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.

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.

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 ‘Almost people’: A Learner Corpus Account of L2 Use and Misuse of Non-numerical Quantification

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Crosthwaite ◽  
Lavigne L.Y. Choy ◽  
Yeonsuk Bae
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Noun Number ◽  
L1 English

AbstractWe present an Integrated Contrastive Model of non-numerical quantificational NPs (NNQs, i.e. ‘some people’) produced by L1 English speakers and Mandarin and Korean L2 English learners. Learner corpus data was sourced from the ICNALE (Ishikawa, 2011, 2013) across four L2 proficiency levels. An average 10% of L2 NNQs were specific to L2 varieties, including noun number mismatches (*‘many child’), omitting obligatory quantifiers after adverbs (*‘almost people’), adding unnecessary particles (*‘all of people’) and non-L1 English-like quantifier/noun agreement (*‘many water’). Significantly fewer ‘openclass’ NNQs (e.g a number of people) are produced by L2 learners, preferring ‘closed-class’ single lexical quantifiers (following L1-like use). While such production is predictable via L1 transfer, Korean L2 English learners produced significantly more L2-like NNQs at each proficiency level, which was not entirely predictable under a transfer account. We thus consider whether positive transfer of other linguistic forms (i.e. definiteness marking) aids the learnability of other L2 forms (i.e. expression of quantification).

Semantic Structural Alignment of Neural Representational Spaces Enables Translation between English and Chinese Words

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1749-1759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Zinszer ◽  
Andrew J. Anderson ◽  
Olivia Kang ◽  
Thalia Wheatley ◽  
Rajeev D. S. Raizada
Keyword(s):  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Language Translation ◽  
Structural Alignment ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
English Word ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
High Level

Two sets of items can share the same underlying conceptual structure, while appearing unrelated at a surface level. Humans excel at recognizing and using alignments between such underlying structures in many domains of cognition, most notably in analogical reasoning. Here we show that structural alignment reveals how different people's neural representations of word meaning are preserved across different languages, such that patterns of brain activation can be used to translate words from one language to another. Groups of Chinese and English speakers underwent fMRI scanning while reading words in their respective native languages. Simply by aligning structures representing the two groups' neural semantic spaces, we successfully infer all seven Chinese–English word translations. Beyond language translation, conceptual structural alignment underlies many aspects of high-level cognition, and this work opens the door to deriving many such alignments directly from neural representational content.

scholarly journals PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING OF STRESS BY NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS LEARNING SPANISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Ramsés Ortín ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
First Language ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Recall Task ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Processing Stress

Abstract One feature of Spanish that presents some difficulties to second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English concerns lexical stress. This study explores one aspect of the obstacle these learners face, weak phonological processing routines concerning stress inherited from their native language. Participants were L1 English L2 learners of Spanish. The experiment was a sequence-recall task with auditory stimuli minimally contrasting in stress (target) or segmental composition (baseline). The results suggest that learners are more likely to accurately recall sequences with stimuli contrasting in segmental composition than stress, suggesting reduced phonological processing of stress relative to a processing baseline. Furthermore, an increase in proficiency—assessed by means of grammatical and lexical tests—was found to be modestly associated with an increase in the accuracy of processing stress. We conclude that the processing routines of native English speakers lead to an acquisitional obstacle when learning Spanish as a L2.

scholarly journals The relationship between phonotactic awareness and pronunciation in adult second language learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Hanna Kivistö-de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
L1 English ◽  
L2 Pronunciation

Abstract: This study examined to what extent L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) EFL learners are aware of L2 phonotactics and whether there would be a relationship between L2 phonotactic awareness and L2 pronunciation accuracy. The language learners were tested regarding their awareness of L2 onset consonant clusters with a lexical decision task presenting nonword stimuli with legal and illegal onset clusters. L2 pronunciation was measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task. The results showed that L1 BP participants showed a high awareness concerning L2 phonotactics, not differing from L1 English speakers, t(86)=.20, p =.83. Furthermore, high phonotactic awareness was found to be related to higher accuracy in L2 pronunciation (r= -.46, p <.001). The results suggest that phonotactics should be taught in foreign language classrooms since increasing learners’ awareness might be beneficial for the accuracy of their L2 pronunciation.

scholarly journals English Speakers’ Implicit Gender Concepts Influence Their Processing of French Grammatical Gender: Evidence for Semantically Mediated Cross-Linguistic Influence

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Nicoladis ◽  
Chris Westbury ◽  
Cassandra Foursha-Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Response Times ◽  
First Language ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Word Embedding ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
French Words ◽  
L1 English ◽  
French Gender

Second language (L2) learners often show influence from their first language (L1) in all domains of language. This cross-linguistic influence could, in some cases, be mediated by semantics. The purpose of the present study was to test whether implicit English gender connotations affect L1 English speakers’ judgments of the L2 French gender of objects. We hypothesized that gender estimates derived from word embedding models that measure similarity of word contexts in English would affect accuracy and response time on grammatical gender (GG) decision in L2 French. L2 French learners were asked to identify the GG of French words estimated to be either congruent or incongruent with the implicit gender in English. The results showed that they were more accurate with words that were congruent with English gender connotations than words that were incongruent, suggesting that English gender connotations can influence grammatical judgments in French. Response times showed the same pattern. The results are consistent with semantics-mediated cross-linguistic influence.

scholarly journals Recognition times for 62 thousand English words: Data from the English Crowdsourcing Project

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Emmanuel Keuleers ◽  
Paweł Mandera
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Word ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Virtual Experiments

We present a new dataset of English word recognition times for a total of 62 thousand words, called the English Crowdsourcing Project. The data were collected via an internet vocabulary test, in which more than one million people participated. The present dataset is limited to native English speakers. Participants were asked to indicate which words they knew. Their response times were registered, although at no point were the participants asked to respond as fast as possible. Still, the response times correlate around .75 with the response times of the English Lexicon Project for the shared words. Also results of virtual experiments indicate that the new response times are a valid addition to the English Lexicon Project. This not only means that we have useful response times for some 35 thousand extra words, but we now also have data on differences in response latencies as a functionof education and age.

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 Stressed and Unstressed Syllable Alternation in Educated Edo (Nigerian) English

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-59
Author(s):  
Julianah Akindele
Keyword(s):  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Metrical Theory ◽  
British English ◽  
Perceptual Analysis ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Filing System ◽  
Unstressed Syllable ◽  
Validated Instrument

Standard British English (SBE) rhythm is characterised by stressed and unstressed syllable alternation. Phonological investigations from non-native English such as Nigerian English (NE) have claimed that NE differs remarkably from SBE, especially in the area of rhythm. Existing phonological studies on Educated Edo English (EEE) – a sub-variety of NE – have been on word and variable stress while studies on stressed and unstressed syllable alternation have been rare. This study, therefore, investigated the extent to which Educated Edo English Speakers (EEES) stressed and unstressed syllable alternation conforms to SBE rhythm. Prince and Liberman’s (1977) metrical theory, which explains the alternation of strong and weak constituents in SBE rhythm units, served as a theoretical framework. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 150 (75 males and 75 females) EEES while 2 SBE speakers served as Native Baselines (NB). Speech Filing System (SFS) version 1.41 was used to record the production of a validated instrument of 40 rhythm units, with stressed and unstressed syllable alternation. The recordings were transcribed and subjected to a perceptual analysis (frequency and percentages). Out of 6000 expected instances of stressed and unstressed syllable alternation, the participants had 694 (11.6%), while inappropriate use was higher, with 5,306 (88.4%). The performance of EEES males showed 5.7% and the females 5.9%. The grids of EEES showed proliferation of Strong/Strong (S/S) juxtaposition of stressed and unstressed syllables in rhythm units, compared to the NB alternation of Weak/Strong (W/S) or Strong/Weak (S/W). Results confirmed that EEES alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in rhythm units differ ‘markedly’ from those of the SBE form.

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