Designing a Corpus of Czech Monologues: Orator v2

ORATOR v2 is a new 1.5M word corpus of Czech monologues, delivered to a live audience in semi-formal to formal settings. It was designed to chart the space of naturally occurring monologues which can be obtained for corpus processing. As such, it aims for diversity but does not attempt any balancing of subcategories, recognizing that some types of data are inherently easier to obtain in high volume than others. The transcription guidelines and annotation tools employed are the same as other recent spoken corpora published by the CNC, which facilitates interesting comparisons between various types of spoken Czech. The present paper sketches out three case studies, comparing ORATOR to the informal conversations of ORTOFON v2 in terms of the frequencies of demonstratives and hesitations, as well as lexical richness.

Incomplete Acquisition, Attrition and Maintenance of Heritage Speakers’ Family Language: Iranians in New Zealand

<p>This dissertation is composed of a quantitative investigation of Incomplete Heritage Language Acquisition and Attrition in heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge. This portion is followed by a qualitative investigation of Heritage Language Acquisition and Maintenance in which the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance for their children are explored. Three groups of participants took part in this study. One group consisted of thirty 6-18 year old Persian-English simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in New Zealand. To obtain benchmark data, a control group was recruited, comprised of thirty monolingual speakers of Persian in Iran who were matched with the heritage speakers in terms of age, gender, number of siblings and their family’s socio-economic status. The third group of the participants consisted of twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers. Information about the bilinguals’ demographic and socio-linguistic factors was collected through semi-structured interviews with their parents. The quantitative investigation commences with a study that examines young heritage speakers’, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to the matched monolingual counterparts, and the factors that account for a difference, if there is any, are investigated. These factors include current age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of heritage language use and parents’ attitude towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance. The results of productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge tests showed that the heritage speakers were outperformed by the monolinguals, but the gap was wider in the case of the simultaneous bilinguals. Additionally, the parents’ attitude was found to be a strong predictor of the simultaneous bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge, while the sequential bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge was associated mostly with age at emigration. The second study in the quantitative investigation examines whether the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals differ from monolinguals with regard to lexical richness, according to measures of lexical diversity and lexical sophistication, in their family language. It also weighs the influence of the demographic and/or sociolinguistic factors on the difference between these sub-groups, if there is any. A film-retelling task was used to collect free speech samples. As expected, the monolinguals’ narratives tended to manifest greater lexical richness according to both measures, but did most markedly so according to the lexical sophistication measure, suggesting that the latter is a better parameter in detecting the differences between heritage speakers and monolinguals. Of the factors investigated, the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals’ lexical richness was predicted by age, showing that the older the children were when they moved to the second language environment, the better their family language vocabulary tended to be. The sociolinguistic variables (i.e. Persian use and parental attitude) were not found to play a significant role in the results of the two quantitative studies. This might have been due to the fact that the demographic variables (i.e. age and age at emigration) were so strong that they overrode the influence of the sociolinguistic variables. Alternatively, the Likert-scale items used in the questionnaire-based interview may have been too blunt an instrument to discern subtle and yet relevant sociolinguistic differences among families. This raised a need to conduct a qualitative investigation in case a more in-depth analysis of the interview data might reveal a clearer picture of their influence. The qualitative portion of this dissertation begins with an exploration of the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards their children’s development and maintenance of their heritage language by utilizing Spolsky’s (2004) model of language policy as a methodological framework. The data consist of the same semi-structured interviews with twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers as used in the quantitative investigation. The findings reveal that although the parents hold positive beliefs about family language acquisition and maintenance, there are discrepancies between their language ideologies and family language practices and efforts. In light of these inconsistencies, this study suggests that analyses of parental language attitudes towards heritage language maintenance should not only consider their beliefs towards minority language acquisition and maintenance, but also their language practices and management. It was also found that the majority of Iranian parents in this study were satisfied if their children had good conversational skills in Persian. This finding led me to look into the parents’ attitudes towards their children’s acquisition and maintenance of Persian literacy. Following the first part of this investigation, the parents’ beliefs, practices and management strategies were explored to see how they reflect their attitudes towards their children’s heritage language literacy acquisition and maintenance. The findings revealed that it was very uncommon for the heritage speakers to have high literacy skills, which the parents attributed largely to the lack of community-based heritage language schools in the host country. Furthermore, parents’ efforts in heritage language literacy development and maintenance can be explained through the concept of investment (Norton, 2000). It seems that the parents choose not to promote investment in heritage language literacy, when they do not see it as a part of their children’s imagined identities. Additionally, while conversational fluency and cultural knowledge were continuously positioned as being extremely important for the heritage language speaking children by the parents, it was not seen as connected to traditional literacy. Investigating the different aspects of heritage speakers’ lexical knowledge, the quantitative portion of this dissertation furthers our understanding of incomplete acquisition and attrition of family languages in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. Additionally, the qualitative portion illustrates that positive parental beliefs do not guarantee heritage language acquisition and maintenance. This investigation also raised immigrant parents’ awareness of the role literacy can also play in heritage language maintenance. Taken together, this dissertation draws the attention of researchers, educators, immigrant parents and communities to various social and linguistic aspects of young heritage speakers’ acquisition and maintenance of their family language as they grow up.</p>

Incomplete Acquisition, Attrition and Maintenance of Heritage Speakers’ Family Language: Iranians in New Zealand

<p>This dissertation is composed of a quantitative investigation of Incomplete Heritage Language Acquisition and Attrition in heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge. This portion is followed by a qualitative investigation of Heritage Language Acquisition and Maintenance in which the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance for their children are explored. Three groups of participants took part in this study. One group consisted of thirty 6-18 year old Persian-English simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in New Zealand. To obtain benchmark data, a control group was recruited, comprised of thirty monolingual speakers of Persian in Iran who were matched with the heritage speakers in terms of age, gender, number of siblings and their family’s socio-economic status. The third group of the participants consisted of twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers. Information about the bilinguals’ demographic and socio-linguistic factors was collected through semi-structured interviews with their parents. The quantitative investigation commences with a study that examines young heritage speakers’, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to the matched monolingual counterparts, and the factors that account for a difference, if there is any, are investigated. These factors include current age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of heritage language use and parents’ attitude towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance. The results of productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge tests showed that the heritage speakers were outperformed by the monolinguals, but the gap was wider in the case of the simultaneous bilinguals. Additionally, the parents’ attitude was found to be a strong predictor of the simultaneous bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge, while the sequential bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge was associated mostly with age at emigration. The second study in the quantitative investigation examines whether the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals differ from monolinguals with regard to lexical richness, according to measures of lexical diversity and lexical sophistication, in their family language. It also weighs the influence of the demographic and/or sociolinguistic factors on the difference between these sub-groups, if there is any. A film-retelling task was used to collect free speech samples. As expected, the monolinguals’ narratives tended to manifest greater lexical richness according to both measures, but did most markedly so according to the lexical sophistication measure, suggesting that the latter is a better parameter in detecting the differences between heritage speakers and monolinguals. Of the factors investigated, the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals’ lexical richness was predicted by age, showing that the older the children were when they moved to the second language environment, the better their family language vocabulary tended to be. The sociolinguistic variables (i.e. Persian use and parental attitude) were not found to play a significant role in the results of the two quantitative studies. This might have been due to the fact that the demographic variables (i.e. age and age at emigration) were so strong that they overrode the influence of the sociolinguistic variables. Alternatively, the Likert-scale items used in the questionnaire-based interview may have been too blunt an instrument to discern subtle and yet relevant sociolinguistic differences among families. This raised a need to conduct a qualitative investigation in case a more in-depth analysis of the interview data might reveal a clearer picture of their influence. The qualitative portion of this dissertation begins with an exploration of the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards their children’s development and maintenance of their heritage language by utilizing Spolsky’s (2004) model of language policy as a methodological framework. The data consist of the same semi-structured interviews with twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers as used in the quantitative investigation. The findings reveal that although the parents hold positive beliefs about family language acquisition and maintenance, there are discrepancies between their language ideologies and family language practices and efforts. In light of these inconsistencies, this study suggests that analyses of parental language attitudes towards heritage language maintenance should not only consider their beliefs towards minority language acquisition and maintenance, but also their language practices and management. It was also found that the majority of Iranian parents in this study were satisfied if their children had good conversational skills in Persian. This finding led me to look into the parents’ attitudes towards their children’s acquisition and maintenance of Persian literacy. Following the first part of this investigation, the parents’ beliefs, practices and management strategies were explored to see how they reflect their attitudes towards their children’s heritage language literacy acquisition and maintenance. The findings revealed that it was very uncommon for the heritage speakers to have high literacy skills, which the parents attributed largely to the lack of community-based heritage language schools in the host country. Furthermore, parents’ efforts in heritage language literacy development and maintenance can be explained through the concept of investment (Norton, 2000). It seems that the parents choose not to promote investment in heritage language literacy, when they do not see it as a part of their children’s imagined identities. Additionally, while conversational fluency and cultural knowledge were continuously positioned as being extremely important for the heritage language speaking children by the parents, it was not seen as connected to traditional literacy. Investigating the different aspects of heritage speakers’ lexical knowledge, the quantitative portion of this dissertation furthers our understanding of incomplete acquisition and attrition of family languages in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. Additionally, the qualitative portion illustrates that positive parental beliefs do not guarantee heritage language acquisition and maintenance. This investigation also raised immigrant parents’ awareness of the role literacy can also play in heritage language maintenance. Taken together, this dissertation draws the attention of researchers, educators, immigrant parents and communities to various social and linguistic aspects of young heritage speakers’ acquisition and maintenance of their family language as they grow up.</p>

Lexical richness in adolescent writing, insights from the classroom: An L1 vocabulary development study

<p>This thesis constitutes a mixed-methods enquiry into how vocabulary develops across adolescence, within the context of New Zealand secondary schools. A quantitative approach was adopted to investigate vocabulary use in authentic written essays produced by secondary school English students (N=141) belonging to three age groups: 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18, from eight schools. Essays were analysed for the following three lexical richness features: lexical variation, lexical sophistication, and lexical density. With links between these lexical richness features and vocabulary size/skill in vocabulary use (Vermeer, 2000; Ravid & Zilberbuch, 2003; Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2009), signs of development were studied through comparison of scores across the three age groups. Quantitative findings indicate significant lexical development across year levels in the data set. Furthermore, the findings suggest that within the period of adolescence there is an even more specific period in which substantial development takes place: 15-18 years, or later adolescence. The qualitative aspect of this study focussed on identifying teacher perspectives on influences from within the secondary school context impacting on vocabulary development during this significant period of acquisition. Seven secondary school English teachers were interviewed on the subject of lexical development as it occurs within the schooling environment. Contributions from the school curriculum to vocabulary acquisition were observed, with spikes in curriculum difficulty from year 11 (age 15-16) onward corresponding with the developmental spike observed in the quantitative data further supporting this observation. Non-schooling related influences were also identified, including cognitive development, reading habits, and attitude and orientation toward vocabulary. The present study contributes to the growing field of later language acquisition through identification of a possible period of heightened development within the adolescent years. Importantly, it also highlights factors in students’ everyday school lives which may contribute to their lexical development, raising implications both for those wishing to promote lexical development within the secondary school population, and more globally for our understanding of how heightened development occurs during this period. The study concludes with implications for theory, research and practice, together with limitations of the study and future research directions arising from this research.</p>

Lexical richness in adolescent writing, insights from the classroom: An L1 vocabulary development study

<p>This thesis constitutes a mixed-methods enquiry into how vocabulary develops across adolescence, within the context of New Zealand secondary schools. A quantitative approach was adopted to investigate vocabulary use in authentic written essays produced by secondary school English students (N=141) belonging to three age groups: 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18, from eight schools. Essays were analysed for the following three lexical richness features: lexical variation, lexical sophistication, and lexical density. With links between these lexical richness features and vocabulary size/skill in vocabulary use (Vermeer, 2000; Ravid & Zilberbuch, 2003; Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2009), signs of development were studied through comparison of scores across the three age groups. Quantitative findings indicate significant lexical development across year levels in the data set. Furthermore, the findings suggest that within the period of adolescence there is an even more specific period in which substantial development takes place: 15-18 years, or later adolescence. The qualitative aspect of this study focussed on identifying teacher perspectives on influences from within the secondary school context impacting on vocabulary development during this significant period of acquisition. Seven secondary school English teachers were interviewed on the subject of lexical development as it occurs within the schooling environment. Contributions from the school curriculum to vocabulary acquisition were observed, with spikes in curriculum difficulty from year 11 (age 15-16) onward corresponding with the developmental spike observed in the quantitative data further supporting this observation. Non-schooling related influences were also identified, including cognitive development, reading habits, and attitude and orientation toward vocabulary. The present study contributes to the growing field of later language acquisition through identification of a possible period of heightened development within the adolescent years. Importantly, it also highlights factors in students’ everyday school lives which may contribute to their lexical development, raising implications both for those wishing to promote lexical development within the secondary school population, and more globally for our understanding of how heightened development occurs during this period. The study concludes with implications for theory, research and practice, together with limitations of the study and future research directions arising from this research.</p>

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Literary Translation Styles: Taking the C-E Translations of the 11th “The World of English Cup” Translation Contest as an Example

The paper makes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the translation style differences between the reference translation (Lin’s Version) and the first prize-winning translation (Liu’s Version) of The Original Mission of Culture in the “11th Hangzhou Normal University-English World Cup Translation Contest” from lexical, syntactic and discourse features. The translation styles of the two translators are found to show similarities and differences. The differences are mainly reflected in the lexical and sentence dimensions. Lin’s Version shows higher lexical richness and complexity and sophisticated sentence patterns, while Liu’s Version is more reader-friendly, featured by changing narrative perspectives, adopting the explicit translation method, and reflecting the explanatory trend. The similarities are mainly embodied in discourse features. Both translation versions use conjunctions to achieve discourse cohesion with similar effects. But given lexicon, syntax, and other factors, Liu’s Version is better in readability. The main causes for the different translation styles of the two versions are related to the translator’s identity and professional background, as well as the translator’s emotional orientation towards the contest.

Lexical richness development in Chinese second language writing: empirical research based on Cambodian Chinese learners

This study investigates the developmental features of lexical richness in Chinese compositions by Cambodian native speakers (n = 40) and the relationship between lexical richness and writing quality in Chinese Second Language (CSL) writing from three dimensions of lexical variation, lexical sophistication and lexical error rate.The results show that with the improvement of Chinese level, there are notable increases in lexical variation (p = 0.000 < 0.05) and lexical sophistication (p = 0.000 < 0.05). As for lexical errors, the overall lexical error rate is decreasing. Among which, the form error rate is decreasing obviously (p = 0.000 < 0.05), while the usage error rate is increasing, but not significantly (p = 0.039 > 0.005). Multiple regression analysis shows that lexical sophistication and lexical error rate are more closely related to CSL writing quality, which can predict writing quality well, while lexical variation has less impact on writing quality.

Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese L3 Beginner Learners

Lexical richness is considered as one of the most efficient methods for assessing writing proficiency and development. However, the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing remain relatively poorly understood compared with that of L2 writings. This study reports a cross-sectional corpus-based study that aims to explore the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writings by Chinese beginner learners of English from the perspective of the dynamic usage-based approach. Specifically, this study compares samples of English writing by Chinese L3 secondary students (grades 7–12) aged 13–18 across three learning stages in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity and lexical density. The writing samples were collected from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Ethnic Minority Beginner Learners as the Third Language (WCCMBL), and the sample sizes of the three stages remained almost the same. The results revealed that lexical richness was generally low in L3 beginner learners' writing. Specifically, L3 beginner learners used fewer diverse words and lexical words, but used numerous high-frequency words in their writing. Additionally, lexical sophistication and lexical density yielded positive growth across the three learning stages, whereas lexical diversity developed non-linearly. These findings reveal a dynamic development of lexical richness in L3 writings, with each of the three measures developing unevenly. Drawing upon these findings, several suggestions for L3 vocabulary teaching are also proposed.