Erroneous Word-Stress Patterns Used by EFL Yemeni Learners

This experimental study aims at investigating the English word-stress patterns used by Yemenis, learning English as a foreign language, and the erroneous stress patterns used by them. Accent or stress is a feature of high significance in English speech. At the level of a word, one syllable gets accentuated with primary stress. To achieve the purpose of this study, and to find out to what extent word stress of Received Pronunciation English poses difficulty on Yemeni Arabic speakers using English as a foreign language, 120 subjects of various scientific disciplines, were chosen for data collection. They were recorded and their utterances went through deep analysis based on the auditory impression of the researcher and on the spectrographic evidence resulting from the speech analysis of the software program PRAAT. The most significant findings reached by the researcher were that word-stress in the four-syllable target words were the most problematic for the speakers in which 53.2% of them put the stress, randomly, on the wrong syllables in words. Three-syllable target words appeared to be less problematic as 44.4% of the participants placed the stress inaccurately in words. The least difficulties encountered by the speakers were with the two-syllable target words where 70.6% of the speakers managed to pronounce the words with correct stress placement. It is noteworthy to mention that there was a tendency among the speakers who produced wrong stress patterns, to accent either the first syllable or the one including a long vowel or a diphthong in the words.

On Mean Dependency Distance as a Metric of Translation Quality Assessment

This paper has adopted a quantitative approach to carry out a linguistic study, within the theoretical framework of dependency grammar. Translation is a process where source language and target language interact with each other. The present study aims at exploring the feasibility of mean dependency distance as a metric for automated translation quality assessment. The current research hypothesized that different levels of translation are significantly different in the aspect of mean dependency distance. Data of this study were based on the written translation in Parallel Corpus of Chinese EFL Learners which was composed of translations from Chinese EFL learners in various topic. The translations were human-scored to determine the levels of translation, according to which the translations were categorized. Our results indicated that: (1) senior students perform better in translation than junior students, and mean dependency distance of translations from senior group is significantly shorter than the junior; (2) high quality translations yield shorter mean dependency distance than the low quality translations; (3) mean dependency distance of translations is moderately correlated with the human score. The resultant implication suggests the potential for mean dependency distance in differentiating translations of different quality.

Translation Competence: Beyond Bilingualism

In translation studies, it is sometimes assumed by some scholars that bilinguals are in possession of an innate competence for translating. In this research, aspects of bilingualism and translation competences are investigated. The questions driving the research are: is being a bilingual enough to be a translator? And what are the competences a translator needs to perform a good translation? This article addresses these questions through a comprehensive literature review and a small-scale empirical study. First, relevant literature on bilingualism and translation competence was reviewed. Second, an empirical investigation was carried out in which bilinguals and professional translators translated a source text to generate empirical data on the use of two languages and relevant translation competences. The results have shown that being a translator is more than being bilingual and going to a translation school is not a guarantee to be a good translator. The subject matter knowledge also matters. The research not only yield insights into the description and development of translation competence, but also provides potential avenues for translators’ self-improvement.

Dialectal intelligibility of Assamese tested functionally

This paper includes a detailed discussion on the intelligibility of the speakers of four regional dialects of the Indo-Aryan language of Assamese. Prior research on Assamese dialects mostly being confined to examining structural variation lends this study relevance and urgency. The dialects of Standard Assamese, Central Assamese, Kamrupi, and Goalparia, covering three varieties each, were considered for the study. Using a functional intelligibility testing approach, the rate of overall intelligibility as well as of inter- and intra-dialectal mutual intelligibility of the dialects were determined. 24 speakers (1 male and 1 female from each variety) were asked to record ‘texts’— words, sentences, and connected speech in their native varieties of Assamese. 11 listeners from each variety (132 in total) were then tested on their comprehension of texts from non-native varieties. Thereafter, their rates of comprehension were used to determine the rates of mutual intelligibility between speakers of the different dialects and varieties of Assamese. This paper establishes that the rates of mutual intelligibility are unequal and asymmetric among the dialects— the native speakers of the Standard and Central Assamese dialects were more intelligible to the speakers of Kamrupi and Goalparia than vice-versa. Finally, the paper finds that the rate of intelligibility is the lowest for words in isolation and reinforces the important role of context in intelligibility.

Adulteration of the Igbo Language Through Multilingualism in South-Eastern Nigeria

The study seeks to find out the linguistic adulteration of the Igbo language through a sociolinguistic process known as multilingualism. Many scholars are lamenting that the Igbo language is going into extinction just because it is losing its original linguistic structures via multilingualism. Such alteration brings to the limelight of the study in order to address these issues on Nigerian indigenous languages in general and the Igbo language in particular. A descriptive approach is used to harvest some of these language contact issues among the Igbo populace and language. A random sampling is used to ascertain the population of the five Igbo states: Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States on how communication and written aspects of the language have been dealt with negatively. Participant observation and students’ essay writing in the Igbo language are used to collate these sub-standard Igbo grammar structures. The study expounds at a length the intricacy of the proper Igbo written forms and as well as pulling the Igbo language away from the effects of multilingualism. The findings of the study prove that the different types of multilingualism abound among the Igbo language native users. They also exemplify some linguistic related issues on the bold face of multilingualism among the Igbo interlocutors and how they vary among the Igbo speech communities in Nigeria. The study also finds out the effects of multilingualism on the standard Igbo teaching. The study goes further in suggesting some quintessential solutions to recuperate the status quo of the Igbo language.

Do Cues Facilitate Retrieval of Verbs in Persons with Bilingual Aphasia?

Word retrieval difficulty is commonly seen in persons with aphasia. The cues would repair word retrieval difficulty. The effect of cues during verb retrieval was gauged via Action Naming Test (ANT) in Kannada and English languages in persons with aphasia (PWAs). A total of eight persons with bilingual Aphasia (Broca's, conduction, and isolation type) were recruited for the study. The participants were expected to have a minimum quantum of verbal output were considered for the study. Specifically, the study used phonemic, semantic, and verbal contextual cues to assess verb retrieval abilities. The result of the study manifested that all participants of the study were able to perform better with phonemic cues followed by semantic and verbal contextual cues in both Kannada and English languages.

Non- Prototypical Reduplication in Odia

The paper discusses in detail echo formations and expressives found in the Odia language and the strategies for forming them. The complex semantic structure as well as the wide semantic and conceptual space they occupy, make them complex categories that have been ignored both by Western and Asian linguists because they are a prototypical grammatical feature not fitting the traditional grammar writing (Abbi, 2018). Odia has morphological fixed segmentism with the variants /ph/ and /m/. Morphological fixed segmentism is a kind of affixation, and so it resembles affixing morphology generally. [ɡaɽɪ > ɡaɽɪ phaɽɪ ‘car and other transport’ ; ʧɪra > ʧɪra mɪra ‘ torn and such’ ] This paper endeavours to find the reason behind this particular choice of phonemes by Odia speakers. Furthermore, the paper investigates if Odia base-reduplicant structures follow the Syllable Contact Law (Vennemann, 1988). According to the Syllable Contact Law, sonority should fall across syllable boundaries. This paper proves that Odia base-reduplicant structures follow the Syllable Contact Law as rise in sonority across syllable boundaries is a marked feature in Odia.’

Nature of English and Tiv Metatheses

Metathesis, the transposition of letters and syllables, is a minor phonological process that is found in both English and Tiv languages. This phonological process has not received much attention it deserves because most scholars considered it as a figure of misspelling which is not worthy of researching. This paper investigates the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The objectives of this paper are to classify English and Tiv metatheses, discuss the formation of metatheses in English and Tiv and state the functions of metatheses in English and Tiv languages. This paper used comparative linguistic theory which compares the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The researcher used participant observation tool for elicitation of data for this study. Secondary materials such as journal articles, textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopaedias and Internet sources were used. This study links phonology, historical linguistics, onomastics and language pathology (speech disorder). The study has established that metathesis has phonological, orthographic, metrical and onomastic relevance. This paper provides an in-depth material for teaching and learning of English and Tiv languages. It has been recommended that lecturers in the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, Departments of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages should write books and critical works on Nigerian or African languages.

Factors that Affect Students Interpersonal Communication Skills in English Language and Literature Regular Students at Kabridahar University

This research paper investigates the factors that affect student’s interpersonal communication skills in English language and literature regular students at Kabridahar University. It focused on English Language and Literature regular students in Kabridahar University. The objective of the study was to investigate the major factors that affect student’s interpersonal communication. The researcher collected data from the students by using Questionnaire, Interview and observation in order to get an appropriate finding. The researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis. The study shows that, the students have interest to communicate and interact with each other. But, some of barriers like mother tongue influence and variety of language affect their interpersonal communication as well as their relationship. Also, factors like weak relationship to others, lack of interest, inexperience, lack of practice and gender issues are the major barriers which affected student’s interpersonal communication.

Nominalization in TIV

Nominalization is a linguistic process of deriving nouns from other word classes or linguistic units. Nominalization is evident in many languages of the world. The Tiv language also exhibits nominalization. This paper critically analyses nominalization in Tiv. The objectives of the paper are: to determine the processes through which nominalization takes place in the Tiv language, the extent to which the processes of nominalization are productive in the Tiv language, and the classes of words and linguistic units that are nominalized in Tiv. Data were sourced from the native speakers of Tiv using the researcher – participant technique. The researchers documented the lexical items used during the interaction, determine the basic components of the lexical items and the word classes such lexical items belonged to. The intuitive knowledge of the researchers as the native speakers of the language was harnessed. The secondary data were sourced from the already existing literatures such as textbooks, journals and the internet. The theory adopted in the paper is Hokett’s (1954) structural theory whose models are the Item-and-Process (I.P) and Item-and-Arrangement (I.P). It has been found out that the processes through which nominalization takes in the Tiv language are prefixation, prefixation plus some modifications, tonality and desententialization (sentence deconstruction). These processes are discovered to be very productive in nominalization in Tiv. It has also been found out that verbs roots and adjectives are the classes of words that are nominalized (lexical nominalization) in the Tiv language together with sentences (syntactic nominalization).