The Use of American and British Lexis in Brunei English

In pronunciation, influenced by American English, a shift in Brunei English can be observed in the increasing use of [r] in tokens such as car and heard particularly among younger speakers whose pronunciation may be influenced by American English. In contrast, older speakers tend to omit the [r] sound in these tokens as their pronunciation may be more influenced by British English. However, it is unclear whether American English has influenced the vocabulary of Brunei English speakers as the education system in Brunei favours British English due to its historical ties with Britain. This paper analyses the use of American and British lexical items between three age groups: 20 in-service teachers aged between 29 to 35 years old, 20 university undergraduates aged between 19 to 25 years old, and 20 secondary school students who are within the 11 to 15 age range. Each age group has 10 female and 10 male participants and they were asked to name seven objects shown to them on Power point slides. Their responses were recorded and compared between the age groups and between female and male data. The analysis is supplemented with recorded data from interviews with all 60 participants to determine instances of American and British lexical items in casual speech. It was found that there is a higher occurrence of American than British lexical items in all three groups and the interview data supports the findings in the main data. Thus, providing further evidence for the Americanisation of Brunei English and that Brunei English is undergoing change.

Co-variation, style and social meaning: the implicational relationship between (h) and (ing) in Debden, Essex

This paper demonstrates that the differing social meanings held by linguistic features can result in an implicational relationship between them. Rates of (h) and (ing) are investigated in the casual speech of sixty-three speakers from a community with Cockney heritage: Debden, Essex. The indexicalities of h-dropping in Debden (signalling Cockney) are superordinate to and incorporate the indexicalities of g-dropping (working-class, “improper”), resulting in an implicational relationship. H-dropping implies g-dropping, but g-dropping can occur independently of h-dropping. This occurs in terms of co-variation at the between-speaker level and clustering effects at the within-speaker level which is measured through a novel approach using the number of phonemes as the denomination of distance. The features’ differing social meaning are also related to rates of change. Young speakers are shifting away from linguistic features which index Cockney heritage (h-dropping; the [-Iŋk] variant of -thing words) in favor of more general, southeastern, working-class norms (g-dropping).

Schwa Deletion in Word-Initial Syllables of Polysyllabic Words

This study aims to analyse factors that could influence schwa deletion in word-initial syllables of polysyllabic words in continuous French speech. Both phonological and extralinguistic factors were considered: number of consonants, post-lexical context, speech style, sex and profession. Three large corpora covering different speech styles were explored using forced alignment with optional schwa variants. Formal journalistic ESTER corpus, conversational journalistic ETAPE corpus and casual speech NCCFr corpus were used in this study. We observe that schwa tends to be deleted more for 2C-words than for 3C-words. Words preceded by a consonant or a pause tend to prevent schwa deletion whereas words preceded by a vowel tend to facilitate schwa deletion. The less formal the speech style is, the more schwas are deleted. Males tend to delete schwas more frequently than females. Interestingly, journalists tend to delete more schwas than politicians in our data.

The Linguistic and Situational features of WhatsApp Messages

<p>WhatsApp messages can be such a rich source for creative and spontaneous language geared towards more individual expression. This study aims to explore the linguistic features of text messaging communicative intent, content and context. 100 different texts from a high school student population in Canada were collected and analyzed using Biber and Conrad’s (2009) qualitative approach to register, genre, and style analysis. The result is that many people use a lot of clipped sentences in a free flow of casual speech. It is concluded that while it is true that a lot of common abbreviations are used and have become standard, there is a lot of individualistic variance in terms of style and language usage. </p>

The Linguistic and Situational features of WhatsApp Messages

<p>WhatsApp messages can be such a rich source for creative and spontaneous language geared towards more individual expression. This study aims to explore the linguistic features of text messaging communicative intent, content and context. 100 different texts from a high school student population in Canada were collected and analyzed using Biber and Conrad’s (2009) qualitative approach to register, genre, and style analysis. The result is that many people use a lot of clipped sentences in a free flow of casual speech. It is concluded that while it is true that a lot of common abbreviations are used and have become standard, there is a lot of individualistic variance in terms of style and language usage. </p>

Word in Hmong

Hmong (Hmong-Mien; Laos and diaspora) possesses categories of both phonological word and grammatical word. Phonological words exhibit a prosodic prominence in certain pragmatic situations combined with a lack of pauses within the word, and a minimal consonant-vowel-tone structure of a syllable serves as a minor third criterion. Grammatical words exhibit grammatical cohesion of two types—isolability, where words can appear alone in their domain, and the absence of separability, where components of a word cannot be separated—and serve as the domain for reduplication and lexical tone melody alternations. Given a category of grammatical wordhood, affixes and compounds can be recognized in Hmong, and coordinate compounds and four-syllable elaborate expressions can be distinguished as set expressions and templatic constructions, respectively. Hmong attests mismatches between phonological and grammatical word, which include the presence of clitics and cliticization in casual speech at a moderate rate of speed, and varying arrangements of grammatical words in four-syllable elaborate expressions.

THE NEW CONCEPT OF TEXTBOOK OF RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND THE WAYS OF ITS IMPLEMENTATION

Статья посвящена проблеме выработки новой концепции презентации учебного материала в современном учебнике РКИ. Изменение коммуникативных потребностей обучаемых вкупе с другими причинами как лингвистического, так и экстралингвистического характера делают выработку такой концепции насущной методической задачей. В статье анализируются некоторые процессы, характерные для современного состояния русского языка, которые не могут не учитываться в теории и практике РКИ. К ним относятся процесс заимствования, демократизация нормы, влияние разговорной речи на все регистры языка. В качестве одного из аспектов лингвометодической базы учебника нового типа авторы определяют необходимость сокращения дистанции между естественной и учебной коммуникацией. Приводимые положения иллюстрируются примерами из разных учебных комплексов, в том числе из разрабатываемого в настоящее время авторами статьи. Russian as a foreign language, methods of teaching, modern textbook, educational communication, natural communication. The article is devoted to the problem of developing a new concept of presentation of educational material in a modern textbook on Russian as a foreign language. Changes in the communicative needs of students along with other reasons of both linguistic and extra-linguistic nature make the development of such a concept an urgent methodological task. Article analyzes select tendencies of modern Russian language that are yet unaccounted for in theory and practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language, such as new loanwords, democratization of the norm and influence of casual speech on all speech registers. For a new type of textbook to emerge, its linguistic and methodological foundation must close the gap between natural communication and communication in a learning environment. The given provisions are illustrated by examples from different educational complexes, including the article currently being developed by the authors.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTUITIVE-IMITATIVE APPROACH FOR TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION IN INDONESIA VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds. Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in casual speech. English pronunciation involves too many complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self-esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or least much respect in the workplace. This research aimed at investigating the effect of Intuitive-Imitative Approach in teaching pronunciation. The participants of this research were the second-year students of Indonesia Vocational High School in amount of 40 students. This research applied pre-experimental method. The instruments of this research were pre-test and post-test in oral test. The result of this research finally showed that the students’ pronunciation of post-test score was higher than the students’ pre-test score. Meanwhile, the result of t­-test showed that the difference was significant where value of the t-test was greater than the value of the t-table (20.17 ≥ 2.069). Thus, it can be concluded that the use of Intuitive-Imitative Approach is effective to use in teaching pronunciation. So that, by applying this method in learning pronunciation, the teacher are hoped to be more creative to enrich their selected word by choosing the unique words to stimulate students and present them an enjoyable, relax, and understandable way in learning process.