmalz
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Orthographic Depth ◽  
Pseudoword Reading ◽  
Item Characteristics

In this work we propose the use of Entropy as a new way to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthographic depth were tested. We predicted that Entropy values will increase with increasing orthographic depth. Moreover, higher Entropy was expected for younger than older children, as reading experience improves the knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). We also tested if interference from a second language would lead to higher Entropy. Results show that orthographic depth affects Entropy, but only when the items are not strictly matched across languages. We also found that Entropy decreases across age, suggesting that GPC knowledge becomes refined throughout Grades 2-4. We found no differences between bilingual and monolingual children. Our results indicate that item characteristics play a fundamental role in pseudoword pronunciation variability, that reading experience is associated with reduced variability in responses, and that in bilinguals' knowledge of a second orthography does not seem to interfere with pseudoword reading aloud.

scholarly journals Unpredictability and complexity of print-to-speech correspondences increase reliance on lexical processes: more evidence for the orthographic depth hypothesis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xenia Schmalz ◽  
Elisabeth Beyersmann ◽  
Eddy Cavalli ◽  
Eva Marinus
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Lexical Route ◽  
Orthographic Depth ◽  
Correct Pronunciation ◽  
Different Orthographies ◽  
Lexical Processes ◽  
Different Sources

The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis [Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: The orthographic depth hypothesis. In R. Frost & L. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 67–84). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science] proposes cross-linguistic differences in the involvement of lexical processing during reading. In orthographies with complex, inconsistent, and/or incomplete sublexical correspondences, decoding is more difficult and therefore slower. This gives more time to the lexical route to retrieve information, and leads to a greater ratio of lexical processing. We test whether this mechanism applies both for words with inconsistent (in English) and for words with complex (in French) correspondences. As complex correspondences are sufficient to derive a correct pronunciation, an increase in lexical processing may not occur. In a reading-aloud task, we used the frequency effect to measure lexical processing. The data showed stronger involvement of lexical processing for inconsistent compared to consistent words, and for complex compared to simple words. The results confirm that Katz and Frost’s proposed mechanism applies to different sources of orthographic depth.

scholarly journals Regular and Irregular Inflection in Different Groups of Bilingual Children and the Role of Verbal Short-Term and Verbal Working Memory

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Evelyn Bosma ◽  
Wilbert Heeringa
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Linguistic Distance

Bilingual children often experience difficulties with inflectional morphology. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate how regularity of inflection in combination with verbal short-term and working memory (VSTM, VWM) influences bilingual children’s performance. Data from 231 typically developing five- to eight-year-old children were analyzed: Dutch monolingual children (N = 45), Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (N = 106), Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (N = 31), Tarifit-Dutch bilingual children (N = 38) and Arabic-Dutch bilingual children (N = 11). Inflection was measured with an expressive morphology task. VSTM and VWM were measured with a Forward and Backward Digit Span task, respectively. The results showed that, overall, children performed more accurately at regular than irregular forms, with the smallest gap between regulars and irregulars for monolinguals. Furthermore, this gap was smaller for older children and children who scored better on a non-verbal intelligence measure. In bilingual children, higher accuracy at using (irregular) inflection was predicted by a smaller cross-linguistic distance, a larger amount of Dutch at home, and a higher level of parental education. Finally, children with better VSTM, but not VWM, were more accurate at using regular and irregular inflection.

Comparatives and Superlatives in the Romance Languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Van Peteghem
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Equal Degree ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
Comparative Constructions ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
Traditional Grammar ◽  
Standard Marker

Comparison expresses a relation involving two or more entities which are ordered on a scale with respect to a gradable property, called the parameter of comparison. In European languages, it is typically expressed through two constructions, comparatives and superlatives. Comparative constructions generally involve two entities, and indicate whether the compared entity shows a higher, lesser, or equal degree of the parameter with respect to the other entity, which is the standard of comparison. Superlatives set out one entity against a class of entities and indicate that the compared entity shows the highest or lowest degree of the parameter. Hence, comparatives may express either inequality (superiority or inferiority) or equality, whereas superlatives necessarily express superiority or inferiority. In traditional grammar, the terms comparative and superlative are primarily used to refer to the morphology of adjectives and adverbs in languages with synthetic marking (cf. Eng. slow, slower, slowest). However, while Latin has such synthetic marking, modern Romance languages no longer possess productive comparative or superlative suffixes. All Romance languages use analytic markers consisting of dedicated adverbs (e.g., Fr. plus ‘more’, moins ‘less’, aussi ‘as, also’) and determiners (e.g., Sp./It. tanto, Ro. atât ‘so much’). Superlatives are marked with the same markers and are mainly distinguished from comparatives by their association with definiteness. Another difference between comparatives and superlatives lies in the complements they license. Comparatives license a comparative complement, which may be clausal or phrasal, and which identifies the standard of comparison. As for superlatives, they license partitive PPs denoting the comparison set, which may be further specified by other PPs, a relative clause, or an infinitive clause. The Romance languages show many similarities with respect to the morphosyntactic encoding of comparatives and superlatives, but they also display important cross-linguistic differences. These differences may be related to the status of the comparative marker, the encoding of the standard marker, ellipsis phenomena in the comparative clause, and the dependence of the superlative on the definite article.

scholarly journals Another bilingual advantage? Perception of talker-voice information

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNAH V. LEVI
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Voice Processing ◽  
Better Than

A bilingual advantage has been found in both cognitive and social tasks. In the current study, we examine whether there is a bilingual advantage in how children process information about who is talking (talker-voice information). Younger and older groups of monolingual and bilingual children completed the following talker-voice tasks with bilingual speakers: a discrimination task in English and German (an unfamiliar language), and a talker-voice learning task in which they learned to identify the voices of three unfamiliar speakers in English. Results revealed effects of age and bilingual status. Across the tasks, older children performed better than younger children and bilingual children performed better than monolingual children. Improved talker-voice processing by the bilingual children suggests that a bilingual advantage exists in a social aspect of speech perception, where the focus is not on processing the linguistic information in the signal, but instead on processing information about who is talking.

scholarly journals A Multivariate Study of T/V Forms in European Languages Based on a Parallel Corpus of Film Subtitles

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Levshina
Keyword(s):  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conditional Inference ◽  
Contextual Variables ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Multivariate Study ◽  
Conditional Inference Trees

The present study investigates the cross-linguistic differences in the use of so-called T/V forms (e.g. French tu and vous, German du and Sie, Russian ty and vy) in ten European languages from different language families and genera. These constraints represent an elusive object of investigation because they depend on a large number of subtle contextual features and social distinctions, which should be cross-linguistically matched. Film subtitles in different languages offer a convenient solution because the situations of communication between film characters can serve as comparative concepts. I selected more than two hundred contexts that contain the pronouns you and yourself in the original English versions, which are then coded for fifteen contextual variables that describe the Speaker and the Hearer, their relationships and different situational properties. The creators of subtitles in the other languages have to choose between T and V when translating from English, where the T/V distinction is not expressed grammatically. On the basis of these situations translated in ten languages, I perform multivariate analyses using the method of conditional inference trees in order to identify the most relevant contextual variables that constrain the T/V variation in each language.

Zeading and reazing: Which is faster? The position of the diverging letter in a pseudoword determines reading time

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (7) ◽  
pp. 1005-1014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Mulatti ◽  
Francesca Peressotti ◽  
Remo Job
Keyword(s):  
Reading Time ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Pseudoword Reading ◽  
Dual Route

We present evidence that (a) at least some components of the reading process are serial and (b) pseudoword reading is affected by lexical knowledge, even in a transparent orthographic system like Italian. Pseudowords deriving from five-letter words by changing either the first or the fourth letter were presented for reading aloud. Results showed an effect of the position of the diverging letter: Early diverging pseudowords were read more slowly than late diverging pseudowords. The dual-route cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) successfully simulated the behavioural data.

A developmental change in selective attention and global form perception

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mafalda Porporino ◽  
Grace Iarocci ◽  
David I. Shore ◽  
Jacob A. Burack
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Developmental Change ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Form Perception ◽  
Global Processing ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Local And Global Processing ◽  
Global And Local

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the processing of local and global perception in relation to selective attention during development from childhood to early adulthood. Filtering was the specific component of selective attention that was examined. The influence of varying distractor congruency and compatibility on relative local-global processing was also examined. Distractor congruency and compatibility did not differentially affect local and global processing. With the presence of neutral distractors, however, 6- and 8-year-old participants demonstrated a greater increase in RTs for global targets relative to local targets whereas older children and adults showed the same pattern of RTs for both local and global targets. The results are suggestive of separate developmental trajectories for global and local level processes, with global processing undergoing developmental change at least until 8 years of age.

scholarly journals Auxiliary clitics in Polish

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Dorota Jagódzka
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The One ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Clitic Placement

Polish auxiliary clitics constitute an interesting set of data which draws attention to cross-linguistic differences among Slavic languages. A general principle for clitic placement in Indo-European languages is the one described by Jacob Wackernagel in his 1892 work. He concluded that clitics appeared in the second position in the clause, after the first word in a sentence. This pattern was true to some degree in Old Church Slavonic and still holds for a number of contemporary Slavic languages e.g. Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Czech and Slovak which have second position clitics. Bulgarian and Macedonian have verb adjacent pronominal clitics and Polish has auxiliary clitics (Migdalski 2007, 2010, Pancheva 2005). Also in the older versions of Polish language the above mentioned tendency was strong. In Modern Polish auxiliary clitics attach to the l-participle most frequently. However, one of the unusual properties they possess is the ability to choose almost every clausal element for their host. Polish auxiliary clitics can trigger morphophonological alternations on their hosts, which is an affix-like property; however, at the same time they display clearly clitic-like behaviour when they attach freely to words of any lexical class. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the morpho-syntactic properties of two kinds of auxiliary clitics: bound and free. The bound clitics carry person-number agreement markers for past tense (the so called ‘floating’ or ‘mobile’ inflections). The free clitic is the morpheme by used for conditional and subjunctive mood.

scholarly journals Measures of bilingual cognition – from infancy to adolescence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Williams ◽  
Prasiddha Parthasarathy ◽  
Monika Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Executive Function ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Memory Flexibility ◽  
Bilingual Literature ◽  
With Memory

An extensive literature exists regarding the effect of bilingualism on cognition in developing populations. However, the term ‘cognition’ is vague and applies to a large number of different abilities. We reviewed 57 publications examining cognition in simultaneous bilingual children to understand what aspects of cognition have been studied in this population and what tasks have been used, in addition to qualitatively assessing the results of bilingual/monolingual comparisons. Executive function was the most frequently assessed cognitive ability across all age groups, paralleling the adult bilingual literature, with memory flexibility and theory of mind also emerging as common targets within infant and preschool age groups. Results are discussed in light of developmental trajectories and assessment methodologies currently available for the cognitive abilities represented in this literature.

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