scholarly journals A cross-cultural examination of young children’s everyday language experiences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P Bunce ◽  
Melanie Soderstrom ◽  
Elika Bergelson ◽  
Celia Rosemberg Rosemberg ◽  
Alejandra Stein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
American English ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Early Language ◽  
British English ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Language Exposure

Cross-cultural variation in children’s early linguistic experience is vastly understudied. Here we quantify young children’s language exposure across communities speaking North American English, British English, Argentinian Spanish, Yélî Dnye, or Tseltal. Our data includes annotations from 70 daylong, naturalistic recordings of 1–36-month-olds. We focus on what children heard in terms of speaker gender, age, and addressee in randomly selected clips from each recording. We find three key results. First, speech quantity was remarkably stable across age. Second, the bulk of child-directed speech children hear comes from women. Finally, we report on differences and similarities in relative rates of adult- and child-directed speech across communities. Critically, this work provides a much-needed cross-cultural approach to understanding young children’s early language experiences.

Reconstructing social emotions across languages and cultures

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-493
Author(s):  
Karolina Krawczak
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Social Emotions ◽  
British English ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Lexical Categories

Abstract The present study investigates the adjectival profiling of shame from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. This concept, overarching the field of negative self-evaluative emotions, is operationalized through two lexical categories (‘shame’ and ‘embarrassment’) that are comparable in the languages under investigation. The usage of the adjectival exponents of these categories is analyzed in four communities of British English, American English, French, and Polish. The study has two goals, one descriptive, the other methodological. Firstly, it aims to identify the conceptual structuring of the two lexical categories relative to their respective socio-cultural contexts. The result will be four sets of culture-sensitive usage profiles. Secondly, the study further advances corpus-driven quantitative methodology for the description of intersubjectively-grounded abstract concepts. The results obtained here provide partial evidence for the existence of a cultural continuum ranging from the Anglo-Saxon communities, through France to Poland along the descriptive dimension of individualism-collectivism.

Dynamic have in North American and British Isles English

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Trudgill ◽  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Ilse Wischer
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
American English ◽  
Full Range ◽  
British Isles ◽  
British English ◽  
Main Verb

There are two important differences between American English and British English with respect to main verb have. First, American English typically employs do-support in constructions such as Do you have any coffee? while traditional British English does not. Secondly, American English typically does not use have in expressions such as I took a shower whereas British Isles English does: I had a shower. In this article, we discuss the possibility that there is a connection between these two facts. We argue that the connection lies in the failure of have in North American English to acquire the full range of dynamic meanings that it has acquired in other varieties of English, and suggest language contact as one explanation for this phenomenon.

Disjunctured Feminisms

2015 ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Roberta Lamb ◽  
Niyati Dhokai
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Music Education ◽  
North American ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
American Music ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
American Academic

This chapter explores feminism in the classroom to contribute to the discussion of music education and social justice in the volume. Through a dual-authored, cross-generational and cross-cultural approach, it follows the disjunctured past of feminism in North American music education, and advocates for the study of feminist histories within music education and its social and historical relevance to current music educators. It also deliberates the negotiation of North American academic feminisms concurrently with global feminisms. Furthermore, it considers the emergence of multicultural feminist perspectives within the music education classroom and offers ethnographic possibilities for encouraging diverse perspectives within the classroom. The chapter offers possibilities for encouraging inclusive and comprehensive music education that recognizes how each individual’s experience contributes to feminist diversity and social justice.

scholarly journals The prosody of other-repetition in British and North American English

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
American English ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
British English ◽  
Varietal Differences ◽  
Epistemic Access ◽  
Pitch Contours ◽  
Pitch Accents

AbstractThis study explores the link between prosody and other-repetition in a moderately large collection from everyday English talk-in-interaction (n = 200). British English and North American English cases were analysed separately in order to track possible varietal differences. Of initial interest was the question whether focal pitch accents might disambiguate among other-repetition actions, both those related to repair and those that go beyond repair. The results indicate that only two out of six possible other-repetition actions are associated with distinct focal pitch contours in the two varieties. For all other repair and beyond-repair actions speakers use many of the same pitch contours nondistinctively. Overall, falling contours appear more frequently in British other-repetitions, while rising contours are more frequent in North American other-repetitions. In conclusion, it is argued that in addition to pitch contour, prosodic features such as pitch span, loudness, and timing are crucial in distinguishing other-repetition actions, as are nonprosodic factors such as epistemic access (often reflected in oh-prefacing) and visible behavior. (Repair initiation, surprise, challenge, registering, pitch accents, oh-preface, epistemics)*

scholarly journals CORRELATION OF NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH AND BRITISH ENGLISH DIVERGENCIES IN LEXIS

2018 ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
V. Yevchenko
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Language Development ◽  
North American ◽  
American English ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
British English ◽  
Lexical Unit ◽  
English Usage

The article focuses on the description of a special type of relationship that arises between lexical units within the corpus of English words in the framework of the sociolinguistic approach. Various ways of correlation between North American and British usages emerge in present-day English due to the action of two processes of the language development favoured by a set of historical, linguistic and sociolinguistic factors: divergence and convergence. The paper describes the most frequent forms of lexical correlation between North American English usage and British English usage. The research states that the semantic structure of the lexical unit or its register of usage can undergo changes under influences of the other variety. The lexemes, common to both national varieties with partial coincidence of the semantic structure and, sometimes, with shifts in the register of usage, are more affected by the process of convergence. The part of the English lexis less affected by convergent processes comprises common lexemes with the split in the semantic structure, the components of which are different or antonymic. The part of the present-day English lexis likely to be involved in the process of internal borrowing mostly includes lexemes specific to US English or British English with, or without lexical equivalents in the other variety. A special kind of correlation between lexical units of common origin can bring about usages functionally confined only to one variety. The functional predominance can contribute to the formation of different chains of synonyms actualized in each of the varieties. When lexemes have lexical equivalents specific to one of the national varieties of English, the so-called ''pseudo-synonymous relations” within the English lexical system can arise

A cross-cultural investigation of email communication in Peninsular Spanish and British English

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus ◽  
Patricia Bou-Franch
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Email Communication ◽  
British English ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
University Lecturers

This paper examines the email discursive practices of particular speakers of two different languages, namely Peninsular Spanish and British English. More specifically, our study focuses on (in)formality and (in)directness therein, for these lie at the heart of considerable scholarly debate regarding, respectively (i) the general stylistic drift towards orality and informality in technology-mediated communication, and (ii) the degree of communicative (in)directness – within broader politeness orientations – of speakers of different languages, specifically an orientation towards directness in Peninsular Spanish vis-à-vis indirectness in British English. The aim of this paper is thus to investigate the role of (in)formality and (in)directness in email messages sent by members of two groups of undergraduate students to their university lecturers. To this end, a corpus of 100 impromptu emails was compiled and analysed. Results revealed complex, fluctuating patterns regarding levels of (in)formality and (in)directness that underlined cross-cultural variation in the way that different sociopragmatic principles found expression in a specific computer-mediated communicative situation.

scholarly journals A multi-lab study of bilingual infants: Exploring the preference for infant-directed speech

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Byers-Heinlein ◽  
Angeline Tsui ◽  
Christina Bergmann ◽  
Alexis K. Black ◽  
Anna Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Matched Samples ◽  
Two Age Groups

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet, IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multi-site study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants’ IDS preference. As part of the multi-lab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 385 monolingual infants’ preference for North-American English IDS (cf. ManyBabies Consortium, 2020 (ManyBabies 1)), tested in 17 labs in 7 countries. Those infants were tested in two age groups: 6–9 months (the younger sample) and 12–15 months (the older sample). We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, amongst bilingual infants who were acquiring North-American English (NAE) as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference, extending the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes a similar contribution to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.

scholarly journals A Multilab Study of Bilingual Infants: Exploring the Preference for Infant-Directed Speech

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 251524592097462
Author(s):  
Krista Byers-Heinlein ◽  
Angeline Sin Mei Tsui ◽  
Christina Bergmann ◽  
Alexis K. Black ◽  
Anna Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Matched Samples ◽  
Two Age Groups

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) compared with adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multisite study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants’ IDS preference. As part of the multilab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared preference for North American English (NAE) IDS in lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 384 monolingual infants tested in 17 labs in seven countries. The tested infants were in two age groups: 6 to 9 months and 12 to 15 months. We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and the two groups did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, among bilingual infants who were acquiring NAE as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference. These findings extend the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger IDS preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes similar contributions to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.

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