Bilingual and Monolingual Children Prefer Native-Accented Speakers

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Andre L. eSouza

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007. Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld & Lambert, 1964, which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children’s reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers.

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Souza, André L; Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Poulin-Dubois, Diane

2013-01-01

Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler et al., 2007). Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld and Lambert, 1964), which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children's reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

The Acquisition of English Focus Marking by Non-Native Speakers

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Baker, Rachel Elizabeth

This dissertation examines Mandarin and Korean speakers' acquisition of English focus marking, which is realized by accenting particular words within a focused constituent. It is important for non-native speakers to learn how accent placement relates to focus in English because appropriate accent placement and realization makes a learner's English more native-like and easier to understand. Such knowledge may also improve their English comprehension skills. In this study, 20 native English speakers, 20 native Mandarin speakers, and 20 native Korean speakers participated in four experiments: (1) a production experiment, in which they were recorded reading the answers to questions, (2) a perception experiment, in which they were asked to determine which word in a recording was the last prominent word, (3) an understanding experiment, in which they were asked whether the answers in recorded question-answer pairs had context-appropriate prosody, and (4) an accent placement experiment, in which they were asked which word they would make prominent in a particular context. Finally, a new group of native English speakers listened to utterances produced in the production experiment, and determined whether the prosody of each utterance was appropriate for its context. The results of the five experiments support a novel predictive model for second language prosodic focus marking acquisition. This model holds that both transfer of linguistic features from a learner's native language (L1) and features of their second language (L2) affect learners' acquisition of prosodic focus marking. As a result, the model includes two complementary components: the Transfer Component and the L2 Challenge Component. The Transfer Component predicts that prosodic structures in the L2 will be more easily acquired by language learners that have similar structures in their L1 than those who do not, even if there are differences between the L1 and L2 in how the structures are realized. The L2

Word Durations in Non-Native English

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Baker, Rachel E.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Bonnasse-Gahot, Laurent; Kim, Midam; Van Engen, Kristin J.; Bradlow, Ann R.

2010-01-01

In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, and 20 Chinese speakers. We also had AE listeners rate the `accentedness' of these non-native speakers. AE speech had shorter durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, greater reduction of function words, and less between-speaker variance than non-native speech. However, both AE and non-native speakers showed sensitivity to lexical predictability by reducing second mentions and high frequency words. Non-native speakers with more native-like word durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, and greater function word reduction were perceived as less accented. Overall, these findings identify word duration as an important and complex feature of foreign-accented English. PMID:21516172

Complimenting Functions by Native English Speakers and Iranian EFL Learners: A Divergence or Convergence

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Ali Akbar Ansarin

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The study of compliment speech act has been under investigation on many occasions in recent years. In this study, an attempt is made to explore appraisals performed by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners to find out how these two groups diverge or converge from each other with regard to complimenting patterns and norms. The participants of the study were 60 advanced Iranian EFL learners who were speaking Persian as their first language and 60 native English speakers. Through a written Discourse Completion Task comprised of eight different scenarios, compliments were analyzed with regard to topics (performance, personality, possession, and skill, functions (explicit, implicit, and opt-out, gender differences and the common positive adjectives used by two groups of native and nonnative participants. The findings suggested that native English speakers praised individuals more implicitly in comparison with Iranian EFL learners and native speakers provided opt-outs more frequently than Iranian EFL learners did. The analysis of data by Chi-square showed that gender and macro functions are independent of each other among Iranian EFL learners’ compliments while for native speakers, gender played a significant role in the distribution of appraisals. Iranian EFL learners’ complimenting patterns converge more towards those of native English speakers. Moreover, both groups favored explicit compliments. However, Iranian EFL learners were more inclined to provide explicit compliments. It can be concluded that there were more similarities rather than differences between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers regarding compliment speech act. The results of this study can benefit researchers, teachers, material developers, and EFL learners.

Adding More Fuel to the Fire: An Eye-Tracking Study of Idiom Processing by Native and Non-Native Speakers

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Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna; Conklin, Kathy; Schmitt, Norbert

2011-01-01

Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ("at the end of the day"--"eventually"), literally ("at the end of the day"--"in the evening"), and novel phrases ("at the end of the war"). Native speaker results…

During Threaded Discussions Are Non-Native English Speakers Always at a Disadvantage?

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Shafer Willner, Lynn

2014-01-01

When participating in threaded discussions, under what conditions might non¬native speakers of English (NNSE) be at a comparative disadvantage to their classmates who are native speakers of English (NSE)? This study compares the threaded discussion perspectives of closely-matched NNSE and NSE adult students having different levels of threaded…

Native Speakers as Teachers in Turkey: Non-Native Pre-Service English Teachers' Reactions to a Nation-Wide Project

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Coskun, Abdullah

2013-01-01

Although English is now a recognized international language and the concept of native speaker is becoming more doubtful every day, the empowerment of the native speakers of English as language teaching professionals is still continuing (McKay, 2002), especially in Asian countries like China and Japan. One of the latest examples showing the…

Visual and auditory digit-span performance in native and nonnative speakers

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Olsthoorn, N.M.; Andringa, S.; Hulstijn, J.H.

2014-01-01

We compared 121 native and 114 non-native speakers of Dutch (with 35 different first languages) on four digit-span tasks, varying modality (visual/auditory) and direction (forward/backward). An interaction was observed between nativeness and modality, such that, while natives performed better than

STUDENTS WRITING EMAILS TO FACULTY: AN EXAMINATION OF E-POLITENESS AMONG NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH

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Sigrun Biesenbach-Lucas

2007-02-01

Full Text Available This study combines interlanguage pragmatics and speech act research with computer-mediated communication and examines how native and non-native speakers of English formulate low- and high-imposition requests to faculty. While some research claims that email, due to absence of non-verbal cues, encourages informal language, other research has claimed the opposite. However, email technology also allows writers to plan and revise messages before sending them, thus affording the opportunity to edit not only for grammar and mechanics, but also for pragmatic clarity and politeness.The study examines email requests sent by native and non-native English speaking graduate students to faculty at a major American university over a period of several semesters and applies Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper’s (1989 speech act analysis framework – quantitatively to distinguish levels of directness, i.e. pragmatic clarity; and qualitatively to compare syntactic and lexical politeness devices, the request perspectives, and the specific linguistic request realization patterns preferred by native and non-native speakers. Results show that far more requests are realized through direct strategies as well as hints than conventionally indirect strategies typically found in comparative speech act studies. Politeness conventions in email, a text-only medium with little guidance in the academic institutional hierarchy, appear to be a work in progress, and native speakers demonstrate greater resources in creating e-polite messages to their professors than non-native speakers. A possible avenue for pedagogical intervention with regard to instruction in and acquisition of politeness routines in hierarchically upward email communication is presented.

Promoting Communities of Practice among Non-Native Speakers of English in Online Discussions

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Kim, Hoe Kyeung

2011-01-01

An online discussion involving text-based computer-mediated communication has great potential for promoting equal participation among non-native speakers of English. Several studies claimed that online discussions could enhance the academic participation of non-native speakers of English. However, there is little research around participation…

Psychophysical Boundary for Categorization of Voiced-Voiceless Stop Consonants in Native Japanese Speakers

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Tamura, Shunsuke; Ito, Kazuhito; Hirose, Nobuyuki; Mori, Shuji

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychophysical boundary used for categorization of voiced-voiceless stop consonants in native Japanese speakers. Method: Twelve native Japanese speakers participated in the experiment. The stimuli were synthetic stop consonant-vowel stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT) with…

The native-speaker fever in English language teaching (ELT: Pitting pedagogical competence against historical origin

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Anchimbe, Eric A.

2006-01-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses English language teaching (ELT around the world, and argues that as a profession, it should emphasise pedagogical competence rather than native-speaker requirement in the recruitment of teachers in English as a foreign language (EFL and English as a second language (ESL contexts. It establishes that being a native speaker does not make one automatically a competent speaker or, of that matter, a competent teacher of the language. It observes that on many grounds, including physical, sociocultural, technological and economic changes in the world as well as the status of English as official and national language in many post-colonial regions, the distinction between native and non-native speakers is no longer valid.

Reflecting on the dichotomy native-non native speakers in an EFL context

OpenAIRE

Mariño, Claudia

2011-01-01

This article provides a discussion based on constructs about the dichotomy betweennative and non-native speakers. Several models and examples are displayed about thespreading of the English language with the intention of understanding its developmentin the whole world and in Colombia, specifically. Then, some possible definitions aregiven to the term “native speaker” and its conceptualization is described as both realityand myth. One of the main reasons for writing this article is grounded on...

The Status of Native Speaker Intuitions in a Polylectal Grammar.

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Debose, Charles E.

A study of one speaker's intuitions about and performance in Black English is presented with relation to Saussure's "langue-parole" dichotomy. Native speakers of a language have intuitions about the static synchronic entities although the data of their speaking is variable and panchronic. These entities are in a diglossic relationship to each…

Is the superior verbal memory span of Mandarin speakers due to faster rehearsal?

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Mattys, Sven L; Baddeley, Alan; Trenkic, Danijela

2018-04-01

It is well established that digit span in native Chinese speakers is atypically high. This is commonly attributed to a capacity for more rapid subvocal rehearsal for that group. We explored this hypothesis by testing a group of English-speaking native Mandarin speakers on digit span and word span in both Mandarin and English, together with a measure of speed of articulation for each. When compared to the performance of native English speakers, the Mandarin group proved to be superior on both digit and word spans while predictably having lower spans in English. This suggests that the Mandarin advantage is not limited to digits. Speed of rehearsal correlated with span performance across materials. However, this correlation was more pronounced for English speakers than for any of the Chinese measures. Further analysis suggested that speed of rehearsal did not provide an adequate account of differences between Mandarin and English spans or for the advantage of digits over words. Possible alternative explanations are discussed.

Expression and recognition of emotion in native and foreign speech : the case of Mandarin and Dutch

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Zhu, Yinyin

2013-01-01

This study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese. There is an acoustic analysis in this dissertation which shows the differences between

An analysis of topics and vocabulary in Chinese oral narratives by normal speakers and speakers with fluent aphasia.

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Law, Sam-Po; Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Lai, Christy

2018-01-01

This study analysed the topic and vocabulary of Chinese speakers based on language samples of personal recounts in a large spoken Chinese database recently made available in the public domain, i.e. Cantonese AphasiaBank ( http://www.speech.hku.hk/caphbank/search/ ). The goal of the analysis is to offer clinicians a rich source for selecting ecologically valid training materials for rehabilitating Chinese-speaking people with aphasia (PWA) in the design and planning of culturally and linguistically appropriate treatments. Discourse production of 65 Chinese-speaking PWA of fluent types (henceforth, PWFA) and their non-aphasic controls narrating an important event in their life were extracted from Cantonese AphasiaBank. Analyses of topics and vocabularies in terms of part-of-speech, word frequency, lexical semantics, and diversity were conducted. There was significant overlap in topics between the two groups. While the vocabulary was larger for controls than that of PWFA as expected, they were similar in distribution across parts-of-speech, frequency of occurrence, and the ratio of concrete to abstract items in major open word classes. Moreover, proportionately more different verbs than nouns were employed at the individual level for both speaker groups. The findings provide important implications for guiding directions of aphasia rehabilitation not only of fluent but also non-fluent Chinese aphasic speakers.

The effect on recognition memory of noise cancelling headphones in a noisy environment with native and nonnative speakers

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Brett R C Molesworth

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Noise has the potential to impair cognitive performance. For nonnative speakers, the effect of noise on performance is more severe than their native counterparts. What remains unknown is the effectiveness of countermeasures such as noise attenuating devices in such circumstances. Therefore, the main aim of the present research was to examine the effectiveness of active noise attenuating countermeasures in the presence of simulated aircraft noise for both native and nonnative English speakers. Thirty-two participants, half native English speakers and half native German speakers completed four recognition (cued recall tasks presented in English under four different audio conditions, all in the presence of simulated aircraft noise. The results of the research indicated that in simulated aircraft noise at 65 dB(A, performance of nonnative English speakers was poorer than for native English speakers. The beneficial effects of noise cancelling headphones in improving the signal to noise ratio led to an improved performance for nonnative speakers. These results have particular importance for organizations operating in a safety-critical environment such as aviation.

Topic Continuity in Informal Conversations between Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

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Morris-Adams, Muna

2013-01-01

Topic management by non-native speakers (NNSs) during informal conversations has received comparatively little attention from researchers, and receives surprisingly little attention in second language learning and teaching. This article reports on one of the topic management strategies employed by international students during informal, social…

Infants' Selectively Pay Attention to the Information They Receive from a Native Speaker of Their Language.

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Marno, Hanna; Guellai, Bahia; Vidal, Yamil; Franzoi, Julia; Nespor, Marina; Mehler, Jacques

2016-01-01

From the first moments of their life, infants show a preference for their native language, as well as toward speakers with whom they share the same language. This preference appears to have broad consequences in various domains later on, supporting group affiliations and collaborative actions in children. Here, we propose that infants' preference for native speakers of their language also serves a further purpose, specifically allowing them to efficiently acquire culture specific knowledge via social learning. By selectively attending to informants who are native speakers of their language and who probably also share the same cultural background with the infant, young learners can maximize the possibility to acquire cultural knowledge. To test whether infants would preferably attend the information they receive from a speaker of their native language, we familiarized 12-month-old infants with a native and a foreign speaker, and then presented them with movies where each of the speakers silently gazed toward unfamiliar objects. At test, infants' looking behavior to the two objects alone was measured. Results revealed that infants preferred to look longer at the object presented by the native speaker. Strikingly, the effect was replicated also with 5-month-old infants, indicating an early development of such preference. These findings provide evidence that young infants pay more attention to the information presented by a person with whom they share the same language. This selectivity can serve as a basis for efficient social learning by influencing how infants' allocate attention between potential sources of information in their environment.

"I May Be a Native Speaker but I'm Not Monolingual": Reimagining "All" Teachers' Linguistic Identities in TESOL

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Ellis, Elizabeth M.

2016-01-01

Teacher linguistic identity has so far mainly been researched in terms of whether a teacher identifies (or is identified by others) as a native speaker (NEST) or nonnative speaker (NNEST) (Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Reis, 2011). Native speakers are presumed to be monolingual, and nonnative speakers, although by definition bilingual, tend to be…

Accent, Intelligibility, and the Role of the Listener: Perceptions of English-Accented German by Native German Speakers

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Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Watzinger-Tharp, Johanna

2012-01-01

We explore the relationship between accentedness and intelligibility, and investigate how listeners' beliefs about nonnative speech interact with their accentedness and intelligibility judgments. Native German speakers and native English learners of German produced German sentences, which were presented to 12 native German speakers in accentedness…

White Native English Speakers Needed: The Rhetorical Construction of Privilege in Online Teacher Recruitment Spaces

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Ruecker, Todd; Ives, Lindsey

2015-01-01

Over the past few decades, scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of native speakerism in the field of TESOL. Several recent studies have exposed instances of native speakerism in TESOL recruitment discourses published through a variety of media, but none have focused specifically on professional websites advertising programs in…

Infants' preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Begus, Katarina; Gliga, Teodora; Southgate, Victoria

2016-01-01

Humans' preference for others who share our group membership is well documented, and this heightened valuation of in-group members seems to be rooted in early development. Before 12 mo of age, infants already show behavioral preferences for others who evidence cues to same-group membership...... such as race or native language, yet the function of this selectivity remains unclear. We examine one of these social biases, the preference for native speakers, and propose that this preference may result from infants' motivation to obtain information and the expectation that interactions with native speakers...... in situations when they can expect to receive information. We then used this neural measure of anticipatory theta activity to explore the expectations of 11-mo-olds when facing social partners who either speak the infants' native language or a foreign tongue (study 2). A larger increase in theta oscillations...

Non-Native English Speakers and Nonstandard English: An In-Depth Investigation

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Polat, Brittany

2012-01-01

Given the rising prominence of nonstandard varieties of English around the world (Jenkins 2007), learners of English as a second language are increasingly called on to communicate with speakers of both native and non-native nonstandard English varieties. In many classrooms around the world, however, learners continue to be exposed only to…

Speaker and Accent Variation Are Handled Differently: Evidence in Native and Non-Native Listeners

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Kriengwatana, Buddhamas; Terry, Josephine; Chládková, Kateřina; Escudero, Paola

2016-01-01

Listeners are able to cope with between-speaker variability in speech that stems from anatomical sources (i.e. individual and sex differences in vocal tract size) and sociolinguistic sources (i.e. accents). We hypothesized that listeners adapt to these two types of variation differently because prior work indicates that adapting to speaker/sex variability may occur pre-lexically while adapting to accent variability may require learning from attention to explicit cues (i.e. feedback). In Experiment 1, we tested our hypothesis by training native Dutch listeners and Australian-English (AusE) listeners without any experience with Dutch or Flemish to discriminate between the Dutch vowels /I/ and /ε/ from a single speaker. We then tested their ability to classify /I/ and /ε/ vowels of a novel Dutch speaker (i.e. speaker or sex change only), or vowels of a novel Flemish speaker (i.e. speaker or sex change plus accent change). We found that both Dutch and AusE listeners could successfully categorize vowels if the change involved a speaker/sex change, but not if the change involved an accent change. When AusE listeners were given feedback on their categorization responses to the novel speaker in Experiment 2, they were able to successfully categorize vowels involving an accent change. These results suggest that adapting to accents may be a two-step process, whereby the first step involves adapting to speaker differences at a pre-lexical level, and the second step involves adapting to accent differences at a contextual level, where listeners have access to word meaning or are given feedback that allows them to appropriately adjust their perceptual category boundaries. PMID:27309889

The Halo surrounding native English speaker teachers in Indonesia

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Angga Kramadibrata

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The Native Speaker Fallacy, a commonly held belief that Native English Speaker Teachers (NESTs are inherently better than Non-NESTs, has long been questioned by ELT researchers. However, this belief still stands strong in the general public. This research looks to understand how much a teacher’s nativeness affects a student’s attitude towards them, as well as the underlying reasons for their attitudes. Sixty seven respondents in two groups were asked to watch an animated teaching video, after which they completed a questionnaire that used Likert-scales to assess comprehensibility, clarity of explanation, engagement, and preference. The videos for both groups were identical apart from the narrator; one spoke in British English, while the other, Indian English. In addition, they were also visually identified as Caucasian and Asian, respectively. The video was controlled for speed of delivery. The quantitative data were then triangulated using qualitative data collected through open questions in the questionnaire as well as from a semi-structured interview conducted with 10 respondents. The data show that there is a significant implicit preference for NEST teachers in the video, as well as in respondent’s actual classes. However, when asked explicitly, respondents didn’t rank nativeness as a very important quality in English teachers. This discrepancy between implicit and explicit attitudes might be due to a subconscious cognitive bias, namely the Halo Effect, in which humans tend to make unjustified presumptions about a person based on known but irrelevant information.

Students Writing Emails to Faculty: An Examination of E-Politeness among Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

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Biesenbach-Lucas, Sigrun

2007-01-01

This study combines interlanguage pragmatics and speech act research with computer-mediated communication and examines how native and non-native speakers of English formulate low- and high-imposition requests to faculty. While some research claims that email, due to absence of non-verbal cues, encourages informal language, other research has…

Long-Term Experience with Chinese Language Shapes the Fusiform Asymmetry of English Reading

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Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Chen, Chuansheng; Wei, Miao; He, Qinghua; Dong, Qi

2015-01-01

Previous studies have suggested differential engagement of the bilateral fusiform gyrus in the processing of Chinese and English. The present study tested the possibility that long-term experience with Chinese language affects the fusiform laterality of English reading by comparing three samples: Chinese speakers, English speakers with Chinese experience, and English speakers without Chinese experience. We found that, when reading words in their respective native language, Chinese and English speakers without Chinese experience differed in functional laterality of the posterior fusiform region (right laterality for Chinese speakers, but left laterality for English speakers). More importantly, compared with English speakers without Chinese experience, English speakers with Chinese experience showed more recruitment of the right posterior fusiform cortex for English words and pseudowords, which is similar to how Chinese speakers processed Chinese. These results suggest that long-term experience with Chinese shapes the fusiform laterality of English reading and have important implications for our understanding of the cross-language influences in terms of neural organization and of the functions of different fusiform subregions in reading. PMID:25598049

Chinese College Students' Views on Native English and Non-Native English in EFL Classrooms

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Qian, Yang; Jingxia, Liu

2016-01-01

With the development of globalization, English is clearly spoken by many more non-native than native speakers, which raises the discussion of English varieties and the debate regarding the conformity to Standard English. Although a large number of studies have shown scholars' attitudes towards native English and non-native English, little research…

Teaching the Native English Speaker How to Teach English

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Odhuu, Kelli

2014-01-01

This article speaks to teachers who have been paired with native speakers (NSs) who have never taught before, and the feelings of frustration, discouragement, and nervousness on the teacher's behalf that can occur as a result. In order to effectively tackle this situation, teachers need to work together with the NSs. Teachers in this scenario…

Phraseology and Frequency of Occurrence on the Web: Native Speakers' Perceptions of Google-Informed Second Language Writing

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Geluso, Joe

2013-01-01

Usage-based theories of language learning suggest that native speakers of a language are acutely aware of formulaic language due in large part to frequency effects. Corpora and data-driven learning can offer useful insights into frequent patterns of naturally occurring language to second/foreign language learners who, unlike native speakers, are…

A Study on Metadiscoursive Interaction in the MA Theses of the Native Speakers of English and the Turkish Speakers of English

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Köroglu, Zehra; Tüm, Gülden

2017-01-01

This study has been conducted to evaluate the TM usage in the MA theses written by the native speakers (NSs) of English and the Turkish speakers (TSs) of English. The purpose is to compare the TM usage in the introduction, results and discussion, and conclusion sections by both groups' randomly selected MA theses in the field of ELT between the…

Openings and Closings in Telephone Conversations between Native Spanish Speakers.

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Coronel-Molina, Serafin M.

1998-01-01

A study analyzed the opening and closing sequences of 11 dyads of native Spanish-speakers in natural telephone conversations conducted in Spanish. The objective was to determine how closely Hispanic cultural patterns of conduct for telephone conversations follow the sequences outlined in previous research. It is concluded that Spanish…

Reading and Vocabulary Recommendations for Spanish for Native Speakers Materials.

Science.gov (United States)

Spencer, Laura Gutierrez

1995-01-01

Focuses on the need for appropriate materials to address the needs of native speakers of Spanish who study Spanish in American universities and high schools. The most important factors influencing the selection of readings should include the practical nature of themes for reading and vocabulary development, level of difficulty, and variety in…

Acquiring native-like intonation in Dutch and Spanish : Comparing the L1 and L2 of native speakers and second language learners

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Maastricht, L.J.; Swerts, M.G.J.; Krahmer, E.J.

2013-01-01

ACQUIRING NATIVE-LIKE INTONATION IN DUTCH AND SPANISH Comparing the L1 and L2 of native speakers and second language learners Introduction Learning more about the interaction between the native language (L1) and the target language (L2) has been the aim of many studies on second language acquisition

THE ROLE OF NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER TEACHERS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING

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Lutfi Ashar Mauludin

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Native-English Speaker Teachers (NESTs and Non-Native English Speaker Teachers (NNESTs have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, for English Language Learners (ELLs, NNESTs have more advantages in helping students to acquire English skills. At least there are three factors that can only be performed by NNESTs in English Language Learning. The factors are knowledge of the subject, effective communication, and understanding students‘ difficulties/needs. The NNESTs can effectively provide the clear explanation of knowledge of the language because they are supported by the same background and culture. NNESTs also can communicate with the students with all levels effectively. The use of L1 is effective to help students building their knowledge. Finally, NNESTs can provide the objectives and materials that are suitable with the needs of the students.

On Chinese Culture Curriculum Planning

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Wang, Catherine

2006-01-01

The importance of cultural elements in foreign language teaching has been widely accepted in recent years. This applies particularly to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) to non-native Chinese speakers at tertiary level in mainland China. However, there is no commonly accepted blueprint that defines the parts of Chinese culture…

Production of lexical stress in non-native speakers of American English: kinematic correlates of stress and transfer.

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Chakraborty, Rahul; Goffman, Lisa

2011-06-01

To assess the influence of second language (L2) proficiency on production characteristics of rhythmic sequences in the L1 (Bengali) and L2 (English), with emphasis on linguistic transfer. One goal was to examine, using kinematic evidence, how L2 proficiency influences the production of iambic and trochaic words, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects of prosody. A second goal was to assess whether prosodic structure influences judgment of foreign accent. Twenty Bengali-English bilingual individuals, 10 with low proficiency in English and 10 with high proficiency in English, and 10 monolingual English speakers, participated. Lip and jaw movements were recorded while the bilingual participants produced Bengali and English words embedded in sentences. Lower lip movement amplitude and duration were measured in trochaic and iambic words. Six native English listeners judged the nativeness of the bilingual speakers. Evidence of L1-L2 transfer was observed through duration but not amplitude cues. More proficient L2 speakers varied duration to mark iambic stress. Perceptually, the high-proficiency group received relatively higher native-like accent ratings. Trochees were judged as more native than iambs. Even in the face of L1-L2 lexical stress transfer, nonnative speakers demonstrated knowledge of prosodic contrasts. Movement duration appears to be more amenable than amplitude to modifications.

Using Audiovisual TV Interviews to Create Visible Authors that Reduce the Learning Gap between Native and Non-Native Language Speakers

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Inglese, Terry; Mayer, Richard E.; Rigotti, Francesca

2007-01-01

Can archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format)…

L2 Chinese: Grammatical Development and Processing

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Mai, Ziyin

2016-01-01

Two recent books (Jiang, 2014, "Advances in Chinese as a second language"; Wang, 2013, "Grammatical development of Chinese among non-native speakers") provide new resources for exploring the role of processing in acquiring Chinese as a second language (L2). This review article summarizes, assesses and compares some of the…

A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of Apology Strategies Employed by Iranian EFL Learners and English Native Speakers

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Elham Abedi

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The development of speech-act theory has provided the hearers with a better understanding of what speakers intend to perform in the act of communication. One type of speech act is apologizing. When an action or utterance has resulted in an offense, the offender needs to apologize. In the present study, an attempt was made to compare the apology strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners and those of English native speakers in order to find out the possible differences and similarities. To this end, a discourse completion test (DCT was given to 100 male and female Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The respondents were supposed to complete the DCTs based on nine situations, which varied in terms of power between the interlocutors and level of imposition. This study employed Cohen and Olshtain's (1981 model to classify various types of apology strategies. The obtained results revealed some similarities along with some (statistically insignificant differences between EFL learners and American English speakers in terms of their use of apology strategies. Furthermore, it was found that the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs, such as request for forgiveness and an offer of apology were the strategies mostly employed by the Iranian EFL learners while taking on responsibility such as explicit self-blame, and expression of self-deficiency were found to be the strategies mostly used by English native speakers. In terms of gender, the male and female respondents more or less used the same apology strategies in response to the situations. The findings of the present research can be used by language teachers as well as sociolinguists. Keywords: Speech act theory, Speech act of apology, Apology strategies, Iranian EFL learners, English Native speakers, Gender

QUANTITATIVE REDUCTION OF VOWEL GRAPHS “A” AND “O” POSITIONED AFTER THE HARD CONSONANTS IN THE SPEECH OF NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE RUSSIAN SPEAKERS IN LITHUANIA

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Danutė Balšaitytė

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This article analyses the absolute duration (ms of stressed Russian vowels /a/, /o/ (graphs: “a”, “o” and their allophones in unstressed positions after the hard consonants in the pronunciation of native and non-native Russian speakers in Lithuania. The results of the conducted spectral analysis reveal the specificities of quantitative reduction in the speech of the Russian speakers in Lithuania and the Lithuanian speakers that are learning the Russian language. These specificities are influenced by the two phonetic systems interaction. The speakers of both languages by the realisation of “a” and “o” violates the relation of unstressed vowel duration that is peculiar to the contemporary Russian language: the post-stressed vowels in closed syllables are shorter than the pre-stressed vowels; the first pre-stressed syllable differs from the second pre-stressed and post-stressed syllables by a longer voice duration. Both Russians and Lithuanians pronounce vowels longer in post-stressed syllables than in the pre-stressed syllables. This corresponds to the qualitative reduction of the Lithuanian language vowels /a:/ and /o:/. There are certain differences between the pronunciation of qualitative vowels “a” and “o” reduction among the native and non-native Russian speakers in Lithuania. The Russian speakers in Lithuania pronounce the second pre-stressed vowel longer than the first pre-stressed vowel; this corresponds to the degree of reduction of pre-stressed vowels “a” and “o” in the standardised Russian language. These degrees of quantitative reduction in the Lithuanian pronunciation are peculiar only for “a” in the Russian language. According to the duration ratio, the unstressed allophones “a” and “o” in the Russian language are closer to the unstressed /a:/ and /o:/ in the Lithuanian language in the pronunciation of Russian-Lithuanian bilinguals than in the pronunciation Lithuanian speakers.

Adaptive Communication: Languages with More Non-Native Speakers Tend to Have Fewer Word Forms.

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Christian Bentz

Full Text Available Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity. Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language.

Adaptive Communication: Languages with More Non-Native Speakers Tend to Have Fewer Word Forms

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Bentz, Christian; Verkerk, Annemarie; Kiela, Douwe; Hill, Felix; Buttery, Paula

2015-01-01

Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity). Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language. PMID:26083380

Action and object processing in brain-injured speakers of Chinese.

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Arévalo, Analia L; Lu, Ching-Ching; Huang, Lydia B-Y; Bates, Elizabeth A; Dronkers, Nina F

2011-11-01

To see whether action and object processing across different tasks and modalities differs in brain-injured speakers of Chinese with varying fluency and lesion locations within the left hemisphere. Words and pictures representing actions and objects were presented to a group of 33 participants whose native and/or dominant language was Mandarin Chinese: 23 patients with left-hemisphere lesions due to stroke and 10 language-, age- and education-matched healthy control participants. A set of 120 stimulus items was presented to each participant in three different forms: as black and white line drawings (for picture-naming), as written words (for reading) and as aurally presented words (for word repetition). Patients were divided into groups for two separate analyses: Analysis 1 divided and compared patients based on fluency (Fluent vs. Nonfluent) and Analysis 2 compared patients based on lesion location (Anterior vs. Posterior). Both analyses yielded similar results: Fluent, Nonfluent, Anterior, and Posterior patients all produced significantly more errors when processing action (M = 0.73, SD = 0.45) relative to object (M = 0.79, SD = 0.41) stimuli, and this effect was strongest in the picture-naming task. As in our previous study with English-speaking participants using the same experimental design (Arévalo et al., 2007, Arévalo, Moineau, Saygin, Ludy, & Bates, 2005), we did not find evidence for a double-dissociation in action and object processing between groups with different lesion and fluency profiles. These combined data bring us closer to a more informed view of action/object processing in the brain in both healthy and brain-injured individuals.

An Evaluation of Native-speaker Judgements of Foreign-accented British and American English

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Doel, W.Z. van den

2006-01-01

This study is the first ever to employ a large-scale Internet survey to investigate priorities in English pronunciation training. Well over 500 native speakers from throughout the English-speaking world, including North America, the British Isles, Australia and New Zealand, were asked to detect and

Non-Native Speakers of the Language of Instruction: Self-Perceptions of Teaching Ability

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Samuel, Carolyn

2017-01-01

Given the linguistically diverse instructor and student populations at Canadian universities, mutually comprehensible oral language may not be a given. Indeed, both instructors who are non-native speakers of the language of instruction (NNSLIs) and students have acknowledged oral communication challenges. Little is known, though, about how the…

Identity Construction of Native Chinese Language Teachers in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

Abstract This study reports on a qualitative research that investigated how three native Chinese language teachers (NCLTs) constructed their teacher identity as they entered the initial teaching practice in Denmark. Drawing upon a framework that underlines the discursive nature of identity...... stages of their teacher identity construction showed the negotiation of past experiences, present perception, and future ideals in regard to Chinese language, pedagogy and context. Key words: Native Chinese language teachers, teacher identity, discourse analysis, narrative...

Going Beyond the Native Speaker in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

In recent years, researchers within the field of TCFL (teaching Chinese as a foreign language) have begun to examine the notion of Chinese language teacher identity (see e.g., Moloney, 2013; Gao, 2012; Wu et al., 2014); however, whilst insightful, this research has not addressed the ways in which...... a period of three years has been carried out. The study findings reveal that despite they teach Chinese in their own home cultures, the teachers face challenges in constructing their identities as CFL teacher, and that the challenges that arose with their Chinese learning trajectory and their intercultural...

"Would you like RED or WHITE wine? - I would like red WINE" : Native speaker perception of (non-)native intonation patterns

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van Maastricht, L.J.; Swerts, M.G.J.; Krahmer, E.J.

2014-01-01

The importance of intonation in communication cannot be denied (Gussenhoven, 2004; Ladd, 2008). Since the goal of most foreign language learners is to successfully communicate in a language other than their mother tongue, more research on the way they are perceived by native speakers and the role of

Listening to a non-native speaker: Adaptation and generalization

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Clarke, Constance M.

2004-05-01

Non-native speech can cause perceptual difficulty for the native listener, but experience can moderate this difficulty. This study explored the perceptual benefit of a brief (approximately 1 min) exposure to foreign-accented speech using a cross-modal word matching paradigm. Processing speed was tracked by recording reaction times (RTs) to visual probe words following English sentences produced by a Spanish-accented speaker. In experiment 1, RTs decreased significantly over 16 accented utterances and by the end were equal to RTs to a native voice. In experiment 2, adaptation to one Spanish-accented voice improved perceptual efficiency for a new Spanish-accented voice, indicating that abstract properties of accented speech are learned during adaptation. The control group in Experiment 2 also adapted to the accented voice during the test block, suggesting adaptation can occur within two to four sentences. The results emphasize the flexibility of the human speech processing system and the need for a mechanism to explain this adaptation in models of spoken word recognition. [Research supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the University of Arizona Cognitive Science Program.] a)Currently at SUNY at Buffalo, Dept. of Psych., Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, cclarke2@buffalo.edu

A Computer Text Analysis of Four Cohesion Devices in English Discourse by Native and Nonnative Writers.

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Reid, Joy

1992-01-01

In a contrastive rhetoric study of nonnative English speakers, 768 essays written in English by native speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and English were examined using the Writer's Workbench program to determine whether distinctive, quantifiable differences in the use of 4 cohesion devices existed among the 4 language backgrounds. (Author/LB)

The Effects of Single and Dual Coded Multimedia Instructional Methods on Chinese Character Learning

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Wang, Ling

2013-01-01

Learning Chinese characters is a difficult task for adult English native speakers due to the significant differences between the Chinese and English writing system. The visuospatial properties of Chinese characters have inspired the development of instructional methods using both verbal and visual information based on the Dual Coding Theory. This…

Can Learning a Foreign Language Foster Analytic Thinking?-Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners' Writings.

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Jiang, Jingyang; Ouyang, Jinghui; Liu, Haitao

2016-01-01

Language is not only the representation of thinking, but also shapes thinking. Studies on bilinguals suggest that a foreign language plays an important and unconscious role in thinking. In this study, a software-Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007-was used to investigate whether the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) can foster Chinese high school students' English analytic thinking (EAT) through the analysis of their English writings with our self-built corpus. It was found that: (1) learning English can foster Chinese learners' EAT. Chinese EFL learners' ability of making distinctions, degree of cognitive complexity and degree of thinking activeness have all improved along with the increase of their English proficiency and their age; (2) there exist differences in Chinese EFL learners' EAT and that of English native speakers, i. e. English native speakers are better in the ability of making distinctions and degree of thinking activeness. These findings suggest that the best EFL learners in high schools have gained native-like analytic thinking through six years' English learning and are able to switch their cognitive styles as needed.

English Language Schooling, Linguistic Realities, and the Native Speaker of English in Hong Kong

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Hansen Edwards, Jette G.

2018-01-01

The study employs a case study approach to examine the impact of educational backgrounds on nine Hong Kong tertiary students' English and Cantonese language practices and identifications as native speakers of English and Cantonese. The study employed both survey and interview data to probe the participants' English and Cantonese language use at…

More than "Hello" and "Bye-Bye": Opening and Closing the Online Chats in Mandarin Chinese

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Zhang, De

2014-01-01

Reporting on a descriptive study on the first semester Chinese language learners' openings and closings in online chats with age-peer native speakers of Chinese, this paper demonstrates the great promise that telecollaboration holds for foreign language education, and argues for an increasing role of pragmatics in Chinese language instruction, and…

Disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English

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Mohsen Rezaeian

2015-05-01

Full Text Available OBJECTIVES: English has become the most frequently used language for scientific communication in the biomedical field. Therefore, scholars from all over the world try to publish their findings in English. This trend has a number of advantages, along with several disadvantages. METHODS: In the current article, the most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English are reviewed. RESULTS: The most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers may include: Overlooking, either unintentionally or even deliberately, the most important local health problems; failure to carry out groundbreaking research due to limited medical research budgets; violating generally accepted codes of publication ethics and committing research misconduct and publications in open-access scam/predatory journals rather than prestigious journals. CONCLUSIONS: The above mentioned disadvantages could eventually result in academic establishments becoming irresponsible or, even worse, corrupt. In order to avoid this, scientists, scientific organizations, academic institutions, and scientific associations all over the world should design and implement a wider range of collaborative and comprehensive plans.

Disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English.

Science.gov (United States)

Rezaeian, Mohsen

2015-01-01

English has become the most frequently used language for scientific communication in the biomedical field. Therefore, scholars from all over the world try to publish their findings in English. This trend has a number of advantages, along with several disadvantages. In the current article, the most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English are reviewed. The most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers may include: Overlooking, either unintentionally or even deliberately, the most important local health problems; failure to carry out groundbreaking research due to limited medical research budgets; violating generally accepted codes of publication ethics and committing research misconduct and publications in open-access scam/predatory journals rather than prestigious journals. The above mentioned disadvantages could eventually result in academic establishments becoming irresponsible or, even worse, corrupt. In order to avoid this, scientists, scientific organizations, academic institutions, and scientific associations all over the world should design and implement a wider range of collaborative and comprehensive plans.

中国现当代小说中的故乡构建初探 (Literary Nativism, the Native Place and Modern Chinese Fiction

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Yiyan Wang

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Although the importance of the native place in Chinese life is beyond dispute and it has been a significant preoccupation of Chinese authors throughout history, literary representations of the native place still remain to be studied systematically. This paper attempts to examine the construction of the native place in modern Chinese fiction and its role in literary representations of China. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the native place in Chinese literature remained an abstract notion without specific geographical locations and the narrative focus was on the ‘native-place sentiment’ (Bryna Goodman 1995. It is a modern phenomenon that the native place appears as a local cultural space with ethnographic details and is closely related to the need for narrating China, although it can still be abstract and symbolic. The construction of the native place is crucial in the project of national narration for modern Chinese fiction, as it is often created as the nation’s cultural origin and authentication. However, the relationship between the native place and national representation in Chinese fiction is paradoxical, because, on the one hand the native place necessarily differs in origin, and on the other hand, many Chinese authors are devoted to China as a cultural totality. This paper will focus on the paradoxical relationship between the authors’ nativist aspirations to create distinctive local cultural identities and their commitment to the abstract idea of a single Chinese nation. Furthermore, both the native place and national narration are intricately associated with the tendency of literary nativism, i.e. the belief and the practice that literary writing should focus on constructing the native place and that the narrative style should continue and develop the indigenous narrative traditions. In other words, poetics is part of the politics in the configuration of the native place. The initial questions I shall try to

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms.

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Zinszer, Benjamin D; Malt, Barbara C; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS FACE A DUAL CHALLENGE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants' response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals' names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals' L2 picture naming responses.

Native-Likeness in Second Language Lexical Categorization Reflects Individual Language History and Linguistic Community Norms

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Benjamin D Zinszer

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Second language learners face a dual challenge in vocabulary learning: First, they must learn new names for the hundreds of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999, and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls in both Chinese and English. Participants’ response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005. For English, bilinguals’ names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals’ L2 picture naming responses.

Teaching Semantic Radicals Facilitates Inferring New Character Meaning in Sentence Reading for Nonnative Chinese Speakers

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Thi Phuong Nguyen

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This study investigates the effects of teaching semantic radicals in inferring the meanings of unfamiliar characters among nonnative Chinese speakers. A total of 54 undergraduates majoring in Chinese Language from a university in Hanoi, Vietnam, who had 1 year of learning experience in Chinese were assigned to two experimental groups that received instructional intervention, called “old-for-new” semantic radical teaching, through two counterbalanced sets of semantic radicals, with one control group. All of the students completed pre- and post-tests of a sentence cloze task where they were required to choose an appropriate character that fit the sentence context among four options. The four options shared the same phonetic radicals but had different semantic radicals. The results showed that the pre-test and post-test score increases were significant for the experimental groups, but not for the control group. Most importantly, the experimental groups successfully transferred the semantic radical strategy to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar characters containing semantic radicals that had not been taught. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching semantic radicals for lexical inference in sentence reading for nonnative speakers, and highlight the ability of transfer learning to acquire semantic categories of sub-lexical units (semantic radicals in Chinese characters among foreign language learners.

Chinese English in as lingua franca in global business setting: A case study of ongoing emails of a foreign company in China

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Wang Wenpu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available With the process of globalization, English has been increasingly become the lingua franca for people speaking different languages to communicate with each other, among whom the number of non-native speakers of English far outnumbers those native speakers in traditional sense. Against this background, the principle of taking the rules of native English speakers as the norms is undergoing challenges. The non-native speakers are claiming the ownership and rights of norm-providing to the English language (Crystal, 2003. In business setting, this is especially true (Charles, 2007. This paper intends to explore the use of Chinese English as lingua franca in business setting. Taking a foreign enterprise based in China as the case, this paper investigates over 400 ongoing business e-mails written in English by its Chinese employees, including the management and other staff. Four most salient patterns of Chinese English structures are identified, i.e., punctuations, absence of inflectional markers in number and tense, serial verb construction, and zero articles, which are then analyzed cultural, linguistic and social-linguistic perspectives. The effectiveness of such language patterns are proved according to the principle of “understandability” proposed by Kachru and Nelson (2006 from both intra-cultural and inter-cultural aspects. Based on the afore-said analysis, this paper concludes that Chinese English, during the process of language contact, has become a legitimate English variation, and has been providing new norms for the other countries to follow. It is suggested that business English users in China need to use their Chinese English with a confident stance, while business partners from other countries need to get familiar with this English variation in order for them to communicate effectively with their Chinese partners.

Linguistic skills of adult native speakers, as a function of age and level of education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mulder, K.; Hulstijn, J.H.

2011-01-01

This study assessed, in a sample of 98 adult native speakers of Dutch, how their lexical skills and their speaking proficiency varied as a function of their age and level of education and profession (EP). Participants, categorized in terms of their age (18-35, 36-50, and 51-76 years old) and the

Non-native Chinese Foreign Language (CFL) Teachers: Identity and Discourse

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

2014-01-01

Abstract Native Chinese foreign language (CFL) teacher identity is an emerging subject of research interest in the teacher education. Yet, limited study has been done on the construction of Non-native CFL teachers in their home culture. Guided by a concept of teacher identity-in-discourse, the pa......Abstract Native Chinese foreign language (CFL) teacher identity is an emerging subject of research interest in the teacher education. Yet, limited study has been done on the construction of Non-native CFL teachers in their home culture. Guided by a concept of teacher identity...... teachers face tensions and challenges in constructing their identities as CFL teachers, and the tensions and challenges that arose from Danish teaching culture could influence the Non-native CFL teachers' contributions to CFL teaching in their home cultures. The findings further show that in order to cope...

A Comparative Study on the Use of Compliment Response Strategies by Persian and English Native Speakers

Science.gov (United States)

Shabani, Mansour; Zeinali, Maryam

2015-01-01

The significance of pragmatic knowledge and politeness strategies has recently been emphasized in language learning and teaching. Most communication failures originate in the lack of pragmatic awareness which is evident among EFL learners while communicating with English native speakers. The present study aimed at investigating compliment response…

Native Speaker Norms and China English: From the Perspective of Learners and Teachers in China

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He, Deyuan; Zhang, Qunying

2010-01-01

This article explores the question of whether the norms based on native speakers of English should be kept in English teaching in an era when English has become World Englishes. This is an issue that has been keenly debated in recent years, not least in the pages of "TESOL Quarterly." However, "China English" in such debates…

Can Learning a Foreign Language Foster Analytic Thinking?—Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners' Writings

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Jingyang; Ouyang, Jinghui; Liu, Haitao

2016-01-01

Language is not only the representation of thinking, but also shapes thinking. Studies on bilinguals suggest that a foreign language plays an important and unconscious role in thinking. In this study, a software—Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007—was used to investigate whether the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) can foster Chinese high school students’ English analytic thinking (EAT) through the analysis of their English writings with our self-built corpus. It was found that: (1) learning English can foster Chinese learners’ EAT. Chinese EFL learners’ ability of making distinctions, degree of cognitive complexity and degree of thinking activeness have all improved along with the increase of their English proficiency and their age; (2) there exist differences in Chinese EFL learners’ EAT and that of English native speakers, i. e. English native speakers are better in the ability of making distinctions and degree of thinking activeness. These findings suggest that the best EFL learners in high schools have gained native-like analytic thinking through six years’ English learning and are able to switch their cognitive styles as needed. PMID:27741270

Exploring Native and Non-Native Intuitions of Word Frequency.

Science.gov (United States)

Schmitt, Norbert; Dunham, Bruce

1999-01-01

Asked native and nonnative speakers to give judgments of frequency for near synonyms in second-language lexical sets and compared those responses to modern corpus word counts. Native speakers were able to discern the core word in lexical sets either 77% or 85%, and nonnative speakers at 71% or 79%. (Author/VWL)

Teaching Arabic to Native Speakers Educational Games in a New Curriculum

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alshikhabobakr, Hanan; Papadopoulos, Pantelis M.; Ibrahim, Zeinab

2016-01-01

This paper presents nine educational games and activities for learning the Arabic language developed for Arabiyyatii project, a three-year endeavor that involves re-conceptualization of the standard Arabic language learning curriculum as a first language for kindergarten students. The applications...... presented in this paper are developed for tabletop surface computers, which support a collaborative and interactive learning environment. These applications focus on speaking, word production, and sentence recognition of the Modern Standard Arabic to young native speakers. This work employs...... an interdisciplinary research framework, exploiting best practices used from related disciplines. Namely: computer-supported collaborative learning, language learning, teaching and learning pedagogy, instructional design and scaffolding....

Learners' Perspectives on Networked Collaborative Interaction With Native Speakers of Spanish in the US

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Lina Lee

2004-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, I discuss a network-based collaborative project that focused on the learning conditions non-native speakers (NNSs of Spanish perceived to be necessary to satisfactoraly communicate with native speakers (NSs. Data from online discussions, end-of-semester surveys, and final oral interviews are presented and discussed. The results of this study demonstrated that the NNS and NS online collaboration promoted the scaffolding by which the NSs assisted the NNSs in composing meaning (ideas and form (grammar. In addition, the NNSs praised the unique learning condition of being exposed to a wide range of functional language discourse produced by the NSs. Students perceived that open-ended questions for two-way exchange were meaningful for them because they were encouraged to use specific vocabulary and structures during the discussions. In spite of the positive conditions and benefits created by networked collaborative interaction (NCI, it was found that there were some major issues that are crucial for NCI. This study demonstrates that learners' language proficiency, computer skills, and age differences are important factors to be considered when incorporating institutional NCI as these may linguistically and socially affect the quality of online negotiation and students' motivation toward NCI. Practical ideas for further research are suggested.

The comparative analysis of English and Lithuanian transport terms and some methods of developing effective science writing strategies by non-native speakers of English

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V. Marina

2009-09-01

Full Text Available The paper addresses the problem of developing more effective strategies and skills of writing scientific and technical texts by non-native speakers of English. The causes of poor writing are identified and general guidelines for developing effective science writing strategies are outlined. The analysis of difficulties faced by non-native speakers of English in writing research papers is made by examining transport terms and international words which are based on different nomination principles in English and Lithuanian. Case study of various names given to a small vehicle used for passenger transportation in many countries is provided, illustrating the alternative ways of naming the same object of reality in different languages. The analysis is based on the theory of linguistic relativity. Differences in the use of similar international terms in English and Lithuanian, which often cause errors and misunderstanding, are also demonstrated. The recommendations helping non-native speakers of English to avoid errors and improve skills of writing scientific and technical texts are given.

Phonological and Visual Similarity Effects in Chinese and English Language Users: Implications for the Use of Cognitive Resources in Short-Term Memory

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Cole, Rachel L.; Pickering, Susan J.

2010-01-01

This study investigated the encoding strategies employed by Chinese and English language users when recalling sequences of pictured objects. The working memory performance of native English participants (n = 14) and Chinese speakers of English as a second language (Chinese ESL; n = 14) was compared using serial recall of visually-presented…

When speaker identity is unavoidable: Neural processing of speaker identity cues in natural speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Tuninetti, Alba; Chládková, Kateřina; Peter, Varghese; Schiller, Niels O; Escudero, Paola

2017-11-01

Speech sound acoustic properties vary largely across speakers and accents. When perceiving speech, adult listeners normally disregard non-linguistic variation caused by speaker or accent differences, in order to comprehend the linguistic message, e.g. to correctly identify a speech sound or a word. Here we tested whether the process of normalizing speaker and accent differences, facilitating the recognition of linguistic information, is found at the level of neural processing, and whether it is modulated by the listeners' native language. In a multi-deviant oddball paradigm, native and nonnative speakers of Dutch were exposed to naturally-produced Dutch vowels varying in speaker, sex, accent, and phoneme identity. Unexpectedly, the analysis of mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes elicited by each type of change shows a large degree of early perceptual sensitivity to non-linguistic cues. This finding on perception of naturally-produced stimuli contrasts with previous studies examining the perception of synthetic stimuli wherein adult listeners automatically disregard acoustic cues to speaker identity. The present finding bears relevance to speech normalization theories, suggesting that at an unattended level of processing, listeners are indeed sensitive to changes in fundamental frequency in natural speech tokens. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Impact of Cyrillic on Native English Speakers' Phono-lexical Acquisition of Russian.

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Showalter, Catherine E

2018-03-01

We investigated the influence of grapheme familiarity and native language grapheme-phoneme correspondences during second language lexical learning. Native English speakers learned Russian-like words via auditory presentations containing only familiar first language phones, pictured meanings, and exposure to either Cyrillic orthographic forms (Orthography condition) or the sequence (No Orthography condition). Orthography participants saw three types of written forms: familiar-congruent (e.g., -[kom]), familiar-incongruent (e.g., -[rɑt]), and unfamiliar (e.g., -[fil]). At test, participants determined whether pictures and words matched according to what they saw during word learning. All participants performed near ceiling in all stimulus conditions, except for Orthography participants on words containing incongruent grapheme-phoneme correspondences. These results suggest that first language grapheme-phoneme correspondences can cause interference during second language phono-lexical acquisition. In addition, these results suggest that orthographic input effects are robust enough to interfere even when the input does not contain novel phones.

Delexical Structures Contrastively: A Common Trap for Non-Native Speakers

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Marjeta Vrbinc

2004-12-01

Full Text Available This article deals with delexical structures and in particular with the problems non-native speakers are faced with when encoding. First, it gives reasons why it is necessary to study the structures and then it discusses the delexical structures in English (monolingual context. The second part of the article focuses on the bilingual aspect, i.e. the translation of English delexical structures into Slovene. Some problems concerning the bilingual context are presented, especially as regards aspect and the difference between the translation of English delexical structures in isolation (e.g. in a dictionary and within the context. The last part of the article concentrates on the dictionary treatment of delexical structures and provides some examples taken from the latest editions of the leading EFL monolingual dictionaries.

Persian Native Speakers Reading Persian and English Texts: Their Strategic Behavior to Overcome Syntactic and Semantic Problems

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Alimorad, Zahra

2015-01-01

This study aimed to discover semantic and syntactic problems Persian native speakers might have while reading English and Persian texts and different strategies they use to overcome those problems. To this end, a convenient sample of 40 intermediate students studying English Literature at Shiraz University was selected. Twenty of them were asked…

English vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination by native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners: The effect of vowel duration dependence.

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Mi, Lin; Tao, Sha; Wang, Wenjing; Dong, Qi; Guan, Jingjing; Liu, Chang

2016-03-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between English vowel identification and English vowel formant discrimination for native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners. The identification of 12 English vowels was measured with the duration cue preserved or removed. The thresholds of vowel formant discrimination on the F2 of two English vowels,/Λ/and/i/, were also estimated using an adaptive-tracking procedure. Native Mandarin Chinese-speaking listeners showed significantly higher thresholds of vowel formant discrimination and lower identification scores than native English-speaking listeners. The duration effect on English vowel identification was similar between native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners. Moreover, regardless of listeners' language background, vowel identification was significantly correlated with vowel formant discrimination for the listeners who were less dependent on duration cues, whereas the correlation between vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination was not significant for the listeners who were highly dependent on duration cues. This study revealed individual variability in using multiple acoustic cues to identify English vowels for both native and non-native listeners. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

English Speakers Attend More Strongly than Spanish Speakers to Manner of Motion when Classifying Novel Objects and Events

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Kersten, Alan W.; Meissner, Christian A.; Lechuga, Julia; Schwartz, Bennett L.; Albrechtsen, Justin S.; Iglesias, Adam

2010-01-01

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual…

Non-Native & Native English Teachers

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İrfan Tosuncuoglu

2017-12-01

Full Text Available In many countries the primary (mother tongue language is not English but there is a great demand for English language teachers all over the world. The demand in this field is try to be filled largely by non-native English speaking teachers who have learned English in the country or abroad, or from another non native English peaking teachers. In some countries, particularly those where English speaking is a a sign of status, the students prefer to learn English from a native English speaker. The perception is that a non-native English speaking teacher is a less authentic teacher than a native English speaker and their instruction is not satifactory in some ways. This paper will try to examine the literature to explore whether there is a difference in instructional effectiveness between NNESTs and native English teachers.

Opening up to Native Speaker Norms: The Use of /?/ in the Speech of Canadian French Immersion Students

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Nadasdi, Terry; Vickerman, Alison

2017-01-01

Our study examines the extent to which French immersion students use lax /?/ in the same linguistic context as native speakers of Canadian French. Our results show that the lax variant is vanishingly rare in the speech of immersion students and is used by only a small minority of individuals. This is interpreted as a limitation of French immersion…

Epistemic Modality in the Argumentative Essays of Chinese EFL Learners

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Hu, Chunyu; Li, Xuyan

2015-01-01

Central to argumentative writing is the proper use of epistemic devices (EDs), which distinguish writers' opinions from facts and evaluate the degree of certainty expressed in their statements. Important as these devices are, they turn out to constitute a thorny area for non-native speakers (NNS). Previous research indicates that Chinese EFL…

Brain Plasticity in Speech Training in Native English Speakers Learning Mandarin Tones

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Heinzen, Christina Carolyn

The current study employed behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate brain plasticity associated with second-language (L2) phonetic learning based on an adaptive computer training program. The program utilized the acoustic characteristics of Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) to train monolingual American English-speaking listeners to perceive Mandarin lexical tones. Behavioral identification and discrimination tasks were conducted using naturally recorded speech, carefully controlled synthetic speech, and non-speech control stimuli. The ERP experiments were conducted with selected synthetic speech stimuli in a passive listening oddball paradigm. Identical pre- and post- tests were administered on nine adult listeners, who completed two-to-three hours of perceptual training. The perceptual training sessions used pair-wise lexical tone identification, and progressed through seven levels of difficulty for each tone pair. The levels of difficulty included progression in speaker variability from one to four speakers and progression through four levels of acoustic exaggeration of duration, pitch range, and pitch contour. Behavioral results for the natural speech stimuli revealed significant training-induced improvement in identification of Tones 1, 3, and 4. Improvements in identification of Tone 4 generalized to novel stimuli as well. Additionally, comparison between discrimination of across-category and within-category stimulus pairs taken from a synthetic continuum revealed a training-induced shift toward more native-like categorical perception of the Mandarin lexical tones. Analysis of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses in the ERP data revealed increased amplitude and decreased latency for pre-attentive processing of across-category discrimination as a result of training. There were also laterality changes in the MMN responses to the non-speech control stimuli, which could reflect reallocation of brain resources in processing pitch patterns

Components and context: exploring sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools.

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Kieffer, Michael J; Vukovic, Rose K

2012-01-01

Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on standardized English language and reading measures. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relative contributions of code-related and linguistic comprehension skills in first and second grade to third grade reading comprehension. Linguistic comprehension and the interaction between linguistic comprehension and code-related skills each explained substantial variation in reading comprehension. Among students with low reading comprehension, more than 80% demonstrated weaknesses in linguistic comprehension alone, whereas approximately 15% demonstrated weaknesses in both linguistic comprehension and code-related skills. Results were remarkably similar for the language minority learners and native English speakers, suggesting the importance of their shared socioeconomic backgrounds and schooling contexts.

Components and Context: Exploring Sources of Reading Difficulties for Language Minority Learners and Native English Speakers in Urban Schools

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Kieffer, Michael J.; Vukovic, Rose K.

2012-01-01

Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on…

Danish-accented Chinese

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Lei; Sloos, Marjoleine 莱娜; Zhang, Chun

In search for a linguistic basis for the education of Chinese as a foreign language CFL in Denmark, we set up a new line of investigation into CFL. This research focuses on the phonetics and phonology of Mandarin Chinese as compared to Danish. Considering the sound systems of both languages, we......-ba /pha pa/ ta-da /tha ta/ ka-ga / kha-ka/ For L2 acquisition it is held that same and new phonemes are (relatively) easy acquired, whereas similar but not identical sounds are difficult to learn. New sounds are initially mapped onto the L1 phoneme inventory (Kuhl 1991). For Danish, this would predict...... instruction, which pitch contours do the Danish learners of Chinese use on neutral tones and to what extent does their production match that of native speakers? Future research may include Norwegian and Swedish-accented Chinese and a comparison between the different Germanic accents of CFL. Reference Kuhl, P...

Evaluation of Arabic Language Learning Program for Non-Native Speakers in Saudi Electronic University According to Total Quality Standards

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Alowaydhi, Wafa Hafez

2016-01-01

The current study aimed at standardizing the program of learning Arabic for non-native speakers in Saudi Electronic University according to certain standards of total quality. To achieve its purpose, the study adopted the descriptive analytical method. The author prepared a measurement tool for evaluating the electronic learning programs in light…

Chinese Students' Perceptions of Native English-Speaking Teachers in EFL Teaching

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Rao, Zhenhui

2010-01-01

The article reports the views of 20 Chinese English as a foreign Language (EFL) students on the strengths and weaknesses of native English-speaking (NES) teachers in EFL teaching. Responding to an open-ended questionnaire and in-depth interviews, EFL students named the following as NES teachers' strengths: native language authenticity, cultural…

Sensitivity to phonological context in L2 spelling: evidence from Russian ESL speakers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dich, Nadya

2010-01-01

The study attempts to investigate factors underlying the development of spellers’ sensitivity to phonological context in English. Native English speakers and Russian speakers of English as a second language (ESL) were tested on their ability to use information about the coda to predict the spelling...... on the information about the coda when spelling vowels in nonwords. In both native and non-native speakers, context sensitivity was predicted by English word spelling; in Russian ESL speakers this relationship was mediated by English proficiency. L1 spelling proficiency did not facilitate L2 context sensitivity...

Personality expression in Chinese language use.

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Qiu, Lin; Lu, Jiahui; Ramsay, Jonathan; Yang, Shanshan; Qu, Weina; Zhu, Tingshao

2017-12-01

To date, little research has investigated personality expressions in languages other than English. Given that the Chinese language has the largest number of native speakers in the world, it is vitally important to examine the associations between personality and Chinese language use. In this research, we analysed Chinese microblogs and identified word categories and factorial structures associated with personality traits. We also compared our results with previous findings in English and showed that linguistic expression of personality has both universal- and language-specific aspects. Expression of personality via content words is more likely to be consistent across languages than expression via function words. This makes an important step towards uncovering universal patterns of personality expression in language. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

Native and Non-native English Teachers' Perceptions of their Professional Identity: Convergent or Divergent?

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Zia Tajeddin

2016-10-01

Full Text Available There is still a preference for native speaker teachers in the language teaching profession, which is supposed to influence the self-perceptions of native and nonnative teachers. However, the status of English as a globalized language is changing the legitimacy of native/nonnative teacher dichotomy. This study sought to investigate native and nonnative English-speaking teachers’ perceptions about native and nonnative teachers’ status and the advantages and disadvantages of being a native or nonnative teacher. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. A total of 200 native and nonnative teachers of English from the UK and the US, i.e. the inner circle, and Turkey and Iran, the expanding circle, participated in this study. A significant majority of nonnative teachers believed that native speaker teachers have better speaking proficiency, better pronunciation, and greater self-confidence. The findings also showed nonnative teachers’ lack of self-confidence and awareness of their role and status compared with native-speaker teachers, which could be the result of existing inequities between native and nonnative English-speaking teachers in ELT. The findings also revealed that native teachers disagreed more strongly with the concept of native teachers’ superiority over nonnative teachers. Native teachers argued that nonnative teachers have a good understanding of teaching methodology whereas native teachers are more competent in correct language. It can be concluded that teacher education programs in the expanding-circle countries should include materials for teachers to raise their awareness of their own professional status and role and to remove their misconception about native speaker fallacy.

Attitudes of Jordanian University Students towards Using Online Chat Discourse with Native Speakers of English for Improving Their Language Proficiency

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Mahfouz, Safi M.; Ihmeideh, Fathi M.

2009-01-01

This study aims to investigate Jordanian university students' attitudes towards using video and text chat discourse with anonymous native speakers of English to improve their English proficiency. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was designed. The study sample consisted of 320 university students enrolled in two Jordanian universities. Results…

Tuck in Your Shirt, You Squid: Suggestions in ESL.

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Banerjee, Janet; Carrell, Patricia L.

1988-01-01

An English discourse completion questionnaire consisting of 60 situations designed to elicit suggestions in English was administered to 28 native speakers of Chinese or Malay and to 12 native speakers of American English. Non-native speakers of English were more direct in their responses. Native and non-native speakers significantly differed in…

Racial Conflict in the United States of America : A Deconstructive Perspective on Native Speaker by Changrae Lee

OpenAIRE

Beiranvand, Amin

2010-01-01

Written about the time of the Golden Venture incident, Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker makes a particular reference to that incident, whereby implying that particular immigrants, on the grounds of their racial identities, are mistreated and considered as aliens by some Americas. While some whites discriminate against immigrants, there is widespread ethnic tension between Korean Americans and African Americans. Significantly, racial conflict between Koreans and blacks and the racist attitude of...

Processing Interrogative Sentence Mood at the Semantic-Syntactic Interface: An Electrophysiological Research in Chinese, German, and Polish

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Kao, Chung-Shan; Dietrich, Rainer; Sommer, Werner

2010-01-01

Background Languages differ in the marking of the sentence mood of a polar interrogative (yes/no question). For instance, the interrogative mood is marked at the beginning of the surface structure in Polish, whereas the marker appears at the end in Chinese. In order to generate the corresponding sentence frame, the syntactic specification of the interrogative mood is early in Polish and late in Chinese. In this respect, German belongs to an interesting intermediate class. The yes/no question is expressed by a shift of the finite verb from its final position in the underlying structure into the utterance initial position, a move affecting, hence, both the sentence's final and the sentence's initial constituents. The present study aimed to investigate whether during generation of the semantic structure of a polar interrogative, i.e., the processing preceding the grammatical formulation, the interrogative mood is encoded according to its position in the syntactic structure at distinctive time points in Chinese, German, and Polish. Methodology/Principal Findings In a two-choice go/nogo experimental design, native speakers of the three languages responded to pictures by pressing buttons and producing utterances in their native language while their brain potentials were recorded. The emergence and latency of lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) in nogo conditions, in which speakers asked a yes/no question, should indicate the time point of processing the interrogative mood. The results revealed that Chinese, German, and Polish native speakers did not differ from each other in the electrophysiological indicator. Conclusions/Significance The findings suggest that the semantic encoding of the interrogative mood is temporally consistent across languages despite its disparate syntactic specification. The consistent encoding may be ascribed to economic processing of interrogative moods at various sentential positions of the syntactic structures in languages or, more

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery.

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Jacob, Gunnar; Felser, Claudia

2016-01-01

We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating how native and non-native speakers of English process temporarily ambiguous sentences such as While the gentleman was eating the burgers were still being reheated in the microwave, in which an initially plausible direct-object analysis is first ruled out by a syntactic disambiguation (were) and also later on by semantic information (being reheated). Both participant groups showed garden-path effects at the syntactic disambiguation, with native speakers showing significantly stronger effects of ambiguity than non-native speakers in later eye-movement measures but equally strong effects in first-pass reading times. Ambiguity effects at the semantic disambiguation and in participants' end-of-trial responses revealed that for both participant groups, the incorrect direct-object analysis was frequently maintained beyond the syntactic disambiguation. The non-native group showed weaker reanalysis effects at the syntactic disambiguation and was more likely to misinterpret the experimental sentences than the native group. Our results suggest that native language (L1) and non-native language (L2) parsing are similar with regard to sensitivity to syntactic and semantic error signals, but different with regard to processes of reanalysis.

Negative pragmatic transfer in Chinese students' complimentary speech acts.

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Ren, Juanjuan; Gao, Xiaofang

2012-02-01

Summary.-This study was designed to examine negative pragmatic transfer of the speech act of English compliments by Chinese who learn English as a foreign language and to estimate the correlation between the amount of negative pragmatic transfer and English proficiency of the Chinese learners. Frequencies of students' performance showed that both in the favored compliments and the response strategies, differences were evident between Chinese English learners and native English speakers. This indicated that Chinese learners had trouble with the "slang" or "idioms" of the target language and tended to transfer negatively their L1 pragmatic norms to their L2 communication. Moreover, the favored compliment response strategies used by two groups of Chinese learners--who had different levels of English proficiency--differed, and negative pragmatic transfer decreased as proficiency in English increased.

Negation in Near-Native French: Variation and Sociolinguistic Competence

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Donaldson, Bryan

2017-01-01

This study investigated how adult second language (L2) speakers of French with near-native proficiency realize verbal negation, a well-known sociolinguistic variable in contemporary spoken French. Data included 10 spontaneous informal conversations between near-native speakers of French and native speakers (NSs) closely acquainted with them.…

Are lexical tones musical? Native language's influence on neural response to pitch in different domains.

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Chen, Ao; Peter, Varghese; Wijnen, Frank; Schnack, Hugo; Burnham, Denis

2018-04-21

Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Factors influencing subjective orthodontic treatment need and culture-related differences among Chinese natives and foreign inhabitants.

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Xiao-Ting, Li; Tang, Yin; Huang, Xue-Lian; Wan, Hua; Chen, Yang-Xi

2010-09-01

The aim of this survey was to compare Chinese natives and foreign inhabitants in Chengdu, China, with respect to: (1) attitudes towards dental appearance, (2) subjective orthodontic treatment need, and (3) the main factors influencing orthodontic treatment need. A total of 522 subjects, including 227 foreign inhabitants and 295 Chinese natives in Chengdu participated in the survey. A simple random sampling method was adopted and a face-to-face interview was conducted at some public sites using a questionnaire. Data was entered by two persons synchronously using Epidata 3.0, and SPSS 13.0 was used to analyze these data. 89.0% of foreign inhabitants were satisfied with their teeth compared to only 46.8% of Chinese natives. Females were more dissatisfied with their teeth than males. Chinese natives put improving appearance as the top priority (55.9%) for seeking orthodontic treatment; however, in foreign inhabitants, the main reason for seeking treatment was to improve masticatory function (44.1%), followed by "to be pretty" (35.2%). The importance of well-aligned teeth and self-perception of psychosocial impact of malocclusion were the same two main factors influencing subjective orthodontic treatment need (P different (P differences in orthodontic treatment motives between the two target groups. (3) There were differences in subjective orthodontic treatment needs between foreign inhabitants and Chinese natives. However, the prominent influential factors were almost the same. There may be benefit to understanding subjective orthodontic needs of different races.

Perception of facial esthetics by native Chinese participants by using manipulated digital imagery techniques.

Science.gov (United States)

Maganzini, A L; Tseng, J Y; Epstein, J Z

2000-10-01

This investigation utilized a manipulated digital video imaging model to elicit profile facial esthetics preferences in a lay population of native Chinese participants from Beijing. A series of 4 distinct digitized distortions were constructed from an initial lateral cephalogram. These images represented skeletal or dental changes that differed by 2 standard deviations from the normative values for Chinese adults. Video morphing then created soft-tissue profiles. A series of nonparametric tests validated the digitized distortion model. The native Chinese participants in this sample found that the profile distortions most acceptable were the "flatter", or bimaxillary retrusive distortion, in the male stimulus face and the "anterior divergent", or maxillary deficiency, in the female stimulus face.

NATIVE VS NON-NATIVE ENGLISH TEACHERS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Masrizal Masrizal

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Although the majority of English language teachers worldwide are non-native English speakers (NNS, no research was conducted on these teachers until recently. A pioneer research by Peter Medgyes in 1994 took quite a long time until the other researchers found their interests in this issue. There is a widespread stereotype that a native speaker (NS is by nature the best person to teach his/her foreign language. In regard to this assumption, we then see a very limited room and opportunities for a non native teacher to teach language that is not his/hers. The aim of this article is to analyze the differences among these teachers in order to prove that non-native teachers have equal advantages that should be taken into account. The writer expects that the result of this short article could be a valuable input to the area of teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia.

Proficiency in English sentence stress production by Cantonese speakers who speak English as a second language (ESL).

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Ng, Manwa L; Chen, Yang

2011-12-01

The present study examined English sentence stress produced by native Cantonese speakers who were speaking English as a second language (ESL). Cantonese ESL speakers' proficiency in English stress production as perceived by English-speaking listeners was also studied. Acoustical parameters associated with sentence stress including fundamental frequency (F0), vowel duration, and intensity were measured from the English sentences produced by 40 Cantonese ESL speakers. Data were compared with those obtained from 40 native speakers of American English. The speech samples were also judged by eight native listeners who were native speakers of American English for placement, degree, and naturalness of stress. Results showed that Cantonese ESL speakers were able to use F0, vowel duration, and intensity to differentiate sentence stress patterns. Yet, both female and male Cantonese ESL speakers exhibited consistently higher F0 in stressed words than English speakers. Overall, Cantonese ESL speakers were found to be proficient in using duration and intensity to signal sentence stress, in a way comparable with English speakers. In addition, F0 and intensity were found to correlate closely with perceptual judgement and the degree of stress with the naturalness of stress.

Improving Speaking Skill Of The Tenth Grade Students Of SMK 17 Agustus 1945 Muncar Through Direct Practice With The Native Speaker

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Mohamad Nor Shodiq

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The Classroom Action Research (CAR aims to invent teaching and learning strategy which fits the learners’ style and to solve the teachers’ problem in finding the appropriate technique in teaching. The researcher took SMK 17 Agustus 1945 Muncar Banyuwangi on 35 students of the tenth grade of AK 1 and was conducted in one cycle with the phases of planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. The researcher found that the implementation of Direct Practice with the Native Speaker could improve the students’ speaking skill. It was proved by the result of the students’ speaking score. The average classical score in preliminary study was 50. 00. They had improvement from the third meeting but did not all of students meet the criteria of success and were still below the KKM. In the fourth meeting was found that all of the students could reach criteria of success and KKM score as 70. 00. Direct Practice with the Native Speaker creates the teaching and learning process fun, and good atmosphere of competition among the students.

Chinese Tertiary Students' Willingness to Communicate in English

OpenAIRE

Bamfield, Vincent Mark

2014-01-01

With the growing number of students from China who study abroad, many initially struggle to engage with native English speakers due to limited opportunities to develop oral English skills within their homeland (Gu and Maley, 2008). The reasons why Chinese students' may exhibit varied levels of motivation to engage with others when they study abroad is not well understood. This thesis has employed MacIntyre's "Willingness to Communicate" pyramid model (MacIntyre et al., 1998) as a theoretical ...

Designing acoustics for linguistically diverse classrooms: Effects of background noise, reverberation and talker foreign accent on speech comprehension by native and non-native English-speaking listeners

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Zhao Ellen

The current classroom acoustics standard (ANSI S12.60-2010) recommends core learning spaces not to exceed background noise level (BNL) of 35 dBA and reverberation time (RT) of 0.6 second, based on speech intelligibility performance mainly by the native English-speaking population. Existing literature has not correlated these recommended values well with student learning outcomes. With a growing population of non-native English speakers in American classrooms, the special needs for perceiving degraded speech among non-native listeners, either due to realistic room acoustics or talker foreign accent, have not been addressed in the current standard. This research seeks to investigate the effects of BNL and RT on the comprehension of English speech from native English and native Mandarin Chinese talkers as perceived by native and non-native English listeners, and to provide acoustic design guidelines to supplement the existing standard. This dissertation presents two studies on the effects of RT and BNL on more realistic classroom learning experiences. How do native and non-native English-speaking listeners perform on speech comprehension tasks under adverse acoustic conditions, if the English speech is produced by talkers of native English (Study 1) versus native Mandarin Chinese (Study 2)? Speech comprehension materials were played back in a listening chamber to individual listeners: native and non-native English-speaking in Study 1; native English, native Mandarin Chinese, and other non-native English-speaking in Study 2. Each listener was screened for baseline English proficiency level, and completed dual tasks simultaneously involving speech comprehension and adaptive dot-tracing under 15 acoustic conditions, comprised of three BNL conditions (RC-30, 40, and 50) and five RT scenarios (0.4 to 1.2 seconds). The results show that BNL and RT negatively affect both objective performance and subjective perception of speech comprehension, more severely for non-native

The relationship between brain reaction and English reading tests for non-native English speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Cheng, Pei-Wen; Tian, Yu-Jie; Kuo, Ting-Hua; Sun, Koun-Tem

2016-07-01

This research analyzed the brain activity of non-native English speakers while engaged in English reading tests. The brain wave event-related potentials (ERPs) of participants were used to analyze the difference between making correct and incorrect choices on English reading test items. Three English reading tests of differing levels were designed and 20 participants, 10 males and 10 females whose ages ranged from 20 to 24, voluntarily participated in the experiment. Experimental results were analyzed by performing independent t-tests on the ERPs of participants for gender, difficulty level, and correct versus wrong options. Participants who chose incorrect options elicited a larger N600, verifying results found in the literature. Another interesting result was found: For incorrectly answered items, different areas of brain showing a significant difference in ERPs between the chosen and non-chosen options corresponded to gender differences; for males, this area was located in the right hemisphere whereas for females, it was located in the left. Experimental results imply that non-native English speaking males and females employ different areas of the brain to comprehend the meaning of difficult items. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Empirical Research on Native Chinese Speakers Reading in English: Data Driven Issues and Challenges

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Brantmeier, Cindy; Xiucheng, Yu

2014-01-01

Mastery of English in China has gathered increased prominence due to the need to foster cultural, political, and economic connections worldwide. Reading is an obvious skill of vital importance for advancing efforts as a player in the world economy. The present article examines research published in academic journals in Chinese and English to…

Genetic diversity of mtDNA D-loop sequences in four native Chinese chicken breeds.

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, H W; Li, C; Wang, X N; Li, Z J; Sun, G R; Li, G X; Liu, X J; Kang, X T; Han, R L

2017-10-01

1. To explore the genetic diversity of Chinese indigenous chicken breeds, a 585 bp fragment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) region was sequenced in 102 birds from the Xichuan black-bone chicken, Yunyang black-bone chicken and Lushi chicken. In addition, 30 mtDNA D-loop sequences of Silkie fowls were downloaded from NCBI. The mtDNA D-loop sequence polymorphism and maternal origin of 4 chicken breeds were analysed in this study. 2. The results showed that a total of 33 mutation sites and 28 haplotypes were detected in the 4 chicken breeds. The haplotype diversity and nucleotide diversity of these 4 native breeds were 0.916 ± 0.014 and 0.012 ± 0.002, respectively. Three clusters were formed in 4 Chinese native chickens and 12 reference breeds. Both the Xichuan black-bone chicken and Yunyang black-bone chicken were grouped into one cluster. Four haplogroups (A, B, C and E) emerged in the median-joining network in these breeds. 3. It was concluded that these 4 Chinese chicken breeds had high genetic diversity. The phylogenetic tree and median network profiles showed that Chinese native chickens and its neighbouring countries had at least two maternal origins, one from Yunnan, China and another from Southeast Asia or its surrounding area.

Non-native educators in English language teaching

CERN Document Server

Braine, George

2013-01-01

The place of native and non-native speakers in the role of English teachers has probably been an issue ever since English was taught internationally. Although ESL and EFL literature is awash, in fact dependent upon, the scrutiny of non-native learners, interest in non-native academics and teachers is fairly new. Until recently, the voices of non-native speakers articulating their own concerns have been even rarer. This book is a response to this notable vacuum in the ELT literature, providing a forum for language educators from diverse geographical origins and language backgrounds. In addition to presenting autobiographical narratives, these authors argue sociopolitical issues and discuss implications for teacher education, all relating to the theme of non-native educators in ETL. All of the authors are non-native speakers of English. Some are long established professionals, whereas others are more recent initiates to the field. All but one received part of the higher education in North America, and all excep...

Visual speaker gender affects vowel identification in Danish

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Charlotte; Tøndering, John

2013-01-01

The experiment examined the effect of visual speaker gender on the vowel perception of 20 native Danish-speaking subjects. Auditory stimuli consisting of a continuum between /muːlə/ ‘muzzle’ and /moːlə/ ‘pier’ generated using TANDEM-STRAIGHT matched with video clips of a female and a male speaker...

Native and Nonnative Interpretation of Pronominal Forms: Evidence from French and Turkish

Science.gov (United States)

Schimke, Sarah; Colonna, Saveria

2016-01-01

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting…

Determinants of success in native and non-native listening comprehension: an individual differences approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Andringa, S.; Olsthoorn, N.; van Beuningen, C.; Schoonen, R.; Hulstijn, J.

2012-01-01

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non-native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non-native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation

Native listeners

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cutler, A.

2002-01-01

Becoming a native listener is the necessary precursor to becoming a native speaker. Babies in the first year of life undertake a remarkable amount of work; by the time they begin to speak, they have perceptually mastered the phonological repertoire and phoneme co-occurrence probabilities of the

Processing advantage for emotional words in bilingual speakers.

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Ponari, Marta; Rodríguez-Cuadrado, Sara; Vinson, David; Fox, Neil; Costa, Albert; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2015-10-01

Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and nonnative language have provided mixed results: Studies that have found differences between native language (L1) and second language (L2) processing attributed the difference to the fact that L2 learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between L2 and L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1s showed the same facilitation in processing emotionally valenced words as native English speakers, regardless of their L1, the age of English acquisition, or the frequency and context of English use. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Discriminating native from non-native speech using fusion of visual cues

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Georgakis, Christos; Petridis, Stavros; Pantic, Maja

2014-01-01

The task of classifying accent, as belonging to a native language speaker or a foreign language speaker, has been so far addressed by means of the audio modality only. However, features extracted from the visual modality have been successfully used to extend or substitute audio-only approaches

Discrimination Between Native and Non-Native Speech Using Visual Features Only

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Georgakis, Christos; Petridis, Stavros; Pantic, Maja

2016-01-01

Accent is a soft biometric trait that can be inferred from pronunciation and articulation patterns characterizing the speaking style of an individual. Past research has addressed the task of classifying accent, as belonging to a native language speaker or a foreign language speaker, by means of the

Some features of a typical house as perceived by native speakers of English and of Serbian

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Dilparić Branislava M.

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The paper reports findings from one of the two differently-designed surveys conducted among groups of both native speakers of English and native speakers of Serbian with a common general objective to obtain a picture of better candidates for a role of the whole (to be analyzed into its constituent elements in the contrastive study on the lexical field a house and its parts in English and Serbian. The specific objective of the survey presented here, however, was to build up the target picture with some of the features of the ideal example of the house category, such as the shape of the house, the key materials its principal structural elements (foundations, walls, a roof are made of, the number of residential units in the house and the type of the household that occupies it, the number of the house levels, the minimum of its interior spatial components and their functions, the types of systemic parts in the house, the status and position of the house relative to surround­ing buildings, etc. Also, taking into consideration that the demographic profiles of the survey participants reflected various cultural backgrounds (which significantly influence the formation of mental images of a typical sample of the category, the survey aimed to compare the similarities and differences between the 'English' and the 'Serbian' typical house, that is the features assigned to a typical house by most of the surveyed representa­tives of Anglo-American and by those of Serbian culture. Judging exclusively by the features observed and the results obtained, the study concludes that the 'English' and the 'Serbian' typical house look very similar in many aspect and that the two different cultures are not as distant as they may seem.

THE NON-DROPPABILITY OF UNINTERPRETABLE FEATURES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: ON THE INTERPRETATION OF RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS IN L2 CHINESE

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Stano Kong

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The study sets to test proposals made by Yuan and Zhao (2005 and Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007 in relation to the issue of parameter resetting in the interpretation of resumptive pronouns by adult English speakers of L2 Chinese. Fiftyfour English speakers of different proficiency levels were asked to correct sentences involving ungrammatical resumptive pronouns in L2 Chinese and their responses were compared with those of a native speaker control group. Findings of the study argue against Yuan and Zhao’s input-driven parameter resetting account. Instead, they support the Interpretability Hypothesis of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou in assuming that there is a critical period for the accessibility of uninterpretable syntactic features for the construction of mental grammars. It is argued, by extending the unattainability of the uninterpretable features assumption, that once the uninterpretable syntactic features are selected, they become difficult to lose if L2 lacks such uninterpretable features.

Determinants of Success in Native and Non-Native Listening Comprehension: An Individual Differences Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Andringa, Sible; Olsthoorn, Nomi; van Beuningen, Catherine; Schoonen, Rob; Hulstijn, Jan

2012-01-01

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non-native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non-native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of…

EFL Teachers' Responses to L2 Writing.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Yuh-Fang

This study investigated differences in the product and process of evaluating second language compositions by Taiwanese speakers of English. It examined whether such factors as language background (native English speaker versus native Chinese speaker), academic discipline, and educational background affected raters' scoring outcomes; whether rating…

Teaching Portuguese to Spanish Speakers: A Case for Trilingualism

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Carvalho, Ana M.; Freire, Juliana Luna; da Silva, Antonio J. B.

2010-01-01

Portuguese is the sixth-most-spoken native language in the world, with approximately 240,000,000 speakers. Within the United States, there is a growing demand for K-12 language programs to engage the community of Portuguese heritage speakers. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 85,000 school-age children speak Portuguese at home. As a result, more…

Native Speakers in Linguistic Imperialism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Phillipson, Robert

2016-01-01

An investigation of Native English Speaking Teachers’ performance in schemes in six Asian contexts, commissioned by the British Council, and undertaken by three British academics, is subjected to critical evaluation. Key issues for exploration are the issue of a monolingual approach to English le...... the economic and geopolitical agenda behind this English teaching business, there is clear evidence of linguistic imperialism in the functions of this global professional service. These activities serve to strengthen Western interests.......An investigation of Native English Speaking Teachers’ performance in schemes in six Asian contexts, commissioned by the British Council, and undertaken by three British academics, is subjected to critical evaluation. Key issues for exploration are the issue of a monolingual approach to English...... learning and teaching, and the inappropriate qualifications of those sent to education systems when they are unfamiliar with the learners’ languages, cultures, and pedagogical traditions. Whether the schemes involved constitute linguistic imperialismis analysed. Whereas the need for multilingual competence...

Do Persian Native Speakers Prosodically Mark Wh-in-situ Questions?

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Shiamizadeh, Zohreh; Caspers, Johanneke; Schiller, Niels O

2018-02-01

It has been shown that prosody contributes to the contrast between declarativity and interrogativity, notably in interrogative utterances lacking lexico-syntactic features of interrogativity. Accordingly, it may be proposed that prosody plays a role in marking wh-in-situ questions in which the interrogativity feature (the wh-phrase) does not move to sentence-initial position, as, for example, in Persian. This paper examines whether prosody distinguishes Persian wh-in-situ questions from declaratives in the absence of the interrogativity feature in the sentence-initial position. To answer this question, a production experiment was designed in which wh-questions and declaratives were elicited from Persian native speakers. On the basis of the results of previous studies, we hypothesize that prosodic features mark wh-in-situ questions as opposed to declaratives at both the local (pre- and post-wh part) and global level (complete sentence). The results of the current study confirm our hypothesis that prosodic correlates mark the pre-wh part as well as the complete sentence in wh-in-situ questions. The results support theoretical concepts such as the frequency code, the universal dichotomous association between relaxation and declarativity on the one hand and tension and interrogativity on the other, the relation between prosody and pragmatics, and the relation between prosody and encoding and decoding of sentence type.

Revisiting the role of language in spatial cognition: Categorical perception of spatial relations in English and Korean speakers.

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Holmes, Kevin J; Moty, Kelsey; Regier, Terry

2017-12-01

The spatial relation of support has been regarded as universally privileged in nonlinguistic cognition and immune to the influence of language. English, but not Korean, obligatorily distinguishes support from nonsupport via basic spatial terms. Despite this linguistic difference, previous research suggests that English and Korean speakers show comparable nonlinguistic sensitivity to the support/nonsupport distinction. Here, using a paradigm previously found to elicit cross-language differences in color discrimination, we provide evidence for a difference in sensitivity to support/nonsupport between native English speakers and native Korean speakers who were late English learners and tested in a context that privileged Korean. Whereas the former group showed categorical perception (CP) when discriminating spatial scenes capturing the support/nonsupport distinction, the latter did not. An additional group of native Korean speakers-relatively early English learners tested in an English-salient context-patterned with the native English speakers in showing CP for support/nonsupport. These findings suggest that obligatory marking of support/nonsupport in one's native language can affect nonlinguistic sensitivity to this distinction, contra earlier findings, but that such sensitivity may also depend on aspects of language background and the immediate linguistic context.

A fundamental residue pitch perception bias for tone language speakers

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Petitti, Elizabeth

A complex tone composed of only higher-order harmonics typically elicits a pitch percept equivalent to the tone's missing fundamental frequency (f0). When judging the direction of residue pitch change between two such tones, however, listeners may have completely opposite perceptual experiences depending on whether they are biased to perceive changes based on the overall spectrum or the missing f0 (harmonic spacing). Individual differences in residue pitch change judgments are reliable and have been associated with musical experience and functional neuroanatomy. Tone languages put greater pitch processing demands on their speakers than non-tone languages, and we investigated whether these lifelong differences in linguistic pitch processing affect listeners' bias for residue pitch. We asked native tone language speakers and native English speakers to perform a pitch judgment task for two tones with missing fundamental frequencies. Given tone pairs with ambiguous pitch changes, listeners were asked to judge the direction of pitch change, where the direction of their response indicated whether they attended to the overall spectrum (exhibiting a spectral bias) or the missing f0 (exhibiting a fundamental bias). We found that tone language speakers are significantly more likely to perceive pitch changes based on the missing f0 than English speakers. These results suggest that tone-language speakers' privileged experience with linguistic pitch fundamentally tunes their basic auditory processing.

Recognizing vocal emotions in Mandarin Chinese: a validated database of Chinese vocal emotional stimuli.

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Liu, Pan; Pell, Marc D

2012-12-01

To establish a valid database of vocal emotional stimuli in Mandarin Chinese, a set of Chinese pseudosentences (i.e., semantically meaningless sentences that resembled real Chinese) were produced by four native Mandarin speakers to express seven emotional meanings: anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, pleasant surprise, and neutrality. These expressions were identified by a group of native Mandarin listeners in a seven-alternative forced choice task, and items reaching a recognition rate of at least three times chance performance in the seven-choice task were selected as a valid database and then subjected to acoustic analysis. The results demonstrated expected variations in both perceptual and acoustic patterns of the seven vocal emotions in Mandarin. For instance, fear, anger, sadness, and neutrality were associated with relatively high recognition, whereas happiness, disgust, and pleasant surprise were recognized less accurately. Acoustically, anger and pleasant surprise exhibited relatively high mean f0 values and large variation in f0 and amplitude; in contrast, sadness, disgust, fear, and neutrality exhibited relatively low mean f0 values and small amplitude variations, and happiness exhibited a moderate mean f0 value and f0 variation. Emotional expressions varied systematically in speech rate and harmonics-to-noise ratio values as well. This validated database is available to the research community and will contribute to future studies of emotional prosody for a number of purposes. To access the database, please contact pan.liu@mail.mcgill.ca.

Differences in the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies among Native and Non-Native Readers.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheorey, R.; Mokhtari, K.

2001-01-01

Examines the differences in the reported use of reading strategies of native and non-native English speakers when reading academic materials. Participants were native English speaking and English-as-a-Second-Language college students who completed a survey of reading strategies aimed at discerning the strategies readers report using when coping…

Nativization Processes in L1 Esperanto.

Science.gov (United States)

Bergen, Benjamin K.

2001-01-01

Describes characteristics of the Native Esperanto of eight speakers, ranging from age 6 to 14 years. Found bilingualism and nativization effects, differentiating native from non-native Esperanto speech. Among these effects are loss or modification of the accusative case, phonological reduction, attrition of tense/aspect system, and pronominal…

Prosody-Syntax Integration in a Second Language: Contrasting Event-Related Potentials from German and Chinese Learners of English Using Linear Mixed Effect Models

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Nickels, Stefanie; Steinhauer, Karsten

2018-01-01

The role of prosodic information in sentence processing is not usually addressed in second language (L2) instruction, and neurocognitive studies on prosody-syntax interactions are rare. Here we compare event-related potentials (ERP) of Chinese and German learners of English L2 to those of native English speakers and show how first language (L1)…

Use of the BAT with a Cantonese-Putonghua Speaker with Aphasia

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Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Weekes, Brendan Stuart

2011-01-01

The aim of this article is to illustrate the use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) with a Cantonese-Putonghua speaker. We describe G, who is a relatively young Chinese bilingual speaker with aphasia. G's communication abilities in his L2, Putonghua, were impaired following brain damage. This impairment caused specific difficulties in…

Mother-Tongue Diversity in the Foreign Language Classroom: Perspectives on the Experiences of Non-Native Speakers of English Studying Foreign Languages in an English-Medium University

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Bruen, Jennifer; Kelly, Niamh

2017-01-01

This paper considers the position of university language students whose mother tongue is other than the medium of instruction. Specifically, it investigates the attitudes and experiences of non-native English speakers studying either German or Japanese as foreign languages at an English-medium university. The findings indicate that the non-native…

Syntactic constraints and individual differences in native and non-native processing of wh-movement

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Adrienne eJohnson

2016-04-01

Full Text Available There is a debate as to whether second language (L2 learners show qualitatively similar processing profiles as native speakers or whether L2 learners are restricted in their ability to use syntactic information during online processing. In the realm of wh-dependency resolution, research has examined whether learners, similar to native speakers, attempt to resolve wh-dependencies in grammatically licensed contexts but avoid positing gaps in illicit contexts such as islands. Also at issue is whether the avoidance of gap filling in islands is due to adherence to syntactic constraints or whether islands simply present processing bottlenecks. One approach has been to examine the relationship between processing abilities and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands. Grammatical accounts of islands do not predict such a relationship as the parser should simply not predict gaps in illicit contexts. In contrast, a pattern of results showing that individuals with more processing resources are better able to establish wh-dependencies in islands could conceivably be compatible with certain processing accounts. In a self-paced reading experiment which examines the processing of wh- dependencies, we address both questions, examining whether native English speakers and Korean learners of English show qualitatively similar patterns and whether there is a relationship between working memory, as measured by counting span and reading span, and processing in both island and non-island contexts. The results of the self-paced reading experiment suggest that learners can use syntactic information on the same timecourse as native speakers, showing qualitative similarity between the two groups. Results of regression analyses did not reveal a significant relationship between working memory and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands but we did observe significant relationships between working memory and the processing of licit wh-dependencies. As the

Chinese L1 children's English L2 verb morphology over time: individual variation in long-term outcomes.

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Paradis, Johanne; Tulpar, Yasemin; Arppe, Antti

2016-05-01

This study examined accuracy in production and grammaticality judgements of verb morphology by eighteen Chinese-speaking children learning English as a second language (L2) followed longitudinally from four to six years of exposure to English, and who began to learn English at age 4;2. Children's growth in accuracy with verb morphology reached a plateau by six years, where 11/18 children did not display native-speaker levels of accuracy for one or more morphemes. Variation in children's accuracy with verb morphology was predicted by their English vocabulary size and verbal short-term memories primarily, and quality and quantity of English input at home secondarily. This study shows that even very young L2 learners might not all catch up to native speakers in this time frame and that non-age factors play a role in determining individual variation in child L2 learners' long-term outcomes with English morphology.

Learning for Life, a Structured and Motivational Process of Knowledge Construction in the Acquisition/Learning of English as a Foreign Language in Native Spanish Speakers

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Mino-Garces, Fernando

2009-01-01

As language learning theory has shifted from a highly guided to a more open learning process, this paper presents the teaching/learning philosophy called Learning for Life (L for L) as a great way to motivate native Spanish speaker students learning English as a foreign language, and to help them be the constructors of their own knowledge. The…

Are Cantonese-speakers really descriptivists? Revisiting cross-cultural semantics.

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Lam, Barry

2010-05-01

In an article in Cognition [Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2004). Semantics cross-cultural style. Cognition, 92, B1-B12] present data which purports to show that East Asian Cantonese-speakers tend to have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names, while Western English-speakers tend to have causal-historical intuitions about proper names. Machery et al. take this finding to support the view that some intuitions, the universality of which they claim is central to philosophical theories, vary according to cultural background. Machery et al. conclude from their findings that the philosophical methodology of consulting intuitions about hypothetical cases is flawed vis a vis the goal of determining truths about some philosophical domains like philosophical semantics. In the following study, three new vignettes in English were given to Western native English-speakers, and Cantonese translations were given to native Cantonese-speaking immigrants from a Cantonese community in Southern California. For all three vignettes, questions were given to elicit intuitions about the referent of a proper name and the truth-value of an uttered sentence containing a proper name. The results from this study reveal that East Asian Cantonese-speakers do not differ from Western English-speakers in ways that support Machery et al.'s conclusions. This new data concerning the intuitions of Cantonese-speakers raises questions about whether cross-cultural variation in answers to questions on certain vignettes reveal genuine differences in intuitions, or whether such differences stem from non-intuitional differences, such as differences in linguistic competence. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Combining Behavioral and ERP Methodologies to Investigate the Differences Between McGurk Effects Demonstrated by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers

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Juan Zhang

2018-05-01

Full Text Available The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dialects on McGurk effect using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP methodologies. Specifically, intra-language comparison of McGurk effect was conducted between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. The behavioral results showed that Cantonese speakers exhibited a stronger McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception compared to Mandarin speakers, although both groups performed equally in the auditory and visual conditions. ERP results revealed that Cantonese speakers were more sensitive to visual cues than Mandarin speakers, though this was not the case for the auditory cues. Taken together, the current findings suggest that the McGurk effect generated by Chinese speakers is mainly influenced by segmental phonology during audiovisual speech integration.

Combining Behavioral and ERP Methodologies to Investigate the Differences Between McGurk Effects Demonstrated by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers

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Zhang, Juan; Meng, Yaxuan; McBride, Catherine; Fan, Xitao; Yuan, Zhen

2018-01-01

The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dialects on McGurk effect using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodologies. Specifically, intra-language comparison of McGurk effect was conducted between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. The behavioral results showed that Cantonese speakers exhibited a stronger McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception compared to Mandarin speakers, although both groups performed equally in the auditory and visual conditions. ERP results revealed that Cantonese speakers were more sensitive to visual cues than Mandarin speakers, though this was not the case for the auditory cues. Taken together, the current findings suggest that the McGurk effect generated by Chinese speakers is mainly influenced by segmental phonology during audiovisual speech integration. PMID:29780312

Normative data for Chinese compound remote associate problems.

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Wu, Ching-Lin; Chen, Hsueh-Chih

2017-12-01

The Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a well-known measure of creativity, with each item on the RAT is composed of three unrelated stimulus words. The participant's task is to find an answer in the form of a word that could combine with each of the stimulus words, thus forming three new actual nouns. Researchers have modified the RAT to develop compound remote associate problems that emphasize combining vocabulary to form compound words. In the field of creativity research for Mandarin speakers, the Chinese RAT has been widely applied for over 10 years. The original RAT, compound remote associate problems, and Chinese RAT have various common advantages, such as being convenient to use and having objective scoring; additionally, the development of items for certain tests is easy and satisfies the requirements of psychological assessments in terms of the quantity of items. Currently, many language editions of the RAT and compound remote associate problems already exist. In particular, the English and Italian versions of these tests already have derived normative data. Because approximately 20% of the world's population are native Mandarin speakers, and because increasing numbers of people are choosing Mandarin as a second language, the need to increase Mandarin-language resources is growing; however, normative data for the Chinese RAT still do not exist. To address this issue, in the present study we developed Chinese compound remote associate problems and analyzed the passing rates by items, problem solving times, and various normative data, using the responses of 253 subjects in three experiments.

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading.

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Cao, Fan; Perfetti, Charles A

2016-01-01

Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level.

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading.

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Fan Cao

Full Text Available Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level.

Chinese Attitudes towards Varieties of English: A Pre-Olympic Examination

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Xu, Wei; Wang, Yu; Case, Rod E.

2010-01-01

This study reports on findings of an investigation into Chinese students' attitudes towards varieties of English before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. One hundred and eight college students in mainland China evaluated six English speeches by two American English speakers, two British English speakers, and two Chinese English speakers for social…

The Acquisition of Clitic Pronouns in the Spanish Interlanguage of Peruvian Quechua Speakers.

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Klee, Carol A.

1989-01-01

Analysis of four adult Quechua speakers' acquisition of clitic pronouns in Spanish revealed that educational attainment and amount of contact with monolingual Spanish speakers were positively related to native-like norms of competence in the use of object pronouns in Spanish. (CB)

Making the Transition from Non-Native Speaker to Near-Native Speaker Teachers of English: Facing Globalization Challenges in Teaching English

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Bin Mohamed Ali, Haja Mohideen

2009-01-01

Many job advertisements seeking teachers of English to work in Japan, China, South Korea and Thailand, for instance, specify that they are looking for native speaking teachers from USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand. They do not seem to be interested even in trained non-native speaking teachers from their own countries. This situation also exists…

[A comparative study on soil fauna in native secondary evergreen broad-leaved forest and Chinese fir plantation forests in subtropics].

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Yan, Shaokui; Wang, Silong; Hu, Yalin; Gao, Hong; Zhang, Xiuyong

2004-10-01

In this study, we investigated the response of soil animal communities to the replacement of native secondary forest by Chinese fir plantation forest and successive rotation of Chinese fir in subtropics. Three adjacent forest stands, i.e., native secondary evergreen broad-leaved forest stand (control) and Chinese fir plantation stands of first (20 yr) and second (20 yr) rotations were selected for the comparison of soil fauna. All animals were extracted from the floor litter and 0-15 cm soil layer of the stands in Summer, 2003 by using Tullgren method, wet funnel method and hand-sorting method. Compared to two Chinese fir plantation forests, the native secondary evergreen broad-leaved forest had a higher abundance and a higher taxonomic diversity of animals in soil and litter, but there were no significant differences in the biomass and productivity of soil fauna between all study stands. The abundance or diversity did not differ significantly between the first rotation and second rotation stands, too. The results supported that vegetation cover might be one of the main forces driving the development of soil animal communities, and the effect of successive rotation of Chinese fir on the development of soil fauna was a slow-running process.

Behavioral and subcortical signatures of musical expertise in Mandarin Chinese speakers.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caitlin Dawson

Full Text Available Both musical training and native language have been shown to have experience-based plastic effects on auditory processing. However, the combined effects within individuals are unclear. Recent research suggests that musical training and tone language speaking are not clearly additive in their effects on processing of auditory features and that there may be a disconnect between perceptual and neural signatures of auditory feature processing. The literature has only recently begun to investigate the effects of musical expertise on basic auditory processing for different linguistic groups. This work provides a profile of primary auditory feature discrimination for Mandarin speaking musicians and nonmusicians. The musicians showed enhanced perceptual discrimination for both frequency and duration as well as enhanced duration discrimination in a multifeature discrimination task, compared to nonmusicians. However, there were no differences between the groups in duration processing of nonspeech sounds at a subcortical level or in subcortical frequency representation of a nonnative tone contour, for fo or for the first or second formant region. The results indicate that musical expertise provides a cognitive, but not subcortical, advantage in a population of Mandarin speakers.

Recognizing Chinese characters in digital ink from non-native language writers using hierarchical models

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Bai, Hao; Zhang, Xi-wen

2017-06-01

While Chinese is learned as a second language, its characters are taught step by step from their strokes to components, radicals to components, and their complex relations. Chinese Characters in digital ink from non-native language writers are deformed seriously, thus the global recognition approaches are poorer. So a progressive approach from bottom to top is presented based on hierarchical models. Hierarchical information includes strokes and hierarchical components. Each Chinese character is modeled as a hierarchical tree. Strokes in one Chinese characters in digital ink are classified with Hidden Markov Models and concatenated to the stroke symbol sequence. And then the structure of components in one ink character is extracted. According to the extraction result and the stroke symbol sequence, candidate characters are traversed and scored. Finally, the recognition candidate results are listed by descending. The method of this paper is validated by testing 19815 copies of the handwriting Chinese characters written by foreign students.

The Native Speaker, Identity, and the Authenticity Hierarchy.

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Myhill, John E.

2003-01-01

Discusses an ideology of native language and identity, which holds that native language is seen as a central element of individual identity. Argues that although this ideology can be very valuable in certain circumstances, it can also create an atmosphere of suspicion toward members of certain ethnicities who choose not to use their ancestral…

The Usage of Loanwords by Japanese Learners and Their Background : case of English Native Speakers (Dedicated to the Memory of Dr. SASAKI Yoshinori)

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堀切, 友紀子

2010-01-01

In the field of Teaching Japanese as a Second Language, the study of Japanese loanwords has focused on their acquisition, and Japanese loanwords tend to be an obstacle for Japanese learners. However, actual situations about loanword usage by English native speakers need to be identical. The purpose of this research is to understand the process involved in the cognition, emotion and usage of loanwords by Japanese learners. An investigatory interview was conducted with 11 Japanese learners who ...

Listen to the Natives

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Prensky, Marc

2006-01-01

"Digital natives" refer to today's students because they are native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. Those who were not born into the digital world are referred to as digital immigrants. Educators, considered digital immigrants, have slid into the 21st century--and into the digital…

Ordered short-term memory differs in signers and speakers: Implications for models of short-term memory

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Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers (Boutla, Supalla, Newport, & Bavelier, 2004). Here, we test the hypothesis that this population difference reflects differences in the way speakers and signers maintain temporal order information in short-te...

Processing ser and estar to locate objects and events: An ERP study with L2 speakers of Spanish.

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Dussias, Paola E; Contemori, Carla; Román, Patricia

2014-01-01

In Spanish locative constructions, a different form of the copula is selected in relation to the semantic properties of the grammatical subject: sentences that locate objects require estar while those that locate events require ser (both translated in English as 'to be'). In an ERP study, we examined whether second language (L2) speakers of Spanish are sensitive to the selectional restrictions that the different types of subjects impose on the choice of the two copulas. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish and two groups of L2 Spanish speakers (24 beginners and 18 advanced speakers) were recruited to investigate the processing of 'object/event + estar/ser ' permutations. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on correct (object + estar ; event + ser ) and incorrect (object + ser ; event + estar ) sentences while their brain activity was recorded. In line with previous studies (Leone-Fernández, Molinaro, Carreiras, & Barber, 2012; Sera, Gathje, & Pintado, 1999), the results of the grammaticality judgment for the native speakers showed that participants correctly accepted object + estar and event + ser constructions. In addition, while 'object + ser ' constructions were considered grossly ungrammatical, 'event + estar ' combinations were perceived as unacceptable to a lesser degree. For these same participants, ERP recording time-locked to the onset of the critical word ' en ' showed a larger P600 for the ser predicates when the subject was an object than when it was an event (*La silla es en la cocina vs. La fiesta es en la cocina). This P600 effect is consistent with syntactic repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. For estar predicates (La silla está en la cocina vs. *La fiesta está en la cocina), the findings showed a central-frontal negativity between 500-700 ms. Grammaticality judgment data for the L2 speakers of Spanish showed that beginners were significantly less accurate than

Memory for non-native language: the role of lexical processing in the retention of surface form.

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Sampaio, Cristina; Konopka, Agnieszka E

2013-01-01

Research on memory for native language (L1) has consistently shown that retention of surface form is inferior to that of gist (e.g., Sachs, 1967). This paper investigates whether the same pattern is found in memory for non-native language (L2). We apply a model of bilingual word processing to more complex linguistic structures and predict that memory for L2 sentences ought to contain more surface information than L1 sentences. Native and non-native speakers of English were tested on a set of sentence pairs with different surface forms but the same meaning (e.g., "The bullet hit/struck the bull's eye"). Memory for these sentences was assessed with a cued recall procedure. Responses showed that native and non-native speakers did not differ in the accuracy of gist-based recall but that non-native speakers outperformed native speakers in the retention of surface form. The results suggest that L2 processing involves more intensive encoding of lexical level information than L1 processing.

Suppression and Working Memory in Auditory Comprehension of L2 Narratives: Evidence from Cross-Modal Priming

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Wu, Shiyu; Ma, Zheng

2016-01-01

Using a cross-modal priming task, the present study explores whether Chinese-English bilinguals process goal related information during auditory comprehension of English narratives like native speakers. Results indicate that English native speakers adopted both mechanisms of suppression and enhancement to modulate the activation of goals and keep…

Cheater's Guide to Speaking English Like a Native

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De Mente, Boye

2007-01-01

Native English-speakers use a large number of proverbs and colloquial expressions in their daily conversations. These common sayings, which evolved over the centuries, are like "codes" that reveal the cultural values and attitudes of the speakers. To fully understand and communicate in English, it's necessary to be familiar with these expressions and know how and when to use them. The Cheater's Guide to Speaking English like a Native is a shortcut to achieving that goal.

Cerebral activation during Chinese semantic associative task in Xinjiang' Uyghurs: a functional MRI study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yang Lixia; Jia Wenxiao; Tang Weijun; Wang Hong; Ding Shuang; Wang Hao

2010-01-01

Objective: To explore the cerebral activation in Xinjiang' Uyghurs when performing a Chinese word tasks by the functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI). Methods: Twenty-one healthy Xinjiang' Uyghurs and 11 healthy Hans were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on a 1.5 T MRI scanner with a single run. Different Chinese words were displayed in each block to avoid any practice effect. SPM5.0 software was used for image data processing. To evaluate the inter subject consistency of brain activations associated with Chinese character and word reading, we created penetrance maps by combining binary individual functional maps. Results: For Uyghur-Chinese bilingual subjects, activations related to generated a word that was semantically related to each stimulus. The results indicated that reading Chinese is characterized by extensive activity of the neural systems. Peak activations occurred in the left middle frontal cortex at Brodmann Areas (BA9 and BA47). The left temporal (BA37) cortices were also strongly activated. Other important activated areas included bilateral visual systems (BA17-19) and cerebellum. The location of peak activation in the left frontal regions was similar in Native Uyghurs and Hans. But the active areas in Uyghurs are more extensive than that of Hans. Conclusions: The location of peak activation in the left frontal regions was similar in Native Uyghurs and Hans. More brain areas were needed for Xinjiang' Uyghur speakers during processing Chinese words. (authors)

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers

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Dawson, Caitlin; Aalto, Daniel; Šimko, Juraj; Vainio, Martti; Tervaniemi, Mari

2017-01-01

Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences. PMID:28450829

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers.

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Dawson, Caitlin; Aalto, Daniel; Šimko, Juraj; Vainio, Martti; Tervaniemi, Mari

2017-01-01

Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences.

Congenital Amusia in Speakers of a Tone Language: Association with Lexical Tone Agnosia

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Nan, Yun; Sun, Yanan; Peretz, Isabelle

2010-01-01

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that affects the processing of musical pitch in speakers of non-tonal languages like English and French. We assessed whether this musical disorder exists among speakers of Mandarin Chinese who use pitch to alter the meaning of words. Using the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia, we tested 117…

Listening Natively across Perceptual Domains?

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Langus, Alan; Seyed-Allaei, Shima; Uysal, Ertugrul; Pirmoradian, Sahar; Marino, Caterina; Asaadi, Sina; Eren, Ömer; Toro, Juan M.; Peña, Marcela; Bion, Ricardo A. H.; Nespor, Marina

2016-01-01

Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

Effects of Language Background on Gaze Behavior: A Crosslinguistic Comparison Between Korean and German Speakers

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Goller, Florian; Lee, Donghoon; Ansorge, Ulrich; Choi, Soonja

2017-01-01

Languages differ in how they categorize spatial relations: While German differentiates between containment (in) and support (auf) with distinct spatial words—(a) den Kuli IN die Kappe stecken (”put pen in cap”); (b) die Kappe AUF den Kuli stecken (”put cap on pen”)—Korean uses a single spatial word (kkita) collapsing (a) and (b) into one semantic category, particularly when the spatial enclosure is tight-fit. Korean uses a different word (i.e., netha) for loose-fits (e.g., apple in bowl). We tested whether these differences influence the attention of the speaker. In a crosslinguistic study, we compared native German speakers with native Korean speakers. Participants rated the similarity of two successive video clips of several scenes where two objects were joined or nested (either in a tight or loose manner). The rating data show that Korean speakers base their rating of similarity more on tight- versus loose-fit, whereas German speakers base their rating more on containment versus support (in vs. auf). Throughout the experiment, we also measured the participants’ eye movements. Korean speakers looked equally long at the moving Figure object and at the stationary Ground object, whereas German speakers were more biased to look at the Ground object. Additionally, Korean speakers also looked more at the region where the two objects touched than did German speakers. We discuss our data in the light of crosslinguistic semantics and the extent of their influence on spatial cognition and perception. PMID:29362644

Encoding, rehearsal, and recall in signers and speakers: shared network but differential engagement.

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Bavelier, D; Newman, A J; Mukherjee, M; Hauser, P; Kemeny, S; Braun, A; Boutla, M

2008-10-01

Short-term memory (STM), or the ability to hold verbal information in mind for a few seconds, is known to rely on the integrity of a frontoparietal network of areas. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to ask whether a similar network is engaged when verbal information is conveyed through a visuospatial language, American Sign Language, rather than speech. Deaf native signers and hearing native English speakers performed a verbal recall task, where they had to first encode a list of letters in memory, maintain it for a few seconds, and finally recall it in the order presented. The frontoparietal network described to mediate STM in speakers was also observed in signers, with its recruitment appearing independent of the modality of the language. This finding supports the view that signed and spoken STM rely on similar mechanisms. However, deaf signers and hearing speakers differentially engaged key structures of the frontoparietal network as the stages of STM unfold. In particular, deaf signers relied to a greater extent than hearing speakers on passive memory storage areas during encoding and maintenance, but on executive process areas during recall. This work opens new avenues for understanding similarities and differences in STM performance in signers and speakers.

Cross-cultural emotional prosody recognition: evidence from Chinese and British listeners.

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Paulmann, Silke; Uskul, Ayse K

2014-01-01

This cross-cultural study of emotional tone of voice recognition tests the in-group advantage hypothesis (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) employing a quasi-balanced design. Individuals of Chinese and British background were asked to recognise pseudosentences produced by Chinese and British native speakers, displaying one of seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, neutral tone of voice, sad, and surprise). Findings reveal that emotional displays were recognised at rates higher than predicted by chance; however, members of each cultural group were more accurate in recognising the displays communicated by a member of their own cultural group than a member of the other cultural group. Moreover, the evaluation of error matrices indicates that both culture groups relied on similar mechanism when recognising emotional displays from the voice. Overall, the study reveals evidence for both universal and culture-specific principles in vocal emotion recognition.

The Chinese Lexicon Project: A megastudy of lexical decision performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character compound words.

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Tse, Chi-Shing; Yap, Melvin J; Chan, Yuen-Lai; Sze, Wei Ping; Shaoul, Cyrus; Lin, Dan

2017-08-01

Using a megastudy approach, we developed a database of lexical variables and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character compound words. Each word was responded to by about 33 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. This resource provides a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the Chinese single-character, English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Three analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential uses of the database. First, we compared the proportion of variance in lexical decision performance accounted for by six word frequency measures and established that the best predictor was Cai and Brysbaert's (PLoS One, 5, e10729, 2010) contextual diversity subtitle frequency. Second, we ran virtual replications of three previously published lexical decision experiments and found convergence between the original experiments and the present megastudy. Finally, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the effects of theoretically important lexical variables in our normative data. This is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese two-character compound word processing, which should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

When the Native Is Also a Non-Native: "Retrodicting" the Complexity of Language Teacher Cognition

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Aslan, Erhan

2015-01-01

The impact of native (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) identities on second or foreign language teachers' cognition and practices in the classroom has mainly been investigated in ESL/EFL contexts. Using complexity theory as a framework, this case study attempts to fill the gap in the literature by presenting a foreign language teacher in the…

The Non-Native English Speaker Teachers in TESOL Movement

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Kamhi-Stein, Lía D.

2016-01-01

It has been almost 20 years since what is known as the non-native English-speaking (NNES) professionals' movement--designed to increase the status of NNES professionals--started within the US-based TESOL International Association. However, still missing from the literature is an understanding of what a movement is, and why non-native English…

Does training make French speakers more able to identify lexical stress?

OpenAIRE

Schwab, Sandra; Llisterri, Joaquim

2013-01-01

This research takes the stress deafness hypothesis as a starting point (e.g. Dupoux et al., 2008), and, more specifically, the fact that French speakers present difficulties in perceiving lexical stress in a free-stress language. In this framework, we aim at determining whether a prosodic training could improve the ability of French speakers to identify the stressed syllable in Spanish words. Three groups of participants took part in this experiment. The Native group was composed of 16 speake...

Different mechanisms in learning different second languages: Evidence from English speakers learning Chinese and Spanish.

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Cao, Fan; Sussman, Bethany L; Rios, Valeria; Yan, Xin; Wang, Zhao; Spray, Gregory J; Mack, Ryan M

2017-03-01

Word reading has been found to be associated with different neural networks in different languages, with greater involvement of the lexical pathway for opaque languages and greater invovlement of the sub-lexical pathway for transparent langauges. However, we do not know whether this language divergence can be demonstrated in second langauge learners, how learner's metalinguistic ability would modulate the langauge divergence, or whether learning method would interact with the language divergence. In this study, we attempted to answer these questions by comparing brain activations of Chinese and Spanish word reading in native English-speaking adults who learned Chinese and Spanish over a 2 week period under three learning conditions: phonological, handwriting, and passive viewing. We found that mapping orthography to phonology in Chinese had greater activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) than in Spanish, suggesting greater invovlement of the lexical pathway in opaque langauges. In contrast, Spanish words evoked greater activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) than English, suggesting greater invovlement of the sublexical pathway for transparant languages. Furthermore, brain-behavior correlation analyses found that higher phonological awareness and rapid naming were associated with greater activation in the bilateral IFG for Chinese and in the bilateral STG for Spanish, suggesting greater language divergence in participants with higher meta-linguistic awareness. Finally, a significant interaction between the language and learning condition was found in the left STG and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), with greater activation in handwriting learning than viewing learning in the left STG only for Spanish, and greater activation in handwriting learning than phonological learning in the left MFG only for Chinese. These findings suggest that handwriting facilitates assembled phonology in Spanish and addressed

The effects of L2 proficiency level on the processing of wh-questions among Dutch second language speakers of English

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Jackson, C.N.; Hell, J.G. van

2011-01-01

Using a self-paced reading task, the present study explores how Dutch-English L2 speakers parse English wh-subject-extractions and wh-object-extractions. Results suggest that English native speakers and highly-proficient Dutch–English L2 speakers do not always exhibit measurable signs of on-line

Iambic-Trochaic Law Effects among Native Speakers of Spanish and English

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Megan Crowhurst

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The Iambic-Trochaic Law (Bolton, 1894; Hayes, 1995; Woodrow, 1909 asserts that listeners associate greater intensity with group beginnings (a loud-first preference and greater duration with group endings (a long-last preference. Hayes (1987; 1995 posits a natural connection between the prominences referred to in the ITL and the locations of stressed syllables in feet. However, not all lengthening in final positions originates with stressed syllables, and greater duration may also be associated with stress in nonfinal (trochaic positions. The research described here challenged the notion that presumptive long-last effects necessarily reflect stress-related duration patterns, and investigated the general hypothesis that the robustness of long-last effects should vary depending on the strength of the association between final positions and increased duration, whatever its source. Two ITL studies were conducted in which native speakers of Spanish and of English grouped streams of rhythmically alternating syllables in which vowel intensity and/or duration levels were varied. These languages were chosen because while they are prosodically similar, increased duration on constituent-final syllables is both more common and more salient in English than Spanish. Outcomes revealed robust loud-first effects in both language groups. Long-last effects were significantly weaker in the Spanish group when vowel duration was varied singly. However, long-last effects were present and comparable in both language groups when intensity and duration were covaried. Intensity was a more robust predictor of responses than duration. A primary conclusion was that whether or not humans’ rhythmic grouping preferences have an innate component, duration-based grouping preferences, at least, and the magnitude of intensity-based effects are shaped by listeners’ backgrounds.

THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH SYLLABLE TIMING BY NATIVE SPANISH SPEAKERS LEARNERS OF ENGLISH. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY'

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Francisco Gutierrez Diez

2001-06-01

Full Text Available In this article we present part of the results of an empirical research on contrastive rhythm (English-Spanish. Of the several points dealt with in such a research (syllable compression, foot timing, syllable timing and isochrony of rhythmic units, we refer here to syllable duration in English and Spanish as well as the leaming of syllable duration by a group of advanced leamers of English whose first language is Spanish. Regarding the issue of syllable timing, a striking result is the equal duration of unstressed syllables in both languages, which challenges an opposite view underlying a teaching practice common among Spanish teachers of English to Spanish learners of that language. As for the interlanguage of the group of Spanish leamers of English, we comment on the presence of an interference error represented by a stressed/unstressed durational ratio mid way between the ratios for Spanish and English; we have also detected a developmental error related to the tempo employed by the leamers in their syllable timing, which is slower than the tempo produced by native speakers of English.

Islands and non-islands in native and heritage Korean

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Boyoung eKim

2016-02-01

Full Text Available To a large extent, island phenomena are cross-linguistically invariable, but English and Korean present some striking differences in this domain. English has wh-movement and Korean does not, and while both languages show sensitivity to wh-islands, only English has island effects for adjunct clauses. Given this complex set of differences, one might expect Korean/English bilinguals, and especially heritage Korean speakers (i.e. early bilinguals whose L2 became their dominant language during childhood to be different from native speakers, since heritage speakers have had more limited exposure to Korean, may have had incomplete acquisition and/or attrition, and may show significant transfer effects from the L2. Here we examine islands in heritage speakers of Korean in the U.S. Through a series of four formal acceptability experiments comparing these heritage speakers with native speakers residing in Korea, we show that the two groups are remarkably similar. Both show clear evidence for wh-islands and an equally clear lack of adjunct island effects. Given the very different linguistic environment that the heritage speakers have had since early childhood, this result lends support to the idea that island phenomena are largely immune to environmental influences and stem from deeper properties of the processor and/or grammar. Similarly, it casts some doubt on recent proposals that islands are learned from the input.

Modifying Dialogical Strategy in Asynchronous Critical Discussions for Cross-Strait Chinese Learners

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Jean Yiching Chiu

2014-09-01

Full Text Available In this global era, critical thinking has become crucial for educators and learners. The purpose of this research was to explore how modifying a dialogical strategy in asynchronous online discussion forums impacted Chinese learners’ critical thinking. Due to the Chinese cultural impact of social harmony, the majority of learners tend to maintain silent and avoid critical discussions in instructional settings. The author deployed an affectively supportive model in a modified dialogical strategy to structure Chinese EFL learners’ asynchronous critical postings by probing and questioning while requiring labeling of each cross-referencing posting as Agree/Disagree/Challenge/New Perspective. The participants were two cohorts of similar cultural background but under different political systems in China and Taiwan, here engaged together in cultural interactions. This study employed two research methods: standardized critical thinking tests, and focus groups. Findings reveal that learners in both cohorts indicated some improvement in their critical thinking skills. Nevertheless, there remain affective and cultural issues. Future studies are thus recommended to further investigate the potential of an adaptive model to engage critical discussions with English native speakers and optimize critical thinking for Chinese learners in an EFL environment.

The Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English: Communicative Efficiency across Conversational Dyads with Varying Language Alignment Profiles

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Van Engen, Kristin J.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Baker, Rachel E.; Choi, Arim; Kim, Midam; Bradlow, Ann R.

2010-01-01

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English, a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English. The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of…

A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English.

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Yu, Vickie Y; Andruski, Jean E

2010-08-01

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.

Evidential Uses in the Spanish of Quechua Speakers in Peru.

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Escobar, Anna Maria

1994-01-01

Analysis of recordings of spontaneous speech of native speakers of Quechua speaking Spanish as a second language reveals that, using verbal morphological resources of Spanish, they have grammaticalized an epistemic marking system resembling that of Quechua. Sources of this process in both Quechua and Spanish are analyzed. (MSE)

Phoneme Error Pattern by Heritage Speakers of Spanish on an English Word Recognition Test.

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Shi, Lu-Feng

2017-04-01

Heritage speakers acquire their native language from home use in their early childhood. As the native language is typically a minority language in the society, these individuals receive their formal education in the majority language and eventually develop greater competency with the majority than their native language. To date, there have not been specific research attempts to understand word recognition by heritage speakers. It is not clear if and to what degree we may infer from evidence based on bilingual listeners in general. This preliminary study investigated how heritage speakers of Spanish perform on an English word recognition test and analyzed their phoneme errors. A prospective, cross-sectional, observational design was employed. Twelve normal-hearing adult Spanish heritage speakers (four men, eight women, 20-38 yr old) participated in the study. Their language background was obtained through the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire. Nine English monolingual listeners (three men, six women, 20-41 yr old) were also included for comparison purposes. Listeners were presented with 200 Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 words in quiet. They repeated each word orally and in writing. Their responses were scored by word, word-initial consonant, vowel, and word-final consonant. Performance was compared between groups with Student's t test or analysis of variance. Group-specific error patterns were primarily descriptive, but intergroup comparisons were made using 95% or 99% confidence intervals for proportional data. The two groups of listeners yielded comparable scores when their responses were examined by word, vowel, and final consonant. However, heritage speakers of Spanish misidentified significantly more word-initial consonants and had significantly more difficulty with initial /p, b, h/ than their monolingual peers. The two groups yielded similar patterns for vowel and word-final consonants, but heritage speakers made significantly

Haunting Native Speakerism? Students' Perceptions toward Native Speaking English Teachers in Taiwan

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Wu, Kun-huei; Ke, Chung

2009-01-01

This paper intends to explore how Taiwanese university students perceive their native-speaking English teachers (NESTs). Mutual expectations between the NESTs and students are also investigated. Collected data include questionnaires from 107 students and interviews with three NESTs and 19 students who have filled out the questionnaire. The result…

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners? English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis

OpenAIRE

Xue, Jin; Liu, Tongtong; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando; Pei, Xuna

2017-01-01

The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learni...

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners’ English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis

OpenAIRE

Jin Xue; Tongtong Liu; Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos; Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos; Xuna Pei

2017-01-01

The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learni...

"Real Language": Combining Intermediate Spanish Language Learners and ESOL/Native Speakers for Vernacular Language Acquisition

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Joe LaValle

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper addresses the possibilities of combining Spanish language learners and English language learners in high school and post-secondary institutions for mutual benefit to learn authentic language. Academic or "classroom" Spanish is insufficient to empower students for today's workplace. The concept behind "Real Language" is illustrated by an example of an interdisciplinary activity to facilitate communicative interaction in genuine language and promote cultural understanding between intermediate Spanish students and ESOL/native speakers at the high school and post-secondary level. Students are asked to utilize their life skills in interactive, freestyle conversation without the intervention of an instructor. The learning space for language exchange is an out-of-class venue for a non-intimidating, more authentic setting. This simple qualitative study investigates the potential value of this sort of interdisciplinary activity. The intent is to evaluate attitudes of the participants in relation to confidence in their ability to use the target language, and their willingness to use it in social and professional environments and, in addition, to facilitate cultural understanding. The positive result of the project is validated by the voice of the student participants as they reflect on their experience in "Real Language". Could this concept facilitate evolving strategies for interdisciplinary contemporary foreign language learning?

The Impact of Non-Native English Teachers' Linguistic Insecurity on Learners' Productive Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Daftari, Giti Ehtesham; Tavil, Zekiye Müge

2017-01-01

The discrimination between native and non-native English speaking teachers is reported in favor of native speakers in literature. The present study examines the linguistic insecurity of non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) and investigates its influence on learners' productive skills by using SPSS software. The eighteen teachers…

Ordered Short-Term Memory Differs in Signers and Speakers: Implications for Models of Short-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

Identifying Core Vocabulary for Urdu Language Speakers Using Augmentative Alternative Communication

Science.gov (United States)

Mukati, Abdul Samad

2013-01-01

The purpose of this research is to identify a core set of vocabulary used by native Urdu language (UL) speakers during dyadic conversation for social interaction and relationship building. This study was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan at an institution of higher education. This research seeks to distinguish between general (nonspecific…

Deeper than Shallow: Evidence for Structure-Based Parsing Biases in Second-Language Sentence Processing

Science.gov (United States)

Witzel, Jeffrey; Witzel, Naoko; Nicol, Janet

2012-01-01

This study examines the reading patterns of native speakers (NSs) and high-level (Chinese) nonnative speakers (NNSs) on three English sentence types involving temporarily ambiguous structural configurations. The reading patterns on each sentence type indicate that both NSs and NNSs were biased toward specific structural interpretations. These…

(Non)native Speakered: Rethinking (Non)nativeness and Teacher Identity in TESOL Teacher Education

Science.gov (United States)

Aneja, Geeta A.

2016-01-01

Despite its imprecision, the native-nonnative dichotomy has become the dominant paradigm for examining language teacher identity development. The nonnative English speaking teacher (NNEST) movement in particular has considered the impact of deficit framings of nonnativeness on "NNEST" preservice teachers. Although these efforts have…

The role of lexical variables in the visual recognition of Chinese characters: A megastudy analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Sze, Wei Ping; Yap, Melvin J; Rickard Liow, Susan J

2015-01-01

Logographic Chinese orthography partially represents both phonology and semantics. By capturing the online processing of a large pool of Chinese characters, we were able to examine the relative salience of specific lexical variables when this nonalphabetic script is read. Using a sample of native mainland Chinese speakers (N = 35), lexical decision latencies for 1560 single characters were collated into a database, before the effects of a comprehensive range of variables were explored. Hierarchical regression analyses determined the unique item-level variance explained by orthographic (frequency, stroke count), semantic (age of learning, imageability, number of meanings), and phonological (consistency, phonological frequency) factors. Orthographic and semantic variables, respectively, accounted for more collective variance than the phonological variables. Significant main effects were further observed for the individual orthographic and semantic predictors. These results are consistent with the idea that skilled readers tend to rely on orthographic and semantic information when processing visually presented characters. This megastudy approach marks an important extension to existing work on Chinese character recognition, which hitherto has relied on factorial designs. Collectively, the findings reported here represent a useful set of empirical constraints for future computational models of character recognition.

The Big Four Skills: Teachers’ Assumptions on Measurement of Cognition and Academic Skills for Non-Native Students.

OpenAIRE

Figueiredo, Sandra; Silva, Carlos Fernandes da; Nunes, Odete; Martins, Maria Margarida Alves d'Orey

2016-01-01

The four-skills on tests for young native speakers commonly do not generate correlation incongruency concerning the cognitive strategies frequently reported. Considering the non-native speakers there are parse evidence to determine which tasks are important to assess properly the cognitive and academic language proficiency (Cummins, 1980; 2012). Research questions: It is of high probability that young students with origin in immigration ...

L2 speakers decompose morphologically complex verbs: fMRI evidence from priming of transparent derived verbs

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Sophie eDe Grauwe

2014-10-01

Full Text Available In this fMRI long-lag priming study, we investigated the processing of Dutch semantically transparent, derived prefix verbs. In such words, the meaning of the word as a whole can be deduced from the meanings of its parts, e.g. wegleggen ‘put aside’. Many behavioral and some fMRI studies suggest that native (L1 speakers decompose transparent derived words. The brain region usually implicated in morphological decomposition is the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG. In non-native (L2 speakers, the processing of transparent derived words has hardly been investigated, especially in fMRI studies, and results are contradictory: Some studies find more reliance on holistic (i.e. non-decompositional processing by L2 speakers; some find no difference between L1 and L2 speakers. In this study, we wanted to find out whether Dutch transparent derived prefix verbs are decomposed or processed holistically by German L2 speakers of Dutch. Half of the derived verbs (e.g. omvallen ‘fall down’ were preceded by their stem (e.g. vallen ‘fall’ with a lag of 4 to 6 words (‘primed’; the other half (e.g. inslapen ‘fall asleep’ were not (‘unprimed’. L1 and L2 speakers of Dutch made lexical decisions on these visually presented verbs. Both ROI analyses and whole-brain analyses showed that there was a significant repetition suppression effect for primed compared to unprimed derived verbs in the LIFG. This was true both for the analyses over L2 speakers only and for the analyses over the two language groups together. The latter did not reveal any interaction with language group (L1 vs. L2 in the LIFG. Thus, L2 speakers show a clear priming effect in the LIFG, an area that has been associated with morphological decomposition. Our findings are consistent with the idea that L2 speakers engage in decomposition of transparent derived verbs rather than processing them holistically.

Does Language Matter? Exploring Chinese-Korean Differences in Holistic Perception.

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Rhode, Ann K; Voyer, Benjamin G; Gleibs, Ilka H

2016-01-01

Cross-cultural research suggests that East Asians display a holistic attentional bias by paying attention to the entire field and to relationships between objects, whereas Westerners pay attention primarily to salient objects, displaying an analytic attentional bias. The assumption of a universal pan-Asian holistic attentional bias has recently been challenged in experimental research involving Japanese and Chinese participants, which suggests that linguistic factors may contribute to the formation of East Asians' holistic attentional patterns. The present experimental research explores differences in attention and information processing styles between Korean and Chinese speakers, who have been assumed to display the same attentional bias due to cultural commonalities. We hypothesize that the specific structure of the Korean language predisposes speakers to pay more attention to ground information than to figure information, thus leading to a stronger holistic attentional bias compared to Chinese speakers. Findings of the present research comparing different groups of English, Chinese, and Korean speakers provide further evidence for differences in East Asians' holistic attentional bias, which may be due to the influence of language. Furthermore, we also extend prior theorizing by discussing the potential impact of other cultural factors. In line with critical voices calling for more research investigating differences between cultures that are assumed to be culturally similar, we highlight important avenues for future studies exploring the language-culture relationship.

Does language matter? Exploring Chinese-Korean differences in holistic perception

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Ann Kristin Rhode

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Cross-cultural research suggests that East Asians display a holistic attentional bias by paying attention to the entire field and to relationships between objects, whereas Westerners pay attention primarily to salient objects, displaying an analytic attentional bias. The assumption of a universal pan-Asian holistic attentional bias has however recently been challenged in experimental research involving Japanese and Chinese participants, which suggests that linguistic factors may contribute to the formation of East Asians’ holistic attentional patterns. The present experimental research explores differences in attention and information processing styles between Korean and Chinese speakers, who have been assumed to display the same attentional bias due to cultural commonalities. We hypothesize that the specific structure of the Korean language predisposes speakers to pay more attention to ground information than to figure information, thus leading to a stronger holistic attentional bias compared to Chinese speakers. Findings of the present research comparing different groups of English, Chinese, and Korean speakers provide further evidence for differences in East Asians’ holistic attentional bias, which may be due to the influence of language. Furthermore, we also extend prior theorizing by discussing the potential impact of other cultural factors. In line with critical voices calling for more research investigating differences between cultures that are assumed to be culturally similar, we highlight important avenues for future studies exploring the language-culture relationship.

Development of Culturally Appropriate Support Strategies to Increase Uptake of Nicotine Replacement Therapy Among Russian- and Chinese-Speaking Smokers in New York City.

Science.gov (United States)

Quinn, Erin C; Sacks, Rachel; Farley, Shannon M; Thihalolipavan, Sayone

2017-06-01

Approximately 80,000 New York City smokers are Chinese or Russian speakers. To increase utilization of smoking cessation services among these populations, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene developed linguistically and culturally tailored outreach strategies to promote and enhance its annual Nicotine Patch and Gum Program. In 2010, online web applications in Chinese and Russian were introduced. In 2011, input was sought from the community to develop Russian-language radio and newspaper ads, and a Russian-speaking liaison provided phone-assisted online enrollment support. In 2012, Chinese newspaper ads were introduced, and a Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking liaison was hired to provide enrollment support. In 2010, 51 Russian speakers and 40 Chinese speakers enrolled in the program via web application. In 2011, 510 Russian speakers applied via the web application, with 463 assisted by the Russian-speaking liaison; forty-four Chinese speakers applied online. In 2012, 394 Russian speakers applied via the web application; 363 were assisted by the Russian-speaking liaison. Eighty-five Chinese smokers applied online via the web application; seventy were assisted by the Chinese-speaking liaison. Following the implementation of culturally tailored cessation support interventions, ethnic Russian smokers' uptake of cessation support increased tenfold, while Chinese smokers' uptake doubled. Although linguistically appropriate resources are an essential foundation for reaching immigrant communities with high smoking rates, devising culturally tailored strategies to increase quit rates is critical to programmatic success.

Perception of English palatal codas by Korean speakers of English

Science.gov (United States)

Yeon, Sang-Hee

2003-04-01

This study aimed at looking at perception of English palatal codas by Korean speakers of English to determine if perception problems are the source of production problems. In particular, first, this study looked at the possible first language effect on the perception of English palatal codas. Second, a possible perceptual source of vowel epenthesis after English palatal codas was investigated. In addition, individual factors, such as length of residence, TOEFL score, gender and academic status, were compared to determine if those affected the varying degree of the perception accuracy. Eleven adult Korean speakers of English as well as three native speakers of English participated in the study. Three sets of a perception test including identification of minimally different English pseudo- or real words were carried out. The results showed that, first, the Korean speakers perceived the English codas significantly worse than the Americans. Second, the study supported the idea that Koreans perceived an extra /i/ after the final affricates due to final release. Finally, none of the individual factors explained the varying degree of the perceptional accuracy. In particular, TOEFL scores and the perception test scores did not have any statistically significant association.

Evaluation of speech errors in Putonghua speakers with cleft palate: a critical review of methodology issues.

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Jiang, Chenghui; Whitehill, Tara L

2014-04-01

Speech errors associated with cleft palate are well established for English and several other Indo-European languages. Few articles describing the speech of Putonghua (standard Mandarin Chinese) speakers with cleft palate have been published in English language journals. Although methodological guidelines have been published for the perceptual speech evaluation of individuals with cleft palate, there has been no critical review of methodological issues in studies of Putonghua speakers with cleft palate. A literature search was conducted to identify relevant studies published over the past 30 years in Chinese language journals. Only studies incorporating perceptual analysis of speech were included. Thirty-seven articles which met inclusion criteria were analyzed and coded on a number of methodological variables. Reliability was established by having all variables recoded for all studies. This critical review identified many methodological issues. These design flaws make it difficult to draw reliable conclusions about characteristic speech errors in this group of speakers. Specific recommendations are made to improve the reliability and validity of future studies, as well to facilitate cross-center comparisons.

Shhh… I Need Quiet! Children's Understanding of American, British, and Japanese-accented English Speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Bent, Tessa; Holt, Rachael Frush

2018-02-01

Children's ability to understand speakers with a wide range of dialects and accents is essential for efficient language development and communication in a global society. Here, the impact of regional dialect and foreign-accent variability on children's speech understanding was evaluated in both quiet and noisy conditions. Five- to seven-year-old children ( n = 90) and adults ( n = 96) repeated sentences produced by three speakers with different accents-American English, British English, and Japanese-accented English-in quiet or noisy conditions. Adults had no difficulty understanding any speaker in quiet conditions. Their performance declined for the nonnative speaker with a moderate amount of noise; their performance only substantially declined for the British English speaker (i.e., below 93% correct) when their understanding of the American English speaker was also impeded. In contrast, although children showed accurate word recognition for the American and British English speakers in quiet conditions, they had difficulty understanding the nonnative speaker even under ideal listening conditions. With a moderate amount of noise, their perception of British English speech declined substantially and their ability to understand the nonnative speaker was particularly poor. These results suggest that although school-aged children can understand unfamiliar native dialects under ideal listening conditions, their ability to recognize words in these dialects may be highly susceptible to the influence of environmental degradation. Fully adult-like word identification for speakers with unfamiliar accents and dialects may exhibit a protracted developmental trajectory.

Specific neural basis of Chinese idioms processing: an event-related functional MRI study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Shaoqi; Zhang Yanzhen; Xiao Zhuangwei; Zhang Xuexin

2007-01-01

Objective: To address the neural basis of Chinese idioms processing with different kinds of stimuli using an event-related fMRI design. Methods: Sixteen native Chinese speakers were asked to perform a semantic decision task during fMRI scanning. Three kinds of stimuli were used: Real idioms (Real-idiom condition); Literally plausible phrases (Pseudo-idiom condition, the last character of a real idiom was replaced by a character with similar meaning); Literally implausible strings (Non-idiom condition, the last character of a real idiom was replaced by a character with unrelated meaning). Reaction time and correct rate were recorded at the same time. Results: The error rate was 2.6%, 5.2% and 0.9% (F=3.51, P 0.05) for real idioms, pseudo-idioms and wrong idioms, respectively. Similar neural network was activated in all of the three conditions. However, the right hippocampus was only activated in the real idiom condition, and significant activations were found in anterior portion of left inferior frontal gyms (BA47) in real-and pseudo-idiom conditions, but not in non-idiom condition. Conclusion: The right hippocampus plays a specific role in the particular wording of the Chinese idioms. And the left anterior inferior frontal gyms (BA47) may be engaged in the semantic processing of Chinese idioms. The results support the notion that there were specific neural bases for Chinese idioms processing. (authors)

Terms of Address in the Chinese Business Enterprise

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Xiaoyan; Sultan, Robert

2014-01-01

This study examines terms of address currently used by employees of Chinese business enterprises. The authors find that a speaker's address selections are related significantly to the gender of the speaker, the location of the enterprise in Eastern or Western China, and the ownership type of the enterprise; that is, whether the enterprise is…

The Sound of Voice: Voice-Based Categorization of Speakers' Sexual Orientation within and across Languages.

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Simone Sulpizio

Full Text Available Empirical research had initially shown that English listeners are able to identify the speakers' sexual orientation based on voice cues alone. However, the accuracy of this voice-based categorization, as well as its generalizability to other languages (language-dependency and to non-native speakers (language-specificity, has been questioned recently. Consequently, we address these open issues in 5 experiments: First, we tested whether Italian and German listeners are able to correctly identify sexual orientation of same-language male speakers. Then, participants of both nationalities listened to voice samples and rated the sexual orientation of both Italian and German male speakers. We found that listeners were unable to identify the speakers' sexual orientation correctly. However, speakers were consistently categorized as either heterosexual or gay on the basis of how they sounded. Moreover, a similar pattern of results emerged when listeners judged the sexual orientation of speakers of their own and of the foreign language. Overall, this research suggests that voice-based categorization of sexual orientation reflects the listeners' expectations of how gay voices sound rather than being an accurate detector of the speakers' actual sexual identity. Results are discussed with regard to accuracy, acoustic features of voices, language dependency and language specificity.

Speaker segmentation and clustering

OpenAIRE

Kotti, M; Moschou, V; Kotropoulos, C

2008-01-01

07.08.13 KB. Ok to add the accepted version to Spiral, Elsevier says ok whlile mandate not enforced. This survey focuses on two challenging speech processing topics, namely: speaker segmentation and speaker clustering. Speaker segmentation aims at finding speaker change points in an audio stream, whereas speaker clustering aims at grouping speech segments based on speaker characteristics. Model-based, metric-based, and hybrid speaker segmentation algorithms are reviewed. Concerning speaker...

Speaker Recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mølgaard, Lasse Lohilahti; Jørgensen, Kasper Winther

2005-01-01

Speaker recognition is basically divided into speaker identification and speaker verification. Verification is the task of automatically determining if a person really is the person he or she claims to be. This technology can be used as a biometric feature for verifying the identity of a person...

A general auditory bias for handling speaker variability in speech? Evidence in humans and songbirds

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Buddhamas eKriengwatana

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Different speakers produce the same speech sound differently, yet listeners are still able to reliably identify the speech sound. How listeners can adjust their perception to compensate for speaker differences in speech, and whether these compensatory processes are unique only to humans, is still not fully understood. In this study we compare the ability of humans and zebra finches to categorize vowels despite speaker variation in speech in order to test the hypothesis that accommodating speaker and gender differences in isolated vowels can be achieved without prior experience with speaker-related variability. Using a behavioural Go/No-go task and identical stimuli, we compared Australian English adults’ (naïve to Dutch and zebra finches’ (naïve to human speech ability to categorize /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vowels of an novel Dutch speaker after learning to discriminate those vowels from only one other speaker. Experiment 1 and 2 presented vowels of two speakers interspersed or blocked, respectively. Results demonstrate that categorization of vowels is possible without prior exposure to speaker-related variability in speech for zebra finches, and in non-native vowel categories for humans. Therefore, this study is the first to provide evidence for what might be a species-shared auditory bias that may supersede speaker-related information during vowel categorization. It additionally provides behavioural evidence contradicting a prior hypothesis that accommodation of speaker differences is achieved via the use of formant ratios. Therefore, investigations of alternative accounts of vowel normalization that incorporate the possibility of an auditory bias for disregarding inter-speaker variability are warranted.

Do We All Apologize the Same?--An Empirical Study on the Act of Apologizing by Spanish Speakers Learning English.

Science.gov (United States)

Mir, Montserrat

1992-01-01

A study examined the production of English apology strategies by Spanish speakers learning English, by analyzing the remedial move in native and non-native social interactions. To restore harmony when an offensive act has been committed, remedial exchanges are performed according to the rules of speaking and the social norms of the speech…

Sonority constraints on onset-rime cohesion: evidence from native and bilingual Filipino readers of English.

Science.gov (United States)

Alonzo, Angelo; Taft, Marcus

2002-01-01

Research in English suggests that syllables can be analyzed in terms of two subunits-the onset (defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster) and the rime (the unit formed by the vowel and following consonant/s). This study investigated whether nonnative readers of English, which in the case of the present study were native Filipino speakers, also make use of onset-rime units, particularly when some features of their native language (namely infixation and reduplication) appear to foster no awareness of such units. In two lexical decision experiments, monosyllabic English words were presented, divided in between their first and second consonants (e.g., B LIND), at their onset-rime boundary (e.g., BL IND), or at their antibody boundary (e.g., BLI ND). Results indicated that the processes of infixation and reduplication did not affect the English word processing of native Filipino speakers. Rather, results for both native Filipino and native English speakers suggest that onsets composed of an "s + consonant" sequence (e.g., STAMP) are less cohesive than onsets comprised of a stop-liquid sequence (e.g., BLIND). It was concluded that not only may sonority constraints underlie onset cohesiveness, but that such phonetic properties may also be involved in visual word recognition. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

How does language distance between L1 and L2 affect the L2 brain network? An fMRI study of Korean-Chinese-English trilinguals.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Say Young; Qi, Ting; Feng, Xiaoxia; Ding, Guosheng; Liu, Li; Cao, Fan

2016-04-01

The present study tested the hypothesis that language distance between first language (L1) and second language (L2) influences the assimilation and accommodation pattern in Korean-Chinese-English trilinguals. The distance between English and Korean is smaller than that between Chinese and Korean in terms of orthographic transparency, because both English and Korean are alphabetic, whereas Chinese is logographic. During fMRI, Korean trilingual participants performed a visual rhyming judgment task in three languages (Korean: KK, Chinese: KC, English: KE). Two L1 control groups were native Chinese and English speakers performing the task in their native languages (CC and EE, respectively). The general pattern of brain activation of KC was more similar to that of CC than KK, suggesting accommodation. Higher accuracy in KC was associated with decreased activation in regions of the KK network, suggesting reduced assimilation. In contrast, the brain activation of KE was more similar to that of KK than EE, suggesting assimilation. Higher accuracy in KE was associated with decreased activation in regions of the EE network, suggesting reduced accommodation. Finally, an ROI analysis on the left middle frontal gyrus revealed greater activation for KC than for KE, suggesting its selective involvement in the L2 with more arbitrary mapping between orthography and phonology (i.e., Chinese). Taken together, the brain network involved in L2 reading is similar to the L1 network when L2 and L1 are similar in orthographic transparency, while significant accommodation is expected when L2 is more opaque than L1. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Rapid extraction of lexical tone phonology in Chinese characters: a visual mismatch negativity study.

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Xiao-Dong Wang

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: In alphabetic languages, emerging evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies shows the rapid and automatic activation of phonological information in visual word recognition. In the mapping from orthography to phonology, unlike most alphabetic languages in which there is a natural correspondence between the visual and phonological forms, in logographic Chinese, the mapping between visual and phonological forms is rather arbitrary and depends on learning and experience. The issue of whether the phonological information is rapidly and automatically extracted in Chinese characters by the brain has not yet been thoroughly addressed. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We continuously presented Chinese characters differing in orthography and meaning to adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers to construct a constant varying visual stream. In the stream, most stimuli were homophones of Chinese characters: The phonological features embedded in these visual characters were the same, including consonants, vowels and the lexical tone. Occasionally, the rule of phonology was randomly violated by characters whose phonological features differed in the lexical tone. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We showed that the violation of the lexical tone phonology evoked an early, robust visual response, as revealed by whole-head electrical recordings of the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN, indicating the rapid extraction of phonological information embedded in Chinese characters. Source analysis revealed that the vMMN was involved in neural activations of the visual cortex, suggesting that the visual sensory memory is sensitive to phonological information embedded in visual words at an early processing stage.

Rapid extraction of lexical tone phonology in Chinese characters: a visual mismatch negativity study.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xiao-Dong; Liu, A-Ping; Wu, Yin-Yuan; Wang, Peng

2013-01-01

In alphabetic languages, emerging evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies shows the rapid and automatic activation of phonological information in visual word recognition. In the mapping from orthography to phonology, unlike most alphabetic languages in which there is a natural correspondence between the visual and phonological forms, in logographic Chinese, the mapping between visual and phonological forms is rather arbitrary and depends on learning and experience. The issue of whether the phonological information is rapidly and automatically extracted in Chinese characters by the brain has not yet been thoroughly addressed. We continuously presented Chinese characters differing in orthography and meaning to adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers to construct a constant varying visual stream. In the stream, most stimuli were homophones of Chinese characters: The phonological features embedded in these visual characters were the same, including consonants, vowels and the lexical tone. Occasionally, the rule of phonology was randomly violated by characters whose phonological features differed in the lexical tone. We showed that the violation of the lexical tone phonology evoked an early, robust visual response, as revealed by whole-head electrical recordings of the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), indicating the rapid extraction of phonological information embedded in Chinese characters. Source analysis revealed that the vMMN was involved in neural activations of the visual cortex, suggesting that the visual sensory memory is sensitive to phonological information embedded in visual words at an early processing stage.

Are the Rules of Address Universal? A Test of Chinese Usage.

Science.gov (United States)

Kroger, Rolf O.; And Others

1979-01-01

Research was conducted among 70 Chinese speakers to measure the degrees of reciprocity, solidarity, and inequality in dyadic address exchanges. The results provided support for extending Brown's allegedly universal Invariant Norm of Address to Chinese usage. (Author/GC)

The effect of L1 prosodic backgrounds of Cantonese and Japanese speakers on the perception of Mandarin tones after training

Science.gov (United States)

So, Connie K.

2005-04-01

The present study investigated to what extent ones' L1 prosodic backgrounds affect their learning of a new tonal system. The question as to whether native speakers of a tone language perform differently from those of a pitch accent language will be addressed. Twenty native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese (a tone language) and Japanese (a pitch accent language) were assigned to two groups. All of them had had no prior knowledge of Mandarin, and had never received any form of musical training before they participated in the study. Their performance of the identification of Mandarin tones before and after a short-term training was compared. Analysis of listeners' tonal confusions in the pretest, posttest, and generalization tests revealed that both Cantonese and Japanese listeners had more confusion for two contrastive tone pairs: Tone 1-Tone 4, and Tone 2-Tone 3. Moreover, Cantonese speakers consistently had greater difficulty than Japanese speakers in distinguishing the tones in each pair. These imply that listeners L1 prosodic backgrounds are at work during the process of learning a new tonal system. The findings will be further discussed in terms of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1995). [Work supported by SSHRC.

The importance of a near-native accent. : Do the Dutch speak English or Double Dutch?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

drs. Frans Hermans

2014-01-01

The importance of a near-native accent. This talk will discuss whether or not it is important for EFL-teachers to try and achieve a near-native generally accepted accent for their students. The focus will be on the credibility of non-native speakers of English while speaking English in a

Speaker Authentication

CERN Document Server

Li, Qi (Peter)

2012-01-01

This book focuses on use of voice as a biometric measure for personal authentication. In particular, "Speaker Recognition" covers two approaches in speaker authentication: speaker verification (SV) and verbal information verification (VIV). The SV approach attempts to verify a speaker’s identity based on his/her voice characteristics while the VIV approach validates a speaker’s identity through verification of the content of his/her utterance(s). SV and VIV can be combined for new applications. This is still a new research topic with significant potential applications. The book provides with a broad overview of the recent advances in speaker authentication while giving enough attention to advanced and useful algorithms and techniques. It also provides a step by step introduction to the current state of the speaker authentication technology, from the fundamental concepts to advanced algorithms. We will also present major design methodologies and share our experience in developing real and successful speake...

Examining Test Speededness by Native Language

Science.gov (United States)

Talento-Miller, Eileen; Guo, Fanmin; Han, Kyung T.

2013-01-01

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of speededness for examinees. Past research on differential speededness has examined gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. When considering the needs of a global audience, research regarding different native language speakers is…

Orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: Evidence from Chinese.

Science.gov (United States)

Qu, Qingqing; Damian, Markus F

2017-06-01

Extensive evidence from alphabetic languages demonstrates a role of orthography in the processing of spoken words. Because alphabetic systems explicitly code speech sounds, such effects are perhaps not surprising. However, it is less clear whether orthographic codes are involuntarily accessed from spoken words in languages with non-alphabetic systems, in which the sound-spelling correspondence is largely arbitrary. We investigated the role of orthography via a semantic relatedness judgment task: native Mandarin speakers judged whether or not spoken word pairs were related in meaning. Word pairs were either semantically related, orthographically related, or unrelated. Results showed that relatedness judgments were made faster for word pairs that were semantically related than for unrelated word pairs. Critically, orthographic overlap on semantically unrelated word pairs induced a significant increase in response latencies. These findings indicate that orthographic information is involuntarily accessed in spoken-word recognition, even in a non-alphabetic language such as Chinese.

Analysis of the genetic diversity of Chinese native Cannabis sativa cultivars by using ISSR and chromosome markers.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, L G; Chang, Y; Zhang, X F; Guan, F Z; Yuan, H M; Yu, Y; Zhao, L J

2014-12-12

Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is an important fiber crop, and native cultivars exist widely throughout China. In the present study, we analyzed the genetic diversity of 27 important Chinese native hemp cultivars, by using inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) and chromosome markers. We determined the following chromosome formulas: 2n = 20 = 14m + 6sm; 2n = 20 = 20m; 2n = 20 = 18m + 2sm; 2n = 20 = 16m + 4sm; and 2n = 20 = 12m + 8sm. The results of our ISSR analysis revealed the genetic relationships among the 27 cultivars; these relationships were analyzed by using the unweighted pair-group method based on DNA polymorphism. Our results revealed that all of the native cultivars showed considerable genetic diversity. At a genetic distance of 0.324, the 27 varieties could be classified into five categories; this grouping corresponded well with the chromosome formulas. All of the investigated hemp cultivars represent relatively primitive types; moreover, the genetic distances show a geographical distribution, with a small amount of regional hybridity.

Why Not Non-Native Varieties of English as Listening Comprehension Test Input?

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Abeywickrama, Priyanvada

2013-01-01

The existence of different varieties of English in target language use (TLU) domains calls into question the usefulness of listening comprehension tests whose input is limited only to a native speaker variety. This study investigated the impact of non-native varieties or accented English speech on test takers from three different English use…

Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical period.

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Deutsch, Diana; Henthorn, Trevor; Marvin, Elizabeth; Xu, HongShuai

2006-02-01

Absolute pitch is extremely rare in the U.S. and Europe; this rarity has so far been unexplained. This paper reports a substantial difference in the prevalence of absolute pitch in two normal populations, in a large-scale study employing an on-site test, without self-selection from within the target populations. Music conservatory students in the U.S. and China were tested. The Chinese subjects spoke the tone language Mandarin, in which pitch is involved in conveying the meaning of words. The American subjects were nontone language speakers. The earlier the age of onset of musical training, the greater the prevalence of absolute pitch; however, its prevalence was far greater among the Chinese than the U.S. students for each level of age of onset of musical training. The findings suggest that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for acquisition of features of their native language.

Pitch perception and production in congenital amusia: Evidence from Cantonese speakers

OpenAIRE

Liu, Fang; Chan, Alice H. D.; Ciocca, Valter; Roquet, Catherine; Peretz, Isabelle; Wong, Patrick C. M.

2016-01-01

This study investigated pitch perception and production in speech and music in individuals with congenital amusia (a disorder of musical pitch processing) who are native speakers of Cantonese, a tone language with a highly complex tonal system. Sixteen Cantonese-speaking congenital amusics and 16 controls performed a set of lexical tone perception, production, singing, and psychophysical pitch threshold tasks. Their tone production accuracy and singing proficiency were subsequently judged by ...

A Mouse with a Roof? Effects of Phonological Neighbors on Processing of Words in Sentences in a Non-Native Language

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Ruschemeyer, Shirley-Ann; Nojack, Agnes; Limbach, Maxi

2008-01-01

The architecture of the language processing system for speakers of more than one language remains an intriguing topic of research. A common finding is that speakers of multiple languages are slower at responding to language stimuli in their non-native language (L2) than monolingual speakers. This may simply reflect participants' unfamiliarity with…

Songs as Ambient Language Input in Phonology Acquisition

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Au, Terry Kit-fong

2013-01-01

Children cannot learn to speak a language simply from occasional noninteractive exposure to native speakers' input (e.g., by hearing television dialogues), but can they learn something about its phonology? To answer this question, the present study varied ambient hearing experience for 126 5- to 7-year-old native Cantonese-Chinese speakers…

The online application of binding condition B in native and non-native pronoun resolution

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Clare ePatterson

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Previous research has shown that anaphor resolution in a non-native language may be more vulnerable to interference from structurally inappropriate antecedents compared to native anaphor resolution. To test whether previous findings on reflexive anaphors generalise to non-reflexive pronouns, we carried out an eye-movement monitoring study investigating the application of binding condition B during native and non-native sentence processing. In two online reading experiments we examined when during processing local and/or non-local antecedents for pronouns were considered in different types of syntactic environment. Our results demonstrate that both native English speakers and native German-speaking learners of English showed online sensitivity to binding condition B in that they did not consider syntactically inappropriate antecedents. For pronouns thought to be exempt from condition B (so-called 'short-distance pronouns', the native readers showed a weak preference for the local antecedent during processing. The non-native readers, on the other hand, showed a preference for the matrix subject even where local coreference was permitted, and despite demonstrating awareness of short-distance pronouns' referential ambiguity in a complementary offline task. This indicates that non-native comprehenders are less sensitive during processing to structural cues that render pronouns exempt from condition B, and prefer to link a pronoun to a salient subject antecedent instead.

A tutoring package to teach pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese characters.

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Wu, Hang; Miller, L Keith

2007-01-01

We examined the effects of a tutoring package (verbal modeling, prompts, and contingent praise/ Chinese conversations with the tutor) on the performance of a college student's Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. The effects of the tutoring package were analyzed using a multiple baseline design across two sets of 50 Chinese characters. The tutoring package produced improvement in the student's correct pronunciation of Chinese characters from 48% (pretutoring) to 90% (posttutoring). Results suggested that the tutoring package produced mastery pronunciation of targeted Mandarin Chinese vocalizations by a nonnative speaker.

Accent on communication: the impact of regional and foreign accent on comprehension in adults with aphasia.

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Bruce, Carolyn; To, Cinn-Teng; Newton, Caroline

2012-01-01

This study explored whether an unfamiliar non-native accent, differing in both segmental and prosodic features was more difficult for individuals with aphasia to understand than an unfamiliar native accent, which differed in segmental features only. Comprehension, which was determined by accuracy judgments on true/false sentences, and speed of response were assessed in the following three conditions: a familiar Southern Standard British English (SSBE) accent, an unfamiliar native Grimsby accent, and an unfamiliar non-native Chinese accent. Thirty-four English speaking adults (17 people with and 17 people without aphasia) served as listeners for this study. All listeners made significantly more errors in the unfamiliar non-native accent, although this difficulty was more marked for those with aphasia. While there was no affect of speaker accent on the response times of listeners with aphasia, listeners without aphasia were significantly slower with the unfamiliar non-native accent. The results indicate that non-native accented speech affects comprehension even on simple tasks in ideal listening conditions. The findings suggest that speaker accent, especially accents varying in both segmental and prosodic features, can be a barrier to successful interactions between non-native accented speakers and native listeners, particularly those with aphasia.

Non-Native Japanese Listeners' Perception of Vowel Length Contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

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Tsukada, Kimiko

2012-01-01

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language…

Native language effects on spelling in English as a foreign language: a time-course study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dich, Nadya; Pedersen, Bo

2013-01-01

The study explores first language (L1) influences on the mechanisms of spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL). We hypothesized that the transparency of L1 orthography influences (a) the amount of hesitation associated with spelling irregular English words, and (b) the size of units EFL...... spellers operate. Participants were adult speakers of three languages differing by the degree of transparency, Danish, Russian, and Italian (n = 60), and a group of English native speakers (n = 20). We analyzed keystroke logs from typed spellings of 30 English words. The amount of hesitation (number...... of corrections and number of long within-word pauses), was equal across all participants groups, thus disconfirming our first hypothesis. Inter-key intervals between onsets and rhymes were longer than within-rhyme intervals, but only in Danes and native English speakers, and not in Russians and Italians. We...

Which English? Whose English? An Investigation of "Non-Native" Teachers' Beliefs about Target Varieties

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Young, Tony Johnstone; Walsh, Steve

2010-01-01

This study explored the beliefs of "non-native English speaking" teachers about the usefulness and appropriacy of varieties such as English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), compared with native speaker varieties. The study therefore addresses the current theoretical debate concerning "appropriate" target…

Optimizing Automatic Speech Recognition for Low-Proficient Non-Native Speakers

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Catia Cucchiarini

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL applications for improving the oral skills of low-proficient learners have to cope with non-native speech that is particularly challenging. Since unconstrained non-native ASR is still problematic, a possible solution is to elicit constrained responses from the learners. In this paper, we describe experiments aimed at selecting utterances from lists of responses. The first experiment on utterance selection indicates that the decoding process can be improved by optimizing the language model and the acoustic models, thus reducing the utterance error rate from 29–26% to 10–8%. Since giving feedback on incorrectly recognized utterances is confusing, we verify the correctness of the utterance before providing feedback. The results of the second experiment on utterance verification indicate that combining duration-related features with a likelihood ratio (LR yield an equal error rate (EER of 10.3%, which is significantly better than the EER for the other measures in isolation.

Primary screening of forestry herbicides for control of Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis), and trumpetcreeper (Campsis radicans) [Abstract

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James H. Miller

1998-01-01

Exotic and native invasive plants increasingly hinder land management, use, and restoration projects. Chinese and Japanese privet are rapidly becoming major threats to future hardwood culture and currently hinder ROW management throughout the southeastern region. Chinese wisteria occurs as severe, dense isolated infestations in forest stands. Native trumpetcreeper can...

L2 Romanian Influence in the Acquisition of the English Passive by L1 Speakers of Hungarian

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Tankó Enikő

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The main question to be investigated is to what extent native speakers of Hungarian understand and acquire the English passive voice, as there is no generalized syntactic passive construction in Hungarian. As we will show, native speakers of Hungarian tend to use the predicative verbal adverbial construction when translating English passive sentences, as this construction is the closest syntactic equivalent of the English passive voice. Another question to be investigated is whether L2 Romanian works as a facilitating factor in the process of acquiring the L3 English passive voice. If all our subjects, Hungarian students living in Romania, were Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals, it would be obvious that knowledge of Romanian helps them in acquiring the English passive. However, as it will be shown, the bilingualism hypothesis is disconfirmed. Still, passive knowledge of Romanian influences to some extent the acquisition of the English passive voice.

Effects of context and word class on lexical retrieval in Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia.

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Law, Sam-Po; Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Lai, Loretta Wing-Shan; Lai, Christy

2015-01-01

Differences in processing nouns and verbs have been investigated intensely in psycholinguistics and neuropsychology in past decades. However, the majority of studies examining retrieval of these word classes have involved tasks of single word stimuli or responses. While the results have provided rich information for addressing issues about grammatical class distinctions, it is unclear whether they have adequate ecological validity for understanding lexical retrieval in connected speech which characterizes daily verbal communication. Previous investigations comparing retrieval of nouns and verbs in single word production and connected speech have reported either discrepant performance between the two contexts with presence of word class dissociation in picture naming but absence in connected speech, or null effects of word class. In addition, word finding difficulties have been found to be less severe in connected speech than picture naming. However, these studies have failed to match target stimuli of the two word classes and between tasks on psycholinguistic variables known to affect performance in response latency and/or accuracy. The present study compared lexical retrieval of nouns and verbs in picture naming and connected speech from picture description, procedural description, and story-telling among 19 Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia and their age, gender, and education matched healthy controls, to understand the influence of grammatical class on word production across speech contexts when target items were balanced for confounding variables between word classes and tasks. Elicitation of responses followed the protocol of the AphasiaBank consortium (http://talkbank.org/AphasiaBank/). Target words for confrontation naming were based on well-established naming tests, while those for narrative were drawn from a large database of normal speakers. Selected nouns and verbs in the two contexts were matched for age-of-acquisition (AoA) and familiarity

The Roles of Pinyin Skill in English-Chinese Biliteracy Learning: Evidence from Chinese Immersion Learners

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Lü, Chan

2017-01-01

Pinyin is a sound-annotating system for Chinese characters using Roman letters. Teaching and learning Pinyin has been an important educational practice in Mainland China for native Chinese children, and it is also typically taught to beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign/second language in tertiary-level classrooms. However, whether it should…

Processing of acoustic and phonological information of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese revealed by mismatch negativity.

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Yu, Keke; Wang, Ruiming; Li, Li; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

The accurate perception of lexical tones in tonal languages involves the processing of both acoustic information and phonological information carried by the tonal signal. In this study we evaluated the relative role of the two types of information in native Chinese speaker's processing of tones at a preattentive stage with event-related potentials (ERPs), particularly the mismatch negativity (MNN). Specifically, we distinguished the acoustic from the phonological information by manipulating phonological category and acoustic interval of the stimulus materials. We found a significant main effect of phonological category for the peak latency of MMN, but a main effect of both phonological category and acoustic interval for the mean amplitude of MMN. The results indicated that the two types of information, acoustic and phonological, play different roles in the processing of Chinese lexical tones: acoustic information only impacts the extent of tonal processing, while phonological information affects both the extent and the time course of tonal processing. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of neurocognitive processes of phonological processing.

Exploring Associations among Writing Self-Perceptions, Writing Abilities, and Native Language of English-Spanish Two-Way Immersion Students

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Neugebauer, Sabina R.; Howard, Elizabeth R.

2015-01-01

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English…

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

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Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2016-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese. PMID:28496393

Reorientando a identidade nacional em Native speaker, de Chang-rae Lee, e O sol se põe em São Paulo, de Bernardo Carvalho

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Rex P. Nielson

2014-01-01

Full Text Available A comparative reading of the novels Native speaker (1995, by the North American writer Chang-rae Lee, and O sol se põe em São Paulo (2007, by Bernardo Carvalho, allows for a reevaluation of how minority identities have been constructed in the two American megalopolises New York and São Paulo. The plotlines of both nove ls hinge on the identity crisis of a second-generation Asian immigrant (from Korea in one case and Japan in the other who is seeking to negotiate his American identity (speaking in hemispheric terms in terms of his family‟s origin and language. However, despite the similar anxieties over assimilation present in both novels, they both reveal significant differences regarding the ways in which the United States and Brazil have responded to cultural difference even as they challenge national myths of inclusi on and belonging.

Effects of Instruction on Chinese College Students' Thematic Choice in Academic Writing

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Wei, Jing

2016-01-01

The Theme is a major aspect of how speakers construct their messages in a way which makes them fit smoothly into the unfolding language event. Thematic choice provides clues as to how English learners organize information and shape their texts. Previous studies reveal that English learners deviated from English native speakers in their thematic…

The Learning of Chinese Idiomatic Expressions as a Foreign Language

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Liu, Li; Yao, Jiayi

2017-01-01

Chinese idioms are mostly four-character phrases and are called Quadra-syllabic Idiomatic Expressions (QIEs). It has long been reported that learning of Chinese QIEs poses a great challenge for both young L1 speakers and adult L2 learners as the condensed form is often associated with complicated figurative meanings. The present study explored the…

The Non-absoluteness of the Leading Position of the Frequency ——On the Vocabulary Design Criteria of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Language

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Ma Qinghua

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The design criteria of the vocabulary outline of the second language teaching vary according to the teaching objectives. Under the same objective, the criteria are often more than one. The multiple criteria are sometimes compatible and sometimes conflicting. Through analyzing and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of the new Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK Vocabulary Outline, this paper reveals the interactions between the task objectives, the criterion conditions and processing strategies, as well as the interaction relationships between the multiple criteria features of the vocabulary outline designing process, and then abstracts the general principles and overall rules. The research results subvert the habitual knowledge that the frequency criterion position ranked first, which is always popular at least in the Chinese academic circle. It finds that the leading position of frequency criterion only exists in the criteria compatibility model. In the conflict model of the locutionary criteria, the stylistic criterion and syntactic criterion are strong criteria, while the word frequency criterion relegates to the weak position. In the conflict model of the locutionary and illocutionary criteria, the illocutionary criterion is strong criterion, while the locutionary criterion relegates to the weak position, which indicates that the language can’t be above its purpose of usage. This research is conducive to the improvement of the vocabulary outline. It also has certain practical significance to the disciplinary theories of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Language or even to the whole second language teaching.

Development and evaluation of height diameter at breast models for native Chinese Metasequoia.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Mu; Feng, Zhongke; Zhang, Zhixiang; Ma, Chenghui; Wang, Mingming; Lian, Bo-Ling; Sun, Renjie; Zhang, Li

2017-01-01

Accurate tree height and diameter at breast height (dbh) are important input variables for growth and yield models. A total of 5503 Chinese Metasequoia trees were used in this study. We studied 53 fitted models, of which 7 were linear models and 46 were non-linear models. These models were divided into two groups of single models and multivariate models according to the number of independent variables. The results show that the allometry equation of tree height which has diameter at breast height as independent variable can better reflect the change of tree height; in addition the prediction accuracy of the multivariate composite models is higher than that of the single variable models. Although tree age is not the most important variable in the study of the relationship between tree height and dbh, the consideration of tree age when choosing models and parameters in model selection can make the prediction of tree height more accurate. The amount of data is also an important parameter what can improve the reliability of models. Other variables such as tree height, main dbh and altitude, etc can also affect models. In this study, the method of developing the recommended models for predicting the tree height of native Metasequoias aged 50-485 years is statistically reliable and can be used for reference in predicting the growth and production of mature native Metasequoia.

Development and evaluation of height diameter at breast models for native Chinese Metasequoia.

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Mu Liu

Full Text Available Accurate tree height and diameter at breast height (dbh are important input variables for growth and yield models. A total of 5503 Chinese Metasequoia trees were used in this study. We studied 53 fitted models, of which 7 were linear models and 46 were non-linear models. These models were divided into two groups of single models and multivariate models according to the number of independent variables. The results show that the allometry equation of tree height which has diameter at breast height as independent variable can better reflect the change of tree height; in addition the prediction accuracy of the multivariate composite models is higher than that of the single variable models. Although tree age is not the most important variable in the study of the relationship between tree height and dbh, the consideration of tree age when choosing models and parameters in model selection can make the prediction of tree height more accurate. The amount of data is also an important parameter what can improve the reliability of models. Other variables such as tree height, main dbh and altitude, etc can also affect models. In this study, the method of developing the recommended models for predicting the tree height of native Metasequoias aged 50-485 years is statistically reliable and can be used for reference in predicting the growth and production of mature native Metasequoia.

The Main Concept Analysis: Validation and sensitivity in differentiating discourse produced by unimpaired English speakers from individuals with aphasia and dementia of Alzheimer type.

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Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Whiteside, Janet; Bargmann, Peggy

2016-10-01

Discourse from speakers with dementia and aphasia is associated with comparable but not identical deficits, necessitating appropriate methods to differentiate them. The current study aims to validate the Main Concept Analysis (MCA) to be used for eliciting and quantifying discourse among native typical English speakers and to establish its norm, and investigate the validity and sensitivity of the MCA to compare discourse produced by individuals with fluent aphasia, non-fluent aphasia, or dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT), and unimpaired elderly. Discourse elicited through a sequential picture description task was collected from 60 unimpaired participants to determine the MCA scoring criteria; 12 speakers with fluent aphasia, 12 with non-fluent aphasia, 13 with DAT, and 20 elderly participants from the healthy group were compared on the finalized MCA. Results of MANOVA revealed significant univariate omnibus effects of speaker group as an independent variable on each main concept index. MCA profiles differed significantly between all participant groups except dementia versus fluent aphasia. Correlations between the MCA performances and the Western Aphasia Battery and Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were found to be statistically significant among the clinical groups. The MCA was appropriate to be used among native speakers of English. The results also provided further empirical evidence of discourse deficits in aphasia and dementia. Practitioners can use the MCA to evaluate discourse production systemically and objectively.

Working with Speakers.

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Pestel, Ann

1989-01-01

The author discusses working with speakers from business and industry to present career information at the secondary level. Advice for speakers is presented, as well as tips for program coordinators. (CH)

On the optimization of a mixed speaker array in an enclosed space using the virtual-speaker weighting method

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Bo; Zheng, Sifa; Liao, Xiangning; Lian, Xiaomin

2018-03-01

In order to achieve sound field reproduction in a wide frequency band, multiple-type speakers are used. The reproduction accuracy is not only affected by the signals sent to the speakers, but also depends on the position and the number of each type of speaker. The method of optimizing a mixed speaker array is investigated in this paper. A virtual-speaker weighting method is proposed to optimize both the position and the number of each type of speaker. In this method, a virtual-speaker model is proposed to quantify the increment of controllability of the speaker array when the speaker number increases. While optimizing a mixed speaker array, the gain of the virtual-speaker transfer function is used to determine the priority orders of the candidate speaker positions, which optimizes the position of each type of speaker. Then the relative gain of the virtual-speaker transfer function is used to determine whether the speakers are redundant, which optimizes the number of each type of speaker. Finally the virtual-speaker weighting method is verified by reproduction experiments of the interior sound field in a passenger car. The results validate that the optimum mixed speaker array can be obtained using the proposed method.

Even with a green card, you can be put out to pasture and still have to work: non-native intuitions of the transparency of common English idioms.

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Malt, Barbara C; Eiter, Brianna

2004-09-01

Native speakers of English use idioms such as put your foot down and spill the beans to label events that are not described literally by the words that compose the idioms. For many such expressions, the idiomatic meanings are transparent; that is, the connection between the literal expression and its figurative meaning makes sense to native speakers. We tested Keysar and Bly's (1995) hypothesis that this sense of transparency for the meaning of everyday idioms does not necessarily obtain because the idiomatic meanings are derived from motivating literal meanings or conceptual metaphors, but rather (at least in part) because language users construct explanations after the fact for whatever meaning is conventionally assigned to the expression. Non-native speakers of English were exposed to common English idioms and taught either the conventional idiomatic meaning or an alternative meaning. In agreement with Keysar and Bly's suggestion, their subsequent sense of transparency was greater for the meaning that the speakers had learned and used, regardless of which one it was.

Characteristics of number transcoding errors of Chinese- versus English-speaking Alzheimer's disease patients.

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Ting, Simon Kang Seng; Chia, Pei Shi; Kwek, Kevin; Tan, Wilnard; Hameed, Shahul

2016-10-01

Number processing disorder is an acquired deficit in mathematical skills commonly observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), usually as a consequence of neurological dysfunction. Common impairments include syntactic errors (800012 instead of 8012) and intrusion errors (8 thousand and 12 instead of eight thousand and twelve) in number transcoding tasks. This study aimed to understand the characterization of AD-related number processing disorder within an alphabetic language (English) and ideographical language (Chinese), and to investigate the differences between alphabetic and ideographic language processing. Chinese-speaking AD patients were hypothesized to make significantly more intrusion errors than English-speaking ones, due to the ideographical nature of both Chinese characters and Arabic numbers. A simplified number transcoding test derived from EC301 battery was administered to AD patients. Chinese-speaking AD patients made significantly more intrusion errors (p = 0.001) than English speakers. This demonstrates that number processing in an alphabetic language such as English does not function in the same manner as in Chinese. The impaired inhibition capability likely contributes to such observations due to its competitive lexical representation in brain for Chinese speakers.

Incidence and risk factors for breast cancer subtypes in three distinct South-East Asian ethnic groups: Chinese, Malay and natives of Sarawak, Malaysia.

Science.gov (United States)

Devi, C R Beena; Tang, Tieng Swee; Corbex, Marilys

2012-12-15

We determined the incidences of the estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) subtypes among breast cancer cases in Sarawak, Malaysia and their correlation with various risk factors in the three ethnic groups: Chinese, Malay and native. Subtype status was ascertained for 1,034 cases of female breast cancer (93% of all cases diagnosed since 2003), and the age-standardized incidence rates (ASRs) of each subtype were inferred. Case-case comparisons across subtypes were performed for reproductive risk factors. We found 48% luminal A (ER+/PR+/HER2-), 29% triple-negative (ER-/PR-/HER2-), 12% triple-positive (ER+/PR+/HER2+) and 11% HER2-overexpressing (ER-/PR-/HER2+) subtypes, with ASRs of 10.6, 6.0, 2.8 and 2.8 per 100,000, respectively. The proportions of subtypes and ASRs differed significantly by ethnic groups: HER2-positive cases were more frequent in Malays (29%; 95% CI [23;35]) than Chinese (22%; [19;26] and natives (21%; [16;26]); triple-negative cases were less frequent among Chinese (23%; [20;27]) than Malays (33%; [27;39]) and natives (37%; [31;43]). The results of the case-case comparison were in accordance with those observed in western case series. Some uncommon associations, such as between triple-negative subtype and older age at menopause (OR, 1.59; p < 0.05), were found. The triple-negative and HER2+ subtypes predominate in our region, with significant differences among ethnic groups. Our results support the idea that the risk factors for different subtypes vary markedly. Westernized populations are more likely to have factors that increase the risk for the luminal A type, while risk factors for the triple-negative type are more frequent in local populations. Copyright © 2012 UICC.

Faithful Imitator, Legitimate Speaker, Playful Creator and Dialogical Communicator: Shift in English Learners' Identity Prototypes

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Gao, Yihong

2014-01-01

This paper attempts to conceptualize identity prototypes regarding model L2 learners/users of English over the past 50 years, as embedded in research discourses. For a long time, the ideal learner was a "faithful imitator" whose L2 use and cultural conduct were strictly modeled on the native speaker (NS). With postcolonial changes around…

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

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Gregory Scontras

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Accurately recognizing and resolving ambiguity is a hallmark of linguistic ability. English is a language with scope ambiguities in doubly-quantified sentences like 'A shark ate every pirate'; this sentence can either describe a scenario with a single shark eating all of the pirates, or a scenario with many sharks—a potentially-different one eating each pirate. In Mandarin Chinese, the corresponding sentence is unambiguous, as it can only describe the single-shark scenario. We present experimental evidence to this effect, comparing native speakers of English with native speakers of Mandarin in their interpretations of doubly-quantified sentences. Having demonstrated the difference between these two languages in their ability for inverse scope interpretations, we then probe the robustness of the grammar of scope by extending our experiments to English-dominant adult heritage speakers of Mandarin. Like native speakers of Mandarin, heritage Mandarin speakers lack inverse scope in Mandarin. Crucially, these speakers also lack inverse scope in English, their dominant language in adulthood. We interpret these results as evidence for the pressure to simplify the grammar of scope, decreasing ambiguity when possible. In other words, when two systems meet—as in the case of heritage speakers—the simpler system prevails. This article is part of the special collection: Quantifier Scope

Chinese language teachers’ beliefs about their roles in the Danish context

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Li; Du, Xiangyun

2016-01-01

This paper focuses on how teachers of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) perceive their roles in the Danish context. In this qualitative study of twelve native and non-native Chinese-speaking language teachers, empirical data was collected from semi-structured interviews and classroom observations...

Assessing the Performance of Automatic Speech Recognition Systems When Used by Native and Non-Native Speakers of Three Major Languages in Dictation Workflows

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zapata, Julián; Kirkedal, Andreas Søeborg

2015-01-01

In this paper, we report on a two-part experiment aiming to assess and compare the performance of two types of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems on two different computational platforms when used to augment dictation workflows. The experiment was performed with a sample of speakers...

Effects of context and word class on lexical retrieval in Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Law, Sam-Po; Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Lai, Loretta Wing-Shan; Lai, Christy

2014-01-01

Background Differences in processing nouns and verbs have been investigated intensely in psycholinguistics and neuropsychology in past decades. However, the majority of studies examining retrieval of these word classes have involved tasks of single word stimuli or responses. While the results have provided rich information for addressing issues about grammatical class distinctions, it is unclear whether they have adequate ecological validity for understanding lexical retrieval in connected speech which characterizes daily verbal communication. Previous investigations comparing retrieval of nouns and verbs in single word production and connected speech have reported either discrepant performance between the two contexts with presence of word class dissociation in picture naming but absence in connected speech, or null effects of word class. In addition, word finding difficulties have been found to be less severe in connected speech than picture naming. However, these studies have failed to match target stimuli of the two word classes and between tasks on psycholinguistic variables known to affect performance in response latency and/or accuracy. Aims The present study compared lexical retrieval of nouns and verbs in picture naming and connected speech from picture description, procedural description, and story-telling among 19 Chinese speakers with anomic aphasia and their age, gender, and education matched healthy controls, to understand the influence of grammatical class on word production across speech contexts when target items were balanced for confounding variables between word classes and tasks. Methods & Procedures Elicitation of responses followed the protocol of the AphasiaBank consortium (http://talkbank.org/AphasiaBank/). Target words for confrontation naming were based on well-established naming tests, while those for narrative were drawn from a large database of normal speakers. Selected nouns and verbs in the two contexts were matched for age

Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua; Bond, Michael Harris

2010-11-01

The issue of whether personality changes as a function of language is controversial. The present research tested the cultural accommodation hypothesis by examining the impact of language use on personality as perceived by the self and by others. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals responded to personality inventories in Chinese or English on perceived traits for themselves, typical native speakers of Chinese, and typical native speakers of English. Study 2 adopted a repeated measures design and collected data at three time points from written measures and actual conversations to examine whether bilinguals exhibited different patterns of personality, each associated with one of their two languages and the ethnicity of their interlocutors. Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions. It is suggested that use of a second language accesses the perceived cultural norms of the group most associated with that language, especially its prototypic trait profiles, thus activating behavioral expressions of personality that are appropriate in the corresponding linguistic-social context.

Native-English Speaking Instructors Teaching Writing in China

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Qing; Zhou, Xiaodi; Fu, Danling

2015-01-01

This article presents two separate but related studies on native-English speaking (NES) instructors' teaching writing practice in Chinese universities. One study is a case study that explores the teaching practice of three NES instructors' writing instruction in a southern Chinese university as well as students' responses to their practice.…

Ethical Considerations in Conducting Research with Non-Native Speakers of English

Science.gov (United States)

Koulouriotis, Joanna

2011-01-01

The ethical considerations of three education researchers working with non-native English-speaking participants were examined from a critical theory stand-point in the light of the literature on research ethics in various disciplines. Qualitative inquiry and data analysis were used to identify key themes, which centered around honor and respect…

Hemispheric involvement in the processing of Chinese idioms: An fMRI study.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Jie; Li, Ping; Fang, Xiaoping; Shu, Hua; Liu, Youyi; Chen, Lang

2016-07-01

Although the left hemisphere is believed to handle major language functions, the role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension remains controversial. Recently researchers have investigated hemispheric language processing with figurative language materials (e.g., metaphors, jokes, and idioms). The current study capitalizes on the pervasiveness and distinct features of Chinese idioms to examine the brain mechanism of figurative language processing. Native Chinese speakers performed a non-semantic task while reading opaque idioms, transparent idioms, and non-idiomatic literal phrases. Whole-brain analyses indicated strong activations for all three conditions in an overlapping brain network that includes the bilateral inferior/middle frontal gyrus and the temporo-parietal and occipital-temporal regions. The two idiom conditions elicited additional activations in the right superior parietal lobule and right precuneus. Item-based modulation analyses further demonstrated that activation amplitudes in the right angular gyrus, right superior parietal lobule and right precuneus, as well as left inferior temporo-occipital cortex, are negatively correlated with the semantic transparency of the idioms. These results suggest that both hemispheres are involved in idiom processing but they play different roles. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of theories of figurative language processing and hemispheric functions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Non-Native English Teachers' Beliefs on Grammar Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Önalan, Okan

2018-01-01

Research on teacher cognition, which mainly focuses on identifying what teachers think, know and believe, is essential to understanding teachers' cognitive framework as it relates to the instructional choices they make. The aim of this study is to find out the beliefs of non-native speaker teachers of English on grammar instruction and to explain…

Supervised and Unsupervised Speaker Adaptation in the NIST 2005 Speaker Recognition Evaluation

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Hansen, Eric G; Slyh, Raymond E; Anderson, Timothy R

2006-01-01

Starting in 2004, the annual NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE) has added an optional unsupervised speaker adaptation track where test files are processed sequentially and one may update the target model...

Communication Interface for Mexican Spanish Dysarthric Speakers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gladys Bonilla-Enriquez

2012-03-01

Full Text Available La disartria es una discapacidad motora del habla caracterizada por debilidad o poca coordinación de los músculos del habla. Esta condición puede ser causada por un infarto, parálisis cerebral, o por una lesión severa en el cerebro. Para mexicanos con esta condición hay muy pocas, si es que hay alguna, tecnologías de asistencia para mejorar sus habilidades sociales de interacción. En este artículo presentamos nuestros avances hacia el desarrollo de una interfazde comunicación para hablantes con disartria cuya lengua materna sea el español mexicano. La metodología propuesta depende de (1 diseño especial de un corpus de entrenamiento con voz normal y recursos limitados, (2 adaptación de usuario estándar, y (3 control de la perplejidad del modelo de lenguaje para lograr alta precisión en el Reconocimiento Automático del Habla (RAH. La interfaz permite al usuario y terapéuta el realizar actividades como adaptación dinámica de usuario, adaptación de vocabulario, y síntesis de texto a voz. Pruebas en vivo fueron realizadas con un usuario con disartria leve, logrando precisiones de 93%-95% para habla espontánea.Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder due to weakness or poor coordination of the speechmuscles. This condition can be caused by a stroke, cerebral palsy, or by a traumatic braininjury. For Mexican people with this condition there are few, if any, assistive technologies to improve their social interaction skills. In this paper we present our advances towards the development of a communication interface for dysarthric speakers whose native language is Mexican Spanish. We propose a methodology that relies on (1 special design of a training normal-speech corpus with limited resources, (2 standard speaker adaptation, and (3 control of language model perplexity, to achieve high Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR accuracy. The interface allows the user and therapist to perform tasks such as dynamic speaker adaptation, vocabulary

75 FR 12221 - Foreign Language Assistance Program-Local Educational Agencies with Institutions of Higher Education

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-15

... or expand foreign language learning, primarily during the traditional school day, within grade... languages: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, and languages in the Indic, Iranian, and Turkic...-native English speakers in the community with the schools in order to promote two-way language learning...

Facework in Non-Face-Threatening Emails by Native and Non-Native English Speakers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

- Зохре Ислами Р

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of this research is to investigate the speech act of assignment submission and presence of facework in submission emails sent to faculty members by native and nonnative English speaking graduate students. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987 and Spencer-Oatey’s (2002, 2008 rapport management framework were utilized to analyze the emails. The corpus consisted of 105 emails from 40 NES and NNES students. Drawing on speech event analysis approach (Merrison, Wilson, Davies, & Haugh, 2012, we analyze both submission head act as well as optional elements like openings, small talk and closings in an email. Our exploratory study revealed that, contrary to the argument that CMC is a lean medium (Duthler, 2006 in which it is difficult to achieve interpersonal communication, through the employment of opening, small talk and closing strategies, students attended to relational goals in their email communication.

The influence of language deprivation in early childhood on L2 processing: An ERP comparison of deaf native signers and deaf signers with a delayed language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Skotara, Nils; Salden, Uta; Kügow, Monique; Hänel-Faulhaber, Barbara; Röder, Brigitte

2012-05-03

To examine which language function depends on early experience, the present study compared deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers and hearing German native speakers while processing German sentences. The participants watched simple written sentences while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. At the end of each sentence they were asked to judge whether the sentence was correct or not. Two types of violations were introduced in the middle of the sentence: a semantically implausible noun or a violation of subject-verb number agreement. The results showed a similar ERP pattern after semantic violations (an N400 followed by a positivity) in all three groups. After syntactic violations, native German speakers and native signers of German sign language (DGS) with German as second language (L2) showed a left anterior negativity (LAN) followed by a P600, whereas no LAN but a negativity over the right hemisphere instead was found in deaf participants with a delayed onset of first language (L1) acquisition. The P600 of this group had a smaller amplitude and a different scalp distribution as compared to German native speakers. The results of the present study suggest that language deprivation in early childhood alters the cerebral organization of syntactic language processing mechanisms for L2. Semantic language processing instead was unaffected.

Together we have fun: native-place networks and sexual risk behaviours among Chinese male rural-urban migrants.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Xiaozhao Yousef; Kelly, Brian C; Yang, Tingzhong

2016-05-01

Some scholars argue that the maintenance of social networks contributes to the lower prevalence of deviant behaviours and fewer adverse health effects among migrants. But others suggest that if migrants are embedded in homogeneous networks, such networks may enable the formation of a deviant subculture that promotes risk taking. Facing this dilemma, the present study investigates how native-place networks influence sexual risk behaviours (SRBs), specifically the pursuit of commercial sex and condomless sex with sex workers, for male rural-urban migrants. Using a multi-stage sample of 1,591 male rural-urban migrants from two major migrant-influx cities within China, we assessed migrants' general friend network ties and native place networks (townsmen in migrants' local networks) and tested their associations with SRBs. Multiple logistic regression analyses indicate that native-place network ties are associated with paying for sex (OR = 1.33, p < 0.001) and condomless sex with sex workers (OR = 1.33, p < 0.001), while general friendship network ties reduce such risks (OR = 0.74, p < 0.001; OR = 0.84, p < 0.01) even after controlling for demographic background, housing conditions, length of stay, health beliefs and behaviours, and spousal companionship. Our findings suggest that native-place networks among Chinese male rural-urban migrants are associated with SRBs because homogenous networks may serve as a platform for the emergence of a deviant subculture that promotes risk behaviours. A Virtual Abstract of this paper is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wg20I6j8XQ. © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

A Study of Jordanian University Students' Perceptions of Using Email Exchanges with Native English Keypals for Improving Their Writing Competency

Science.gov (United States)

Mahfouz, Safi Mahmoud

2010-01-01

English foreign language learners generally tend to consider email exchanges with native speakers (NSs) as an effective tool for improving their foreign language proficiency. This study investigated Jordanian university students' perceptions of using email exchanges with native English keypals (NEKs) for improving their writing competency. A…

The Learning of Chinese Idioms through Multimedia Storytelling Prototype

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Ee Hui; Hew, Soon Hin; Choo, Siew Hwa

2016-01-01

In recent years, the growth of China has successfully boosted the Chinese language to be studied by people from different language-speaking societies. The Chinese language has become the most preferred second or third language among non-Chinese native novices due to the great development of China and global economic change. The Chinese idiom is…

Emotion Situation Knowledge and Autobiographical Memory in Chinese, Immigrant Chinese, and European American 3-Year-Olds

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Qi; Hutt, Rachel; Kulkofsky, Sarah; McDermott, Melissa; Wei, Ruohong

2006-01-01

This study examined the influence of children's emotion situation knowledge (EK) on their autobiographical memory ability at both group and individual levels. Native Chinese, Chinese immigrant, and European American 3-year-old children participated (N = 189). During a home visit, children recounted 2 personal memories of recent, 1-time events with…

Comprehensibility and Prosody Ratings for Pronunciation Software Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paul Warren

2009-10-01

Full Text Available In the context of a project developing software for pronunciation practice and feedback for Mandarin-speaking learners of English, a key issue is how to decide which features of pronunciation to focus on in giving feedback. We used naïve and experienced native speaker ratings of comprehensibility and nativeness to establish the key features affecting comprehensibility of the utterances of a group of Chinese learners of English. Native speaker raters assessed the comprehensibility of recorded utterances, pinpointed areas of difficulty and then rated for nativeness the same utterances, but after segmental information had been filtered out. The results show that prosodic information is important for comprehensibility, and that there are no significant differences between naïve and experienced raters on either comprehensibility or nativeness judgements. This suggests that naïve judgements are a useful and accessible source of data for identifying the parameters to be used in setting up automated feedback.

L2 Word Recognition: Influence of L1 Orthography on Multi-syllabic Word Recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Hamada, Megumi

2017-10-01

L2 reading research suggests that L1 orthographic experience influences L2 word recognition. Nevertheless, the findings on multi-syllabic words in English are still limited despite the fact that a vast majority of words are multi-syllabic. The study investigated whether L1 orthography influences the recognition of multi-syllabic words, focusing on the position of an embedded word. The participants were Arabic ESL learners, Chinese ESL learners, and native speakers of English. The task was a word search task, in which the participants identified a target word embedded in a pseudoword at the initial, middle, or final position. The search accuracy and speed indicated that all groups showed a strong preference for the initial position. The accuracy data further indicated group differences. The Arabic group showed higher accuracy in the final than middle, while the Chinese group showed the opposite and the native speakers showed no difference between the two positions. The findings suggest that L2 multi-syllabic word recognition involves unique processes.

The effect of tonal changes on voice onset time in Mandarin esophageal speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Hanjun; Ng, Manwa L; Wan, Mingxi; Wang, Supin; Zhang, Yi

2008-03-01

The present study investigated the effect of tonal changes on voice onset time (VOT) between normal laryngeal (NL) and superior esophageal (SE) speakers of Mandarin Chinese. VOT values were measured from the syllables /pha/, /tha/, and /kha/ produced at four tone levels by eight NL and seven SE speakers who were native speakers of Mandarin. Results indicated that Mandarin tones were associated with significantly different VOT values for NL speakers, in which high-falling tone was associated with significantly shorter VOT values than mid-rising tone and falling-rising tone. Regarding speaker group, SE speakers showed significantly shorter VOT values than NL speakers across all tone levels. This may be related to their use of pharyngoesophageal (PE) segment as another sound source. SE speakers appear to take a shorter time to start PE segment vibration compared to NL speakers using the vocal folds for vibration.

Language matters: thirteen-month-olds understand that the language a speaker uses constrains conventionality.

Science.gov (United States)

Scott, Jessica C; Henderson, Annette M E

2013-11-01

Object labels are valuable communicative tools because their meanings are shared among the members of a particular linguistic community. The current research was conducted to investigate whether 13-month-old infants appreciate that object labels should not be generalized across individuals who have been shown to speak different languages. Using a visual habituation paradigm, Experiment 1 tested whether infants would generalize a new object label that was taught to them by a speaker of a foreign language to a speaker from the infant's own linguistic group. The results suggest that infants do not expect 2 individuals who have been shown to speak different languages to use the same label to refer to the same object. The results of Experiment 2 reveal that infants do not generalize a new object label that was taught to them by a speaker of their native language to an individual who had been shown to speak a foreign language. These findings offer the first evidence that by the end of the 1st year of life, infants are sensitive to the fact that the conventional nature of language is constrained by the language that a person has been shown to speak.

Left hemisphere lateralization for lexical and acoustic pitch processing in Cantonese speakers as revealed by mismatch negativity.

Science.gov (United States)

Gu, Feng; Zhang, Caicai; Hu, Axu; Zhao, Guoping

2013-12-01

For nontonal language speakers, speech processing is lateralized to the left hemisphere and musical processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere (i.e., function-dependent brain asymmetry). On the other hand, acoustic temporal processing is lateralized to the left hemisphere and spectral/pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere (i.e., acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry). In this study, we examine whether the hemispheric lateralization of lexical pitch and acoustic pitch processing in tonal language speakers is consistent with the patterns of function- and acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry in nontonal language speakers. Pitch contrast in both speech stimuli (syllable /ji/ in Experiment 1) and nonspeech stimuli (harmonic tone in Experiment 1; pure tone in Experiment 2) was presented to native Cantonese speakers in passive oddball paradigms. We found that the mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by lexical pitch contrast was lateralized to the left hemisphere, which is consistent with the pattern of function-dependent brain asymmetry (i.e., left hemisphere lateralization for speech processing) in nontonal language speakers. However, the MMN elicited by acoustic pitch contrast was also left hemisphere lateralized (harmonic tone in Experiment 1) or showed a tendency for left hemisphere lateralization (pure tone in Experiment 2), which is inconsistent with the pattern of acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry (i.e., right hemisphere lateralization for acoustic pitch processing) in nontonal language speakers. The consistent pattern of function-dependent brain asymmetry and the inconsistent pattern of acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry between tonal and nontonal language speakers can be explained by the hypothesis that the acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry is the consequence of a carryover effect from function-dependent brain asymmetry. Potential evolutionary implication of this hypothesis is discussed. © 2013.

Similar speaker recognition using nonlinear analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seo, J.P.; Kim, M.S.; Baek, I.C.; Kwon, Y.H.; Lee, K.S.; Chang, S.W.; Yang, S.I.

2004-01-01

Speech features of the conventional speaker identification system, are usually obtained by linear methods in spectral space. However, these methods have the drawback that speakers with similar voices cannot be distinguished, because the characteristics of their voices are also similar in spectral space. To overcome the difficulty in linear methods, we propose to use the correlation exponent in the nonlinear space as a new feature vector for speaker identification among persons with similar voices. We show that our proposed method surprisingly reduces the error rate of speaker identification system to speakers with similar voices

The First Two R's.

Science.gov (United States)

Tzeng, Ovid J. L.; Wang, William S. Y.

1983-01-01

Indicates that the way different languages reduce speech to script affects how visual information is processed in the brain, suggesting that the relation between script and speech underlying all types of writing systems plays an important part in reading behavior. Compares memory performance of native English/Chinese speakers. (JN)

A Usage-Based Approach to Preposition Placement in English as a Second Language

Science.gov (United States)

Jach, Daniel

2018-01-01

This study examined the acquisition of preposition placement in English as a second language from a usage-based perspective. German and Chinese learners of English and English native speakers rated the acceptability of English oblique "wh" relative clauses in a magnitude estimation task. Results indicated that acceptability depended on…

The Influence of Orthography on the Production of Alphabetic, Second-Language Allophones by Speakers of a Non-alphabetic Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Jeong-Im; Kim, Joo-Yeon

2017-08-01

This study investigated the influence of orthographic information on the production of allophones in a second language (L2). Two proficiency levels of native Mandarin speakers learned novel Korean words with potential variants of /h/ based on auditory stimuli, and then they were provided various types of spellings for the variants, including the letters for [[Formula: see text

Being Chinese or Being Different: Exploring Chinese Foreign Language (CFL) Teachers Use of Chineseness in Identity Construction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

2015-01-01

that no matter which way they use ‘Chinese-ness’, the participants are able to reflect on their experiences and manifest a willingness to adapt to another culture, in which their identity as CFL teachers are constructed. By the end of study, the combination of teaching culture of Chinese and Danish, in which...... participants are forging new identities for them are discussed. Key words: CFL teacher, Danish university, teaching culture, Chinese-ness 中国式的汉语教师 探讨新汉语教师在构建其职业身份中对于中国特色的诠释和理解 中文摘要 在对外汉语教学中......Abstract This study reports on a qualitative research that explores how three beginning native CFL teachers in a Danish university use ‘Chinese-ness’ and how these serve in explaining their own narratives, either through identifying with, or distancing themselves from. Early results show...

Conspecific plasticity and invasion: invasive populations of Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera) have performance advantage over native populations only in low soil salinity.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Leiyi; Tiu, Candice J; Peng, Shaolin; Siemann, Evan

2013-01-01

Global climate change may increase biological invasions in part because invasive species may have greater phenotypic plasticity than native species. This may be especially important for abiotic stresses such as salt inundation related to increased hurricane activity or sea level rise. If invasive species indeed have greater plasticity, this may reflect genetic differences between populations in the native and introduced ranges. Here, we examined plasticity of functional and fitness-related traits of Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera) populations from the introduced and native ranges that were grown along a gradient of soil salinity (control: 0 ppt; Low: 5 ppt; Medium: 10 ppt; High: 15 ppt) in a greenhouse. We used both norm reaction and plasticity index (PIv) to estimate the conspecific phenotypic plasticity variation between invasive and native populations. Overall, invasive populations had higher phenotypic plasticity of height growth rate (HGR), aboveground biomass, stem biomass and specific leaf area (SLA). The plasticity Index (PIv) of height growth rate (HGR) and SLA each were higher for plants from invasive populations. Absolute performance was always comparable or greater for plants from invasive populations versus native populations with the greatest differences at low stress levels. Our results were consistent with the "Master-of-some" pattern for invasive plants in which the fitness of introduced populations was greater in more benign conditions. This suggests that the greater conspecific phenotypic plasticity of invasive populations compared to native populations may increase invasion success in benign conditions but would not provide a potential interspecific competitive advantage in higher salinity soils that may occur with global climate change in coastal areas.

Grammatical Planning Units during Real-Time Sentence Production in Speakers with Agrammatic Aphasia and Healthy Speakers

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jiyeon; Yoshida, Masaya; Thompson, Cynthia K.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Grammatical encoding (GE) is impaired in agrammatic aphasia; however, the nature of such deficits remains unclear. We examined grammatical planning units during real-time sentence production in speakers with agrammatic aphasia and control speakers, testing two competing models of GE. We queried whether speakers with agrammatic aphasia…

The 2016 NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation

Science.gov (United States)

2017-08-20

impact on system performance. Index Terms: NIST evaluation, NIST SRE, speaker detection, speaker recognition, speaker verification 1. Introduction NIST... self -reported. Second, there were two training conditions in SRE16, namely fixed and open. In the fixed training condition, par- ticipants were only

Arctic Visiting Speakers Series (AVS)

Science.gov (United States)

Fox, S. E.; Griswold, J.

2011-12-01

The Arctic Visiting Speakers (AVS) Series funds researchers and other arctic experts to travel and share their knowledge in communities where they might not otherwise connect. Speakers cover a wide range of arctic research topics and can address a variety of audiences including K-12 students, graduate and undergraduate students, and the general public. Host applications are accepted on an on-going basis, depending on funding availability. Applications need to be submitted at least 1 month prior to the expected tour dates. Interested hosts can choose speakers from an online Speakers Bureau or invite a speaker of their choice. Preference is given to individuals and organizations to host speakers that reach a broad audience and the general public. AVS tours are encouraged to span several days, allowing ample time for interactions with faculty, students, local media, and community members. Applications for both domestic and international visits will be considered. Applications for international visits should involve participation of more than one host organization and must include either a US-based speaker or a US-based organization. This is a small but important program that educates the public about Arctic issues. There have been 27 tours since 2007 that have impacted communities across the globe including: Gatineau, Quebec Canada; St. Petersburg, Russia; Piscataway, New Jersey; Cordova, Alaska; Nuuk, Greenland; Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania; Oslo, Norway; Inari, Finland; Borgarnes, Iceland; San Francisco, California and Wolcott, Vermont to name a few. Tours have included lectures to K-12 schools, college and university students, tribal organizations, Boy Scout troops, science center and museum patrons, and the general public. There are approximately 300 attendees enjoying each AVS tour, roughly 4100 people have been reached since 2007. The expectations for each tour are extremely manageable. Hosts must submit a schedule of events and a tour summary to be posted online

Hybrid Speaker Recognition Using Universal Acoustic Model

Science.gov (United States)

Nishimura, Jun; Kuroda, Tadahiro

We propose a novel speaker recognition approach using a speaker-independent universal acoustic model (UAM) for sensornet applications. In sensornet applications such as “Business Microscope”, interactions among knowledge workers in an organization can be visualized by sensing face-to-face communication using wearable sensor nodes. In conventional studies, speakers are detected by comparing energy of input speech signals among the nodes. However, there are often synchronization errors among the nodes which degrade the speaker recognition performance. By focusing on property of the speaker's acoustic channel, UAM can provide robustness against the synchronization error. The overall speaker recognition accuracy is improved by combining UAM with the energy-based approach. For 0.1s speech inputs and 4 subjects, speaker recognition accuracy of 94% is achieved at the synchronization error less than 100ms.

Variation in Second Language Learners' Strategies among Non-Native English Speakers from Three Language/Culture Backgrounds

Science.gov (United States)

Ebsworth, Miriam Eisenstein; Tang, Frank Lixing; Razavi, Nikta; Aiello, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

This study explored the effects of cultural and linguistic background, L2 proficiency, and gender on language learning strategies for 263 college-level learners from Chinese, Russian, and Latino backgrounds. Data based on the SILL (Oxford, 2001) revealed that Russian students used significantly more strategies than the Chinese students in three…

Information Processing Models of Skilled Reading: The Relationship Between Chinese Orthography and Coding Tactics in Primary Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Shwedel, Allan M.

A probe recall short-term retention task was used to test the applicability of the "phonological recoding" (Conrad, 1972) and "flexible decoding" (Smith, 1972) models to processing tactics used by readers of Chinese. Subjects were 45 adult speakers of Cantonese. Stimuli were lists of Chinese characters which varied in terms of phonological and…

The effects of ethnicity, musicianship, and tone language experience on pitch perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Yi; Samuel, Arthur G

2018-02-01

Language and music are intertwined: music training can facilitate language abilities, and language experiences can also help with some music tasks. Possible language-music transfer effects are explored in two experiments in this study. In Experiment 1, we tested native Mandarin, Korean, and English speakers on a pitch discrimination task with two types of sounds: speech sounds and fundamental frequency (F0) patterns derived from speech sounds. To control for factors that might influence participants' performance, we included cognitive ability tasks testing memory and intelligence. In addition, two music skill tasks were used to examine general transfer effects from language to music. Prior studies showing that tone language speakers have an advantage on pitch tasks have been taken as support for three alternative hypotheses: specific transfer effects, general transfer effects, and an ethnicity effect. In Experiment 1, musicians outperformed non-musicians on both speech and F0 sounds, suggesting a music-to-language transfer effect. Korean and Mandarin speakers performed similarly, and they both outperformed English speakers, providing some evidence for an ethnicity effect. Alternatively, this could be due to population selection bias. In Experiment 2, we recruited Chinese Americans approximating the native English speakers' language background to further test the ethnicity effect. Chinese Americans, regardless of their tone language experiences, performed similarly to their non-Asian American counterparts in all tasks. Therefore, although this study provides additional evidence of transfer effects across music and language, it casts doubt on the contribution of ethnicity to differences observed in pitch perception and general music abilities.

Stability in Chinese and Malay heritage languages as a source of divergence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aalberse, S.; Moro, F.; Braunmüller, K.; Höder, S.; Kühl, K.

2014-01-01

This article discusses Malay and Chinese heritage languages as spoken in the Netherlands. Heritage speakers are dominant in another language and use their heritage language less. Moreover, they have qualitatively and quantitatively different input from monolinguals. Heritage languages are often

Stability in Chinese and Malay heritage languages as a source of divergence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aalberse, S.; Moro, F.R.; Braunmüller, K.; Höder, S.; Kühl, K.

2015-01-01

This article discusses Malay and Chinese heritage languages as spoken in the Netherlands. Heritage speakers are dominant in another language and use their heritage language less. Moreover, they have qualitatively and quantitatively different input from monolinguals. Heritage languages are often

Performed Culture: An Approach to East Asian Language Pedagogy. Pathways to Advanced Skills Series, Volume 11

Science.gov (United States)

Christensen, Matthew; Warnick, Paul

2006-01-01

This book is a general introduction to the performed culture approach, which trains students how to express themselves in a way that native speakers of the target culture feel appropriate in given situations. Target readership includes Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language teachers and graduate students. Chapters of this book include: (1)…

Conspecific plasticity and invasion: invasive populations of Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera have performance advantage over native populations only in low soil salinity.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leiyi Chen

Full Text Available Global climate change may increase biological invasions in part because invasive species may have greater phenotypic plasticity than native species. This may be especially important for abiotic stresses such as salt inundation related to increased hurricane activity or sea level rise. If invasive species indeed have greater plasticity, this may reflect genetic differences between populations in the native and introduced ranges. Here, we examined plasticity of functional and fitness-related traits of Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera populations from the introduced and native ranges that were grown along a gradient of soil salinity (control: 0 ppt; Low: 5 ppt; Medium: 10 ppt; High: 15 ppt in a greenhouse. We used both norm reaction and plasticity index (PIv to estimate the conspecific phenotypic plasticity variation between invasive and native populations. Overall, invasive populations had higher phenotypic plasticity of height growth rate (HGR, aboveground biomass, stem biomass and specific leaf area (SLA. The plasticity Index (PIv of height growth rate (HGR and SLA each were higher for plants from invasive populations. Absolute performance was always comparable or greater for plants from invasive populations versus native populations with the greatest differences at low stress levels. Our results were consistent with the "Master-of-some" pattern for invasive plants in which the fitness of introduced populations was greater in more benign conditions. This suggests that the greater conspecific phenotypic plasticity of invasive populations compared to native populations may increase invasion success in benign conditions but would not provide a potential interspecific competitive advantage in higher salinity soils that may occur with global climate change in coastal areas.

Differential Difficulties in Perception of Tashlhiyt Berber Consonant Quantity Contrasts by Native Tashlhiyt Listeners vs. Berber-Naïve French Listeners.

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Hallé, Pierre A; Ridouane, Rachid; Best, Catherine T

2016-01-01

In a discrimination experiment on several Tashlhiyt Berber singleton-geminate contrasts, we find that French listeners encounter substantial difficulty compared to native speakers. Native listeners of Tashlhiyt perform near ceiling level on all contrasts. French listeners perform better on final contrasts such as fit-fitt than initial contrasts such as bi-bbi or sir-ssir. That is, French listeners are more sensitive to silent closure duration in word-final voiceless stops than to either voiced murmur or frication duration of fully voiced stops or voiceless fricatives in word-initial position. We propose, tentatively, that native speakers of French, a language in which gemination is usually not considered to be phonemic, have not acquired quantity contrasts but yet exhibit a presumably universal sensitivity to rhythm, whereby listeners are able to perceive and compare the relative temporal distance between beats given by successive salient phonetic events such as a sequence of vowel nuclei.

A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of Apology Strategies Employed by Iranian EFL Learners and English Native Speakers

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Abedi, Elham

2016-01-01

The development of speech-act theory has provided the hearers with a better understanding of what speakers intend to perform in the act of communication. One type of speech act is apologizing. When an action or utterance has resulted in an offense, the offender needs to apologize. In the present study, an attempt was made to compare the apology…

Multimodal Speaker Diarization.

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Noulas, A; Englebienne, G; Krose, B J A

2012-01-01

We present a novel probabilistic framework that fuses information coming from the audio and video modality to perform speaker diarization. The proposed framework is a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) that is an extension of a factorial Hidden Markov Model (fHMM) and models the people appearing in an audiovisual recording as multimodal entities that generate observations in the audio stream, the video stream, and the joint audiovisual space. The framework is very robust to different contexts, makes no assumptions about the location of the recording equipment, and does not require labeled training data as it acquires the model parameters using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. We apply the proposed model to two meeting videos and a news broadcast video, all of which come from publicly available data sets. The results acquired in speaker diarization are in favor of the proposed multimodal framework, which outperforms the single modality analysis results and improves over the state-of-the-art audio-based speaker diarization.

Do Nonnative Language Speakers "Chew the Fat" and "Spill the Beans" with Different Brain Hemispheres? Investigating Idiom Decomposability with the Divided Visual Field Paradigm

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Cieslicka, Anna B.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore possible cerebral asymmetries in the processing of decomposable and nondecomposable idioms by fluent nonnative speakers of English. In the study, native language (Polish) and foreign language (English) decomposable and nondecomposable idioms were embedded in ambiguous (neutral) and unambiguous (biasing…

Dissimilation in the Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones

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Zhang, Hang

2016-01-01

This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical…

Hidden Markov modeling of frequency-following responses to Mandarin lexical tones.

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Llanos, Fernando; Xie, Zilong; Chandrasekaran, Bharath

2017-11-01

The frequency-following response (FFR) is a scalp-recorded electrophysiological potential reflecting phase-locked activity from neural ensembles in the auditory system. The FFR is often used to assess the robustness of subcortical pitch processing. Due to low signal-to-noise ratio at the single-trial level, FFRs are typically averaged across thousands of stimulus repetitions. Prior work using this approach has shown that subcortical encoding of linguistically-relevant pitch patterns is modulated by long-term language experience. We examine the extent to which a machine learning approach using hidden Markov modeling (HMM) can be utilized to decode Mandarin tone-categories from scalp-record electrophysiolgical activity. We then assess the extent to which the HMM can capture biologically-relevant effects (language experience-driven plasticity). To this end, we recorded FFRs to four Mandarin tones from 14 adult native speakers of Chinese and 14 of native English. We trained a HMM to decode tone categories from the FFRs with varying size of averages. Tone categories were decoded with above-chance accuracies using HMM. The HMM derived metric (decoding accuracy) revealed a robust effect of language experience, such that FFRs from native Chinese speakers yielded greater accuracies than native English speakers. Critically, the language experience-driven plasticity was captured with average sizes significantly smaller than those used in the extant literature. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of HMM in assessing the robustness of neural pitch. Machine-learning approaches can complement extant analytical methods that capture auditory function and could reduce the number of trials needed to capture biological phenomena. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Newton High School Project Capable 1983-84. OEA Evaluation Report.

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New York City Board of Education, Brooklyn, NY. Office of Educational Evaluation.

Project Capable, in its second year of a three year funding cycle (1983-84), provides instruction in English as a second language (ESL) and native language arts, and bilingual instruction in science and social studies, to approximately 400 Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese speakers (most recent arrivals to the country) in grades nine through twelve…

TEACHING TURKISH AS SPOKEN IN TURKEY TO TURKIC SPEAKERS - TÜRK DİLLİLERE TÜRKİYE TÜRKÇESİ ÖĞRETİMİ NASIL OLMALIDIR?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ali TAŞTEKİN

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Attributing different titles to the activity of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers is related to the perspective of those who conduct this activity. If Turkish Language teaching centres are sub-units of Schools of Foreign Languages and Departments of Foreign Languages of our Universities or teachers have a foreign language background, then the title “Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language” is adopted and claimed to be universal. In determining success at teaching and learning, the psychological perception of the educational activity and the associational power of the words used are far more important factors than the teacher, students, educational environment and educational tools. For this reason, avoiding the negative connotations of the adjective “foreign” in the activity of teaching foreigners Turkish as spoken in Turkey would be beneficial. In order for the activity of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers to be successful, it is crucial to dwell on the formal and contextual quality of the books written for this purpose. Almost none of the course books and supplementary books in the field of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers has taken Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers into consideration. The books written for the purpose of teaching Turkish to non-speakers should be examined thoroughly in terms of content and method and should be organized in accordance with the purpose and level of readiness of the target audience. Activities of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers are still conducted at public and private primary and secondary schools and colleges as well as private courses by self-educated teachers who are trained within a master-apprentice relationship. Turkic populations who had long been parted by necessity have found the opportunity to reunite and turn towards common objectives after the dissolution of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This recent

Utterance Verification for Text-Dependent Speaker Recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kinnunen, Tomi; Sahidullah, Md; Kukanov, Ivan

2016-01-01

Text-dependent automatic speaker verification naturally calls for the simultaneous verification of speaker identity and spoken content. These two tasks can be achieved with automatic speaker verification (ASV) and utterance verification (UV) technologies. While both have been addressed previously...

Constraints of Tones, Vowels and Consonants on Lexical Selection in Mandarin Chinese.

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Wiener, Seth; Turnbull, Rory

2016-03-01

Previous studies have shown that when speakers of European languages are asked to turn nonwords into words by altering either a vowel or consonant, they tend to treat vowels as more mutable than consonants. These results inspired the universal vowel mutability hypothesis: listeners learn to cope with vowel variability because vowel information constrains lexical selection less tightly and allows for more potential candidates than does consonant information. The present study extends the word reconstruction paradigm to Mandarin Chinese--a Sino-Tibetan language, which makes use of lexically contrastive tone. Native speakers listened to word-like nonwords (e.g., su3) and were asked to change them into words by manipulating a single consonant (e.g., tu3), vowel (e.g., si3), or tone (e.g., su4). Additionally, items were presented in a fourth condition in which participants could change any part. The participants' reaction times and responses were recorded. Results revealed that participants responded faster and more accurately in both the free response and the tonal change conditions. Unlike previous reconstruction studies on European languages, where vowels were changed faster and more often than consonants, these results demonstrate that, in Mandarin, changes to vowels and consonants were both overshadowed by changes to tone, which was the preferred modification to the stimulus nonwords, while changes to vowels were the slowest and least accurate. Our findings show that the universal vowel mutability hypothesis is not consistent with a tonal language, that Mandarin tonal information is lower-priority than consonants and vowels and that vowel information most tightly constrains Mandarin lexical access.

User-Centred Design for Chinese-Oriented Spoken English Learning System

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Yu, Ping; Pan, Yingxin; Li, Chen; Zhang, Zengxiu; Shi, Qin; Chu, Wenpei; Liu, Mingzhuo; Zhu, Zhiting

2016-01-01

Oral production is an important part in English learning. Lack of a language environment with efficient instruction and feedback is a big issue for non-native speakers' English spoken skill improvement. A computer-assisted language learning system can provide many potential benefits to language learners. It allows adequate instructions and instant…

The Speaker Gender Gap at Critical Care Conferences.

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Mehta, Sangeeta; Rose, Louise; Cook, Deborah; Herridge, Margaret; Owais, Sawayra; Metaxa, Victoria

2018-06-01

To review women's participation as faculty at five critical care conferences over 7 years. Retrospective analysis of five scientific programs to identify the proportion of females and each speaker's profession based on conference conveners, program documents, or internet research. Three international (European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, Society of Critical Care Medicine) and two national (Critical Care Canada Forum, U.K. Intensive Care Society State of the Art Meeting) annual critical care conferences held between 2010 and 2016. Female faculty speakers. None. Male speakers outnumbered female speakers at all five conferences, in all 7 years. Overall, women represented 5-31% of speakers, and female physicians represented 5-26% of speakers. Nursing and allied health professional faculty represented 0-25% of speakers; in general, more than 50% of allied health professionals were women. Over the 7 years, Society of Critical Care Medicine had the highest representation of female (27% overall) and nursing/allied health professional (16-25%) speakers; notably, male physicians substantially outnumbered female physicians in all years (62-70% vs 10-19%, respectively). Women's representation on conference program committees ranged from 0% to 40%, with Society of Critical Care Medicine having the highest representation of women (26-40%). The female proportions of speakers, physician speakers, and program committee members increased significantly over time at the Society of Critical Care Medicine and U.K. Intensive Care Society State of the Art Meeting conferences (p gap at critical care conferences, with male faculty outnumbering female faculty. This gap is more marked among physician speakers than those speakers representing nursing and allied health professionals. Several organizational strategies can address this gender gap.

Variation in Second Language Learners' Strategies among Non-Native English Speakers from Three Language/Culture Backgrounds

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Ebsworth, Miriam Eisenstein; Tang, Frank Lixing; Razavi, Nikta; Aiello, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

This study explored the effects of cultural and linguistic background, L2 proficiency, and gender on language learning strategies for 263 college-level learners from Chinese, Russian, and Latino backgrounds. Data based on the SILL (Oxford, 2001) revealed that Russian students used significantly more strategies than the Chinese students in three…

Physiological responses at short distances from a parametric speaker

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lee Soomin

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract In recent years, parametric speakers have been used in various circumstances. In our previous studies, we verified that the physiological burden of the sound of parametric speaker set at 2.6 m from the subjects was lower than that of the general speaker. However, nothing has yet been demonstrated about the effects of the sound of a parametric speaker at the shorter distance between parametric speakers the human body. Therefore, we studied this effect on physiological functions and task performance. Nine male subjects participated in this study. They completed three consecutive sessions: a 20-minute quiet period as a baseline, a 30-minute mental task period with general speakers or parametric speakers, and a 20-minute recovery period. We measured electrocardiogram (ECG photoplethysmogram (PTG, electroencephalogram (EEG, systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Four experiments, one with a speaker condition (general speaker and parametric speaker, the other with a distance condition (0.3 m and 1.0 m, were conducted respectively at the same time of day on separate days. To examine the effects of the speaker and distance, three-way repeated measures ANOVA (speaker factor x distance factor x time factor were conducted. In conclusion, we found that the physiological responses were not significantly different between the speaker condition and the distance condition. Meanwhile, it was shown that the physiological burdens increased with progress in time independently of speaker condition and distance condition. In summary, the effects of the parametric speaker at the 2.6 m distance were not obtained at the distance of 1 m or less.

Hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals of conflict processing in the Chinese-character Stroop task: a simultaneous near-infrared spectroscopy and event-related potential study.

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Zhai, Jiahuan; Li, Ting; Zhang, Zhongxing; Gong, Hui

2009-01-01

A dual-modality method combining continuous-wave near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and event-related potentials (ERPs) was developed for the Chinese-character color-word Stroop task, which included congruent, incongruent, and neutral stimuli. Sixteen native Chinese speakers participated in this study. Hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were monitored simultaneously by NIRS and ERP. The hemodynamic signals were represented by relative changes in oxy-, deoxy-, and total hemoglobin concentration, whereas the electrophysiological signals were characterized by the parameters P450, N500, and P600. Both types of signals measured at four regions of the PFC were analyzed and compared spatially and temporally among the three different stimuli. We found that P600 signals correlated significantly with the hemodynamic parameters, suggesting that the PFC executes conflict-solving function. Additionally, we observed that the change in deoxy-Hb concentration showed higher sensitivity in response to the Stroop task than other hemodynamic signals. Correlation between NIRS and ERP signals revealed that the vascular response reflects the cumulative effect of neural activities. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that this new dual-modality method is a useful approach to obtaining more information during cognitive and physiological studies.

Parallel Recovery in a Trilingual Speaker: The Use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test as a Diagnostic Complement to the Comprehensive Aphasia Test

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Green, David W.; Ruffle, Louise; Grogan, Alice; Ali, Nilufa; Ramsden, Sue; Schofield, Tom; Leff, Alex P.; Crinion, Jenny; Price, Cathy J.

2011-01-01

We illustrate the value of the Bilingual Aphasia Test in the diagnostic assessment of a trilingual speaker post-stroke living in England for whom English was a non-native language. The Comprehensive Aphasia Test is routinely used to assess patients in English, but only in combination with the Bilingual Aphasia Test is it possible and practical to…

Audiovisual perceptual learning with multiple speakers.

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Mitchel, Aaron D; Gerfen, Chip; Weiss, Daniel J

2016-05-01

One challenge for speech perception is between-speaker variability in the acoustic parameters of speech. For example, the same phoneme (e.g. the vowel in "cat") may have substantially different acoustic properties when produced by two different speakers and yet the listener must be able to interpret these disparate stimuli as equivalent. Perceptual tuning, the use of contextual information to adjust phonemic representations, may be one mechanism that helps listeners overcome obstacles they face due to this variability during speech perception. Here we test whether visual contextual cues to speaker identity may facilitate the formation and maintenance of distributional representations for individual speakers, allowing listeners to adjust phoneme boundaries in a speaker-specific manner. We familiarized participants to an audiovisual continuum between /aba/ and /ada/. During familiarization, the "b-face" mouthed /aba/ when an ambiguous token was played, while the "D-face" mouthed /ada/. At test, the same ambiguous token was more likely to be identified as /aba/ when paired with a stilled image of the "b-face" than with an image of the "D-face." This was not the case in the control condition when the two faces were paired equally with the ambiguous token. Together, these results suggest that listeners may form speaker-specific phonemic representations using facial identity cues.

Speakers' choice of frame in binary choice

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Marc van Buiten

2009-02-01

Full Text Available A distinction is proposed between extit{recommending for} preferred choice options and extit{recommending against} non-preferred choice options. In binary choice, both recommendation modes are logically, though not psychologically, equivalent. We report empirical evidence showing that speakers recommending for preferred options predominantly select positive frames, which are less common when speakers recommend against non-preferred options. In addition, option attractiveness is shown to affect speakers' choice of frame, and adoption of recommendation mode. The results are interpreted in terms of three compatibility effects, (i extit{recommendation mode---valence framing compatibility}: speakers' preference for positive framing is enhanced under extit{recommending for} and diminished under extit{recommending against} instructions, (ii extit{option attractiveness---valence framing compatibility}: speakers' preference for positive framing is more pronounced for attractive than for unattractive options, and (iii extit{recommendation mode---option attractiveness compatibility}: speakers are more likely to adopt a extit{recommending for} approach for attractive than for unattractive binary choice pairs.

Non-native Listeners’ Recognition of High-Variability Speech Using PRESTO

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Tamati, Terrin N.; Pisoni, David B.

2015-01-01

Background Natural variability in speech is a significant challenge to robust successful spoken word recognition. In everyday listening environments, listeners must quickly adapt and adjust to multiple sources of variability in both the signal and listening environments. High-variability speech may be particularly difficult to understand for non-native listeners, who have less experience with the second language (L2) phonological system and less detailed knowledge of sociolinguistic variation of the L2. Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of high-variability sentences on non-native speech recognition and to explore the underlying sources of individual differences in speech recognition abilities of non-native listeners. Research Design Participants completed two sentence recognition tasks involving high-variability and low-variability sentences. They also completed a battery of behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires designed to assess their indexical processing skills, vocabulary knowledge, and several core neurocognitive abilities. Study Sample Native speakers of Mandarin (n = 25) living in the United States recruited from the Indiana University community participated in the current study. A native comparison group consisted of scores obtained from native speakers of English (n = 21) in the Indiana University community taken from an earlier study. Data Collection and Analysis Speech recognition in high-variability listening conditions was assessed with a sentence recognition task using sentences from PRESTO (Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-Set) mixed in 6-talker multitalker babble. Speech recognition in low-variability listening conditions was assessed using sentences from HINT (Hearing In Noise Test) mixed in 6-talker multitalker babble. Indexical processing skills were measured using a talker discrimination task, a gender discrimination task, and a forced-choice regional dialect categorization task. Vocabulary

Speaker-dependent Dictionary-based Speech Enhancement for Text-Dependent Speaker Verification

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomsen, Nicolai Bæk; Thomsen, Dennis Alexander Lehmann; Tan, Zheng-Hua

2016-01-01

not perform well in this setting. In this work we compare the performance of different noise reduction methods under different noise conditions in terms of speaker verification when the text is known and the system is trained on clean data (mis-matched conditions). We furthermore propose a new approach based......The problem of text-dependent speaker verification under noisy conditions is becoming ever more relevant, due to increased usage for authentication in real-world applications. Classical methods for noise reduction such as spectral subtraction and Wiener filtering introduce distortion and do...... on dictionary-based noise reduction and compare it to the baseline methods....

An Investigation of Native and Nonnative English Speakers' Levels of Written Syntactic Complexity in Asynchronous Online Discussions

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Mancilla, Rae L.; Polat, Nihat; Akcay, Ahmet O.

2017-01-01

This manuscript reports on a corpus-based comparison of native and nonnative graduate students' language production in an asynchronous learning environment. Using 486 discussion board postings from a five-year period (2009-2013), we analyzed the extent to which native and nonnative university students' writing differed in 10 measures of syntactic…

Pragmatic Development of Chinese EFL Learners--A Study on FL Suggestions

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Gu, Tongqing

2014-01-01

While the number of studies on the pragmatic development of nonnative English speakers has been increasing, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the development of the ability of foreign language learners to perform the suggestion speech act, with even less taking Chinese EFL learners as the target group. The present study examines…

Pitch Correlogram Clustering for Fast Speaker Identification

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Nitin Jhanwar

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Gaussian mixture models (GMMs are commonly used in text-independent speaker identification systems. However, for large speaker databases, their high computational run-time limits their use in online or real-time speaker identification situations. Two-stage identification systems, in which the database is partitioned into clusters based on some proximity criteria and only a single-cluster GMM is run in every test, have been suggested in literature to speed up the identification process. However, most clustering algorithms used have shown limited success, apparently because the clustering and GMM feature spaces used are derived from similar speech characteristics. This paper presents a new clustering approach based on the concept of a pitch correlogram that captures frame-to-frame pitch variations of a speaker rather than short-time spectral characteristics like cepstral coefficient, spectral slopes, and so forth. The effectiveness of this two-stage identification process is demonstrated on the IVIE corpus of 110 speakers. The overall system achieves a run-time advantage of 500% as well as a 10% reduction of error in overall speaker identification.

Investigating the Development of Chinese Oral Explanation and Justification in Singapore Primary Students

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Yan, Jing

2016-01-01

Explanation and justification require cognitive ability which selects and organises relevant information in a logical way, and linguistic ability which enables speakers to encode the information with linguistic knowledge. This study aims to investigate the development of Chinese oral explanation and justification in Singapore primary students. The…

[Comments on Nigel Wiseman's A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine: on the use of Western medical terms in English glossary of Chinese medicine].

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Xie, Zhu-fan; Liu, Gan-zhong; Lu, Wei-bo

2005-11-01

Mr. Wiseman believes that Western medical terms chosen as equivalents of Chinese medical terms should be the words known to all speakers and not requiring any specialist knowledge or instrumentation to understand or identify, and strictly technical Western medical terms should be avoided regardless of their conceptual conformity to the Chinese terms. According to such criteria, many inappropriate Western medical terms are selected as English equivalents by the authors of the Dictionary, and on the other hand, many ready-made appropriate Western medical terms are replaced by loan English terms with the Chinese style of word formation. The experience obtained by translating Western medical terms into Chinese when Western medicine was first introduced to China should be helpful for developing English equivalents at present. However, the authors of the Dictionary adhere to their own opinions and reject others' experience. The English terms thus created do not reflect the genuine meaning of the Chinese terms, but make the English glossary in chaos. The so-called true face of traditional Chinese revealed by such terms is merely the Chinese custom of word formation and metaphoric rhetoric. In other words, traditional Chinese medicine is not regarded as a system of medicine but merely some Oriental folklore.

Code Glosses in Academic Writing: The Comparison of Iranian and Native Authors

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Mahdi Dehghan

2016-01-01

Full Text Available One of the challenges of academic writing is the creation of a structurally and communicatively well-organized and coherent text. Metadiscourse enables authors of journal articles to achieve this goal by raising the writers‘ awareness about discourse features which can contribute to a better academic content production. Also, L1 background has always been a hot topic in applied linguistics and native versus non-native comparisons have been of particular interest in this field. The purpose of this study was to see whether native English speakers and Iranians use code glosses as a sub-category of metadiscourse similarly in their academic writings. To this end, the introduction section of 30 journal articles written by native and Iranian non-native English authors were investigated and the number of code-glosses in each group was counted and analyzed. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research question of this study. The result of data analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between the frequency count of code glosses used by Iranian and native English authors. This study can have pedagogical implications for EAP course designers as well as academic writing instructors and students.

Who spoke when? Audio-based speaker location estimation for diarization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dadvar, M.

2011-01-01

Speaker diarization is the process which detects active speakers and groups those speech signals which has been uttered by the same speaker. Generally we can find two main applications for speaker diarization. Automatic Speech Recognition systems make use of the speaker homogeneous clusters to adapt

Speaker-specific variability of phoneme durations

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Van Heerden, CJ

2007-11-01

Full Text Available The durations of phonemes varies for different speakers. To this end, the correlations between phonemes across different speakers are studied and a novel approach to predict unknown phoneme durations from the values of known phoneme durations for a...

Are "Digital Natives" Really Digitally Competent?--A Study on Chinese Teenagers

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Li, Yan; Ranieri, Maria

2010-01-01

Literature review has found that despite the considerable attention focused on "digital natives", few studies have carefully investigated the characteristics of this group. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the debate on digital natives by providing a "piece of evidence" on the digital competence status of a group…

Learning for life, a structured and motivational process of knowledge construction in the acquisition/learning of English as a foreign language in native Spanish speakers

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Fernando Miño-Garcés

2009-06-01

Full Text Available As language learning theory has shifted from a highly guided to a more open learning process, this paper presents the teaching/learning philosophy called Learning for Life (L for L as a great way to motivate native Spanish speaker students learning English as a foreign language, and to help them be the constructors of their own knowledge. The Learning for Life philosophy was created by Patricia López de Jaramillo, M.A. and Fernando Miño-Garcés, Ph.D. at the Andean Center for Latin American Studies (ACLAS in Quito – Ecuador. In the Learning for Life philosophy, the learner is the center of the process and becomes the creator of his/her own knowledge. To get to this new dimension in learning, acquisition is emphasized, and the principles of this philosophy are applied in the EFL classroom. The definition of the philosophy and its principles are presented, and explained in detail as to how they can be applied in the teaching of a foreign language. This paper also explains the difference between acquisition versus learning, and what process should be applied in the classroom to emphasize on acquisition, and not so much on learning.

Unsupervised Speaker Change Detection for Broadcast News Segmentation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Kasper Winther; Mølgaard, Lasse Lohilahti; Hansen, Lars Kai

2006-01-01

This paper presents a speaker change detection system for news broadcast segmentation based on a vector quantization (VQ) approach. The system does not make any assumption about the number of speakers or speaker identity. The system uses mel frequency cepstral coefficients and change detection...

A New Database for Speaker Recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Feng, Ling; Hansen, Lars Kai

2005-01-01

In this paper we discuss properties of speech databases used for speaker recognition research and evaluation, and we characterize some popular standard databases. The paper presents a new database called ELSDSR dedicated to speaker recognition applications. The main characteristics of this database...

Teaching Chinese as a Second Language: From Taiwan to the United States

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Hsu, Shuliang

2014-01-01

Teaching Chinese as a second language in Taiwan vs. in the United States. How are they different? What are the challenges to teachers? This article will bring to you interesting findings from the perspective of a native speaking Chinese teacher.

Speaker Segmentation and Clustering Using Gender Information

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2006-02-01

used in the first stages of segmentation forder information in the clustering of the opposite-gender speaker diarization of news broadcasts. files, the...AFRL-HE-WP-TP-2006-0026 AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY Speaker Segmentation and Clustering Using Gender Information Brian M. Ore General Dynamics...COVERED (From - To) February 2006 ProceedinLgs 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER Speaker Segmentation and Clustering Using Gender Information 5b

L2 Learners' Assessments of Accentedness, Fluency, and Comprehensibility of Native and Nonnative German Speech

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O'Brien, Mary Grantham

2014-01-01

In early stages of classroom language learning, many adult second language (L2) learners communicate primarily with one another, yet we know little about which speech stream characteristics learners tune into or the extent to which they understand this lingua franca communication. In the current study, 25 native English speakers learning German as…

Subjectivity in Mandarin Chinese: The meaning and use of causal connectives in written discourse

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Li, F.

2014-01-01

This dissertation investigates the way in which ‘subjectivity’ − the degree to which the speaker expresses herself in the utterance – constrains the use of Chinese causal connectives, and into the universal and language-specific properties associated with this use. It starts with a literature review

Affective processing in bilingual speakers: disembodied cognition?

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Pavlenko, Aneta

2012-01-01

A recent study by Keysar, Hayakawa, and An (2012) suggests that "thinking in a foreign language" may reduce decision biases because a foreign language provides a greater emotional distance than a native tongue. The possibility of such "disembodied" cognition is of great interest for theories of affect and cognition and for many other areas of psychological theory and practice, from clinical and forensic psychology to marketing, but first this claim needs to be properly evaluated. The purpose of this review is to examine the findings of clinical, introspective, cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of affective processing in bilingual speakers in order to identify converging patterns of results, to evaluate the claim about "disembodied cognition," and to outline directions for future inquiry. The findings to date reveal two interrelated processing effects. First-language (L1) advantage refers to increased automaticity of affective processing in the L1 and heightened electrodermal reactivity to L1 emotion-laden words. Second-language (L2) advantage refers to decreased automaticity of affective processing in the L2, which reduces interference effects and lowers electrodermal reactivity to negative emotional stimuli. The differences in L1 and L2 affective processing suggest that in some bilingual speakers, in particular late bilinguals and foreign language users, respective languages may be differentially embodied, with the later learned language processed semantically but not affectively. This difference accounts for the reduction of framing biases in L2 processing in the study by Keysar et al. (2012). The follow-up discussion identifies the limits of the findings to date in terms of participant populations, levels of processing, and types of stimuli, puts forth alternative explanations of the documented effects, and articulates predictions to be tested in future research.

Magnitude of phonetic distinction predicts success at early word learning in native and non-native accents

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Paola eEscudero

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Although infants perceptually attune to native vowels and consonants well before 12 months, at 13–15 months, they have difficulty learning to associate novel words that differ by their initial consonant (e.g., BIN and DIN to their visual referents. However, this difficulty may not apply to all minimal-pair novel words. While Canadian English (CE 15-month-olds failed to respond to a switch from the newly learned word DEET to the novel nonword DOOT, they did notice a switch from DEET to DIT (Curtin, Fennell, & Escudero, 2009. Those authors argued that early word learners capitalize on large phonetic differences, seen in CE DEET–DIT, but not on smaller phonetic differences, as in CE DEET–DOOT. To assess this hypothesis, we tested Australian English (AusE 15-month-olds, as AusE has a smaller magnitude of phonetic difference in both novel word pairs. Two groups of infants were trained on the novel word DEET and tested on the vowel switches in DIT and DOOT, produced by an AusE female speaker or the same CE female speaker as in Curtin et al. (2009. If the size of the phonetic distinction plays a more central role than native accent experience in early word learning, AusE children should more easily recognize both of the unfamiliar but larger CE vowel switches than the more familiar but smaller AusE ones. The results support our phonetic-magnitude hypothesis: AusE children taught and tested with the CE-accented novel words looked longer to both of the switch test trials (DIT, DOOT than same test trials (DEET, while those who heard the AusE-accented tokens did not notice either switch. Implications of our findings for models of early word learning are discussed.

Robust speaker recognition in noisy environments

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Rao, K Sreenivasa

2014-01-01

This book discusses speaker recognition methods to deal with realistic variable noisy environments. The text covers authentication systems for; robust noisy background environments, functions in real time and incorporated in mobile devices. The book focuses on different approaches to enhance the accuracy of speaker recognition in presence of varying background environments. The authors examine: (a) Feature compensation using multiple background models, (b) Feature mapping using data-driven stochastic models, (c) Design of super vector- based GMM-SVM framework for robust speaker recognition, (d) Total variability modeling (i-vectors) in a discriminative framework and (e) Boosting method to fuse evidences from multiple SVM models.

FPGA Implementation for GMM-Based Speaker Identification

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Phaklen EhKan

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In today's society, highly accurate personal identification systems are required. Passwords or pin numbers can be forgotten or forged and are no longer considered to offer a high level of security. The use of biological features, biometrics, is becoming widely accepted as the next level for security systems. Biometric-based speaker identification is a method of identifying persons from their voice. Speaker-specific characteristics exist in speech signals due to different speakers having different resonances of the vocal tract. These differences can be exploited by extracting feature vectors such as Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs from the speech signal. A well-known statistical modelling process, the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM, then models the distribution of each speaker's MFCCs in a multidimensional acoustic space. The GMM-based speaker identification system has features that make it promising for hardware acceleration. This paper describes the hardware implementation for classification of a text-independent GMM-based speaker identification system. The aim was to produce a system that can perform simultaneous identification of large numbers of voice streams in real time. This has important potential applications in security and in automated call centre applications. A speedup factor of ninety was achieved compared to a software implementation on a standard PC.

A system of automatic speaker recognition on a minicomputer

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El Chafei, Cherif

1978-01-01

This study describes a system of automatic speaker recognition using the pitch of the voice. The pre-treatment consists in the extraction of the speakers' discriminating characteristics taken from the pitch. The programme of recognition gives, firstly, a preselection and then calculates the distance between the speaker's characteristics to be recognized and those of the speakers already recorded. An experience of recognition has been realized. It has been undertaken with 15 speakers and included 566 tests spread over an intermittent period of four months. The discriminating characteristics used offer several interesting qualities. The algorithms concerning the measure of the characteristics on one hand, the speakers' classification on the other hand, are simple. The results obtained in real time with a minicomputer are satisfactory. Furthermore they probably could be improved if we considered other speaker's discriminating characteristics but this was unfortunately not in our possibilities. (author) [fr

Speaker diarization system using HXLPS and deep neural network

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V. Subba Ramaiah

2018-03-01

Full Text Available In general, speaker diarization is defined as the process of segmenting the input speech signal and grouped the homogenous regions with regard to the speaker identity. The main idea behind this system is that it is able to discriminate the speaker signal by assigning the label of the each speaker signal. Due to rapid growth of broadcasting and meeting, the speaker diarization is burdensome to enhance the readability of the speech transcription. In order to solve this issue, Holoentropy with the eXtended Linear Prediction using autocorrelation Snapshot (HXLPS and deep neural network (DNN is proposed for the speaker diarization system. The HXLPS extraction method is newly developed by incorporating the Holoentropy with the XLPS. Once we attain the features, the speech and non-speech signals are detected by the Voice Activity Detection (VAD method. Then, i-vector representation of every segmented signal is obtained using Universal Background Model (UBM model. Consequently, DNN is utilized to assign the label for the speaker signal which is then clustered according to the speaker label. The performance is analysed using the evaluation metrics, such as tracking distance, false alarm rate and diarization error rate. The outcome of the proposed method ensures the better diarization performance by achieving the lower DER of 1.36% based on lambda value and DER of 2.23% depends on the frame length. Keywords: Speaker diarization, HXLPS feature extraction, Voice activity detection, Deep neural network, Speaker clustering, Diarization Error Rate (DER

Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults

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Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D.; Finn, Amy S.; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D.E.

2018-01-01

Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual’s native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. PMID:27737775

Learning speaker-specific characteristics with a deep neural architecture.

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Chen, Ke; Salman, Ahmad

2011-11-01

Speech signals convey various yet mixed information ranging from linguistic to speaker-specific information. However, most of acoustic representations characterize all different kinds of information as whole, which could hinder either a speech or a speaker recognition (SR) system from producing a better performance. In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural architecture (DNA) especially for learning speaker-specific characteristics from mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, an acoustic representation commonly used in both speech recognition and SR, which results in a speaker-specific overcomplete representation. In order to learn intrinsic speaker-specific characteristics, we come up with an objective function consisting of contrastive losses in terms of speaker similarity/dissimilarity and data reconstruction losses used as regularization to normalize the interference of non-speaker-related information. Moreover, we employ a hybrid learning strategy for learning parameters of the deep neural networks: i.e., local yet greedy layerwise unsupervised pretraining for initialization and global supervised learning for the ultimate discriminative goal. With four Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) benchmarks and two non-English corpora, we demonstrate that our overcomplete representation is robust in characterizing various speakers, no matter whether their utterances have been used in training our DNA, and highly insensitive to text and languages spoken. Extensive comparative studies suggest that our approach yields favorite results in speaker verification and segmentation. Finally, we discuss several issues concerning our proposed approach.

Robustness-related issues in speaker recognition

CERN Document Server

Zheng, Thomas Fang

2017-01-01

This book presents an overview of speaker recognition technologies with an emphasis on dealing with robustness issues. Firstly, the book gives an overview of speaker recognition, such as the basic system framework, categories under different criteria, performance evaluation and its development history. Secondly, with regard to robustness issues, the book presents three categories, including environment-related issues, speaker-related issues and application-oriented issues. For each category, the book describes the current hot topics, existing technologies, and potential research focuses in the future. The book is a useful reference book and self-learning guide for early researchers working in the field of robust speech recognition.

Real Time Recognition Of Speakers From Internet Audio Stream

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Weychan Radoslaw

2015-09-01

Full Text Available In this paper we present an automatic speaker recognition technique with the use of the Internet radio lossy (encoded speech signal streams. We show an influence of the audio encoder (e.g., bitrate on the speaker model quality. The model of each speaker was calculated with the use of the Gaussian mixture model (GMM approach. Both the speaker recognition and the further analysis were realized with the use of short utterances to facilitate real time processing. The neighborhoods of the speaker models were analyzed with the use of the ISOMAP algorithm. The experiments were based on four 1-hour public debates with 7–8 speakers (including the moderator, acquired from the Polish radio Internet services. The presented software was developed with the MATLAB environment.

Lexical exposure to native language dialects can improve non-native phonetic discrimination.

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Olmstead, Annie J; Viswanathan, Navin

2018-04-01

Nonnative phonetic learning is an area of great interest for language researchers, learners, and educators alike. In two studies, we examined whether nonnative phonetic discrimination of Hindi dental and retroflex stops can be improved by exposure to lexical items bearing the critical nonnative stops. We extend the lexical retuning paradigm of Norris, McQueen, and Cutler (Cognitive Psychology, 47, 204-238, 2003) by having naive American English (AE)-speaking participants perform a pretest-training-posttest procedure. They performed an AXB discrimination task with the Hindi retroflex and dental stops before and after transcribing naturally produced words from an Indian English speaker that either contained these tokens or not. Only those participants who heard words with the critical nonnative phones improved in their posttest discrimination. This finding suggests that exposure to nonnative phones in native lexical contexts supports learning of difficult nonnative phonetic discrimination.

Multidimensional Approach to the Development of a Mandarin Chinese-Oriented Sound Test

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Hung, Yu-Chen; Lin, Chun-Yi; Tsai, Li-Chiun; Lee, Ya-Jung

2016-01-01

Purpose: Because the Ling six-sound test is based on American English phonemes, it can yield unreliable results when administered to non-English speakers. In this study, we aimed to improve specifically the diagnostic palette for Mandarin Chinese users by developing an adapted version of the Ling six-sound test. Method: To determine the set of…

Accent Attribution in Speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome

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Verhoeven, Jo; De Pauw, Guy; Pettinato, Michele; Hirson, Allen; Van Borsel, John; Marien, Peter

2013-01-01

Purpose: The main aim of this experiment was to investigate the perception of Foreign Accent Syndrome in comparison to speakers with an authentic foreign accent. Method: Three groups of listeners attributed accents to conversational speech samples of 5 FAS speakers which were embedded amongst those of 5 speakers with a real foreign accent and 5…

Comparison of Diarization Tools for Building Speaker Database

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Eva Kiktova

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper compares open source diarization toolkits (LIUM, DiarTK, ALIZE-Lia_Ral, which were designed for extraction of speaker identity from audio records without any prior information about the analysed data. The comparative study of used diarization tools was performed for three different types of analysed data (broadcast news - BN and TV shows. Corresponding values of achieved DER measure are presented here. The automatic speaker diarization system developed by LIUM was able to identified speech segments belonging to speakers at very good level. Its segmentation outputs can be used to build a speaker database.

Spoken Grammar for Chinese Learners

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

徐晓敏

2013-01-01

Currently, the concept of spoken grammar has been mentioned among Chinese teachers. However, teach-ers in China still have a vague idea of spoken grammar. Therefore this dissertation examines what spoken grammar is and argues that native speakers’ model of spoken grammar needs to be highlighted in the classroom teaching.

Acoustic cues to perception of word stress by English, Mandarin, and Russian speakers.

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Chrabaszcz, Anna; Winn, Matthew; Lin, Candise Y; Idsardi, William J

2014-08-01

This study investigated how listeners' native language affects their weighting of acoustic cues (such as vowel quality, pitch, duration, and intensity) in the perception of contrastive word stress. Native speakers (N = 45) of typologically diverse languages (English, Russian, and Mandarin) performed a stress identification task on nonce disyllabic words with fully crossed combinations of each of the 4 cues in both syllables. The results revealed that although the vowel quality cue was the strongest cue for all groups of listeners, pitch was the second strongest cue for the English and the Mandarin listeners but was virtually disregarded by the Russian listeners. Duration and intensity cues were used by the Russian listeners to a significantly greater extent compared with the English and Mandarin participants. Compared with when cues were noncontrastive across syllables, cues were stronger when they were in the iambic contour than when they were in the trochaic contour. Although both English and Russian are stress languages and Mandarin is a tonal language, stress perception performance of the Mandarin listeners but not of the Russian listeners is more similar to that of the native English listeners, both in terms of weighting of the acoustic cues and the cues' relative strength in different word positions. The findings suggest that tuning of second-language prosodic perceptions is not entirely predictable by prosodic similarities across languages.

An introduction to application-independent evaluation of speaker recognition systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leeuwen, D.A. van; Brümmer, N.

2007-01-01

In the evaluation of speaker recognition systems - an important part of speaker classification [1], the trade-off between missed speakers and false alarms has always been an important diagnostic tool. NIST has defined the task of speaker detection with the associated Detection Cost Function (DCF) to

Climato-economic imprints on Chinese collectivism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van de Vliert, E; Yang, Huadong; Wang, Y; Ren, X

A still unsolved question is why humans create collectivism. New theory proposes that poorer populations coping with more demanding winters or summers become more collectivist. Preliminary support comes from a province-level analysis of survey data from 1662 native residents of 15 Chinese provinces.

Climato-economic imprints on Chinese collectivism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van de Vliert, E.; Yang, H.; Wang, Y.; Ren, X.

2013-01-01

A still unsolved question is why humans create collectivism. A new theory proposes that poorer populations coping with more demanding winters or summers become more collectivist. Preliminary support comes from a province-level analysis of survey data from 1,662 native residents of 15 Chinese

Menopausal symptoms in an intercultural context: a comparison between German women, Chinese women and migrant Chinese women using the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS II).

Science.gov (United States)

Hinrichsen, Grete; Wernecke, Klaus-D; Schalinski, Adelheid; Borde, Theda; David, Matthias

2014-11-01

What are the differences between the occurrence of menopausal symptoms in German women, migrant Chinese women in Germany and Chinese women in their native country? Can these potential discrepancies be explained by sociocultural differences? What are the differences in menopausal symptoms in connection with the consumption of soya? Cross-sectional study 2005-2008. Survey of three groups of women aged between 45 and 60 years (native German women in Berlin, migrant Chinese women in several German cities, Chinese women in Beijing) with an evaluated set of questionnaires surveying socio-demographic data, use of hormone therapy, migration/acculturation, MRS II and other areas. A total of 2,109 questionnaires were sent out and a 41 % response rate was achieved, although this varied greatly across the three individual study groups. The results of the MRS II factor analysis were almost identical for German women and migrant Chinese women, but there were some differences in content compared to the Chinese study group. Chinese women surveyed in Beijing reported severe symptoms significantly less frequently in all three symptom groups (factors) of MRS II than the German women and the migrant Chinese women, but the values from the German women and migrant Chinese women surveyed are relatively similar. In all three study groups there are no significant differences in the stated severity of the symptoms, regardless of whether soya is consumed frequently or less frequently. The question whether the differences found are solely cultural or migration-related must be examined in further studies. The special experiences and situation in life of migrant women should be taken into particular account by attending physicians during the care and treatment of women in this phase of life.

Does Mandarin spatial metaphor for time influence Chinese deaf signers’ spatio-temporal reasoning?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gu, Yan; Zheng, Yeqiu; Swerts, Marc; Gunzelmann, G.; Howes, A.; Tenbrink, T.; Davelaar, E. J.

2017-01-01

In Mandarin Chinese, the space-time word “前/qian” is used to express both the spatial concept of front/forward and the temporal concept of early/before (e.g., “前天/qian-tian”, literally front day, meaning the day before yesterday). This is consistent with the fact that Mandarin speakers can gesture

Non-Native Chinese Language Learners' Attitudes towards Online Vision-Based Motion Games

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Hao, Yungwei; Hong, Jon-Chao; Jong, Jyh-Tsorng; Hwang, Ming-Yueh; Su, Chao-Ya; Yang, Jin-Shin

2010-01-01

Learning to write Chinese characters is often thought to be a very challenging and laborious task. However, new learning tools are being designed that might reduce learners' tedium. This study explores one such tool, an online program in which learners can learn Chinese characters through vision-based motion games. The learner's gestures are…

Role of Speaker Cues in Attention Inference

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Jin Joo Lee

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Current state-of-the-art approaches to emotion recognition primarily focus on modeling the nonverbal expressions of the sole individual without reference to contextual elements such as the co-presence of the partner. In this paper, we demonstrate that the accurate inference of listeners’ social-emotional state of attention depends on accounting for the nonverbal behaviors of their storytelling partner, namely their speaker cues. To gain a deeper understanding of the role of speaker cues in attention inference, we conduct investigations into real-world interactions of children (5–6 years old storytelling with their peers. Through in-depth analysis of human–human interaction data, we first identify nonverbal speaker cues (i.e., backchannel-inviting cues and listener responses (i.e., backchannel feedback. We then demonstrate how speaker cues can modify the interpretation of attention-related backchannels as well as serve as a means to regulate the responsiveness of listeners. We discuss the design implications of our findings toward our primary goal of developing attention recognition models for storytelling robots, and we argue that social robots can proactively use speaker cues to form more accurate inferences about the attentive state of their human partners.

Chinese Immigrant Wealth: Heterogeneity in Adaptation

Science.gov (United States)

Agius Vallejo, Jody; Aronson, Brian

2016-01-01

Chinese immigrants are a diverse and growing group whose members provide a unique opportunity to examine within-immigrant group differences in adaptation. In this paper, we move beyond thinking of national-origin groups as homogenous and study variation among Chinese immigrants in wealth ownership, a critical indicator of adaptation that attracts relatively little attention in the immigration literature. We develop an analytical approach that considers national origin, tenure in the U.S., and age to examine heterogeneity in economic adaptation among the immigrant generation. Our results show that variations among Chinese immigrants explain within-group differences in net worth, asset ownership, and debt. These differences also account for important variation between Chinese immigrants, natives, and other immigrant groups and provide important, new insight into the processes that lead to immigrant adaptation and long-term class stability. PMID:27977737

Chinese Immigrant Wealth: Heterogeneity in Adaptation.

Science.gov (United States)

Keister, Lisa A; Agius Vallejo, Jody; Aronson, Brian

2016-01-01

Chinese immigrants are a diverse and growing group whose members provide a unique opportunity to examine within-immigrant group differences in adaptation. In this paper, we move beyond thinking of national-origin groups as homogenous and study variation among Chinese immigrants in wealth ownership, a critical indicator of adaptation that attracts relatively little attention in the immigration literature. We develop an analytical approach that considers national origin, tenure in the U.S., and age to examine heterogeneity in economic adaptation among the immigrant generation. Our results show that variations among Chinese immigrants explain within-group differences in net worth, asset ownership, and debt. These differences also account for important variation between Chinese immigrants, natives, and other immigrant groups and provide important, new insight into the processes that lead to immigrant adaptation and long-term class stability.

Chinese Immigrant Wealth: Heterogeneity in Adaptation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lisa A Keister

Full Text Available Chinese immigrants are a diverse and growing group whose members provide a unique opportunity to examine within-immigrant group differences in adaptation. In this paper, we move beyond thinking of national-origin groups as homogenous and study variation among Chinese immigrants in wealth ownership, a critical indicator of adaptation that attracts relatively little attention in the immigration literature. We develop an analytical approach that considers national origin, tenure in the U.S., and age to examine heterogeneity in economic adaptation among the immigrant generation. Our results show that variations among Chinese immigrants explain within-group differences in net worth, asset ownership, and debt. These differences also account for important variation between Chinese immigrants, natives, and other immigrant groups and provide important, new insight into the processes that lead to immigrant adaptation and long-term class stability.

Pitch perception and production in congenital amusia: Evidence from Cantonese speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Fang; Chan, Alice H D; Ciocca, Valter; Roquet, Catherine; Peretz, Isabelle; Wong, Patrick C M

2016-07-01

This study investigated pitch perception and production in speech and music in individuals with congenital amusia (a disorder of musical pitch processing) who are native speakers of Cantonese, a tone language with a highly complex tonal system. Sixteen Cantonese-speaking congenital amusics and 16 controls performed a set of lexical tone perception, production, singing, and psychophysical pitch threshold tasks. Their tone production accuracy and singing proficiency were subsequently judged by independent listeners, and subjected to acoustic analyses. Relative to controls, amusics showed impaired discrimination of lexical tones in both speech and non-speech conditions. They also received lower ratings for singing proficiency, producing larger pitch interval deviations and making more pitch interval errors compared to controls. Demonstrating higher pitch direction identification thresholds than controls for both speech syllables and piano tones, amusics nevertheless produced native lexical tones with comparable pitch trajectories and intelligibility as controls. Significant correlations were found between pitch threshold and lexical tone perception, music perception and production, but not between lexical tone perception and production for amusics. These findings provide further evidence that congenital amusia is a domain-general language-independent pitch-processing deficit that is associated with severely impaired music perception and production, mildly impaired speech perception, and largely intact speech production.

Phonotactics Constraints and the Spoken Word Recognition of Chinese Words in Speech

Science.gov (United States)

Yip, Michael C.

2016-01-01

Two word-spotting experiments were conducted to examine the question of whether native Cantonese listeners are constrained by phonotactics information in spoken word recognition of Chinese words in speech. Because no legal consonant clusters occurred within an individual Chinese word, this kind of categorical phonotactics information of Chinese…

Speaker and Observer Perceptions of Physical Tension during Stuttering.

Science.gov (United States)

Tichenor, Seth; Leslie, Paula; Shaiman, Susan; Yaruss, J Scott

2017-01-01

Speech-language pathologists routinely assess physical tension during evaluation of those who stutter. If speakers experience tension that is not visible to clinicians, then judgments of severity may be inaccurate. This study addressed this potential discrepancy by comparing judgments of tension by people who stutter and expert clinicians to determine if clinicians could accurately identify the speakers' experience of physical tension. Ten adults who stutter were audio-video recorded in two speaking samples. Two board-certified specialists in fluency evaluated the samples using the Stuttering Severity Instrument-4 and a checklist adapted for this study. Speakers rated their tension using the same forms, and then discussed their experiences in a qualitative interview so that themes related to physical tension could be identified. The degree of tension reported by speakers was higher than that observed by specialists. Tension in parts of the body that were less visible to the observer (chest, abdomen, throat) was reported more by speakers than by specialists. The thematic analysis revealed that speakers' experience of tension changes over time and that these changes may be related to speakers' acceptance of stuttering. The lack of agreement between speaker and specialist perceptions of tension suggests that using self-reports is a necessary component for supporting the accurate diagnosis of tension in stuttering. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Forensic speaker recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meuwly, Didier

2013-01-01

The aim of forensic speaker recognition is to establish links between individuals and criminal activities, through audio speech recordings. This field is multidisciplinary, combining predominantly phonetics, linguistics, speech signal processing, and forensic statistics. On these bases, expert-based

Re-examination of Chinese semantic processing and syntactic processing: evidence from conventional ERPs and reconstructed ERPs by residue iteration decomposition (RIDE.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fang Wang

Full Text Available A number of studies have explored the time course of Chinese semantic and syntactic processing. However, whether syntactic processing occurs earlier than semantics during Chinese sentence reading is still under debate. To further explore this issue, an event-related potentials (ERPs experiment was conducted on 21 native Chinese speakers who read individually-presented Chinese simple sentences (NP1+VP+NP2 word-by-word for comprehension and made semantic plausibility judgments. The transitivity of the verbs was manipulated to form three types of stimuli: congruent sentences (CON, sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following a transitive verb (semantic violation, SEM, and sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following an intransitive verb (combined semantic and syntactic violation, SEM+SYN. The ERPs evoked from the target NP2 were analyzed by using the Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE method to reconstruct the ERP waveform blurred by trial-to-trial variability, as well as by using the conventional ERP method based on stimulus-locked averaging. The conventional ERP analysis showed that, compared with the critical words in CON, those in SEM and SEM+SYN elicited an N400-P600 biphasic pattern. The N400 effects in both violation conditions were of similar size and distribution, but the P600 in SEM+SYN was bigger than that in SEM. Compared with the conventional ERP analysis, RIDE analysis revealed a larger N400 effect and an earlier P600 effect (in the time window of 500-800 ms instead of 570-810ms. Overall, the combination of conventional ERP analysis and the RIDE method for compensating for trial-to-trial variability confirmed the non-significant difference between SEM and SEM+SYN in the earlier N400 time window. Converging with previous findings on other Chinese structures, the current study provides further precise evidence that syntactic processing in Chinese does not occur earlier than semantic processing.

What's so funny about ha-ħa?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Andreas Højlund; Spyrou, Loukianos; Sadakata, Makiko

In this paper we present electrophysiological and behavioral results from a study on non-native speakers listening to, identifying and discriminating an Arabic phonemic contrast, [h] versus [ħ] (emphatic "h"). The non-native speakers were native Dutch speakers with no knowledge of Arabic. Arabic...... or decreasing glottal frication, unlike native Arabic speakers. And we further hypothesized that the native Dutch speakers would therefore show mismatch negativities (MMNs) significantly lower in amplitude to the Arabic than to a larger native Dutch contrast between [h] and [f], potentially reflecting...... a difference in categorical perception due to native language tuning. We did not find support of this hypothesis. Instead, we saw MMN responses in the native Dutch speakers that were stronger to the Arabic contrast ([h] vs. [ħ]) than to the native Dutch contrast of ([h] vs. [f])....

Language related differences of the sustained response evoked by natural speech sounds.

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Christina Siu-Dschu Fan

Full Text Available In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG, we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl's gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction

Language related differences of the sustained response evoked by natural speech sounds.

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Christina Siu-Dschu; Zhu, Xingyu; Dosch, Hans Günter; von Stutterheim, Christiane; Rupp, André

2017-01-01

In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF) in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF) evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl's gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction between

Comparison of potentially preventable hospitalizations related to diabetes among Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese elderly compared with whites, Hawai'i, December 2006-December 2010.

Science.gov (United States)

Sentell, Tetine L; Ahn, Hyeong Jun; Juarez, Deborah T; Tseng, Chien-Wen; Chen, John J; Salvail, Florentina R; Miyamura, Jill; Mau, Marjorie L M

2013-07-25

Approximately 25% of individuals aged 65 years or older in the United States have diabetes mellitus. Diabetes rates in this age group are higher for Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AA/PI) than for whites. We examined racial/ethnic differences in diabetes-related potentially preventable hospitalizations (DRPH) among people aged 65 years or older for Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Native Hawaiians, and whites. Discharge data for hospitalizations in Hawai'i for people aged 65 years or older from December 2006 through December 2010 were compared. Annual rates of DRPH by patient were calculated for each racial/ethnic group by sex. Rate ratios (RRs) were calculated relative to whites. Multivariable models controlling for insurer, comorbidity, diabetes prevalence, age, and residence location provided final adjusted rates and RRs. A total of 1,815 DRPH were seen from 1,515 unique individuals. Unadjusted RRs for DRPH by patient were greater than 1 in all AA/PI study groups compared with whites, but were highest among Native Hawaiians and Filipinos [corrected]. In fully adjusted models accounting for higher diabetes prevalence in AA/PI groups, Native Hawaiian (adjusted rate ratio [aRR] = 1.59), Filipino (aRR = 2.26), and Japanese (aRR = 1.86) men retained significantly higher rates of diabetes-related potentially preventable hospitalizations than whites, as did Filipino women (aRR = 1.61). Native Hawaiian, Filipino, and Japanese men and Filipino women aged 65 years or older have a higher risk than whites for DRPH. Health care providers and public health programs for elderly patients should consider effective programs to reduce potentially preventable hospitalizations among Native Hawaiian, Filipino, and Japanese men and Filipino women aged 65 years or older.

Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D; Finn, Amy S; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D E

2017-04-01

Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual's native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Data-Model Relationship in Text-Independent Speaker Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stapert Robert

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Text-independent speaker recognition systems such as those based on Gaussian mixture models (GMMs do not include time sequence information (TSI within the model itself. The level of importance of TSI in speaker recognition is an interesting question and one addressed in this paper. Recent works has shown that the utilisation of higher-level information such as idiolect, pronunciation, and prosodics can be useful in reducing speaker recognition error rates. In accordance with these developments, the aim of this paper is to show that as more data becomes available, the basic GMM can be enhanced by utilising TSI, even in a text-independent mode. This paper presents experimental work incorporating TSI into the conventional GMM. The resulting system, known as the segmental mixture model (SMM, embeds dynamic time warping (DTW into a GMM framework. Results are presented on the 2000-speaker SpeechDat Welsh database which show improved speaker recognition performance with the SMM.

Inferring speaker attributes in adductor spasmodic dysphonia: ratings from unfamiliar listeners.

Science.gov (United States)

Isetti, Derek; Xuereb, Linnea; Eadie, Tanya L

2014-05-01

To determine whether unfamiliar listeners' perceptions of speakers with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) differ from control speakers on the parameters of relative age, confidence, tearfulness, and vocal effort and are related to speaker-rated vocal effort or voice-specific quality of life. Twenty speakers with ADSD (including 6 speakers with ADSD plus tremor) and 20 age- and sex-matched controls provided speech recordings, completed a voice-specific quality-of-life instrument (Voice Handicap Index; Jacobson et al., 1997), and rated their own vocal effort. Twenty listeners evaluated speech samples for relative age, confidence, tearfulness, and vocal effort using rating scales. Listeners judged speakers with ADSD as sounding significantly older, less confident, more tearful, and more effortful than control speakers (p < .01). Increased vocal effort was strongly associated with decreased speaker confidence (rs = .88-.89) and sounding more tearful (rs = .83-.85). Self-rated speaker effort was moderately related (rs = .45-.52) to listener impressions. Listeners' perceptions of confidence and tearfulness were also moderately associated with higher Voice Handicap Index scores (rs = .65-.70). Unfamiliar listeners judge speakers with ADSD more negatively than control speakers, with judgments extending beyond typical clinical measures. The results have implications for counseling and understanding the psychosocial effects of ADSD.

Speaker-dependent Multipitch Tracking Using Deep Neural Networks

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-01

sentences spoken by each of 34 speakers (18 male, 16 female). Two male and two female speakers (No. 1, 2, 18, 20, same as [30]), denoted as MA1, MA2 ...Engineering Technical Report #12, 2015 Speaker Pairs MA1- MA2 MA1-FE1 MA1-FE2 MA2 -FE1 MA2 -FE2 FE1-FE2 E T ot al 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Jin and Wang Hu and...Pitch 1 Estimated Pitch 2 (d) Figure 6: Multipitch tracking results on a test mixture (pbbv6n and priv3n) for the MA1- MA2 speaker pair. (a) Groundtruth

Joint Single-Channel Speech Separation and Speaker Identification

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mowlaee, Pejman; Saeidi, Rahim; Tan, Zheng-Hua

2010-01-01

In this paper, we propose a closed loop system to improve the performance of single-channel speech separation in a speaker independent scenario. The system is composed of two interconnected blocks: a separation block and a speaker identiſcation block. The improvement is accomplished by incorporat......In this paper, we propose a closed loop system to improve the performance of single-channel speech separation in a speaker independent scenario. The system is composed of two interconnected blocks: a separation block and a speaker identiſcation block. The improvement is accomplished...... enhances the quality of the separated output signals. To assess the improvements, the results are reported in terms of PESQ for both target and masked signals....

Development of aquatic life criteria for triclosan and comparison of the sensitivity between native and non-native species.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xiao-Nan; Liu, Zheng-Tao; Yan, Zhen-Guang; Zhang, Cong; Wang, Wei-Li; Zhou, Jun-Li; Pei, Shu-Wei

2013-09-15

Triclosan (TCS) is an antimicrobial agent which is used as a broad-spectrum bacteriostatic and found in personal care products, and due to this it is widely spread in the aquatic environment. However, there is no paper dealing with the aquatic life criteria of TCS, mainly result from the shortage of toxicity data of different taxonomic levels. In the present study, toxicity data were obtained from 9 acute toxicity tests and 3 chronic toxicity tests using 9 Chinese native aquatic species from different taxonomic levels, and the aquatic life criteria was derived using 3 methods. Furthermore, differences of species sensitivity distributions (SSD) between native and non-native species were compared. Among the tested species, demersal fish Misgurnus anguillicaudatus was the most sensitive species, and the fishes were more sensitive than the aquatic invertebrates of Annelid and insect, and the insect was the least sensitive species. The comparison showed that there was no significant difference between SSDs constructed from native and non-native taxa. Finally, a criterion maximum concentration of 0.009 mg/L and a criterion continuous concentration of 0.002 mg/L were developed based on different taxa, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Optimization of multilayer neural network parameters for speaker recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Tovarek, Jaromir; Partila, Pavol; Rozhon, Jan; Voznak, Miroslav; Skapa, Jan; Uhrin, Dominik; Chmelikova, Zdenka

2016-05-01

This article discusses the impact of multilayer neural network parameters for speaker identification. The main task of speaker identification is to find a specific person in the known set of speakers. It means that the voice of an unknown speaker (wanted person) belongs to a group of reference speakers from the voice database. One of the requests was to develop the text-independent system, which means to classify wanted person regardless of content and language. Multilayer neural network has been used for speaker identification in this research. Artificial neural network (ANN) needs to set parameters like activation function of neurons, steepness of activation functions, learning rate, the maximum number of iterations and a number of neurons in the hidden and output layers. ANN accuracy and validation time are directly influenced by the parameter settings. Different roles require different settings. Identification accuracy and ANN validation time were evaluated with the same input data but different parameter settings. The goal was to find parameters for the neural network with the highest precision and shortest validation time. Input data of neural networks are a Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). These parameters describe the properties of the vocal tract. Audio samples were recorded for all speakers in a laboratory environment. Training, testing and validation data set were split into 70, 15 and 15 %. The result of the research described in this article is different parameter setting for the multilayer neural network for four speakers.

Proficiency and sentence constraint effects on second language word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Tengfei; Chen, Baoguo; Lu, Chunming; Dunlap, Susan

2015-07-01

This paper presents an experiment that investigated the effects of L2 proficiency and sentence constraint on semantic processing of unknown L2 words (pseudowords). All participants were Chinese native speakers who learned English as a second language. In the experiment, we used a whole sentence presentation paradigm with a delayed semantic relatedness judgment task. Both higher and lower-proficiency L2 learners could make use of the high-constraint sentence context to judge the meaning of novel pseudowords, and higher-proficiency L2 learners outperformed lower-proficiency L2 learners in all conditions. These results demonstrate that both L2 proficiency and sentence constraint affect subsequent word learning among second language learners. We extended L2 word learning into a sentence context, replicated the sentence constraint effects previously found among native speakers, and found proficiency effects in L2 word learning. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automatic Speaker Recognition for Mobile Forensic Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammed Algabri

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Presently, lawyers, law enforcement agencies, and judges in courts use speech and other biometric features to recognize suspects. In general, speaker recognition is used for discriminating people based on their voices. The process of determining, if a suspected speaker is the source of trace, is called forensic speaker recognition. In such applications, the voice samples are most probably noisy, the recording sessions might mismatch each other, the sessions might not contain sufficient recording for recognition purposes, and the suspect voices are recorded through mobile channel. The identification of a person through his voice within a forensic quality context is challenging. In this paper, we propose a method for forensic speaker recognition for the Arabic language; the King Saud University Arabic Speech Database is used for obtaining experimental results. The advantage of this database is that each speaker’s voice is recorded in both clean and noisy environments, through a microphone and a mobile channel. This diversity facilitates its usage in forensic experimentations. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients are used for feature extraction and the Gaussian mixture model-universal background model is used for speaker modeling. Our approach has shown low equal error rates (EER, within noisy environments and with very short test samples.

Request Strategies in Everyday Interactions of Persian and English Speakers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shiler Yazdanfar

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Cross-cultural studies of speech acts in different linguistic contexts might have interesting implications for language researchers and practitioners. Drawing on the Speech Act Theory, the present study aimed at conducting a comparative study of request speech act in Persian and English. Specifically, the study endeavored to explore the request strategies used in daily interactions of Persian and English speakers based on directness level and supportive moves. To this end, English and Persian TV series were observed and requestive utterances were transcribed. The utterances were then categorized based on Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Pattern (CCSARP for directness level and internal and external mitigation devises. According to the results, although speakers of both languages opted for the direct level as their most frequently used strategy in their daily interactions, the English speakers used more conventionally indirect strategies than the Persian speakers did, and the Persian speakers used more non-conventionally indirect strategies than the English speakers did. Furthermore, the analyzed data revealed the fact that American English speakers use more mitigation devices in their daily interactions with friends and family members than Persian speakers.

Opposite patterns of hemisphere dominance for early auditory processing of lexical tones and consonants

OpenAIRE

Luo, Hao; Ni, Jing-Tian; Li, Zhi-Hao; Li, Xiao-Ou; Zhang, Da-Ren; Zeng, Fan-Gang; Chen, Lin

2006-01-01

in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, a lexical tone carries semantic information and is preferentially processed in the left brain hemisphere of native speakers as revealed by the functional MRI or positron emission tomography studies, which likely measure the temporally aggregated neural events including those at an attentive stage of auditory processing. Here, we demonstrate that early auditory processing of a lexical tone at a preattentive stage is actually ...

Speaker Reliability Guides Children's Inductive Inferences about Novel Properties

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Kim, Sunae; Kalish, Charles W.; Harris, Paul L.

2012-01-01

Prior work shows that children can make inductive inferences about objects based on their labels rather than their appearance (Gelman, 2003). A separate line of research shows that children's trust in a speaker's label is selective. Children accept labels from a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker (e.g., Koenig & Harris, 2005). In the…

Guest Speakers in School-Based Sexuality Education

Science.gov (United States)

McRee, Annie-Laurie; Madsen, Nikki; Eisenberg, Marla E.

2014-01-01

This study, using data from a statewide survey (n = 332), examined teachers' practices regarding the inclusion of guest speakers to cover sexuality content. More than half of teachers (58%) included guest speakers. In multivariate analyses, teachers who taught high school, had professional preparation in health education, or who received…

Anthropometric measures of 9-to 10-year-old native tibetan children living at 3700 and 4300m above sea level and han Chinese living at 3700m

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bianba, B.; Yangzong, Y.; Gonggalanzi, G.

2015-01-01

A high residential altitude impacts on the growth of children, and it has been suggested that linear growth (height) is more affected than bodymass. The aimof the present study was to estimate the prevalence of obesity, overweight, underweight, and stunting in groups of native Tibetan children...... school children aged 9 to 10 years were conducted in Lhasa in 2005 and Tingri in 2007. Conventional age-And sex-specific cutoff values were used for defining underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obesity, whereas stunting was defined from sex-specific height-for-Age z-scores (2.0). The prevalence...... found in 14.6%and 35.7%, respectively, of Tingri children, and near null among Han Chinese and native Tibetans in Lhasa. In logistic regression analyses, socioeconomic status and diet did not substantially change the observed crude association (total effect) (odds ratio [OR]=3.3; 95% confidence interval...

The Communication of Public Speaking Anxiety: Perceptions of Asian and American Speakers.

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Martini, Marianne; And Others

1992-01-01

Finds that U.S. audiences perceive Asian speakers to have more speech anxiety than U.S. speakers, even though Asian speakers do not self-report higher anxiety levels. Confirms that speech state anxiety is not communicated effectively between speakers and audiences for Asian or U.S. speakers. (SR)

The Impact of Biculturalism on Language and Literacy Development: Teaching Chinese English Language Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Palmer, Barbara C.; Chen, Chia-I; Chang, Sara; Leclere, Judith T.

2006-01-01

According to the 2000 United States Census, Americans age five and older who speak a language other than English at home grew 47 percent over the preceding decade. This group accounts for slightly less than one in five Americans (17.9%). Among the minority languages spoken in the United States, Asian-language speakers, including Chinese and other…

Speaker Clustering for a Mixture of Singing and Reading (Preprint)

Science.gov (United States)

2012-03-01

diarization [2, 3] which answers the ques- tion of ”who spoke when?” is a combination of speaker segmentation and clustering. Although it is possible to...focuses on speaker clustering, the techniques developed here can be applied to speaker diarization . For the remainder of this paper, the term ”speech...and retrieval,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 88, 2000. [2] S. Tranter and D. Reynolds, “An overview of automatic speaker diarization systems,” IEEE

Human and automatic speaker recognition over telecommunication channels

CERN Document Server

Fernández Gallardo, Laura

2016-01-01

This work addresses the evaluation of the human and the automatic speaker recognition performances under different channel distortions caused by bandwidth limitation, codecs, and electro-acoustic user interfaces, among other impairments. Its main contribution is the demonstration of the benefits of communication channels of extended bandwidth, together with an insight into how speaker-specific characteristics of speech are preserved through different transmissions. It provides sufficient motivation for considering speaker recognition as a criterion for the migration from narrowband to enhanced bandwidths, such as wideband and super-wideband.

Electrophysiology of subject-verb agreement mediated by speakers' gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Hanulíková, Adriana; Carreiras, Manuel

2015-01-01

An important property of speech is that it explicitly conveys features of a speaker's identity such as age or gender. This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the effects of social information provided by a speaker's gender, i.e., the conceptual representation of gender, on subject-verb agreement. Despite numerous studies on agreement, little is known about syntactic computations generated by speaker characteristics extracted from the acoustic signal. Slovak is well suited to investigate this issue because it is a morphologically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, case, and gender. Grammaticality of a sentence can be evaluated by checking a speaker's gender as conveyed by his/her voice. We examined how conceptual information about speaker gender, which is not syntactic but rather social and pragmatic in nature, is interpreted for the computation of agreement patterns. ERP responses to verbs disagreeing with the speaker's gender (e.g., a sentence including a masculine verbal inflection spoken by a female person 'the neighbors were upset because I (∗)stoleMASC plums') elicited a larger early posterior negativity compared to correct sentences. When the agreement was purely syntactic and did not depend on the speaker's gender, a disagreement between a formally marked subject and the verb inflection (e.g., the womanFEM (∗)stoleMASC plums) resulted in a larger P600 preceded by a larger anterior negativity compared to the control sentences. This result is in line with proposals according to which the recruitment of non-syntactic information such as the gender of the speaker results in N400-like effects, while formally marked syntactic features lead to structural integration as reflected in a LAN/P600 complex.

Speakers of different languages process the visual world differently.

Science.gov (United States)

Chabal, Sarah; Marian, Viorica

2015-06-01

Language and vision are highly interactive. Here we show that people activate language when they perceive the visual world, and that this language information impacts how speakers of different languages focus their attention. For example, when searching for an item (e.g., clock) in the same visual display, English and Spanish speakers look at different objects. Whereas English speakers searching for the clock also look at a cloud, Spanish speakers searching for the clock also look at a gift, because the Spanish names for gift (regalo) and clock (reloj) overlap phonologically. These different looking patterns emerge despite an absence of direct language input, showing that linguistic information is automatically activated by visual scene processing. We conclude that the varying linguistic information available to speakers of different languages affects visual perception, leading to differences in how the visual world is processed. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Multimodal Speaker Diarization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noulas, A.; Englebienne, G.; Kröse, B.J.A.

2012-01-01

We present a novel probabilistic framework that fuses information coming from the audio and video modality to perform speaker diarization. The proposed framework is a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) that is an extension of a factorial Hidden Markov Model (fHMM) and models the people appearing in an

Processing lexical semantic and syntactic information in first and second language: fMRI evidence from German and Russian.

Science.gov (United States)

Rüschemeyer, Shirley-Ann; Fiebach, Christian J; Kempe, Vera; Friederici, Angela D

2005-06-01

We introduce two experiments that explored syntactic and semantic processing of spoken sentences by native and non-native speakers. In the first experiment, the neural substrates corresponding to detection of syntactic and semantic violations were determined in native speakers of two typologically different languages using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results show that the underlying neural response of participants to stimuli across different native languages is quite similar. In the second experiment, we investigated how non-native speakers of a language process the same stimuli presented in the first experiment. First, the results show a more similar pattern of increased activation between native and non-native speakers in response to semantic violations than to syntactic violations. Second, the non-native speakers were observed to employ specific portions of the frontotemporal language network differently from those employed by native speakers. These regions included the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), superior temporal gyrus (STG), and subcortical structures of the basal ganglia.

Native language change during early stages of second language learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Bice, Kinsey; Kroll, Judith F

2015-11-11

Research on proficient bilinguals has demonstrated that both languages are always active, even when only one is required. The coactivation of the two languages creates both competition and convergence, facilitating the processing of cognate words, but slowing lexical access when there is a requirement to engage control mechanisms to select the target language. Critically, these consequences are evident in the native language (L1) as well as in the second language (L2). The present study questioned whether L1 changes can be detected at early stages of L2 learning and how they are modulated by L2 proficiency. Native English speakers learning Spanish performed an English (L1) lexical decision task that included cognates while event-related potentials were recorded. They also performed verbal fluency, working memory, and inhibitory control tasks. A group of matched monolinguals performed the same tasks in English only. The results revealed that intermediate learners demonstrate a reduced N400 for cognates compared with noncognates in English (L1), and an emerging effect is visually present in beginning learners as well; however, no behavioral cognate effect was present for either group. In addition, slower reaction times in English (L1) are related to a larger cognate N400 magnitude in English (L1) and Spanish (L2), and to better inhibitory control for learners but not for monolinguals. The results suggest that contrary to the claim that L2 affects L1 only when L2 speakers are highly proficient, L2 learning begins to impact L1 early in the development of the L2 skill.

Non-native scientists, research dissemination and English neologisms: What happens in the early stages of reception and re-production?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Linder

2016-11-01

Full Text Available That the English language is the prevailing language in international scientific discourse is an undeniable fact for research professionals who are non-native speakers of English (NNSE. An exploratory, survey-based study of scientists in the experimental disciplines of neuroscience and medicine seeks to reveal, on the one hand, the habits of scientists who in their research practice come across neologisms in English and need to use them in oral and written scientific discourse in their own languages, and, on the other hand, their attitudes towards these neologisms and towards English as the language of international science. We found that all scientists write and publish their research articles (RAs in English and most submit them unrevised by native speakers of English. When first encountering a neologism in English, scientists tend to pay close attention to these new concepts, ideas or terms and very early in the reception process attempt to coin acceptable, natural-sounding Spanish equivalents for use in the laboratory and in their Spanish texts. In conjunction with the naturalized Spanish term, they often use the English neologism verbatim in a coexistent bilingual form, but they avoid using only the English term and very literal translations. These behaviors show an ambivalent attitude towards English (the language of both new knowledge reception and dissemination of their RAs and Spanish (used for local professional purposes and for popularization: while accepting to write in their acquired non-native language, they simultaneously recognize that their native language needs to preserve its specificity as a language of science.

The Influence of Language Proficiency on Book Search Behaviour

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skov, Mette; Bogers, Toine

2015-01-01

In this paper we describe our participation in the Interactive Social Book Search task at CLEF 2015. We focus our analysis on differences in search behaviour between native and non-native speakers of English. The analysis is based on both questionnaire and log data. 49 participants out of the 192...... total participants are native speakers and the remaining 143 participants are nonnative speakers. In general results show surprisingly few differences in search behaviour between native and non-native speakers. Non-native speakers spent more time on both the focused and the open task than the native...... speakers, but no significant differences were found in relation to number of queries, query length, depth of results inspection, number of books added to the book-bag, or length of notes explaining why a book was added to the book-bag....

Using "Reading to Learn" (R2L) Pedagogy to Teach Discussion Genre to Non-Chinese-Speaking Students in Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Shum, Mark Shiu-kee; Tai, Chung Pui; Shi, Dan

2018-01-01

Non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) South Asian students, as ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are the main disadvantaged social cohort in Chinese language learning. It has been a challenge for L1 Chinese teachers to conduct L2 Chinese teaching to NCS students with diversified native languages and socio-cultural backgrounds. "Reading to Learn,…

AHP 2A: China's na53 mʑi 53 Tibetans: Life, Language and Folklore

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Libu Lakhi (Li Jianfu 李建富, Dawa Tenzin ཟླ་བ་བསྟན་འཛིན།

2009-06-01

Full Text Available This remarkable book is the product of a fruitful collaboration among a native speaker of na53 mʑi53 kha11 tho11, Tibetan and Chinese consultants, and a dedicated group of Westerners resident in China. It affords the reader an intimate glimpse into traditional na53 mʑi53 life, now well on its way to disappearing along with hundreds of similar minority cultures in the world.

AHP 2B: China's na53 mʑi 53 Tibetans: Life, Language and Folklore

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Libu Lakhi (Li Jianfu 李建富, Dawa Tenzin ཟླ་བ་བསྟན་འཛིན།

2009-06-01

Full Text Available This remarkable book is the product of a fruitful collaboration among a native speaker of na53 mʑi53 kha11 tho11, Tibetan and Chinese consultants, and a dedicated group of Westerners resident in China. It affords the reader an intimate glimpse into traditional na53 mʑi53 life, now well on its way to disappearing along with hundreds of similar minority cultures in the world.

A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 million English speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Hartshorne, Joshua K; Tenenbaum, Joshua B; Pinker, Steven

2018-08-01

Children learn language more easily than adults, though when and why this ability declines have been obscure for both empirical reasons (underpowered studies) and conceptual reasons (measuring the ultimate attainment of learners who started at different ages cannot by itself reveal changes in underlying learning ability). We address both limitations with a dataset of unprecedented size (669,498 native and non-native English speakers) and a computational model that estimates the trajectory of underlying learning ability by disentangling current age, age at first exposure, and years of experience. This allows us to provide the first direct estimate of how grammar-learning ability changes with age, finding that it is preserved almost to the crux of adulthood (17.4 years old) and then declines steadily. This finding held not only for "difficult" syntactic phenomena but also for "easy" syntactic phenomena that are normally mastered early in acquisition. The results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition, but the age of offset is much later than previously speculated. The size of the dataset also provides novel insight into several other outstanding questions in language acquisition. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Studies on inter-speaker variability in speech and its application in ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

tic representation of vowel realizations by different speakers. ... in regional background, education level and gender of speaker. A more ...... formal maps such as bilinear transform and its generalizations for speaker normalization. Since.

Instrumental Analysis of the English Stops Produced by Arabic Speakers of English

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Noureldin Mohamed Abdelaal

2017-07-01

Full Text Available This study reports the findings of a research that was conducted on ten (10 Arab students, who were enrolled in a master of English applied linguistics program at Universiti Putra Malaysia. The research aimed at instrumentally analyzing the English stops produced by Arab learners, in terms of voice onset time (VOT; identifying the effect of their mother tongue on producing the English stops; and the extent Arabic speakers of English differentiate in terms of pronunciation between minimal pairs. The findings of the study showed that some of the subjects’ VOT values were similar to native speakers of English. It was also found that the subjects could differentiate in terms of aspiration or voicing between /p/ and /b/, which refutes the assumption that Arab learners have a problem in producing the /p/ sound with appropriate aspiration. However, they did not show significant difference in pronunciation between the /t/ and /d/ or between the /k/ and /g/. Moreover, there is a kind of limited effect of the L1 on producing some stops (e.g. /t/ and /g/. However, for the /b/ sound, it cannot be inferred that there is interference from the mother tongue because its VOT value is almost the same in English and Arabic. This research suggests that teachers need to enhance Arab learners’ pronunciation of some minimal pairs such as /t/ and /d/ or /k/ and /g/.

Content-specific coordination of listeners' to speakers' EEG during communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuhlen, Anna K; Allefeld, Carsten; Haynes, John-Dylan

2012-01-01

Cognitive neuroscience has recently begun to extend its focus from the isolated individual mind to two or more individuals coordinating with each other. In this study we uncover a coordination of neural activity between the ongoing electroencephalogram (EEG) of two people-a person speaking and a person listening. The EEG of one set of twelve participants ("speakers") was recorded while they were narrating short stories. The EEG of another set of twelve participants ("listeners") was recorded while watching audiovisual recordings of these stories. Specifically, listeners watched the superimposed videos of two speakers simultaneously and were instructed to attend either to one or the other speaker. This allowed us to isolate neural coordination due to processing the communicated content from the effects of sensory input. We find several neural signatures of communication: First, the EEG is more similar among listeners attending to the same speaker than among listeners attending to different speakers, indicating that listeners' EEG reflects content-specific information. Secondly, listeners' EEG activity correlates with the attended speakers' EEG, peaking at a time delay of about 12.5 s. This correlation takes place not only between homologous, but also between non-homologous brain areas in speakers and listeners. A semantic analysis of the stories suggests that listeners coordinate with speakers at the level of complex semantic representations, so-called "situation models". With this study we link a coordination of neural activity between individuals directly to verbally communicated information.

Musical ability and non-native speech-sound processing are linked through sensitivity to pitch and spectral information.

Science.gov (United States)

Kempe, Vera; Bublitz, Dennis; Brooks, Patricia J

2015-05-01

Is the observed link between musical ability and non-native speech-sound processing due to enhanced sensitivity to acoustic features underlying both musical and linguistic processing? To address this question, native English speakers (N = 118) discriminated Norwegian tonal contrasts and Norwegian vowels. Short tones differing in temporal, pitch, and spectral characteristics were used to measure sensitivity to the various acoustic features implicated in musical and speech processing. Musical ability was measured using Gordon's Advanced Measures of Musical Audiation. Results showed that sensitivity to specific acoustic features played a role in non-native speech-sound processing: Controlling for non-verbal intelligence, prior foreign language-learning experience, and sex, sensitivity to pitch and spectral information partially mediated the link between musical ability and discrimination of non-native vowels and lexical tones. The findings suggest that while sensitivity to certain acoustic features partially mediates the relationship between musical ability and non-native speech-sound processing, complex tests of musical ability also tap into other shared mechanisms. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Forensic Speaker Recognition Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism

CERN Document Server

Patil, Hemant

2012-01-01

Forensic Speaker Recognition: Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism is an anthology of the research findings of 35 speaker recognition experts from around the world. The volume provides a multidimensional view of the complex science involved in determining whether a suspect’s voice truly matches forensic speech samples, collected by law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, that are associated with the commission of a terrorist act or other crimes. While addressing such topics as the challenges of forensic case work, handling speech signal degradation, analyzing features of speaker recognition to optimize voice verification system performance, and designing voice applications that meet the practical needs of law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, this material all sounds a common theme: how the rigors of forensic utility are demanding new levels of excellence in all aspects of speaker recognition. The contributors are among the most eminent scientists in speech engineering and signal process...

Gricean Semantics and Vague Speaker-Meaning

OpenAIRE

Schiffer, Stephen

2017-01-01

Presentations of Gricean semantics, including Stephen Neale’s in “Silent Reference,” totally ignore vagueness, even though virtually every utterance is vague. I ask how Gricean semantics might be adjusted to accommodate vague speaker-meaning. My answer is that it can’t accommodate it: the Gricean program collapses in the face of vague speaker-meaning. The Gricean might, however, fi nd some solace in knowing that every other extant meta-semantic and semantic program is in the same boat.

Effect of lisping on audience evaluation of male speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Mowrer, D E; Wahl, P; Doolan, S J

1978-05-01

The social consequences of adult listeners' first impression of lisping were evaluated in two studies. Five adult speakers were rated by adult listeners with regard to speaking ability, intelligence, education, masculinity, and friendship. Results from both studies indicate that listeners rate adult speakers who demonstrate frontal lisping lower than nonlispers in all five categories investigated. Efforts to correct frontal lisping are justifiable on the basis of the poor impression lisping speakers make on the listener.

Phonological processing in Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Xiao; Peng, Gang

2014-12-01

Although there is an emerging consensus that both musical and linguistic pitch processing can be problematic for individuals with a developmental disorder termed congenital amusia, the nature of such a pitch-processing deficit, especially that demonstrated in a speech setting, remains unclear. Therefore, this study tested the performance of native Mandarin speakers, both with and without amusia, on discrimination and imitation tasks for Cantonese level tones, aiming to shed light on this issue. Results suggest that the impact of the phonological deficit, coupled with that of the domain-general pitch deficit, could provide a more comprehensive interpretation of Mandarin amusics' speech impairment. Specifically, when there was a high demand for pitch sensitivity, as in fine-grained pitch discriminations, the operation of the pitch-processing deficit played the more predominant role in modulating amusics' speech performance. But when the demand was low, as in discriminating naturally produced Cantonese level tones, the impact of the phonological deficit was more pronounced compared to that of the pitch-processing deficit. However, despite their perceptual deficits, Mandarin amusics' imitation abilities were comparable to controls'. Such selective impairment in tonal perception suggests that the phonological deficit more severely implicates amusics' input pathways.

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners’ English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis

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Jin Xue

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learning (i.e., primary school, junior and senior high schools. A 3 (AoA: early vs. intermediate vs. late × 2 (regularity: regular vs. irregular × 2 (semantic relatedness: related vs. unrelated × 2 (hemisphere: left vs. right × 3 (brain area: anterior vs. central vs. posterior within-subjects design was adopted. Results from the analysis of N100 and N400 amplitudes showed that early learned words had an advantage in processing accuracy and speed; there is a tendency that the AoA effect was more pronounced for irregular word pairs and in the semantic related condition. More important, ERP results showed early acquired words induced larger N100 amplitudes for early AoA words in the parietal area and more negative-going N400 than late acquire words in the frontal and central regions. The results indicate the locus of the AoA effect might derive from the arbitrary mapping between word forms and semantic concepts, and early acquired words have more semantic interconnections than late acquired words.

NATIVE LANGUAGE INFLUENCE IN LEARNERS'. ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH FOCUS

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M. L. Garcia Lecumberri

2001-06-01

Full Text Available Accentual focus is a frequent linguistic device in English which may also be used in Spanish but less widely and less frequently. Given this disparity, it was expected that native language influence would manifest itself in FL leamers' focus assessrnents as cornpared to native English speakers. Other factors were also expected to account of listener perceptions, such as task type and linguistic competence. Two focus domains were used to test hypotheses: utterance initial and utterance medial focus. Focus identification was tested using two tasks which differed in their cognitive demands: multiple choice and open questions. Acceptability was estirnated by asking listeners to rate utterances on a five point scale. English NL listeners displayed better focus identification rates as cornpared to FL learners. This result may be understood both as an effect of native competence advantage and also as a reflection of native language influence. Both listener groups found utterance initial focus easier to identi@ and considered it to be more acceptable than medial focus. Both groups showed worse results in the open test, which is interpreted as a consequence of this task being more demanding on listeners' explicit knowledge. These trends were much more pronounced amongst FL leamers. It is suggested that the potential ambiguity of English medial focus is partly responsible for the bias against it. Additionally, Spanish listeners results show the their NL influence in this bias as well as in the good results for initial focus and acceptability estirnations.

Design, implementation, and evaluation of a computerized system to communicate with patients with limited native language proficiency in the perioperative period.

Science.gov (United States)

Taicher, Brad M; Alam, Rammy I; Berman, Joshua; Epstein, Richard H

2011-01-01

Effective communication with patients having limited proficiency in the native language of anesthesia care providers during the perioperative period is often challenging. We describe how we developed, implemented, and evaluated a computerized system to convey frequently used prerecorded phrases related to perioperative anesthesia care in the languages we most often encounter in such patients. Phrases were chosen through a consensus process among anesthesia department members. These included routine sayings used to inform patients about what they should anticipate, what interventions we are performing, and how they can participate. Common questions requiring a "yes" or "no" answer were also identified. We recorded these phrases using native speakers who were both knowledgeable medically and familiar with the culture of the patients to provide accurate translations. We developed a software application that categorically grouped the phrases and allowed care providers to select a phrase and play the associated sound file to the patient and deployed the program on our touchscreen-enabled anesthesia information management system workstations. A convenience sample of obstetrical patients speaking a Chinese dialect with whom the language program was used were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire, translated into Chinese, about their experience. Ninety-five percent lower confidence limits (LCLs) were calculated for response proportions. We approached 25 parturients with varying levels of English comprehension, and all agreed to use the language program. Each used it throughout her interaction with the anesthesia care providers during labor and delivery, and all patients completed the survey. Acceptance of the process was high, with all patients indicating that they would like to use it again were they to return for another procedure requiring anesthesia. Eighty-eight percent (LCL = 73%) indicated that having instructions in their native language made them feel more

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility.

Science.gov (United States)

Gillis, Randall L; Nilsen, Elizabeth S

2017-06-01

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers' words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers' affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers' affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers' believability, "weird" speech), but not general characteristics (speakers' friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.

Recognition of speaker-dependent continuous speech with KEAL

Science.gov (United States)

Mercier, G.; Bigorgne, D.; Miclet, L.; Le Guennec, L.; Querre, M.

1989-04-01

A description of the speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition system KEAL is given. An unknown utterance, is recognized by means of the followng procedures: acoustic analysis, phonetic segmentation and identification, word and sentence analysis. The combination of feature-based, speaker-independent coarse phonetic segmentation with speaker-dependent statistical classification techniques is one of the main design features of the acoustic-phonetic decoder. The lexical access component is essentially based on a statistical dynamic programming technique which aims at matching a phonemic lexical entry containing various phonological forms, against a phonetic lattice. Sentence recognition is achieved by use of a context-free grammar and a parsing algorithm derived from Earley's parser. A speaker adaptation module allows some of the system parameters to be adjusted by matching known utterances with their acoustical representation. The task to be performed, described by its vocabulary and its grammar, is given as a parameter of the system. Continuously spoken sentences extracted from a 'pseudo-Logo' language are analyzed and results are presented.

Cost-Sensitive Learning for Emotion Robust Speaker Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dongdong Li

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In the field of information security, voice is one of the most important parts in biometrics. Especially, with the development of voice communication through the Internet or telephone system, huge voice data resources are accessed. In speaker recognition, voiceprint can be applied as the unique password for the user to prove his/her identity. However, speech with various emotions can cause an unacceptably high error rate and aggravate the performance of speaker recognition system. This paper deals with this problem by introducing a cost-sensitive learning technology to reweight the probability of test affective utterances in the pitch envelop level, which can enhance the robustness in emotion-dependent speaker recognition effectively. Based on that technology, a new architecture of recognition system as well as its components is proposed in this paper. The experiment conducted on the Mandarin Affective Speech Corpus shows that an improvement of 8% identification rate over the traditional speaker recognition is achieved.

Cost-sensitive learning for emotion robust speaker recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Dongdong; Yang, Yingchun; Dai, Weihui

2014-01-01

In the field of information security, voice is one of the most important parts in biometrics. Especially, with the development of voice communication through the Internet or telephone system, huge voice data resources are accessed. In speaker recognition, voiceprint can be applied as the unique password for the user to prove his/her identity. However, speech with various emotions can cause an unacceptably high error rate and aggravate the performance of speaker recognition system. This paper deals with this problem by introducing a cost-sensitive learning technology to reweight the probability of test affective utterances in the pitch envelop level, which can enhance the robustness in emotion-dependent speaker recognition effectively. Based on that technology, a new architecture of recognition system as well as its components is proposed in this paper. The experiment conducted on the Mandarin Affective Speech Corpus shows that an improvement of 8% identification rate over the traditional speaker recognition is achieved.

Young Children's Sensitivity to Speaker Gender When Learning from Others

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Lili; Woolley, Jacqueline D.

2013-01-01

This research explores whether young children are sensitive to speaker gender when learning novel information from others. Four- and 6-year-olds ("N" = 144) chose between conflicting statements from a male versus a female speaker (Studies 1 and 3) or decided which speaker (male or female) they would ask (Study 2) when learning about the functions…

Fluency profile: comparison between Brazilian and European Portuguese speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Castro, Blenda Stephanie Alves e; Martins-Reis, Vanessa de Oliveira; Baptista, Ana Catarina; Celeste, Letícia Correa

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study was to compare the speech fluency of Brazilian Portuguese speakers with that of European Portuguese speakers. The study participants were 76 individuals of any ethnicity or skin color aged 18-29 years. Of the participants, 38 lived in Brazil and 38 in Portugal. Speech samples from all participants were obtained and analyzed according to the variables of typology and frequency of speech disruptions and speech rate. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed to assess the association between the fluency profile and linguistic variant variables. We found that the speech rate of European Portuguese speakers was higher than the speech rate of Brazilian Portuguese speakers in words per minute (p=0.004). The qualitative distribution of the typology of common dysfluencies (pPortuguese speakers is not available, speech therapists in Portugal can use the same speech fluency assessment as has been used in Brazil to establish a diagnosis of stuttering, especially in regard to typical and stuttering dysfluencies, with care taken when evaluating the speech rate.

Direct Speaker Gaze Promotes Trust in Truth-Ambiguous Statements.

Science.gov (United States)

Kreysa, Helene; Kessler, Luise; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2016-01-01

A speaker's gaze behaviour can provide perceivers with a multitude of cues which are relevant for communication, thus constituting an important non-verbal interaction channel. The present study investigated whether direct eye gaze of a speaker affects the likelihood of listeners believing truth-ambiguous statements. Participants were presented with videos in which a speaker produced such statements with either direct or averted gaze. The statements were selected through a rating study to ensure that participants were unlikely to know a-priori whether they were true or not (e.g., "sniffer dogs cannot smell the difference between identical twins"). Participants indicated in a forced-choice task whether or not they believed each statement. We found that participants were more likely to believe statements by a speaker looking at them directly, compared to a speaker with averted gaze. Moreover, when participants disagreed with a statement, they were slower to do so when the statement was uttered with direct (compared to averted) gaze, suggesting that the process of rejecting a statement as untrue may be inhibited when that statement is accompanied by direct gaze.

On native Danish learners' challenges in distinguishing /tai/, /cai/ and /zai/

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sloos, Marjoleine; Zhang, Chun

2015-01-01

University participated in an ABX experiment. They were auditorily presented pairs of the critical stimuli tai-cai-zai, te-ce-ze and tuo-cuo-zuo combined with all four tones and alternated with fillers. The subjects indicated for each pair which of the two words matched the pinyin description. The expected...... results show that beginner learners perform on chance level regarding the distinction between t and z and between c and z. The reason is that in Danish, which has an aspiration contrast between plosives (like Chinese) /th/ is variably pronounced as affricated /ts/ and many speakers are unaware...

English as a lingua franca used at international meetings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Barančicová Jana

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with the use of English as a lingua franca. It concentrates on the environment of international meetings where English is used as a lingua franca. The aim of the research conducted through a survey of members of a NATO working group is to find out how native and non-native speakers feel about English used as a lingua franca during international meetings and how these two groups of speakers see each other in multinational interaction from the point of view of linguistics. The sections dealing with non-native speakers concentrate on the level of knowledge of English and on how native speakers cope with the English used during the meetings. The sections dealing with the views of English native speakers should establish the approach they take towards mistakes made by non-native speakers, whether native speakers should adjust the way they speak at international meetings and how they generally view the fact that their mother tongue is used all around the world.

Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and the association with symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress in a multi-ethnic pregnant population in southern Sweden.

Science.gov (United States)

Wangel, Anne-Marie; Ryding, Elsa Lena; Schei, Berit; Östman, Margareta; Lukasse, Mirjam

2016-10-01

This study aims to describe the prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and analyze associations with symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress (PTS) in pregnancy, by ethnic background. This is a cross-sectional study of the Swedish data from the Bidens cohort study. Ethnicity was categorized as native and non-native Swedish-speakers. Women completed a questionnaire while attending routine antenatal care. The NorVold Abuse Questionnaire (NorAQ) assessed a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. The Edinburgh Depression Scale-5 measured symptoms of depression. Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress (PTS) included intrusion, avoidance and numbness. Of 1003 women, 78.6% were native and 21.4% were non-native Swedish-speakers. Native and non-native Swedish-speakers experienced a similar proportion of lifetime abuse. Moderate emotional and physical abuse in childhood was significantly more common among non-native Swedish-speakers. Sexual abuse in adulthood was significantly more prevalent among native Swedish-speakers. Emotional and sexual abuse were significantly associated with symptoms of depression for both natives and non-natives. Physical abuse was significantly associated with symptoms of depression for non-natives only. All types of abuse were significantly associated with symptoms of PTS for both native and non-native Swedish-speakers. Adding ethnicity to the multiple binary regression analyses did not really alter the association between the different types of abuse and symptoms of depression and PTS. The prevalence of lifetime abuse did not differ significantly for native and non-native Swedish-speakers but there were significant differences on a more detailed level. Abuse was associated with symptoms of depression and PTS. Being a non-native Swedish-speaker did not influence the association much. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A hybrid generative-discriminative approach to speaker diarization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noulas, A.K.; van Kasteren, T.; Kröse, B.J.A.

2008-01-01

In this paper we present a sound probabilistic approach to speaker diarization. We use a hybrid framework where a distribution over the number of speakers at each point of a multimodal stream is estimated with a discriminative model. The output of this process is used as input in a generative model

Noise Reduction with Microphone Arrays for Speaker Identification

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cohen, Z

2011-12-22

Reducing acoustic noise in audio recordings is an ongoing problem that plagues many applications. This noise is hard to reduce because of interfering sources and non-stationary behavior of the overall background noise. Many single channel noise reduction algorithms exist but are limited in that the more the noise is reduced; the more the signal of interest is distorted due to the fact that the signal and noise overlap in frequency. Specifically acoustic background noise causes problems in the area of speaker identification. Recording a speaker in the presence of acoustic noise ultimately limits the performance and confidence of speaker identification algorithms. In situations where it is impossible to control the environment where the speech sample is taken, noise reduction filtering algorithms need to be developed to clean the recorded speech of background noise. Because single channel noise reduction algorithms would distort the speech signal, the overall challenge of this project was to see if spatial information provided by microphone arrays could be exploited to aid in speaker identification. The goals are: (1) Test the feasibility of using microphone arrays to reduce background noise in speech recordings; (2) Characterize and compare different multichannel noise reduction algorithms; (3) Provide recommendations for using these multichannel algorithms; and (4) Ultimately answer the question - Can the use of microphone arrays aid in speaker identification?

Understanding speaker attitudes from prosody by adults with Parkinson's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Monetta, Laura; Cheang, Henry S; Pell, Marc D

2008-09-01

The ability to interpret vocal (prosodic) cues during social interactions can be disrupted by Parkinson's disease, with notable effects on how emotions are understood from speech. This study investigated whether PD patients who have emotional prosody deficits exhibit further difficulties decoding the attitude of a speaker from prosody. Vocally inflected but semantically nonsensical 'pseudo-utterances' were presented to listener groups with and without PD in two separate rating tasks. Task I required participants to rate how confident a speaker sounded from their voice and Task 2 required listeners to rate how polite the speaker sounded for a comparable set of pseudo-utterances. The results showed that PD patients were significantly less able than HC participants to use prosodic cues to differentiate intended levels of speaker confidence in speech, although the patients could accurately detect the politelimpolite attitude of the speaker from prosody in most cases. Our data suggest that many PD patients fail to use vocal cues to effectively infer a speaker's emotions as well as certain attitudes in speech such as confidence, consistent with the idea that the basal ganglia play a role in the meaningful processing of prosodic sequences in spoken language (Pell & Leonard, 2003).

A Method to Integrate GMM, SVM and DTW for Speaker Recognition

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Ing-Jr Ding

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper develops an effective and efficient scheme to integrate Gaussian mixture model (GMM, support vector machine (SVM, and dynamic time wrapping (DTW for automatic speaker recognition. GMM and SVM are two popular classifiers for speaker recognition applications. DTW is a fast and simple template matching method, and it is frequently seen in applications of speech recognition. In this work, DTW does not play a role to perform speech recognition, and it will be employed to be a verifier for verification of valid speakers. The proposed combination scheme of GMM, SVM and DTW, called SVMGMM-DTW, for speaker recognition in this study is a two-phase verification process task including GMM-SVM verification of the first phase and DTW verification of the second phase. By providing a double check to verify the identity of a speaker, it will be difficult for imposters to try to pass the security protection; therefore, the safety degree of speaker recognition systems will be largely increased. A series of experiments designed on door access control applications demonstrated that the superiority of the developed SVMGMM-DTW on speaker recognition accuracy.

Different Neural Correlates of Emotion-Label Words and Emotion-Laden Words: An ERP Study

OpenAIRE

Zhang, Juan; Wu, Chenggang; Meng, Yaxuan; Yuan, Zhen

2017-01-01

It is well-documented that both emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, happiness) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, wedding) can induce emotion activation. However, the neural correlates of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words recognition have not been examined. The present study aimed to compare the underlying neural responses when processing the two kinds of words by employing event-related potential (ERP) measurements. Fifteen Chinese native speakers were asked to perform a lexical...

LEARNING VECTOR QUANTIZATION FOR ADAPTED GAUSSIAN MIXTURE MODELS IN AUTOMATIC SPEAKER IDENTIFICATION

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IMEN TRABELSI

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Speaker Identification (SI aims at automatically identifying an individual by extracting and processing information from his/her voice. Speaker voice is a robust a biometric modality that has a strong impact in several application areas. In this study, a new combination learning scheme has been proposed based on Gaussian mixture model-universal background model (GMM-UBM and Learning vector quantization (LVQ for automatic text-independent speaker identification. Features vectors, constituted by the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC extracted from the speech signal are used to train the New England subset of the TIMIT database. The best results obtained (90% for gender- independent speaker identification, 97 % for male speakers and 93% for female speakers for test data using 36 MFCC features.

Direct Speaker Gaze Promotes Trust in Truth-Ambiguous Statements.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Helene Kreysa

Full Text Available A speaker's gaze behaviour can provide perceivers with a multitude of cues which are relevant for communication, thus constituting an important non-verbal interaction channel. The present study investigated whether direct eye gaze of a speaker affects the likelihood of listeners believing truth-ambiguous statements. Participants were presented with videos in which a speaker produced such statements with either direct or averted gaze. The statements were selected through a rating study to ensure that participants were unlikely to know a-priori whether they were true or not (e.g., "sniffer dogs cannot smell the difference between identical twins". Participants indicated in a forced-choice task whether or not they believed each statement. We found that participants were more likely to believe statements by a speaker looking at them directly, compared to a speaker with averted gaze. Moreover, when participants disagreed with a statement, they were slower to do so when the statement was uttered with direct (compared to averted gaze, suggesting that the process of rejecting a statement as untrue may be inhibited when that statement is accompanied by direct gaze.

Differences in Sickness Allowance Receipt between Swedish Speakers and Finnish Speakers in Finland

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Kaarina S. Reini

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Previous research has documented lower disability retirement and mortality rates of Swedish speakers as compared with Finnish speakers in Finland. This paper is the first to compare the two language groups with regard to the receipt of sickness allowance, which is an objective health measure that reflects a less severe poor health condition. Register-based data covering the years 1988-2011 are used. We estimate logistic regression models with generalized estimating equations to account for repeated observations at the individual level. We find that Swedish-speaking men have approximately 30 percent lower odds of receiving sickness allowance than Finnish-speaking men, whereas the difference in women is about 15 percent. In correspondence with previous research on all-cause mortality at working ages, we find no language-group difference in sickness allowance receipt in the socially most successful subgroup of the population.

On the improvement of speaker diarization by detecting overlapped speech

OpenAIRE

Hernando Pericás, Francisco Javier; Hernando Pericás, Francisco Javier

2010-01-01

Simultaneous speech in meeting environment is responsible for a certain amount of errors caused by standard speaker diarization systems. We are presenting an overlap detection system for far-field data based on spectral and spatial features, where the spatial features obtained on different microphone pairs are fused by means of principal component analysis. Detected overlap segments are applied for speaker diarization in order to increase the purity of speaker clusters an...

Hemispheric asymmetry of emotion words in a non-native mind: a divided visual field study.

Science.gov (United States)

Jończyk, Rafał

2015-05-01

This study investigates hemispheric specialization for emotional words among proficient non-native speakers of English by means of the divided visual field paradigm. The motivation behind the study is to extend the monolingual hemifield research to the non-native context and see how emotion words are processed in a non-native mind. Sixty eight females participated in the study, all highly proficient in English. The stimuli comprised 12 positive nouns, 12 negative nouns, 12 non-emotional nouns and 36 pseudo-words. To examine the lateralization of emotion, stimuli were presented unilaterally in a random fashion for 180 ms in a go/no-go lexical decision task. The perceptual data showed a right hemispheric advantage for processing speed of negative words and a complementary role of the two hemispheres in the recognition accuracy of experimental stimuli. The data indicate that processing of emotion words in non-native language may require greater interhemispheric communication, but at the same time demonstrates a specific role of the right hemisphere in the processing of negative relative to positive valence. The results of the study are discussed in light of the methodological inconsistencies in the hemifield research as well as the non-native context in which the study was conducted.

Role of Speaker Cues in Attention Inference

OpenAIRE

Jin Joo Lee; Cynthia Breazeal; David DeSteno

2017-01-01

Current state-of-the-art approaches to emotion recognition primarily focus on modeling the nonverbal expressions of the sole individual without reference to contextual elements such as the co-presence of the partner. In this paper, we demonstrate that the accurate inference of listeners’ social-emotional state of attention depends on accounting for the nonverbal behaviors of their storytelling partner, namely their speaker cues. To gain a deeper understanding of the role of speaker cues in at...

Speaker recognition through NLP and CWT modeling.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Brown-VanHoozer, A.; Kercel, S. W.; Tucker, R. W.

1999-06-23

The objective of this research is to develop a system capable of identifying speakers on wiretaps from a large database (>500 speakers) with a short search time duration (<30 seconds), and with better than 90% accuracy. Much previous research in speaker recognition has led to algorithms that produced encouraging preliminary results, but were overwhelmed when applied to populations of more than a dozen or so different speakers. The authors are investigating a solution to the ''huge population'' problem by seeking two completely different kinds of characterizing features. These features are extracted using the techniques of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT). NLP extracts precise neurological, verbal and non-verbal information, and assimilates the information into useful patterns. These patterns are based on specific cues demonstrated by each individual, and provide ways of determining congruency between verbal and non-verbal cues. The primary NLP modalities are characterized through word spotting (or verbal predicates cues, e.g., see, sound, feel, etc.) while the secondary modalities would be characterized through the speech transcription used by the individual. This has the practical effect of reducing the size of the search space, and greatly speeding up the process of identifying an unknown speaker. The wavelet-based line of investigation concentrates on using vowel phonemes and non-verbal cues, such as tempo. The rationale for concentrating on vowels is there are a limited number of vowels phonemes, and at least one of them usually appears in even the shortest of speech segments. Using the fast, CWT algorithm, the details of both the formant frequency and the glottal excitation characteristics can be easily extracted from voice waveforms. The differences in the glottal excitation waveforms as well as the formant frequency are evident in the CWT output. More significantly, the CWT reveals significant

Composition Medium Comparability in a Direct Writing Assessment of Non-Native English Speakers

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Edward W. Wolfe

2004-01-01

Full Text Available The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL contains a direct writing assessment, and examinees are given the option of composing their responses at a computer terminal using a keyboard or composing their responses in handwriting. This study sought to determine whether performance on a direct writing assessment is comparable for examinees when given the choice to compose essays in handwriting versus word processing. We examined this relationship controlling for English language proficiency and several demographic characteristics of examinees using linear models. We found a weak two-way interaction between composition medium and English language proficiency with examinees with weaker English language scores performing better on handwritten essays while examinees with better English language scores performing comparably on the two testing media. We also observed predictable differences associated with geographic region, native language, gender, and age.

Race in Conflict with Heritage: "Black" Heritage Language Speaker of Japanese

Science.gov (United States)

Doerr, Neriko Musha; Kumagai, Yuri

2014-01-01

"Heritage language speaker" is a relatively new term to denote minority language speakers who grew up in a household where the language was used or those who have a family, ancestral, or racial connection to the minority language. In research on heritage language speakers, overlap between these 2 definitions is often assumed--that is,…

Analysis of human scream and its impact on text-independent speaker verification.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, John H L; Nandwana, Mahesh Kumar; Shokouhi, Navid

2017-04-01

Scream is defined as sustained, high-energy vocalizations that lack phonological structure. Lack of phonological structure is how scream is identified from other forms of loud vocalization, such as "yell." This study investigates the acoustic aspects of screams and addresses those that are known to prevent standard speaker identification systems from recognizing the identity of screaming speakers. It is well established that speaker variability due to changes in vocal effort and Lombard effect contribute to degraded performance in automatic speech systems (i.e., speech recognition, speaker identification, diarization, etc.). However, previous research in the general area of speaker variability has concentrated on human speech production, whereas less is known about non-speech vocalizations. The UT-NonSpeech corpus is developed here to investigate speaker verification from scream samples. This study considers a detailed analysis in terms of fundamental frequency, spectral peak shift, frame energy distribution, and spectral tilt. It is shown that traditional speaker recognition based on the Gaussian mixture models-universal background model framework is unreliable when evaluated with screams.

Robust Digital Speech Watermarking For Online Speaker Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammad Ali Nematollahi

2015-01-01

Full Text Available A robust and blind digital speech watermarking technique has been proposed for online speaker recognition systems based on Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform (DWPT and multiplication to embed the watermark in the amplitudes of the wavelet’s subbands. In order to minimize the degradation effect of the watermark, these subbands are selected where less speaker-specific information was available (500 Hz–3500 Hz and 6000 Hz–7000 Hz. Experimental results on Texas Instruments Massachusetts Institute of Technology (TIMIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, and Mobile Biometry (MOBIO show that the degradation for speaker verification and identification is 1.16% and 2.52%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed watermark technique can provide enough robustness against different signal processing attacks.

Cultural influence on Chinese teachers’ perceptions and beliefs in a Danish context

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Li; Jensen, Annie Aarup

2013-01-01

The paper presents the results of a pilot study designed to investigate native Chinese teachers’ beliefs and perceptions in Danish teaching context and how culture impacts their perceptions and beliefs. Ethnographic interviews were utilized to explore their perceptions on students’ characteristics......, teaching methods, and relevant experiences of four native Chinese who have been teaching in Denmark for many years. It demonstrates that teachers’ perceptions reflect two different educational cultures which have shaped and are reshaping their beliefs about students’ characteristics and teaching methods...... in Danish context. It suggests that teachers’ cultural backgrounds and the new cultural contexts in which they are teaching cause their belief development from more teacher-oriented to more student-oriented. However, their belief about teaching methods also implies a complexity of combining two competing...

A Joint Approach for Single-Channel Speaker Identification and Speech Separation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mowlaee, Pejman; Saeidi, Rahim; Christensen, Mads Græsbøll

2012-01-01

) accuracy, here, we report the objective and subjective results as well. The results show that the proposed system performs as well as the best of the state-of-the-art in terms of perceived quality while its performance in terms of speaker identification and automatic speech recognition results......In this paper, we present a novel system for joint speaker identification and speech separation. For speaker identification a single-channel speaker identification algorithm is proposed which provides an estimate of signal-to-signal ratio (SSR) as a by-product. For speech separation, we propose...... a sinusoidal model-based algorithm. The speech separation algorithm consists of a double-talk/single-talk detector followed by a minimum mean square error estimator of sinusoidal parameters for finding optimal codevectors from pre-trained speaker codebooks. In evaluating the proposed system, we start from...

Speaker Recognition from Emotional Speech Using I-vector Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MACKOVÁ Lenka

2014-05-01

Full Text Available In recent years the concept of i-vectors become very popular and successful in the field of the speaker verification. The basic principle of i-vectors is that each utterance is represented by fixed-length feature vector of low-dimension. In the literature for purpose of speaker verification various recordings obtained from telephones or microphones were used. The aim of this experiment was to perform speaker verification using speaker model trained with emotional recordings on i-vector basis. The Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC, log energy, their deltas and acceleration coefficients were used in process of features extraction. As the classification methods of the verification system Mahalanobis distance metric in combination with Eigen Factor Radial normalization was used and in the second approach Cosine Distance Scoring (CSS metric with Within-class Covariance Normalization as a channel compensation was employed. This verification system used emotional recordings of male subjects from freely available German emotional database (Emo-DB.

Segmentation of the Speaker's Face Region with Audiovisual Correlation

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Yuyu; Sato, Yoichi

The ability to find the speaker's face region in a video is useful for various applications. In this work, we develop a novel technique to find this region within different time windows, which is robust against the changes of view, scale, and background. The main thrust of our technique is to integrate audiovisual correlation analysis into a video segmentation framework. We analyze the audiovisual correlation locally by computing quadratic mutual information between our audiovisual features. The computation of quadratic mutual information is based on the probability density functions estimated by kernel density estimation with adaptive kernel bandwidth. The results of this audiovisual correlation analysis are incorporated into graph cut-based video segmentation to resolve a globally optimum extraction of the speaker's face region. The setting of any heuristic threshold in this segmentation is avoided by learning the correlation distributions of speaker and background by expectation maximization. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can detect the speaker's face region accurately and robustly for different views, scales, and backgrounds.

The TNO speaker diarization system for NIST RT05s meeting data

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leeuwen, D.A. van

2006-01-01

The TNO speaker speaker diarization system is based on a standard BIC segmentation and clustering algorithm. Since for the NIST Rich Transcription speaker dizarization evaluation measure correct speech detection appears to be essential, we have developed a speech activity detector (SAD) as well.

Ungrammatical Patterns in Chinese EFL Learners' Free Writing

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Xiaohui

2014-01-01

This paper investigated a number of common ungrammatical patterns that were found in Chinese EFL leaners' free writings, in order to find useful pedagogical implications for English grammar teaching in EFL setting, especially in China. The corpus of writing data is examined by the author together with a native English teacher. Our findings suggest…

The Role of the Native Language in the Use of the English Nongeneric Definite Article by L2 Learners: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison