Connecting perception and production in early Catalan–Spanish bilingual children: language dominance and quality of input effects

This study investigates perception and production of the Catalan mid-vowel /e/-/ɛ/ contrast by two groups of 4.5-year-old Catalan–Spanish bilingual children, differing in language dominance. Perception was assessed with an XAB discrimination task involving familiar words and non-words. Production accuracy was measured using a familiar-word elicitation task. Overall, Catalan-dominant bilingual children outperformed Spanish-dominant bilinguals, the latter showing high variability in production accuracy, while being slightly above chance level in perception. No correlation between perception and production performance could be established in this group. The effect of language dominance alone could not explain the Spanish-dominant participants’ performance, but quality of Catalan input (native vs. accented speech) was identified as an important factor behind familiar-word production and the inaccurate representation of the target contrast in the lexicon of the bilinguals’ less-dominant language. More fine-grained measurements of experience-related factors are needed for a full understanding of the acquisition of challenging contrasts in bilingual contexts.

The Many Faces of Randomness

While “random” is a familiar word, the many subdisciplines found in mathematics and the sciences treat it differently. This chapter gives an overview of the terrain, looking at what randomness and closely related terms mean when used in a technical sense. As we will see, some are more relevant to the question of providence than others.

Repetition, but not acoustic differentiation, facilitates pseudohomophone learning by children

Children’s ability to learn words with multiple meanings may be hindered by their adherence to a one-to-one form-to-meaning mapping bias. Previous research on children’s learning of pseudohomophones has yielded mixed results, suggesting a range of factors that may impact when children entertain a new meaning for a familiar word. One such factor is repetition of the new meaning (Storkel & Maekawa, 2005) and another is the acoustic differentiation of the two meanings (Conwell, 2017). This study asked 72 4-year-old English-learning children to assign novel meanings to familiar words and manipulated how many times they heard the words with their new referents as well as whether the productions were acoustically longer than typical productions of the words. The results show that repetition supports the learning of a pseudohomophone, but acoustic differentiation does not. There was no evidence of an interaction of the two factors. Homophone learning is facilitated by increased exposure to a second meaning, but children do not use acoustic differences in homophone learning, despite the availability of such differences in their experience.

Lexicographic Unranking of Combinations Revisited

In the context of combinatorial sampling, the so-called “unranking method” can be seen as a link between a total order over the objects and an effective way to construct an object of given rank. The most classical order used in this context is the lexicographic order, which corresponds to the familiar word ordering in the dictionary. In this article, we propose a comparative study of four algorithms dedicated to the lexicographic unranking of combinations, including three algorithms that were introduced decades ago. We start the paper with the introduction of our new algorithm using a new strategy of computations based on the classical factorial numeral system (or factoradics). Then, we present, in a high level, the three other algorithms. For each case, we analyze its time complexity on average, within a uniform framework, and describe its strengths and weaknesses. For about 20 years, such algorithms have been implemented using big integer arithmetic rather than bounded integer arithmetic which makes the cost of computing some coefficients higher than previously stated. We propose improvements for all implementations, which take this fact into account, and we give a detailed complexity analysis, which is validated by an experimental analysis. Finally, we show that, even if the algorithms are based on different strategies, all are doing very similar computations. Lastly, we extend our approach to the unranking of other classical combinatorial objects such as families counted by multinomial coefficients and k-permutations.

EXPRESS: On the tip of the pen: Effects of character-level lexical variables and handwriter-level individual differences on orthographic retrieval difficulties in Chinese handwriting

In the past decades, Chinese speakers have suffered from difficulties in handwriting, which include tip-of-the-pen (TOP) states (knowing a character but failing to fully handwrite it) and character amnesia in general (a general inability to handwrite a character despite being able to recognize it). The current study presents a systematic empirical investigation of the effects of character-level lexical characteristics and handwriter-level individual differences on TOP, character amnesia and partial orthographic access in TOP states. Using a spelling-to-dictation task, we had 64 participants to handwrite 200 simplified Chinese characters. We showed that, at the lexical level, participants experienced more TOP and character amnesia in handwriting if a character was less frequent, was acquired later in life, was embedded in a less familiar word, or had more strokes; TOP but not character amnesia was additionally affected by phonetic radical order and spelling regularity. At the handwriter level, people also experienced more TOP and character amnesia if they had more digital exposure, less pen exposure, or less print exposure. In a TOP state, partial orthographic access was more likely if a character was acquired later in life, had fewer strokes, or had a left-right or top-down composition or if a handwriter had less digital exposure.

Translation in Movie Subtitles: Foreignization and Domestication

ABSTRACT Translationnot only concerned with the transfer of languages butalso the cultural aspect of language. This study aims to investigate the treatment -foreignization, and domestication- and to find the pattern concerning the treatment in two movie subtitles, one from Bahasa Indonesia to English and from English to Bahasa Indonesia. This study is conducted through a qualitative approach to the theory proposed by Venuti (1995): foreignizationand domestication focusing on cultural specific items (CSIs) as categorized by Espindola (2005). The result of this study shows that foreignizationand domestication, as well as a mix treatment, are found to be employed by the translator. The translator tends to favor foreignizationand only used domestication if the CSIs already have an equivalence in the target text culture. Furthermore, a mix treatment will be applied if the CSIs are in the form of a phrase containing a general or familiar word and a specific or unfamiliar word. Keywords: Foreignization, Domestication, Culture-Specific Items (CSIs). ABSTRAK Penerjemahan tidak hanya tentang mentransfer antar bahasa, tetapi juga tentang aspek budaya yang ada di dalam suatu bahasa. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi perlakuan apa yang diberikan -foreignization dan domestication- dan pola apa yang bisa ditemukan yang berkaitan dengan perlakuan yang diberikan pada dua subtilte (Inggris ke Indonesia dan Indonesia ke Inggris) dari dua film berbeda. Pendekatan qualitatif deskriptif dipakai untuk melaksanakan penelitian ini. Teori yang digunakan adalah teori foreignization dan domestication dari Venuti (1995) yang berfokus pada culture specific items (CSIs) yang telah dikategorikan oleh Espindola (2005). Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah telah ditemukan bahwa kedua subtitle telah diberikan perlakuan foreignization, domestication, dan perlakuan campur -foreignization dan domestication-. Selanjutnya, ditemukan juga kalau dua penerjemah dari kedua subtitle tersebut lebih mengutamakan foreignization dan akan hanya menggunakan domestication apabila CSIs-nya sudah memiliki terjemahan lokal di kultur target. Yang terakhir, penerjemah akan menggunakan perlakuan campur jika CSIs dalam betuk frasa dimana terdapat kata yang familiar dan juga terdapat kata yang tidak familiar.Kata kunci: Foreignization, Domestication, Culture-Specific Items (CSIs).

NON-EQUIVALENCE TRANSLATION AT WORD LEVEL FROM MANDARIN TO INDONESIAN IN HIGHSCHOOL/MA MANDARIN TEXTBOOK

This research aimed to analyze the non-equivalence translation at the word level, including translation strategy to solve the non-equivalence translation result from Mandarin to Indonesian in the Highschool/MA Mandarin textbook published Depdikbud. This research used the qualitative research method. This research proves 24 non-equivalence translation data from the source language (Mandarin) to the target language (Indonesian) at the word level. Non-equivalencies in the translation from Mandarin to Indonesian are caused by the misunderstanding word, phrases, or expressions in the source language. The translator can use the strategy to get the equivalent translation at the word level primarily by using the more familiar word and closer to the level from the source language (Mandarin) and using paraphrase.

Konsep Cahaya dalam Al-Qur’an

An-Nur in the Qur’an is a familiar word. It was mentioned in many verses withdifferent context. An-Nur in each verse has a different meaning, then need to adeep understanding. The purpose of this study is to know the real meaning fromAn-Nur in the Qur’an use a semantic theory. Semantic of Al-Qur’an is an attemptto reveal the world view of Qur’an on some terms and vocabularies in Qur’anthrough a semantic analysis. The analysis process begins from research a basicmeaning and contextual meaning of An-Nur with some verses. The conclusions ofthis study is that the word Án-Nur in the Qur’an has three categories; 1) An-Nuras something to fight digression, 2) An-Nur as the religion from God, and 3) Godas An-Nur or the Highest Level of An-Nur. The word An-Nur in the Qu’an isalways mentioned in singular form, while the darkness (opposite) is alwaysmentioned in plural form. That shows there are many dark or bad things, such asa various kinds of immorality, but it will be defeated with the one of the light (An-Nur). God as the Highest Light, Eternal, True, and Everything

Supra-segmental Details in Early Lexical Representations

Recent studies have indicated that toddlers as young as 19 months old already have sophisticated phonological details in their lexical representations. Studies using word recognition tasks have also found that toddlers had graded sensitivities to varying degrees of mispronunciation changes in word onsets and vowels. However, existing studies have primarily investigated sensitivities to segments (vowels and consonants). Less is known about toddlers’ early lexical representations of supra-segmental units such as lexical tones. Unlike segmental units such as vowels and consonants, supra-segmental information is primarily carried across syllables. Phonetically, changes in supra-segmental units are broadly achieved by varying toddlers’ lexical representations of supra-segments. 19-month-old monolingual Mandarin learning toddlers were tested on their sensitivities to varying degrees of familiar word mispronunciations of lexical tones using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP). The findings suggested that as toddlers’ sensitivities to mispronunciations increased as a function of the degree of the deviations from the correct forms, replicating previous studies for word-initial consonants and vowels. Therefore, 19-month-olds’ lexical representations appear to contain well-refined architecture in the supra-segmental dimensions.