scholarly journals ПРЕЦЕДЕНТНІ ТОПОНІМИ В НЕОФІЦІЙНИХ НАЗВАХ АМЕРИКАНСЬКИХ МІСТ І ШТАТІВ

Author(s):  
О. В. Зосімова

Nicknames or informal (alternative) names for geographical objects belong to particularly interesting phenomena in the sphere of proper names. The topicality of an in-depth analysis of this group of nicknames is determined by their wide spread in English-speaking countries as well as their important informative function and ethno-cultural value. The aim of the research is to identify and describe the main motivational types of informal names of American cities and states that contain precedent toponyms. Our task is also to determine what geographical names serve as precedent phenomena and classify them into groups. Precedent toponyms used in the nicknames under discussion include geographical names relating to the Old and the New Worlds. They can be both universal cultural symbols (e.g. Athens, Paris, Mecca; New York, Las Vegas) and phenomena that are familiar mostly to native English speakers, particularly Americans (e.g. Birmingham; Saratoga, Lexington and Pittsburgh). Among the precedent toponyms of the first group the component ‘Athens’ predominates: it functions in over ten nicknames in question as a symbol of art, culture and education. The most popular U.S. toponyms used in the informal place names are ‘Chicago’ and ‘Las Vegas’. The nicknames under discussion also contain mythonyms – biblical place names (e.g. Gomorrah, Eden), and lesser-known onyms that are mainly associated with American or British culture. The nicknames for some U.S. cities are based on the names of famous streets, districts and neighbourhoods (e.g. Wall Street, Hollywood). The main conclusion of the research is that the nicknames in question are mostly connected with the history, culture, economy and nationality of the first settlers or current inhabitants of various cities and regions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 877-887
Author(s):  
Leffi Noviyenty ◽  
Fakhruddin ◽  
Taqiyuddin ◽  
Bukman Lian

Purpose of the study: This study aimed at finding out the Islamic terms used as well as translated by English lecturers in English conversations, the strategies used by English lecturers in translating the Islamic terms in English conversations, the reasons why they use the strategies, and the contexts when they use and translate the Islamic terms in English conversations. Methodology: This research applied a qualitative study by involving seven English lecturers at State Islamic Institute of Curup, Bengkulu, Indonesia. The data were garnered from interviews and observations. The data were analyzed using an interactive model of data analysis. Main Findings: This research has found that the English lecturers used, and to some extent translated nineteen Islamic terms during English conversations. Those terms subsumed Assalammu’alaikum Warahmatullahi wa barakaatuh, InshaAllah, Bismillahirrohmannirrohiiim, Alhamdulillah, Adzan, Aamiiin, Allahuakbar, Haram, Halal, Ka’bah, Munkar, Subhanallah, Al-Qur’an, Iman, Sholat, hajj, Saum, Allah, and Masjidil Haram. Most of the lecturers used borrowed or loan words and general word-use or synonymous word strategies in translating the Islamic terms. There were some reasons for the uses of borrowing or general word-use strategies. For the use of borrowing strategy, the reasons were: first they had limited vocabularies for Islamic terms. Second, they borrowed the Islamic terms because such terms had already been common to be used in their original forms. Third, they lacked of knowledge on the translation of Islamic terms in English. Fourth, they wanted to Maintain Moslem’s identity. Subsequently, for the use of general word-use strategy or synonym, the lecturer applying this strategy had a reason that in English speaking the Islamic terms should be translated into English albeit using words with similar meanings in a general sense. Furthermore, the Islamic terms were mostly used in the classrooms and in the opening as well as closing of teaching and learning processes. Applications of this study: This research will be useful for universities, lecturers, students, and non-native English speakers that are common to be engaged in English conversations framed by Islamic discourses. Novelty/Originality of this study: Many studies as regards the English translation of Islamic terms have been conducted in the field of a written mode of translation. However, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, very few studies have been oriented towards translation strategies of Islamic terms in a spoken mode, or in this regard, English conversations. This case is worth researching, and this research seeks to fulfill this gap.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracye A. Todd ◽  
Terrye A. Stinson ◽  
Thillainatarajan Sivakumaran

Over the past decade, the number of non-native English speaking students in higher education has increased dramatically. Educators at all levels have experienced challenges in meeting the academic needs of these students and continue to seek strategies for addressing these challenges. This paper describes some of this research related to K-12 and suggests ways for applying the results to improve the academic performance of non-native English speaking students in U.S. graduate programs. Educators in higher education can benefit from the research focused on K-12 and should seek ways to replicate the successful strategies in the graduate classroom.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucie Moussu ◽  
Enric Llurda

Although the majority of English language teachers worldwide are non-native English speakers, no research was conducted on these teachers until recently. After the pioneering work of Robert Phillipson in 1992 and Peter Medgyes in 1994, nearly a decade had to elapse for more research to emerge on the issues relating to non-native English teachers. The publication in 1999 of George Braine's bookNonnative educators in English language teachingappears to have encouraged a number of graduate students and scholars to research this issue, with topics ranging from teachers' perceptions of their own identity to students' views and aspects of teacher education. This article compiles, classifies, and examines research conducted in the last two decades on this topic, placing a special emphasis on World Englishes concerns, methods of investigation, and areas in need of further attention.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Tariq Elyas ◽  
Noor Motlaq Alghofaili

In the field of TESOL, the perception that Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) are better than Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) has influenced language schools, recruitment policies and institutional leadership practices. The tendency to recruit more NESTs and achieve improved learning outcomes can be seen in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) contexts. This paper aims to investigate whether NESTs or NNESTs have any impact on the EFL learners� language proficiency in Saudi EFL context. This quantitative study adopts pretest-posttest experimental and ex post facto designs to determine students� achievement in two language skills, namely speaking and listening. The two groups of participants are EFL students in a foundation year program at a Saudi Arabian University. One group was taught by a NEST and the other by a NNEST. The quantitative data were analyzed by using SPSS. The findings indicated that teachers� nativeness and backgrounds have no significant effects on the Saudi EFL learners� speaking and listening skills. Here, Saudi EFL learners can equally perform in classes taught by NESTs or NNESTs. In the light of the findings, the study suggests that recruitment policy should not be influenced by the employers� belief that NESTs possess better teaching skills than NNESTs.��


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Face ◽  
Mandy R. Menke

AbstractPrevious studies of native English speakers learning Spanish as a second language (L2) document compromise voice onset time (VOT) values; however, the focus has been predominantly on voiceless stops and has almost exclusively investigated beginning and intermediate learners. This study fills a gap in the literature by considering the acquisition of VOT in both voiceless and voiced Spanish stops by long-time native English-speaking residents of Spain. Overall, the results show that the L2 speakers’ VOT values differ from those of native speakers across all stop consonants; yet L2 speakers’ productions of voiceless, as opposed to voiced, stops more closely approximate those of native speakers. Considerable individual variation is observed as no speaker achieves native-like performance overall, and no consonant is mastered by more than half of the speakers. Results are considered in light of what they contribute to our understanding of ultimate attainment of Spanish VOT, specifically, and L2 phonology more generally.


Author(s):  
Samantha Gordon Danner

This paper uses English demonyms – the name for inhabitants of a particular region, such as Californian or Icelander – to investigate a combination of phonological and non-phonological factors that drive conditioned allomorphy. A corpus study of English demonyms found that hypothesized phonological conditioning factors of demonym allomorphy such as base stress and base syllable count did not fully account for alternation in demonym allomorphy. In a related experiment that tested native English speakers’ preferences for demonym allomorphs among real and fictional place names, additional non-phonological factors such as familiarity and frequency were also considered. The experiment results showed that place names noted as unfamiliar by participants had different conditioning factors than phonologically similar place names from the corpus study. The corpus study and experimental results highlight the need to consider both phonological factors and non-phonological factors in the study of conditioned allomorphy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Meng-Lin Chen ◽  
Dahui Dong

<p><em>English tense is widely believed as one of the most problematic areas in the “interlanguage”, which includes non-native English speakers’ English writing and translations into the translator’s second language. This study aims to investigate the relationships between the tense choice in translation, the tense in the Chinese source text, and the translation competence of translators. A small Chinese-English parallel corpus has been built with 127 translations of Chinese press editorials by experienced native English speaking translators, experienced native Chinese speaking translators, and novice native Chinese speaking translators. Cross-tabulate analyses of this study have shown that the three groups of translators differ from one another significantly in their handling of marked Chinese past tense verbs, while they do not when translating Chinese sentences with contextually marked tense. This study suggests that in order to improve their translation </em><em>quality</em><em>, (1) experienced native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the</em><em> percentages</em><em> of Present Simple, Present Progress, Present Perfect, and Past Simple, and reduce the</em><em> percentag</em><em>e</em><em>s</em><em> of Past Perfect</em><em> in their translation</em><em>; (2) novice native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the</em><em> percentages</em><em> of Present Simple, and Present Progress, and reduce the </em><em>percentages</em><em> of Past Perfect, Past Simple, and Present Perfect</em><em> in their translation.</em><em> </em></p>


1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Torr

This paper discusses some of the results of a pilot study of spontaneous teacher/child discourse in two Year 1 Sydney classrooms (children aged 6 and 7 years). The two classrooms differed greatly in terms of their ethnic composition; in one class, the majority of children came from non-English speaking backgrounds, while in the other class, all the children were native English speakers. The teachers and students were taped during typical group lessons, and the resulting data were transcribed and analysed using a speech act framework (Hasan’s message semantics network). The results showed significant differences between the discourse in the two classrooms; for example, the teacher of the non-English speaking background class spoke more frequently than the teacher of native English speakers, and she asked different types of questions. The children from non-English speaking backgrounds rarely participated in the classroom conversation. These results suggest that further investigation in the area is justified, in order to determine how typical these differences are, and the extent to which the differences are educationally significant in terms of classroom practices currently followed with ESB and NESB children.


Author(s):  
Huma Shah ◽  
Kevin Warwick

The Turing Test, originally configured as a game for a human to distinguish between an unseen and unheard man and woman, through a text-based conversational measure of gender, is the ultimate test for deception and hence, thinking. So conceived Alan Turing when he introduced a machine into the game. His idea, that once a machine deceives a human judge into believing that they are the human, then that machine should be attributed with intelligence. What Turing missed is the presence of emotion in human dialogue, without expression of which, an entity could appear non-human. Indeed, humans have been confused as machine-like, the confederate effect, during instantiations of the Turing Test staged in Loebner Prizes for Artificial Intelligence. We present results from recent Loebner Prizes and two parallel conversations from the 2006 contest in which two human judges, both native English speakers, each concomitantly interacted with a non-native English speaking hidden-human, and jabberwacky, the 2005 and 2006 Loebner Prize bronze prize winner for most human-like machine. We find that machines in those contests appear conversationally worse than non-native hidden-humans, and, as a consequence attract a downward trend in highest scores awarded to them by human judges in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 Loebner Prizes. Analysing Loebner 2006 conversations, we see that a parallel could be drawn with autistics: the machine was able to broadcast but it did not inform; it talked but it did not emote. The hidden-humans were easily identified through their emotional intelligence, ability to discern emotional state of others and contribute with their own ‘balloons of textual emotion’.


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