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Leung, Yan-kit Ingrid. "Verb morphology in second language versus third language acquisition." EUROSLA Yearbook 6 (July 20, 2006): 27–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.6.05leu.
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This paper reports an experimental study on L2 vs. L3 Spanish morphological representation. A total of 19 Spanish learners (10 Chinese native speakers who are upper intermediate to advanced L2 English users as well as 9 English native speakers who do not speak a prior language without overt morphology) participated in the study. A written production task using Spanish nonce verbs was used to elicit regular and irregular forms of Spanish past participles. The study revealed differences between native and non-native Spanish speakers but ones that are still compatible with an approach which posits a dual mechanism for morphological processing. In addition, no principal difference between the L2 and the L3 Spanish learners was identified. A follow-up experiment on L2 English was therefore carried out testing 26 native speakers of Chinese and 17 native speakers of English using a written production task eliciting English regular and irregular past tense forms for both real verbs and nonce verbs. The findings suggested that native and non-native English speakers’ performances pattern similarly. It seems that L2 English plays a crucial role in Chinese speakers’ L3 Spanish morphological representation and in their similar performance to the L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers.
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Robles-Puente, Sergio. "Intonational transfers in second language English speakers." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 134, no. 5 (November 2013): 4247. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4831626.
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Park, Hyeson. "A minimalist approach to null subjects and objects in second language acquisition." Second Language Research 20, no. 1 (January 2004): 1–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/0267658304sr228oa.
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Studies of the second language acquisition of pronominal arguments have observed that: (1) L1 speakers of null subject languages of the Spanish type drop more subjects in their second language (L2) English than first language (L1) speakers of null subject languages of the Korean type and (2) speakers of Korean-type languages drop more objects than subjects in their L2 English. An analysis of these two asymmetries is conducted within the Minimalist Program framework (MP), which hypothesizes that language acquisition involves the learning of formal features of a target language.I propose, based on Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998), that the licensing of null subjects is conditioned by the interpretability of agreement features. When a language has [+interpretable] agreement features, raising of the verb to T (X-movement) satisfies the EPP requirement: hence, a null subject is allowed. On the other hand, in a language with [-interpretable] agreement features, the subject is obligatory since merger of the subject in the specifier of TP (XP-merge) is required to check the EPP feature. Learning of the obligatory status of English subjects is easier for Korean learners than for Spanish speakers since syntactically both English and Korean have the same feature value [-interpretable] (although null subjects are allowed in Korean for pragmatic reasons). Spanish has the opposite syntactic feature value [+interpretable] and resetting of this is more difficult. Licensing of null objects is hypothesized to be related to the strength of theta-features. Languages with strong theta-features, such as English and Spanish, do not allow null objects, whereas languages with weak theta-features like Korean allow null objects. It takes time for Korean speakers to learn the different value of English theta-features, resulting in the extended null object period in L2 English of Korean L1 speakers.
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Zsiga, Elizabeth C. "ARTICULATORY TIMING IN A SECOND LANGUAGE." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25, no. 3 (August 4, 2003): 399–432. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263103000160.
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This study compares patterns of consonant-to-consonant timing at word boundaries in English and Russian and investigates the roles of transfer and the emergence of linguistic universals in second language (L2) articulation. Native Russian speakers learning English and native English speakers learning Russian produced phrases in English and Russian contrasting VC#CV, VC#V, and V#CV sequences. The duration of all stop closures was measured as well as the percentage of consonant sequences in which the first consonant was audibly released. In their native language (L1), Russian speakers had a higher percentage of released final consonants than did English speakers in their L1 as well as a higher ratio of sequence-to-singleton duration. Examination of the timing patterns across different clusters revealed different articulatory strategies for the two languages. The native Russian pattern transferred to L2 English, but the native English pattern did not transfer to L2 Russian. Evidence was found for both articulatory transfer and the emergence of a default pattern of articulation, characteristic of neither L1 nor L2.
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Lee, Yun Kyung, and Jeon Gue Park. "Multimodal Unsupervised Speech Translation for Recognizing and Evaluating Second Language Speech." Applied Sciences 11, no. 6 (March 16, 2021): 2642. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11062642.
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This paper addresses an automatic proficiency evaluation and speech recognition for second language (L2) speech. The proposed method recognizes the speech uttered by the L2 speaker, measures a variety of fluency scores, and evaluates the proficiency of the speaker’s spoken English. Stress and rhythm scores are one of the important factors used to evaluate fluency in spoken English and are computed by comparing the stress patterns and the rhythm distributions to those of native speakers. In order to compute the stress and rhythm scores even when the phonemic sequence of the L2 speaker’s English sentence is different from the native speaker’s one, we align the phonemic sequences based on a dynamic time-warping approach. We also improve the performance of the speech recognition system for non-native speakers and compute fluency features more accurately by augmenting the non-native training dataset and training an acoustic model with the augmented dataset. In this work, we augment the non-native speech by converting some speech signal characteristics (style) while preserving its linguistic information. The proposed variational autoencoder (VAE)-based speech conversion network trains the conversion model by decomposing the spectral features of the speech into a speaker-invariant content factor and a speaker-specific style factor to estimate diverse and robust speech styles. Experimental results show that the proposed method effectively measures the fluency scores and generates diverse output signals. Also, in the proficiency evaluation and speech recognition tests, the proposed method improves the proficiency score performance and speech recognition accuracy for all proficiency areas compared to a method employing conventional acoustic models.
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Williams, Jessica. "Zero Anaphora in Second Language Acquisition:A Comparison among Three Varieties of English." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10, no. 3 (October 1988): 339–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100007488.
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This study examines the use of zero anaphora in the English production of three speaker groups: native speakers, second language learners, and speakers of a non-native institutionalized variety. General discourse function for zero anaphora is found to be similar across speaker groups, although in many cases, ungrammatical by prescriptive standards. In addition, there are important quantitative and structural differences between the native speakers and non-native speakers in how this device is used. The results suggest that the relationship between performance data and second language acquisition needs to be reexamined. In particular, it cannot be assumed that spontaneous production of a given form isa direct indicator of acquisition and conversely, that non-production is necessarily proof of non-acquisition.
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Henderson, Lalitha. "Interference in Second Language Learning." ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 81-82 (January 1, 1988): 73–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/itl.81-82.04hen.
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Abstract This study deals with the acquisition of English and Tamil as a second language and to explain the errors found in the speech of L2 learners caused by the interference from the first language within the frame of reference of the phonological system of the target language (L2) as perceived and produced by the native speaker of the first language (L1). The overall systems are compared so as to highlight the most genera] similarities and differences. The comparison also focuses on the similarities and contrasts between the phonetic manifestations of each phonological unit of L1 and its counterpart in L2. The data from the actual speech of English and Tamil by the L2 speakers are used to bring out the contrast between the two languages and the L1 interference on L2.
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Rabinovich, Ella, Yulia Tsvetkov, and Shuly Wintner. "Native Language Cognate Effects on Second Language Lexical Choice." Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 6 (December 2018): 329–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00024.
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We present a computational analysis of cognate effects on the spontaneous linguistic productions of advanced non-native speakers. Introducing a large corpus of highly competent non-native English speakers, and using a set of carefully selected lexical items, we show that the lexical choices of non-natives are affected by cognates in their native language. This effect is so powerful that we are able to reconstruct the phylogenetic language tree of the Indo-European language family solely from the frequencies of specific lexical items in the English of authors with various native languages. We quantitatively analyze non-native lexical choice, highlighting cognate facilitation as one of the important phenomena shaping the language of non-native speakers.
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Jyothi, Dr M. "Learning English as a Foreign / Second Language: A Critique." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 4, no. 5 (September 22, 2017): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v4i5.1345.
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A knowledge of the English Language has become an object of importance in relation to its application in various walks of life. A complete command over the language could be possible where the varied meanings of usage of words, idioms and phrases according to the changing circumstances and situations are comprehensively elucidated to learners. In the twentieth century there is the phenomenon of the native speakers of English being outnumbered by the non-native speakers considerably. There are as many as 1500 millions users of English as a second language. Of these, an estimated 18 million users are in India. The Indian users of English are spread all over India. Though the users of English are spread all over India. English in India has a pan-Indian character. Though the users of English in India make use of the charastic role of English, yet there is no complete homogeneity. The variation in the use of English is partly due to the vast linguistic diversity in the country. It is estimated that there are as many as fifteen major languages and 1652 languages and dialects spoken in India. The ethnic variety of proficiency tend to contribute to the lack of homogeneity in Indians’ use of English. Against this back ground, Indian users of English language, lack intelligibility in communicating English language as it ought to be communicated like native speakers of English. This kind of situations often noticed by the native speakers who claim that they use only Standard English. Standard English is defined by H.C.Wyld as a certain vareity of English “spoken within certain social boundaries, with an extraordinary degree of uniformity, all over the country”. It is neither a regional nor social dialect, but its use confers a social change on the speakers. Every educated Englishmen speak it as it is the widely accepted dialect. It is the English spoken in southern England and it remains to be the language of the cultured and educated people living in south of the River Thames. It is the speech heard among men who have bee
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O’BRIEN, MARY GRANTHAM, and CAROLINE FÉRY. "Dynamic localization in second language English and German." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18, no. 3 (October 8, 2014): 400–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728914000182.
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Marking new and given constituents requires speakers to use morphosyntactic and phonological cues within a discourse context. The current study uses a dynamic localization paradigm whereby German and English native speakers, with the other language as a second language (L2), describe constellations of pictures. In each picture a new or reintroduced animal is localized relative to other animals, thereby allowing for control of newness vs. givenness of animals. Participants completed the task in their native language (L1) and L2. English native speakers use predominantly canonical word order and often mark the new object with a falling pitch accent. German native speakers use a given-before-new word order, even when this is non-canonical, and they use a rising pitch accent in non-final position. The results indicate that speakers easily transfer unmarked grammatical structures – both word order and pitch accents – from their L1 to their L2.
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Spinelli, Giacomo, Luciana Forti, and Debra Jared. "Learning to assign stress in a second language: The role of second-language vocabulary size and transfer from the native language in second-language readers of Italian." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24, no. 1 (April 3, 2020): 124–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728920000243.
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AbstractLearning to pronounce a written word implies assigning a stress pattern to that word. This task can present a challenge for speakers of languages like Italian, in which stress information must often be computed from distributional properties of the language, especially for individuals learning Italian as a second language (L2). Here, we aimed to characterize the processes underlying the development of stress assignment in native English and native Chinese speakers learning L2 Italian. Both types of bilinguals produced evidence supporting a role of vocabulary size in modulating the type of distributional information used in stress assignment, with an early bias for Italian's dominant stress pattern being gradually replaced by use of associations between orthographic sequences and stress patterns in more advanced bilinguals. We also obtained some evidence for a transfer of stress assignment habits from the bilinguals’ native language to Italian, although only in English native speakers.
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Brown, Amanda. "Gesture viewpoint in Japanese and English." Gestures in language development 8, no. 2 (August 4, 2008): 256–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/gest.8.2.08bro.
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Abundant evidence across languages, structures, proficiencies, and modalities shows that properties of first languages influence performance in second languages. This paper presents an alternative perspective on the interaction between established and emerging languages within second language speakers by arguing that an L2 can influence an L1, even at relatively low proficiency levels. Analyses of the gesture viewpoint employed in English and Japanese descriptions of motion events revealed systematic between-language and within-language differences. Monolingual Japanese speakers used significantly more Character Viewpoint than monolingual English speakers, who predominantly employed Observer Viewpoint. In their L1 and their L2, however, native Japanese speakers with intermediate knowledge of English patterned more like the monolingual English speakers than their monolingual Japanese counterparts. After controlling for effects of cultural exposure, these results offer valuable insights into both the nature of cross-linguistic interactions within individuals and potential factors underlying gesture viewpoint.
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Strachan, Lauren, Sara Kennedy, and Pavel Trofimovich. "Second language speakers’ awareness of their own comprehensibility." Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 5, no. 3 (March 14, 2019): 347–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jslp.18008.str.
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Abstract This study investigated whether second language (L2) speakers are aware of and can manipulate aspects of their speech contributing to comprehensibility. Forty Mandarin speakers of L2 English performed two versions of the same oral task. Before the second task, half of the speakers were asked to make their speech as easy for the interlocutor to understand as possible, while the other half received no additional prompt. Speakers self-assessed comprehensibility after each task and were interviewed about how they improved their comprehensibility. Native-speaking listeners evaluated speaker performances for five dimensions, rating speech similarly across groups and tasks. Overall, participants did not become more comprehensible from task 1 to task 2, whether prompted or not, nor did speakers’ self-assessments become more in line with raters’, indicating speakers may not be aware of their own comprehensibility. However, speakers who did demonstrate greater improvement in comprehensibility received higher ratings of flow, and speakers’ self-ratings of comprehensibility were aligned with listeners’ assessments only in the second task. When discussing comprehensibility, speakers commented more on task content than linguistic dimensions. Results highlight the roles of task repetition and self-assessment in speakers’ awareness of comprehensibility.
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Juffs, Alan. "Some effects of first language argument structure and morphosyntax on second language sentence processing." Second Language Research 14, no. 4 (October 1998): 406–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/026765898668800317.
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This article explores some effects of first language verb-argument structure on second language processing of English as a second language. Speakers of Chinese, Japanese or Korean, three Romance languages and native English speakers provided word-by-word reading times and grammaticality judgement data in a self-paced reading task. Results suggest that reliable differences in parsing are not restricted to cases where verb-argument structure differs crosslinguistically.
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Gabriele, Alison, and Junko Maekawa. "Interpreting tense in a second language." EUROSLA Yearbook 8 (August 7, 2008): 79–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.8.07gab.
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The question of whether adult native speakers of Chinese, a language that does not morphosyntactically represent tense, are able to acquire tense in English has been a topic of great interest in part because it allows us to examine whether there is a critical period for features that are not instantiated in the native language (Hawkins 2001; Hawkins & Liszka 2003; Lardiere 1998a, 2003).While most previous studies have focused on production data, the present study examines the semantics of tense, investigating whether or not learners’ interpretations are sensitive to temporal distinctions. Native speakers of Mandarin are compared with native speakers of Japanese and Korean, languages which both morphosyntactically encode tense. Results of an interpretation task targeting the present progressive and past progressive in English show that by advanced levels of proficiency the three groups of learners performsimilarly. The results provide evidence that tense is fully acquirable in L2 acquisition regardless of the properties of the native language.
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Kpogo, Felix, and Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole. "The influence of native English-speaking environment on Akan-English bilinguals’ production of English inter-dental fricatives." International Journal of Bilingualism 24, no. 4 (April 24, 2019): 559–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367006919844032.
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Aims and Objectives: This study examined how age of acquisition, immersion in a native English-speaking environment, and phonological environment influence Akan-English bilinguals’ production of English inter-dental fricatives. Design/Methodology: Forty-five Akan-English bilinguals who immigrated to the USA between the ages of 10 and 64 participated. English inter-dental fricatives occurring in word-initial, intervocalic, and word-final positions were elicited through a production task using sentence frames. Accuracy of production was analyzed relative to age of acquisition, relative length of immersion, and phonological environment. Findings/Conclusion: Performance was better overall on the voiceless than the voiced inter-dental, but the phonological environment mattered: performance was at ceiling for both in the medial position, but less good in the initial and final positions. Early age of acquisition conspired with length of residence in the USA to foster better production for both sounds. However, substitutions for target segments were still observed in the most fluent speakers. These results indicate that in determining speakers’ proficiency in the second language, we must consider all of these factors—phonological environment, age of acquisition, and length of stay—together to gain a comprehensive picture of development. Originality: Few studies have examined Ghanaian speakers’ English, even though English is the official language of Ghana. Further, previous studies on second-language speakers’ abilities with inter-dental fricatives have largely focused on word-initial environments. The present study reveals that distinct phonological environments may not show the same effect. Here, speakers were particularly accurate in intervocalic positions. Significance: This study contributes to theoretical debates concerning the roles of input and age of acquisition for second-language learning. It also provides insights on some of the possible hurdles that second-language learners face as they strive to acquire additional languages, which can assist second-language teachers in designing appropriate methodologies to help learners.
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Kennedy, Sara, and Pavel Trofimovich. "Research timeline: Second language communication strategies." Language Teaching 49, no. 4 (September 23, 2016): 494–512. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026144481600015x.
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Speakers of a second language (L2), regardless of proficiency level, communicate for specific purposes. For example, an L2 speaker of English may wish to build rapport with a co-worker by chatting about the weather. The speaker will draw on various resources to accomplish her communicative purposes. For instance, the speaker may say ‘falling ice’ if she has forgotten the word ‘hail’ or may repeat the last few words of her interlocutor's utterance to show that she is listening and engaged. The term communication strategies (CSs) refers to the strategic use of various resources (both linguistic and non-linguistic) for communicative purposes. While speakers also use CSs in their native languages (L1s), research on L2 CS use is particularly interesting because speakers’ L2 linguistic resources and the associated cognitive processes are typically less developed, compared to those in their L1. Therefore, for L2 users to accomplish their communicative purposes in the L2, it is important that they effectively use the resources available to them. This research timeline presents key developments in theoretical understanding and empirical research targeting L2 CSs, mainly in oral communication. The timeline places particular emphasis on the evolution of theoretical approaches to the study of CSs and the consequent expansion of research in terms of the nature of participants, speech samples, and analytical tools used.
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Lanteigne, Betty, and Peter Crompton. "Analyzing Use of “Thanks to You”: Insights for Language Teaching and Assessment in Second and Foreign Language Contexts." Research in Language 9, no. 2 (December 30, 2011): 29–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10015-011-0018-9.
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This investigation of thanks to you in British and American usage was precipitated by a situation at an American university, in which a native Arabic speaker said thanks to you in isolation, making his intended meaning unclear. The study analyzes use of thanks to you in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus to gain insights for English language instruction /assessment in the American context, as well as English-as-a-lingua-franca contexts where the majority of speakers are not native speakers of English or are speakers of different varieties of English but where American or British English are for educational purposes the standard varieties. Analysis of the two corpora revealed three functions for thanks to you common to British and American usage: expressing gratitude, communicating “because of you” positively, and communicating “because of you” negatively (as in sarcasm). A fourth use of thanks to you, thanking journalists/guests for being on news programs/talk shows, occurred in the American corpus only. Analysis indicates that felicitous use of thanks to you for each of these meanings depends on the presence of a range of factors, both linguistic and material, in the context of utterance.
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LIN, CANDISE Y., MIN WANG, WILLIAM J. IDSARDI, and YI XU. "Stress processing in Mandarin and Korean second language learners of English." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17, no. 2 (August 2, 2013): 316–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728913000333.
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This study examined stress processing among Mandarin and Korean second language learners of English and English monolinguals. While both English and Mandarin have contrastive stress at the word-level, Korean does not. Consequently, Mandarin speakers may have an advantage over Korean speakers in English stress processing, even when matched for their general English proficiency. Experiment 1 assessed participants’ stress encoding ability for nonwords in a short-term memory task. Experiment 2 examined the effect of stress in online word recognition in a lexical decision task by manipulating word frequency, stress location, and vowel quality. The results of both experiments support an advantage for English and Mandarin speakers over Korean speakers in stress processing of real words and nonwords. Only Korean speakers’ lexical judgment of nonwords was modulated by word frequency, suggesting that they do not utilize stress in lexical access. Only English speakers’ word recognition was facilitated by vowel quality changes. These results suggest that the abilities of non-native speakers to process stress in their L2 is influenced by the characteristics of the stress systems in their L1.
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Kainada, Evia, and Angelos Lengeris. "Native language influences on the production of second-language prosody." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45, no. 3 (December 2015): 269–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100315000158.
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This study examined native language (L1) transfer effects on the production of second-language (L2) prosody by intermediate Greek learners of English, specifically the set of tonal events and their alignment, speech rate, pitch span and pitch level in English polar questions. Greek uses an L* L+H- L% melody giving rise to a low–high–low f0 contour at the end of the polar question that does not resemble any of the contours used by native speakers in English polar questions. The results showed that the Greek speakers transferred the full set of Greek tonal events into English associating them with stressed syllables, and consistently placed the focus on the verb. The Greek speakers also anchored the peak of the phrase accent in polar questions around the midpoint of the stressed vowel across L1/L2 despite using longer vowel durations in L2. At the same time, their productions deviated from L1 forms in terms of speech rate (slower in L2), pitch span (narrower in L2) and pitch level (lower in L2), indicating that even when learners adopt an L1 prosodic feature in their L2, they still produce interlanguage forms that deviate from L1.
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Md Zolkapli, Rasyiqah Batrisya, and Khazriyati Salehuddin. "Lexical Access Patterns of Second Language Speakers of English." GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies 19, no. 4 (November 27, 2019): 48–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/gema-2019-1904-03.
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Wiltshire, Caroline R. "The “Indian English” of Tibeto-Burman language speakers." English World-Wide 26, no. 3 (October 31, 2005): 275–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.26.3.03wil.
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English as spoken as a second language in India (IE) has developed different sound patterns from other varieties of English. While most descriptions of IE have focused on the English of speakers whose first languages belong to the Indo-Aryan or Dravidian families, in this study, I examine the phonetic and phonological characteristics of the English produced by speakers of three Indian L1s from the Tibeto-Burman language family (Angami, Ao, and Mizo). In addition to describing aspects of Tibeto-Burman Indian English, a previously unreported Indian English variety, I also examine how and why this variety of English differs from General Indian English. The English of Tibeto-Burman L1 speakers seems to form a variety distinct from Indian English, most noticeably in terms of the lack of retroflexion of coronal consonants, the devoicing of word-final obstruents, the simplification of consonant clusters, the presence of post-vocalic [p], and the reduced set of vowel contrasts. Most of these can be traced to transfer from the L1 phonology, with the coda devoicing and cluster reductions reflecting simplification in terms of markedness, following developmental sequences found in second language acquisition.
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VANLANCKER–SIDTIS, DIANA. "Auditory recognition of idioms by native and nonnative speakers of English: It takes one to know one." Applied Psycholinguistics 24, no. 1 (January 21, 2003): 45–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716403000031.
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The abilities of second language speakers to discriminate the prosodic contrasts between idiomatic and literal meanings of ambiguous sentences were investigated using utterances previously shown to be reliably identified by acoustic cues. Four listener groups of varying proficiency, native speakers of American English, native speakers of non-American English, fluent nonnative speakers of English, and advanced students of English as a second language (ESL), judged whether single and paired, tape-recorded, literal and idiomatic utterances were spoken with intended idiomatic or literal meanings. Both native speaker groups performed significantly better than fluent nonnatives, while ESL students performed at chance. These results lend support to the hypothesis that abilities to discriminate subtle prosodic contrasts are learned later than other components of speech and language.
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KAAN, EDITH, JOCELYN C. BALLANTYNE, and FRANK WIJNEN. "Effects of reading speed on second-language sentence processing." Applied Psycholinguistics 36, no. 4 (January 17, 2014): 799–830. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716413000519.
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ABSTRACTTo test the effects of reading speed on second-language (L2) sentence processing and the potential influence of conflicting native language word order, we compared advanced L2 learners of English with native English speakers on a self-paced reading task. L2 learners read faster overall than native English speakers. When differences in reading speed were controlled for, L2 learners were as sensitive to grammaticality manipulations as native English speakers. On-line reading times did not reflect any effect of cross-language conflict in the learners. Results from an end-of-sentence verification task showed a stronger bias toward a subject–object order in the cross-language conflict conditions in speed-matched L2 learners but not in L2 learners reading faster than native speakers. Results are compatible with hypothesized differences in resource allocation between L2 and native language processing.
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Malik Abbasi, Abdul, Samreen Riaz Ahmed, Alia Farooqi, and Stephon John. "Exploring Factors of Speech Anxiety in Second Language Classroom." Advances in Language and Literary Studies 10, no. 5 (October 30, 2019): 97. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.5p.97.
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This study aims to investigate the factors affecting on English speech of undergraduate students at the SMIU, Karachi. The study prospects two aspects as outcomes of the study, one to discover what are the major issues and hindrances and another one to find their solutions for developing techniques and skills to gain confidence while speaking English as a second language in ESL classroom and in public. It will further investigate as how to help develop a wonderful speech free from speech anxiety. The study administered Likert Scale as a tool for data collection. Forty participating students were recruited from the department of Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi. Speech anxiety is a common phenomenon amongst the students in the second language classrooms. Second language i.e., English, however, has become the lingua franca of the world. It is no longer the language of only native Britishers and Americans, rather, it is a widely spoken language by most people living in every nook & corner of the world. This study investigates as to how ESL learners turn out as nervous speakers while speaking English. Findings of the study suggest that speech anxiety seems to be an unavoidable phenomenon for ESL learners as the data reveal. In addition, this study is associated with the previous studies that there is a moderate level of Foreign Language Speech Anxiety (FLSA) amongst the Pakistani English speakers. Since English is taught from the primary level and every literate person almost understands and speaks English. Pakistani English language speakers should speak without speech anxiety, though it seems to be a part of human nature being nervous while speaking English as a second language. The students should learn how to manage speech anxiety by welcoming it and try to overcome it not by mindless imitation but by being natural in English speech.
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FELSER, CLAUDIA, and IAN CUNNINGS. "Processing reflexives in a second language: The timing of structural and discourse-level constraints." Applied Psycholinguistics 33, no. 3 (August 8, 2011): 571–603. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716411000488.
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ABSTRACTWe report the results from two eye-movement monitoring experiments examining the processing of reflexive pronouns by proficient German-speaking learners of second language (L2) English. Our results show that the nonnative speakers initially tried to link English argument reflexives to a discourse-prominent but structurally inaccessible antecedent, thereby violating binding condition A. Our native speaker controls, in contrast, showed evidence of applying condition A immediately during processing. Together, our findings show that L2 learners’ initial focusing on a structurally inaccessible antecedent cannot be due to first language influence and is also independent of whether the inaccessible antecedent c-commands the reflexive. This suggests that unlike native speakers, nonnative speakers of English initially attempt to interpret reflexives through discourse-based coreference assignment rather than syntactic binding.
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Broos, Wouter PJ, Wouter Duyck, and Robert J. Hartsuiker. "Monitoring speech production and comprehension: Where is the second-language delay?" Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 72, no. 7 (October 30, 2018): 1601–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021818807447.
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Research on error monitoring suggests that bilingual Dutch–English speakers are slower to correct some speech errors in their second language (L2) as opposed to their first language (L1). But which component of self-monitoring is slowed down in L2, error detection or interruption and repair of the error? This study charted the time course of monitoring in monolingual English speakers and bilingual Dutch–English speakers in language production and language comprehension, with the aim of pinpointing the component(s) of monitoring that cause an L2 disadvantage. First, we asked whether phonological errors are interrupted more slowly in L2. An analysis of data from three speech error elicitation experiments indeed showed that Dutch–English bilinguals were slower to stop speaking after an error had been detected in their L2 (English) than in their L1 (Dutch), at least for interrupted errors. A similar L2 disadvantage was found when comparing the L2 of Dutch–English bilinguals to the L1 of English monolinguals. Second, monolingual English speakers and bilingual Dutch–English speakers performed a picture naming task, a production monitoring task, and a comprehension monitoring task. Bilingual English speakers were slower in naming pictures in their L2 than monolingual English speakers. However, the production monitoring task and comprehension monitoring task yielded comparable response latencies between monolinguals in their L1 and bilinguals in their L2, indicating that monitoring processes in L2 are not generally slower. We suggest that interruption and repair are planned concurrently and that the difficulty of repairing in L2 triggers a slow-down in L2 interruption.
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Uribe-Enciso, Olga Lucía, Sol Smith Fuentes Hernandez, Karla Lizeth Vargas Pita, and Anderson Steve Rey Pabón. "Problematic Phonemes for Spanish-speakers’ Learners of English." GIST – Education and Learning Research Journal, no. 19 (December 12, 2019): 215–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.26817/16925777.701.
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When learning English, learners might face a challenging task in mastering pronunciation due to differences in both languages such as sound-to-letter correspondence, size of phoneme inventory, allophonic realization of sounds, place and manner of articulation, among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review both theoretical and research reports on the most problematic sounds for Spanish-speakers English language learners. Approaches to second language learners’ errors like Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis although being criticized have contributed to identifying likely causes of errors and dealing with them whether anticipating them or providing appropriate feedback on them. Besides, first language interference and age of second language acquisition have been found as complicating factors in the English pronunciation learning process. Finally, some classroom activities have been reported as successful for facilitating English pronunciation in Spanish native speakers.
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AU, TERRY KIT-FONG, WINNIE WAILAN CHAN, LIAO CHENG, LINDA S. SIEGEL, and RICKY VAN YIP TSO. "Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?" Journal of Child Language 42, no. 2 (April 7, 2014): 323–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000913000627.
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ABSTRACTTo fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.
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Brown, Amanda, and Marianne Gullberg. "Multicompetence and native speaker variation in clausal packaging in Japanese." Second Language Research 28, no. 4 (October 2012): 415–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658312455822.
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Native speakers show systematic variation in a range of linguistic domains as a function of a variety of sociolinguistic variables. This article addresses native language variation in the context of multicompetence, i.e. knowledge of two languages in one mind (Cook, 1991). Descriptions of motion were elicited from functionally monolingual and non-monolingual speakers of Japanese, with analyses focusing on clausal packaging of Manner and Path. Results revealed that (1) acquisition of a second language (L2) appears to affect how speakers distribute information about motion in and across clauses in their first language (L1); (2) these effects can be seen with rather less knowledge of a second language than the advanced bilingual proficiency level typically studied; and (3) there appears to be little effect of L2 immersion in this domain since Japanese users of English as a second language (ESL) did not differ from Japanese users of English as a foreign language (EFL). We discuss the findings with respect to characterizations of emerging multicompetent grammars, and to implications for the construct of ‘the native speaker’, for language pedagogy and language assessment.
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Hao, Yen-Chen. "Second Language Perception of Mandarin Vowels and Tones." Language and Speech 61, no. 1 (July 7, 2017): 135–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830917717759.
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This study examines the discrimination of Mandarin vowels and tones by native English speakers with varying amounts of Mandarin experience, aiming to investigate the relative difficulty of these two types of sounds for English speakers at different learning stages, and the source of their difficulty. Seventeen advanced learners of Mandarin (Ex group), eighteen beginning learners (InEx group), and eighteen English speakers naïve to Mandarin (Naïve group) participated in an AXB discrimination task. The stimuli were two Mandarin vowel contrasts, /li–ly/ and /lu–ly/, and two tonal contrasts, T1–T4 and T2–T3. The predicted difficulty for each contrast was hypothesized based on the assimilation of these sounds to English reported in previous work. The results showed that the Naïve group was more accurate with vowel contrasts than with tones, suggesting that non-tonal language speakers without any Mandarin training are less sensitive to tonal distinction than to vowels. The two learner groups, on the other hand, were highly accurate with all contrasts except for the T2–T3 pair, and achieved significantly higher accuracy than the Naïve group on /li–ly/ and T1–T4. This lends support to the view that experience in Mandarin improves English speakers’ sensitivity to tonal distinction, helping them discriminate some tones as accurately as vowels. However, all three groups achieved low accuracy in discriminating T2 and T3, suggesting that this contrast may be inherently difficult and resistant to improvement. This study shows that various factors in addition to the native language experience may affect the perception of non-native vowels and tones.
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Schachter, Jacquelyn. "On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition." Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) 6, no. 2 (December 1990): 93–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765839000600201.
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The issue of completeness in adult second language acquisition is critical in the development of a theory of second language acquisition. Assuming the Chomskyan definition of core grammar as being those aspects of the language determined by the interaction of the innately specified Universal Grammar and the input to which the learner is exposed, we need to ask if it is possible for an adult learner of a second language to attain native-speaker competence in the core aspects of the grammar of the second language. This paper examines evidence for presence or absence of one principle of UG, Subjacency, in the grammars of groups of proficient nonnative speakers of English. There are three groups whose native languages - Korean, Chinese, Indonesian - differ from English with regard to Subjacency, Korean showing no evidence of it, Chinese and Indonesian showing partial evidence of it. There is one group whose native language, Dutch, shows the full range of Subjacency effects that English does. If all groups show the same Subjacency effects in English that native speakers do, then it must be the case UG is still available for adult second language learning and completeness in second language grammars is possible; if not, then completeness cannot be included as a possible characteristic of adult second language acquisition. Proficient nonnative university students with the above native languages were given grammaticality judgement tests on a set of sentences containing a variety of structures (islands) and Subjacency violations involving those structures. Analysis showed that though all groups were able to correctly judge grammatical sentences (containing islands) as grammatical, only the Dutch group was able to correctly judge ungrammatical sentences (containing Subjacency violations) as ungrammatical; the Korean subjects performed randomly on this task. This native language effect was shown not to be due to attribute variables, such as age of first exposure to English, number of months in an English-speaking country, number of years of English study, etc. The results support the conclusion that completeness is not a possible property of adult-acquired grammars since adults no longer have access to UG for the second language learning process.
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Chanethom, Vincent. "Influence of American English on second generation Lao immigrant speakers." English Today 26, no. 3 (August 24, 2010): 20–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078410000179.
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For many centuries, the United States has opened its doors to a variety of immigrants throughout the globe, engendering situations that Fishman (2004: 406) characterizes as ‘pluralistic societal impact.’ Upon coming to America, twentieth century immigrants found themselves immersed in a context in which not only their cultures clashed with that of the U.S., but also their mother tongues interacted with American English. The language patterns resulting from such interactions between immigrants' native languages and American English has been of great interest to the linguistic research community for the past several decades. For instance, research in the field of language contact has been particularly marked by the influential work undertaken by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) in which they developed a model to predict the nature of these contact-induced changes and to examine the mechanism by which these changes emerge.
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Sato, Takanori, and Tim McNamara. "What Counts in Second Language Oral Communication Ability? The Perspective of Linguistic Laypersons." Applied Linguistics 40, no. 6 (September 14, 2018): 894–916. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/amy032.
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Abstract Applied linguists have developed complex theories of the ability to communicate in a second language (L2). However, the perspectives on L2 communication ability of speakers who are not trained language professionals have been incorporated neither into theories of communication ability nor in the criteria for assessing performance on general-purpose oral proficiency tests. This potentially weakens the validity of such tests because the ultimate arbiters of L2 speakers’ oral performance are not trained language professionals. This study investigates the perspectives of these linguistic laypersons on L2 communication ability. Twenty-three native and non-native English-speaking linguistic laypersons judged L2 speakers’ oral performances and verbalized the reasons for their judgments. The results showed that the participants focus not only on the linguistic aspects of the speaker’s output but also on features that applied linguists have less paid attention to. Even where speaker’s linguistic errors were acknowledged, message conveyance and comprehensibility of the message contributed to their judgment. The study has implications for language testing and the development of tests reflecting the construct of English as a lingua franca.
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Li, Bin, Yingting Cui, Yan Dou, and Yan Liu. "English-as-a-second-language speakers’ perception of personality in English speech." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 140, no. 4 (October 2016): 3333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4970622.
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Techentin, Cheryl, David R. Cann, Melissa Lupton, and Derek Phung. "Sarcasm detection in native English and English as a second language speakers." Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale 75, no. 2 (June 2021): 133–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cep0000241.
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Mcdonald, Janet L. "Sentence interpretation in bilingual speakers of English and Dutch." Applied Psycholinguistics 8, no. 4 (December 1987): 379–413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400000382.
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ABSTRACTSpeakers of English and Dutch vary in how strongly they use various syntactic (e.g., word order, prepositions, case inflection) and semantic (e.g., noun animacy) cues to interpret native language sentences. For example, in simple NVN sentences, English speakers rely heavily on word order, while Dutch speakers rely on case inflection. This paper compares the cue usage of English/Dutch and Dutch/English bilinguals with varying amounts of second language exposure to that of native speaker control groups. For all constructions tested, dative constructions, simple NVN sentences, and relative clauses, it was found that with increasing exposure, cue usage in the second language gradually shifts from that appropriate to the first language to that appropriate to the second. A model of cue learning originally proposed to account for monolingual data is found to be compatible with the learning pattern exhibited by bilinguals.
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Takahashi, Satomi, and Herbert L. Roitblat. "Comprehension process of second language indirect requests." Applied Psycholinguistics 15, no. 4 (October 1994): 475–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400006883.
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ABSTRACTThis study examined the comprehension of English conventional indirect requests by native English speakers and Japanese learners of English. Subjects read stories inducing either a conventional or a literal interpretation of a priming sentence. Reading speeds did not vary as a function of the interpretation. Subsequent target sentences that paraphrased either the literal or the conventional interpretation of the prime sentence were read more quickly when they paraphrased a conventional interpretation of the sentence than when they paraphrased a literal interpretation. Target sentences were also read more quickly if they paraphrased the interpretation induced by the context than if they did not match. The results suggest that both native and nonnative speakers process both meanings of an ambiguous conventional request.
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El-Dakhs, Dina Abdel Salam. "Investigating the apology strategies of Saudi learners of English." Pragmatics and Society 9, no. 4 (December 31, 2018): 598–625. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ps.16048.eld.
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Abstract The present study examines the apologetic behavior of Saudi learners of English in a foreign language learning context. The study also investigates the influence of language exposure, gender, distance and dominance on the learners’ apologies. To this end, a Discourse Completion Test was completed by (1) 411 Saudi learners of English, (2) 42 native speakers of Saudi Arabic and (3) 47 native speakers of English. The groups of native speakers provided the norms of apologetic behavior in the learners’ first (L1) and second (L2) languages. The results showed the Saudi participants’ preference for face-saving strategies to both the speaker and hearer, and a positive influence for increased L2 exposure on the learners’ pragmatic competence. The variables of gender, distance and dominance also proved influential but to varying degrees. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature and theoretical models. Pedagogical implications and research directions are proposed.
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Kayam, Orly. "Heritage Language Maintenance among Native English Speakers Living in Israel." Journal of Sociological Research 4, no. 2 (October 23, 2013): 308. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/jsr.v4i2.4446.
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<p>Heritage language maintenance research most often focuses on heritage languages in English dominant societies. This paper presents a case-study, the second in a series, which focuses on the family language policy experiences, strategies, and outcomes of native English speakers raising children in a Hebrew dominant environment in Israel. </p>
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Et al., Dr Kampol Navun. "Non - Native Speakers Motivation in Learning English as Second Language." Psychology and Education Journal 58, no. 1 (January 29, 2021): 1490–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.17762/pae.v58i1.934.
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The demand for a good communication is the basis for every language learning activity, regardless of the language being learned. Studies on language leaning have shown that motivation is a key role, which moves a learner towards attaining proficiency in the goal language. The target of studying may be communicative, linguistic, materialistic or academic. It could also take from the need to improve one’s linguistic skills already acquired, in order to be a more competent user of the language and to be better communicator. In this situation, as a cognitive factor motivation plays an important role in learning English as a second or a Foreign language. The objective of this present article analyzes the motivation in learning English as second language of non - native speakers. The non - native speakers are from different social and educational backgrounds. The results of the study show that motivation is an important portion which language learning and varies with individual learners. What triggers motivation is the focus of the study that takes a few interesting attitudes of the leaners to limelight.
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Wang, Ying. "Native English speakers' authority in English." English Today 32, no. 1 (December 21, 2015): 35–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078415000516.
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Given the unprecedented spread of English, native English speakers (NESs) have been estimated to number 508 million by 2050 (Graddol, 1997: 27), while a bold estimation of speakers of English is 2 billion by 2050 (Crystal, 2008: 4–5). The international demographic profile of English presents a scenario whereby the development of English depends on how this language is used by non-native English speakers (NNESs), who are obviously in the majority for English use (e.g. Brumfit, 2001: 116; Crystal, 2008: 6; Graddol, 1997: 10; Mauranen, 2012; Seidlhofer, 2011: 7–8). While the importance of the number of English speakers globally is acknowledged, English in China remains a particularly interesting area for linguists. Not only English is widely learned in China, but also Chinese speakers of English are increasingly involved in intercultural encounters. In Graddol's (1997, 2006) discussion of the future of English, a comprehensive account is put forward about China, a country that has statistical significance for the development of English, given its large population of people who know English and its economic development. As Crystal (2008: 5) notes: [I]f India is the significant factor in relation to second-language speakers (in the sense of countries where English has some sort of special status), then China is surely the corresponding factor in relation to foreign-language speakers (in the sense of countries where the language has no official status). In this sense, it would seem that China will play an important role in shaping the profile of English use in the future. If this is an acceptable hypothesis, the development of English in China has implications for the future world of English use.
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Riazantseva, Anastasia. "SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PAUSING A Study of Russian Speakers of English." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, no. 4 (December 2001): 497–526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s027226310100403x.
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The present study examines the relationship between second language (L2) proficiency and pausing patterns (i.e., pause duration, frequency, and distribution) in the speech of 30 Russian speakers of English performing two oral tasks—a topic narrative and a cartoon description—in Russian and in English. The subjects were divided into two oral English proficiency groups, high and intermediate, on the basis of a standardized test of spoken English. Baseline data were collected from a control group of 20 native English speakers. Statistical analyses were performed to determine: (a) the native norms of pause duration, frequency, and distribution for Russian and English on the two experimental tasks; (b) the effect of the level of L2 proficiency (high and intermediate) on the pausing of Russian speakers in English; and (c) the differences or similarities in pausing exhibited by native English speakers and native Russian speakers (with two different levels of English proficiency) when speaking English. The results of this study indicate that English and Russian informal monologue speech can be characterized as having different pausing conventions, thus suggesting that crosslinguistic differences involve, among many other aspects, contrasts in pausing patterns. Additionally, L2 proficiency was found to affect the pause duration of advanced nonnative speakers in that they were able to adjust the duration of their pauses in English to produce a nativelike pausing norm. It was also found that even highly proficient L2 speakers pause more frequently in their L2 than in their first language (L1). The examination of pause distribution patterns suggests that persons of intermediate to high L2 speaking proficiency make the same number of within-constituent pauses as native speakers. Overall, the findings of this study support the view that adherence to the target language pausing norms may lead to the perception of nonnative speech as more fluent and nativelike. The findings also highlight the importance of exposing L2 students to a richer variety of situations that illustrate native patterns of verbal communication.
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RÄSÄNEN, SANNA HEINI MARIA, and JULIAN M. PINE. "Emotional force of languages in multilingual speakers in Finland." Applied Psycholinguistics 35, no. 3 (December 10, 2012): 443–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716412000471.
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ABSTRACTThe aim of the present study was to investigate whether the better recall of emotional words applies to both native and later-learned languages. In a mixed design, 41 native Finnish speakers, who were substantially less proficient in their later-learned languages, which were English (second language) and Swedish (third language), were shown negative/taboo, positive, and neutral words in the three languages. Their memory for the words was assessed in an unexpected free recall test preceded by a depth of processing task (deep or shallow). The results revealed that an emotion-word advantage was visible for negatively valenced words (negative/taboo) in the native language, Finnish, and the second language, English. However, the nature of the processing task had no significant effect on recall. Additional self-report measures indicated that English was perceived as more emotional and more frequently used than Swedish. These results suggest that the amount and frequency of everyday exposure to a particular language are two critical factors in determining the degree of emotionality of that language for the speaker.
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KAAN, EDITH, and EUNJIN CHUN. "Priming and adaptation in native speakers and second-language learners." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21, no. 2 (February 6, 2017): 228–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728916001231.
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Native speakers show rapid adjustment of their processing strategies and preferences on the basis of the structures they have recently encountered. The present study investigated the nature of priming and adaptation in second-language (L2) speakers and, more specifically, whether similar mechanisms underlie L2 and native language adaptation. Native English speakers and Korean L2 learners of English completed a written priming study probing the use of double object and prepositional phrase datives. Both groups showed cumulative adaptation effects for both types of dative, which was stronger for the structure that was initially less frequent to them (prepositional phrase datives for the native English speakers, and double object datives for the L2 learners). This supports models of priming that incorporate frequency-based modulation of long-lasting activation of structures. L2 learners and native speakers use similar processing mechanisms; differences in adaptation can be accounted for by differences in the relative frequency of structures.
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Skarnitzl, Radek, and Pavel Šturm. "Voicing Assimilation in Czech and Slovak Speakers of English: Interactions of Segmental Context, Language and Strength of Foreign Accent." Language and Speech 60, no. 3 (July 8, 2016): 427–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830916654509.
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This study focuses on voicing assimilation across word boundaries in the speech of second language (L2) users. We compare native speakers of British English to speakers of two West Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak, which, despite their many similarities, differ with respect to voicing assimilation rules. Word-final voicing was analysed in 30 speakers, using the static value of voicing percentage and the voicing profile method. The results of linear mixed-effects modelling suggest an effect of first language (L1) transfer in all L2 English speaker groups, with the tendency to assimilate being correlated with the strength of foreign accent. Importantly, the two language groups differed in assimilation strategies before sonorant consonants, as a clear effect of L1-based phonetic influence.
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GUTIÉRREZ-CLELLEN, VERA F., GABRIELA SIMON-CEREIJIDO, and CHRISTINE WAGNER. "Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners." Applied Psycholinguistics 29, no. 1 (January 2008): 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716408080016.
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ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine whether English finite morphology has the potential to differentiate children with and without language impairment (LI) from Spanish-speaking backgrounds and different levels of English proficiency in comparison to Hispanic English speakers and (b) to investigate the extent to which children who are bilingual exhibit differences in their grammatical performance because of cross-linguistic influence from their first language. Seventy-one children between the ages of 4 years, 5 months and 6 years, 5 months were distributed into the following five groups: English as a first language (EL1) speakers with typical language development (TLD), EL1 speakers with LI, Spanish–English bilinguals with TLD, Spanish–English bilinguals with LI, and English as a second language (EL2) learners with TLD were compared on regular verb finiteness and nominative subject use using spontaneous narrative samples. The EL1 children with LI had significantly lower verb accuracy rates than the EL1 controls with TLD. Verb finiteness marking was also a significant discriminator for the bilinguals with LI. There was no evidence of cross-linguistic influence, however. The analysis indicated no significant differences between EL1 and bilingual children on subject or verb use. The EL2 group only presented difficulties with finite verb use. The typological differences between English and Spanish for overt subject use did not seem to affect the performance of either typical or atypical bilingual learners. The findings underscore the need for addressing language dominance in future bilingual studies.
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LIM, JUNG HYUN, and KIEL CHRISTIANSON. "Second language sentence processing in reading for comprehension and translation." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16, no. 3 (September 6, 2012): 518–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728912000351.
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A self-paced reading and translation task was used with learners of English as a second language (L2) to explore what sorts of information L2 learners use during online comprehension compared to native speakers, and how task (reading for comprehension vs. translation) and proficiency affect L2 comprehension. Thirty-six Korean native speakers of English and 32 native English speakers read plausible and implausible subject relative clauses and object relative clauses. Reading times, comprehension accuracy, and translations were analyzed. Results showed that L2 learners were able to use syntactic information similarly to native speakers during comprehension, and that online L2 processing and offline comprehension were modulated by reading goals and proficiency. Results are interpreted as showing that L2 processing is quantitatively rather than qualitatively different from first language processing, i.e. strategically “good enough”.
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Maledo, Richard Oliseyenum, and Simeon Igbomene. "Sentential Negation in English and Izon Languages." Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 2, no. 4 (October 30, 2020): 38–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.32996/jeltal.2020.2.4.5.
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This paper is a contrastive study of Sentential Negation in English and Izon languages. Contact language situations have given rise not only to the influences of one language over the other but also to the differences between the structures of the two languages in contact and the likely learning difficulties which an L1 learner of a second language may likely encounter in learning the structure of the L2. Thus, the data for this study were sourced from competent native speakers of the Ogbe-Ijo dialect of the Izon language and a contrastive approach was adopted using the Chomskyan’s Government and Binding theory as a theoretical framework with a view to identifying the structural variations, hierarchy of difficulties and the likely learning problems an Izon learner of English as a second language may encounter at the level of Negation. It discovers that there were obvious parametric variations between the English and Izon languages at the levels of do insertion and the negative particle not among others. It then recommends that conscious efforts should be made by teachers and Izon learners / speakers of English as a second language at the level of realisation of negation in English as a second language.
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Simon, Ellen. "Acquiring a new second language contrast: an analysis of the English laryngeal system of native speakers of Dutch." Second Language Research 25, no. 3 (June 25, 2009): 377–408. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658309104580.
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This study examines the acquisition of the English laryngeal system by native speakers of (Belgian) Dutch. Both languages have a two-way laryngeal system, but while Dutch contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, English has a contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops. The primary aim of the article is to test two hypotheses on the acquisition process based on first language acquisition research: (1) native speakers of a voicing language will succeed in producing short-lag stops in the target aspirating language, since short-lag stops occur early in first language acquisition and can be considered unmarked and since one member of the contrast is formed by short-lag stops in both voicing and aspirating languages, and (2) native speakers of a voicing language will succeed in acquiring long-lag stops in the target language, because aspiration is an acoustically salient realization. The analysis is based on an examination of natural speech data (conversations between dyads of informants), combined with the results of a controlled reading task. Both types of data were gathered in Dutch as well as in EngDutch(i.e. the English speech of native speakers of Dutch). The analysis revealed an interesting pattern: while the first language (L1) Dutch speakers were successful in acquiring long-lag aspirated stops (confirming hypothesis 2), they did not acquire English short-lag stops (rejecting hypothesis 1). Instead of the target short-lag stops, the L1 Dutch speakers produced prevoiced stops and frequently transferred regressive voice assimilation with voiced stops as triggers from Dutch into English. Various explanations for this pattern in terms of acoustic salience, perceptual cues and training will be considered.