scholarly journals Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Ghosh ◽  
John M. Levis
Keyword(s):  
Word Identification ◽  
English Word ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Auditory Lexical Decision ◽  
Suprasegmental Cues ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Stress Error

The use of suprasegmental cues to word stress occurs across many languages. Nevertheless, L1 English listeners' pay little attention to suprasegmental word stress cues and evidence shows that segmental cues are more important to L1 English listeners in how words are identified in speech. L1 English listeners assume strong syllables with full vowels mark the beginning of a new word, attempting alternative resegmentations only when this heuristic fails to identify a viable word string. English word stress errors have been shown to severely disrupt processing for both L1 and L2 listeners, but not all word stress errors are equally damaging. Vowel quality and direction of stress shift are thought to be predictors of the intelligibility of non-standard stress pronunciations—but most research so far on this topic has been limited to two-syllable words. The current study uses auditory lexical decision and delayed word identification tasks to test a hypothesized English Word Stress Error Gravity Hierarchy for words of two to five syllables. Results indicate that English word stress errors affect intelligibility most when they introduce concomitant vowel errors, an effect that is somewhat mediated by the direction of stress shift. As a consequence, the relative intelligibility impact of any particular lexical stress error can be predicted by the Hierarchy for both L1 and L2 English listeners. These findings have implications for L1 and L2 English pronunciation research and teaching. For research, our results demonstrate that varied findings about loss of intelligibility are connected to vowel quality changes of word stress errors and that these factors must be accounted for in intelligibility research. For teaching, the results indicate that not all word stress errors are equally important, and that only word stress errors that affect vowel quality should be prioritized.

scholarly journals Is there an interlanguage intelligibility benefit in perception of English word stress?

Loquens ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 061
Author(s):  
Rana Almbark ◽  
Nadia Bouchhioua ◽  
Sam Hellmuth
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Structural Knowledge ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Stress Perception ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Minimal Pairs ◽  
Unstressed Syllable ◽  
Final Stress ◽  
L1 English

This paper asks whether there is an ‘interlanguage intelligibility benefit’ in perception of word-stress, as has been reported for global sentence recognition. L1 English listeners, and L2 English listeners who are L1 speakers of Arabic dialects from Jordan and Egypt, performed a binary forced-choice identification task on English near-minimal pairs (such as[ˈɒbdʒɛkt] ~ [əbˈdʒɛkt]) produced by an L1 English speaker, and two L2 English speakers from Jordan and Egypt respectively. The results show an overall advantage for L1 English listeners, which replicates the findings of an earlier study for general sentence recognition, and which is also consistent with earlier findings that L1 listeners rely more on structural knowledge than on acoustic cues in stress perception. Non-target-like L2 productions of words with final stress (which are primarily cued in L1 production by vowel reduction in the initial unstressed syllable) were less accurately recognized by L1 English listeners than by L2 listeners, but there was no evidence of a generalized advantage for L2 listeners in response to other L2 stimuli.

The role of lexical stress in spoken English word recognition by listeners of English and Taiwan Mandarin

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-601
Author(s):  
Shu-chen Ou
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
English Word ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Taiwan Mandarin ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
Auditory Lexical Decision ◽  
Suprasegmental Cues

Abstract Two perceptual experiments investigated how the suprasegmental information of monosyllables is perceived and exploited in spoken English word recognition by listeners of English and Taiwan Mandarin (TM). Using an auditory lexical decision task in which correctly stressed English words and mis-stressed nonwords (e.g. camPAIGN vs. *CAMpaign) were presented for lexical decisions, Experiment I demonstrated that TM listeners could perceive the differences between stressed and unstressed syllables with native-like accuracy and rapidity. To examine how the perceived suprasegmental contrast would constrain English lexical access, Experiment II was conducted. It used a cross-modal fragment priming task in which a lexical decision had to be made for a visually presented English word or nonword following an auditory prime, which was a spoken word-initial syllable. The results showed that English and TM listeners recognized the displayed word (e.g. campus) faster both after a stress-matching (e.g. CAM-) prime and a stress-mismatching (e.g. cam-) prime than after a control prime (e.g. MOUN-, with mismatching segments). This indicates that suprasegmental information does not inhibit a segmentally matching but suprasegmentally mismatching word candidate for both the two groups, although TM is a language where lexical prosody is expressed syllabically and its listeners tend to interpret lexical stress tonally. Yet, the two groups’ responses were slower after the stressed primes than after the unstressed ones, presumably because the former generally had more possible continuations than the latter do. It is therefore concluded that when recognizing spoken English words, both the native and non-native (TM-speaking) listeners can exploit the suprasegmental cues of monosyllables, which, however, are not so effective that they will outweigh the segmental cues.

Word Class Influence upon L1 and L2 English Word Association

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Xiaosa ◽  
Wang Wenyu
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
English Word ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Word Association Test ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English

AbstractThis study explores word class influence upon L1 and L2 word association. The participants included 26 L1 English speakers and 28 advanced EFL learners who finished an English word association test that involved three types of stimuli: nouns, verbs and adjectives. Response words to the stimuli were classified into paradigmatic, syntagmatic, encyclopedic and form-based categories. Results show that: 1) L2 mental lexicon largely resembled that of L1 English speakers in that both were dominated by paradigmatic association, but L2 syntagmatic association was obviously weaker than that of L1 across the three word classes; 2) Verbs and adjectives demonstrated a greater potential to elicit syntagmatic responses than nouns in both L1 and L2 association; 3) Compared with verbs and adjectives, nouns were more paradigmatically challenging to L2 learners.

scholarly journals The Impact of Visual Aids on the Retention of English Word Stress Patterns

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid Ghaemi ◽  
Fahimeh Rafi
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Placement Test ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Group A ◽  
Group B ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Stress Patterns

The present study aimed at comparing the effectiveness of three different techniques on learners’ long term memorization of English word stress patterns. After administering a quick placement test, 67 Iranian EFL elementary learners at language institutes were selected to participate in the study. Then they were divided into three groups. Before starting the instruction, a pretest was conducted to classify the participants’ abilities on word stress patterns. Then the new techniques were used to teach English word stress patterns. In all three groups, words were printed largely on a piece of paper and the syllables were clearly specified by dots. In group ‘A’, pronunciation and stress pattern of new words were taught aurally through the repetition of the words. In group ‘B’, all the procedure was exactly similar to that of group ‘A’, the only difference was that the stressed syllables were printed in bold. In group ‘C’, all the procedure was exactly similar to that of group ‘B’,  except that the stressed syllables were not only printed in bold, but also introduced by teacher’s hand gesture. After two weeks, a delayed posttest was conducted to check long term memorization of the word stress patterns. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant difference between pretest and delayed posttest in all three groups. But the most meaningful difference belonged to group ‘C’. That is, the participants in the third group (gesture group) outperformed those in the other groups. Finally, some implications and suggestions provided for further research.   

scholarly journals El papel del lenguaje en la construcción de explicaciones en la clase de ciencias en contextos bilingües a través del enfoque CLIL

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (21) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Mauricio Mancipe Triviño ◽  
Cynthia Marcela Ramírez Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Language ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
Close Link ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Science Classes ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Do So

This paper covers the issue with respect to elaborating explanations about natural phenomena in the Science class in bilingual contexts (Spanish (L1) – English (L2)), in which the role of the language is analysed from two perspectives: communicative and explanatory. To do so, this article focuses on the categorisation of cognitive-linguistic abilities exhibited by the students throughout the implementation of the designed unit, as well as analysing the expressions used by them from the communicative perspective; this analysis is born from the upcoming and growing concern of bilingualism implementation in Colombia and Latin America. The methodology used follows an interpretative-qualitative analysis with an inductive analysis approach, analysing the collected information during the didactic implementation in recordings, products developed by students and class diaries from a sample of 25 and 19 students belonging to two private secondary schools located in Cajicá and Bogotá, Colombia. The document presents the reflections arisen from the analysis categories built to assess the collected information: socio-linguistic abilities, communication of ideas in both L1 and L2, the conceptual, social, epistemological and didactic aspects of knowledge. It was found a close link between the L2 proficiency and the depth of the explanations elaborated by the students, enabling the more competent students in L2 to communicate better using the scientific language and getting to more complex explanations. Moreover, the implementation re-dimensioned the content perspective applied by some teachers when using the CLIL approach, placing bilingualism in the Science classes in a dimension distant from transmitting information, being a medium that fosters communicative and explanatory processes by nurturing different cognitive-linguistic abilities.

Some Problems of English Word-Stress for the Iraqi Learner

ELT Journal ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Y. Aziz
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Word Stress

The influence of first language polysemy and first language and second language lexical frequencies on second language learners’ use of false cognates

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 530-541
Author(s):  
Carl Cañizares-Álvarez ◽  
Virginia C Mueller Gathercole
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Word Choice ◽  
Relative Transparency ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English

Aims and objectives: This study examines second language (L2) bilinguals’ use of words that have the same or similar forms in their two languages but whose meaning extensions differ – that is, false cognates. We examine the conditions under which L2 speakers inappropriately use false cognates in the L2. How do frequency of the relevant words in each language and polysemy of the word in the first language (L1) affect L2 learners’ use of such words? Design: Fifty Spanish L1–English L2 adults translated 80 words in context from Spanish (S) to English (E). The words involved polysemous Spanish words that had several translations in English, one of which was a cognate form. Words were strictly balanced for L1 polysemy (high versus low), frequency of the S word, frequency of the E cognate form, and frequency of the E non-cognate translation. The words were presented in unambiguous contextual frames that pushed for the non-cognate translation in English. Data and analysis: Analyses of variance were used to analyze participants’ translations relative to the variables of Spanish polysemy and the frequencies of the forms in question. Findings: The findings show that the relative transparency or opacity of the mapping between the L1 and L2 influences word choice: the use of a false cognate instead of a competing correct lexical item depends on the complex interaction of L1 polysemy and the lexical frequencies of the L1 and L2 forms in the bilingual’s two languages. Originality: This study strictly controls for several factors crucial to L2 users’ choice of a word in the L2: polysemy in the L1, frequency of the L1 word, and frequencies of the L2 words involved. Significance: When these variables are viewed together, the data reveal a complex interaction showing factors that contribute to the transparency or opacity of the L1–L2 lexical semantic linkages.

Extended uses of the progressive form in L1 and L2 Englishes

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heli Paulasto
Keyword(s):  
Functional Characteristics ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Progressive Form ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Primary Substrate

This paper examines extended stative and habitual uses of the progressive form (PF), features of vernacular syntax that are shared by numerous contact-induced Englishes. Three of these are investigated here: Welsh English (WelE), a high-contact L1/L2 shift variety, Indian English, an indigenised L2 variety, and the traditional dialects of England, representing vernacular L1 English and a potential historical superstrate. Despite cross-varietal similarities, the PF proves to be quite distinctive in the corpora in terms of its structural, functional, and lexical properties. The patterns of variation are considered in relation to the primary substrate languages, Welsh and Hindi, the English English superstrate, and general developments in the use of the PF in English. The results indicate that the contact-induced varieties are typologically similar to the substrates in divergent ways and that the superstrate is clearly influential in WelE. Propositions of “angloversality” therefore need to be considered in light of regional linguistic ecologies and the structural and functional characteristics of (vernacular) English itself.

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