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Sample records for spoken language understanding

  1. Spoken Language Understanding Systems for Extracting Semantic Information from Speech

    CERN Document Server

    Tur, Gokhan

    2011-01-01

    Spoken language understanding (SLU) is an emerging field in between speech and language processing, investigating human/ machine and human/ human communication by leveraging technologies from signal processing, pattern recognition, machine learning and artificial intelligence. SLU systems are designed to extract the meaning from speech utterances and its applications are vast, from voice search in mobile devices to meeting summarization, attracting interest from both commercial and academic sectors. Both human/machine and human/human communications can benefit from the application of SLU, usin

  2. Spoken Spanish Language Development at the High School Level: A Mixed-Methods Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moeller, Aleidine J.; Theiler, Janine

    2014-01-01

    Communicative approaches to teaching language have emphasized the centrality of oral proficiency in the language acquisition process, but research investigating oral proficiency has been surprisingly limited, yielding an incomplete understanding of spoken language development. This study investigated the development of spoken language at the high…

  3. Professionals' Guidance about Spoken Language Multilingualism and Spoken Language Choice for Children with Hearing Loss

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crowe, Kathryn; McLeod, Sharynne

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this research was to investigate factors that influence professionals' guidance of parents of children with hearing loss regarding spoken language multilingualism and spoken language choice. Sixteen professionals who provide services to children and young people with hearing loss completed an online survey, rating the importance of…

  4. A real-time spoken-language system for interactive problem-solving, combining linguistic and statistical technology for improved spoken language understanding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moore, Robert C.; Cohen, Michael H.

    1993-09-01

    Under this effort, SRI has developed spoken-language technology for interactive problem solving, featuring real-time performance for up to several thousand word vocabularies, high semantic accuracy, habitability within the domain, and robustness to many sources of variability. Although the technology is suitable for many applications, efforts to date have focused on developing an Air Travel Information System (ATIS) prototype application. SRI's ATIS system has been evaluated in four ARPA benchmark evaluations, and has consistently been at or near the top in performance. These achievements are the result of SRI's technical progress in speech recognition, natural-language processing, and speech and natural-language integration.

  5. A step beyond local observations with a dialog aware bidirectional GRU network for Spoken Language Understanding

    OpenAIRE

    Vukotic , Vedran; Raymond , Christian; Gravier , Guillaume

    2016-01-01

    International audience; Architectures of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) recently become a very popular choice for Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) problems; however, they represent a big family of different architectures that can furthermore be combined to form more complex neural networks. In this work, we compare different recurrent networks, such as simple Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, Gated Memory Units (GRU) and their bidirectional versions,...

  6. CROATIAN ADULT SPOKEN LANGUAGE CORPUS (HrAL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jelena Kuvač Kraljević

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Interest in spoken-language corpora has increased over the past two decades leading to the development of new corpora and the discovery of new facets of spoken language. These types of corpora represent the most comprehensive data source about the language of ordinary speakers. Such corpora are based on spontaneous, unscripted speech defined by a variety of styles, registers and dialects. The aim of this paper is to present the Croatian Adult Spoken Language Corpus (HrAL, its structure and its possible applications in different linguistic subfields. HrAL was built by sampling spontaneous conversations among 617 speakers from all Croatian counties, and it comprises more than 250,000 tokens and more than 100,000 types. Data were collected during three time slots: from 2010 to 2012, from 2014 to 2015 and during 2016. HrAL is today available within TalkBank, a large database of spoken-language corpora covering different languages (https://talkbank.org, in the Conversational Analyses corpora within the subsection titled Conversational Banks. Data were transcribed, coded and segmented using the transcription format Codes for Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT and the Computerised Language Analysis (CLAN suite of programmes within the TalkBank toolkit. Speech streams were segmented into communication units (C-units based on syntactic criteria. Most transcripts were linked to their source audios. The TalkBank is public free, i.e. all data stored in it can be shared by the wider community in accordance with the basic rules of the TalkBank. HrAL provides information about spoken grammar and lexicon, discourse skills, error production and productivity in general. It may be useful for sociolinguistic research and studies of synchronic language changes in Croatian.

  7. Inferring Speaker Affect in Spoken Natural Language Communication

    OpenAIRE

    Pon-Barry, Heather Roberta

    2012-01-01

    The field of spoken language processing is concerned with creating computer programs that can understand human speech and produce human-like speech. Regarding the problem of understanding human speech, there is currently growing interest in moving beyond speech recognition (the task of transcribing the words in an audio stream) and towards machine listening—interpreting the full spectrum of information in an audio stream. One part of machine listening, the problem that this thesis focuses on, ...

  8. Spoken language outcomes after hemispherectomy: factoring in etiology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Curtiss, S; de Bode, S; Mathern, G W

    2001-12-01

    We analyzed postsurgery linguistic outcomes of 43 hemispherectomy patients operated on at UCLA. We rated spoken language (Spoken Language Rank, SLR) on a scale from 0 (no language) to 6 (mature grammar) and examined the effects of side of resection/damage, age at surgery/seizure onset, seizure control postsurgery, and etiology on language development. Etiology was defined as developmental (cortical dysplasia and prenatal stroke) and acquired pathology (Rasmussen's encephalitis and postnatal stroke). We found that clinical variables were predictive of language outcomes only when they were considered within distinct etiology groups. Specifically, children with developmental etiologies had lower SLRs than those with acquired pathologies (p =.0006); age factors correlated positively with higher SLRs only for children with acquired etiologies (p =.0006); right-sided resections led to higher SLRs only for the acquired group (p =.0008); and postsurgery seizure control correlated positively with SLR only for those with developmental etiologies (p =.0047). We argue that the variables considered are not independent predictors of spoken language outcome posthemispherectomy but should be viewed instead as characteristics of etiology. Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science.

  9. Is spoken Danish less intelligible than Swedish?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gooskens, Charlotte; van Heuven, Vincent J.; van Bezooijen, Renee; Pacilly, Jos J. A.

    2010-01-01

    The most straightforward way to explain why Danes understand spoken Swedish relatively better than Swedes understand spoken Danish would be that spoken Danish is intrinsically a more difficult language to understand than spoken Swedish. We discuss circumstantial evidence suggesting that Danish is

  10. Retinoic acid signaling: a new piece in the spoken language puzzle

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jon-Ruben eVan Rhijn

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Speech requires precise motor control and rapid sequencing of highly complex vocal musculature. Despite its complexity, most people produce spoken language effortlessly. This is due to activity in distributed neuronal circuitry including cortico-striato-thalamic loops that control speech-motor output. Understanding the neuro-genetic mechanisms that encode these pathways will shed light on how humans can effortlessly and innately use spoken language and could elucidate what goes wrong in speech-language disorders.FOXP2 was the first single gene identified to cause speech and language disorder. Individuals with FOXP2 mutations display a severe speech deficit that also includes receptive and expressive language impairments. The underlying neuro-molecular mechanisms controlled by FOXP2, which will give insight into our capacity for speech-motor control, are only beginning to be unraveled. Recently FOXP2 was found to regulate genes involved in retinoic acid signaling and to modify the cellular response to retinoic acid, a key regulator of brain development. Herein we explore the evidence that FOXP2 and retinoic acid signaling function in the same pathways. We present evidence at molecular, cellular and behavioral levels that suggest an interplay between FOXP2 and retinoic acid that may be important for fine motor control and speech-motor output. We propose that retinoic acid signaling is an exciting new angle from which to investigate how neurogenetic mechanisms can contribute to the (spoken language ready brain.

  11. How sensory-motor systems impact the neural organization for language: direct contrasts between spoken and signed language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emmorey, Karen; McCullough, Stephen; Mehta, Sonya; Grabowski, Thomas J.

    2014-01-01

    To investigate the impact of sensory-motor systems on the neural organization for language, we conducted an H215O-PET study of sign and spoken word production (picture-naming) and an fMRI study of sign and audio-visual spoken language comprehension (detection of a semantically anomalous sentence) with hearing bilinguals who are native users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Directly contrasting speech and sign production revealed greater activation in bilateral parietal cortex for signing, while speaking resulted in greater activation in bilateral superior temporal cortex (STC) and right frontal cortex, likely reflecting auditory feedback control. Surprisingly, the language production contrast revealed a relative increase in activation in bilateral occipital cortex for speaking. We speculate that greater activation in visual cortex for speaking may actually reflect cortical attenuation when signing, which functions to distinguish self-produced from externally generated visual input. Directly contrasting speech and sign comprehension revealed greater activation in bilateral STC for speech and greater activation in bilateral occipital-temporal cortex for sign. Sign comprehension, like sign production, engaged bilateral parietal cortex to a greater extent than spoken language. We hypothesize that posterior parietal activation in part reflects processing related to spatial classifier constructions in ASL and that anterior parietal activation may reflect covert imitation that functions as a predictive model during sign comprehension. The conjunction analysis for comprehension revealed that both speech and sign bilaterally engaged the inferior frontal gyrus (with more extensive activation on the left) and the superior temporal sulcus, suggesting an invariant bilateral perisylvian language system. We conclude that surface level differences between sign and spoken languages should not be dismissed and are critical for understanding the neurobiology of language

  12. Asian/Pacific Islander Languages Spoken by English Learners (ELs). Fast Facts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Office of English Language Acquisition, US Department of Education, 2015

    2015-01-01

    The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page PDF sheets, by topic, with graphics, plus key contacts. The topics for this report on Asian/Pacific Islander languages spoken by English Learners (ELs) include: (1) Top 10 Most Common Asian/Pacific Islander Languages Spoken Among ELs:…

  13. Rethinking spoken fluency

    OpenAIRE

    McCarthy, Michael

    2009-01-01

    This article re-examines the notion of spoken fluency. Fluent and fluency are terms commonly used in everyday, lay language, and fluency, or lack of it, has social consequences. The article reviews the main approaches to understanding and measuring spoken fluency and suggest that spoken fluency is best understood as an interactive achievement, and offers the metaphor of ‘confluence’ to replace the term fluency. Many measures of spoken fluency are internal and monologue-based, whereas evidence...

  14. Spoken Grammar and Its Role in the English Language Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hilliard, Amanda

    2014-01-01

    This article addresses key issues and considerations for teachers wanting to incorporate spoken grammar activities into their own teaching and also focuses on six common features of spoken grammar, with practical activities and suggestions for teaching them in the language classroom. The hope is that this discussion of spoken grammar and its place…

  15. Prosodic Parallelism – comparing spoken and written language

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    Richard Wiese

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available The Prosodic Parallelism hypothesis claims adjacent prosodic categories to prefer identical branching of internal adjacent constituents. According to Wiese and Speyer (2015, this preference implies feet contained in the same phonological phrase to display either binary or unary branching, but not different types of branching. The seemingly free schwa-zero alternations at the end of some words in German make it possible to test this hypothesis. The hypothesis was successfully tested by conducting a corpus study which used large-scale bodies of written German. As some open questions remain, and as it is unclear whether Prosodic Parallelism is valid for the spoken modality as well, the present study extends this inquiry to spoken German. As in the previous study, the results of a corpus analysis recruiting a variety of linguistic constructions are presented. The Prosodic Parallelism hypothesis can be demonstrated to be valid for spoken German as well as for written German. The paper thus contributes to the question whether prosodic preferences are similar between the spoken and written modes of a language. Some consequences of the results for the production of language are discussed.

  16. The Listening and Spoken Language Data Repository: Design and Project Overview

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bradham, Tamala S.; Fonnesbeck, Christopher; Toll, Alice; Hecht, Barbara F.

    2018-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of the Listening and Spoken Language Data Repository (LSL-DR) was to address a critical need for a systemwide outcome data-monitoring program for the development of listening and spoken language skills in highly specialized educational programs for children with hearing loss highlighted in Goal 3b of the 2007 Joint Committee…

  17. Spoken Indian language identification: a review of features and ...

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    BAKSHI AARTI

    2018-04-12

    Apr 12, 2018 ... languages and can be used for the purposes of spoken language identification. Keywords. SLID .... branch of linguistics to study the sound structure of human language. ... countries, work in the area of Indian language identification has not ...... English and speech database has been collected over tele-.

  18. Improving Spoken Language Outcomes for Children With Hearing Loss: Data-driven Instruction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Douglas, Michael

    2016-02-01

    To assess the effects of data-driven instruction (DDI) on spoken language outcomes of children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. Retrospective, matched-pairs comparison of post-treatment speech/language data of children who did and did not receive DDI. Private, spoken-language preschool for children with hearing loss. Eleven matched pairs of children with cochlear implants who attended the same spoken language preschool. Groups were matched for age of hearing device fitting, time in the program, degree of predevice fitting hearing loss, sex, and age at testing. Daily informal language samples were collected and analyzed over a 2-year period, per preschool protocol. Annual informal and formal spoken language assessments in articulation, vocabulary, and omnibus language were administered at the end of three time intervals: baseline, end of year one, and end of year two. The primary outcome measures were total raw score performance of spontaneous utterance sentence types and syntax element use as measured by the Teacher Assessment of Spoken Language (TASL). In addition, standardized assessments (the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Preschool Version 2 (CELF-P2), the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT), the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT), and the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 (GFTA2)) were also administered and compared with the control group. The DDI group demonstrated significantly higher raw scores on the TASL each year of the study. The DDI group also achieved statistically significant higher scores for total language on the CELF-P and expressive vocabulary on the EOWPVT, but not for articulation nor receptive vocabulary. Post-hoc assessment revealed that 78% of the students in the DDI group achieved scores in the average range compared with 59% in the control group. The preliminary results of this study support further investigation regarding DDI to investigate whether this method can consistently

  19. Speech-Language Pathologists: Vital Listening and Spoken Language Professionals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Houston, K. Todd; Perigoe, Christina B.

    2010-01-01

    Determining the most effective methods and techniques to facilitate the spoken language development of individuals with hearing loss has been a focus of practitioners for centuries. Due to modern advances in hearing technology, earlier identification of hearing loss, and immediate enrollment in early intervention, children with hearing loss are…

  20. Cochlear implants and spoken language processing abilities: Review and assessment of the literature

    OpenAIRE

    Peterson, Nathaniel R.; Pisoni, David B.; Miyamoto, Richard T.

    2010-01-01

    Cochlear implants (CIs) process sounds electronically and then transmit electric stimulation to the cochlea of individuals with sensorineural deafness, restoring some sensation of auditory perception. Many congenitally deaf CI recipients achieve a high degree of accuracy in speech perception and develop near-normal language skills. Post-lingually deafened implant recipients often regain the ability to understand and use spoken language with or without the aid of visual input (i.e. lip reading...

  1. The Beneficial Role of L1 Spoken Language Skills on Initial L2 Sign Language Learning: Cognitive and Linguistic Predictors of M2L2 Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Williams, Joshua T.; Darcy, Isabelle; Newman, Sharlene D.

    2017-01-01

    Understanding how language modality (i.e., signed vs. spoken) affects second language outcomes in hearing adults is important both theoretically and pedagogically, as it can determine the specificity of second language (L2) theory and inform how best to teach a language that uses a new modality. The present study investigated which…

  2. What Comes First, What Comes Next: Information Packaging in Written and Spoken Language

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladislav Smolka

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The paper explores similarities and differences in the strategies of structuring information at sentence level in spoken and written language, respectively. In particular, it is concerned with the position of the rheme in the sentence in the two different modalities of language, and with the application and correlation of the end-focus and the end-weight principles. The assumption is that while there is a general tendency in both written and spoken language to place the focus in or close to the final position, owing to the limitations imposed by short-term memory capacity (and possibly by other factors, for the sake of easy processibility, it may occasionally be more felicitous in spoken language to place the rhematic element in the initial position or at least close to the beginning of the sentence. The paper aims to identify differences in the function of selected grammatical structures in written and spoken language, respectively, and to point out circumstances under which initial focus is a convenient alternative to the usual end-focus principle.

  3. Pointing and Reference in Sign Language and Spoken Language: Anchoring vs. Identifying

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barberà, Gemma; Zwets, Martine

    2013-01-01

    In both signed and spoken languages, pointing serves to direct an addressee's attention to a particular entity. This entity may be either present or absent in the physical context of the conversation. In this article we focus on pointing directed to nonspeaker/nonaddressee referents in Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal,…

  4. ELSIE: The Quick Reaction Spoken Language Translation (QRSLT)

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Montgomery, Christine

    2000-01-01

    The objective of this effort was to develop a prototype, hand-held or body-mounted spoken language translator to assist military and law enforcement personnel in interacting with non-English-speaking people...

  5. Using Spoken Language to Facilitate Military Transportation Planning

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Bates, Madeleine; Ellard, Dan; Peterson, Pat; Shaked, Varda

    1991-01-01

    .... In an effort to demonstrate the relevance of SIS technology to real-world military applications, BBN has undertaken the task of providing a spoken language interface to DART, a system for military...

  6. Word reading skill predicts anticipation of upcoming spoken language input: a study of children developing proficiency in reading.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mani, Nivedita; Huettig, Falk

    2014-10-01

    Despite the efficiency with which language users typically process spoken language, a growing body of research finds substantial individual differences in both the speed and accuracy of spoken language processing potentially attributable to participants' literacy skills. Against this background, the current study took a look at the role of word reading skill in listeners' anticipation of upcoming spoken language input in children at the cusp of learning to read; if reading skills affect predictive language processing, then children at this stage of literacy acquisition should be most susceptible to the effects of reading skills on spoken language processing. We tested 8-year-olds on their prediction of upcoming spoken language input in an eye-tracking task. Although children, like in previous studies to date, were successfully able to anticipate upcoming spoken language input, there was a strong positive correlation between children's word reading skills (but not their pseudo-word reading and meta-phonological awareness or their spoken word recognition skills) and their prediction skills. We suggest that these findings are most compatible with the notion that the process of learning orthographic representations during reading acquisition sharpens pre-existing lexical representations, which in turn also supports anticipation of upcoming spoken words. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. The effects of sign language on spoken language acquisition in children with hearing loss: a systematic review protocol.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Stevens, Adrienne; Garritty, Chantelle; Moher, David

    2013-12-06

    Permanent childhood hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and frequently disrupts typical spoken language acquisition. Early identification of hearing loss through universal newborn hearing screening and the use of new hearing technologies including cochlear implants make spoken language an option for most children. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes optimal interventions for children when spoken language is the desired outcome. Intervention and educational approaches ranging from oral language only to oral language combined with various forms of sign language have evolved. Parents are therefore faced with important decisions in the first months of their child's life. This article presents the protocol for a systematic review of the effects of using sign language in combination with oral language intervention on spoken language acquisition. Studies addressing early intervention will be selected in which therapy involving oral language intervention and any form of sign language or sign support is used. Comparison groups will include children in early oral language intervention programs without sign support. The primary outcomes of interest to be examined include all measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, speech production, and speech intelligibility skills. We will include randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, and other quasi-experimental designs that include comparator groups as well as prospective and retrospective cohort studies. Case-control, cross-sectional, case series, and case studies will be excluded. Several electronic databases will be searched (for example, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO) as well as grey literature and key websites. We anticipate that a narrative synthesis of the evidence will be required. We will carry out meta-analysis for outcomes if clinical similarity, quantity and quality permit quantitative pooling of data. We will conduct subgroup analyses if possible according to severity

  8. Delayed Anticipatory Spoken Language Processing in Adults with Dyslexia—Evidence from Eye-tracking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huettig, Falk; Brouwer, Susanne

    2015-05-01

    It is now well established that anticipation of upcoming input is a key characteristic of spoken language comprehension. It has also frequently been observed that literacy influences spoken language processing. Here, we investigated whether anticipatory spoken language processing is related to individuals' word reading abilities. Dutch adults with dyslexia and a control group participated in two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted to assess whether adults with dyslexia show the typical language-mediated eye gaze patterns. Eye movements of both adults with and without dyslexia closely replicated earlier research: spoken language is used to direct attention to relevant objects in the environment in a closely time-locked manner. In Experiment 2, participants received instructions (e.g., 'Kijk naar de(COM) afgebeelde piano(COM)', look at the displayed piano) while viewing four objects. Articles (Dutch 'het' or 'de') were gender marked such that the article agreed in gender only with the target, and thus, participants could use gender information from the article to predict the target object. The adults with dyslexia anticipated the target objects but much later than the controls. Moreover, participants' word reading scores correlated positively with their anticipatory eye movements. We conclude by discussing the mechanisms by which reading abilities may influence predictive language processing. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  9. Spoken language achieves robustness and evolvability by exploiting degeneracy and neutrality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winter, Bodo

    2014-10-01

    As with biological systems, spoken languages are strikingly robust against perturbations. This paper shows that languages achieve robustness in a way that is highly similar to many biological systems. For example, speech sounds are encoded via multiple acoustically diverse, temporally distributed and functionally redundant cues, characteristics that bear similarities to what biologists call "degeneracy". Speech is furthermore adequately characterized by neutrality, with many different tongue configurations leading to similar acoustic outputs, and different acoustic variants understood as the same by recipients. This highlights the presence of a large neutral network of acoustic neighbors for every speech sound. Such neutrality ensures that a steady backdrop of variation can be maintained without impeding communication, assuring that there is "fodder" for subsequent evolution. Thus, studying linguistic robustness is not only important for understanding how linguistic systems maintain their functioning upon the background of noise, but also for understanding the preconditions for language evolution. © 2014 WILEY Periodicals, Inc.

  10. The missing foundation in teacher education: Knowledge of the structure of spoken and written language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moats, L C

    1994-01-01

    Reading research supports the necessity for directly teaching concepts about linguistic structure to beginning readers and to students with reading and spelling difficulties. In this study, experienced teachers of reading, language arts, and special education were tested to determine if they have the requisite awareness of language elements (e.g., phonemes, morphemes) and of how these elements are represented in writing (e.g., knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences). The results were surprisingly poor, indicating that even motivated and experienced teachers typically understand too little about spoken and written language structure to be able to provide sufficient instruction in these areas. The utility of language structure knowledge for instructional planning, for assessment of student progress, and for remediation of literacy problems is discussed.The teachers participating in the study subsequently took a course focusing on phonemic awareness training, spoken-written language relationships, and careful analysis of spelling and reading behavior in children. At the end of the course, the teachers judged this information to be essential for teaching and advised that it become a prerequisite for certification. Recommendations for requirements and content of teacher education programs are presented.

  11. Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Hoog, Brigitte E; Langereis, Margreet C; van Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; Keuning, Jos; Knoors, Harry; Verhoeven, Ludo

    2016-10-01

    Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken language levels of children with CIs as compared to those of a normative sample of age-matched children with normal hearing. Furthermore, the predictive value of auditory and verbal memory factors in the spoken language performance of implanted children was analyzed. Thirty-nine profoundly deaf children with CIs were assessed using a test battery including measures of lexical, grammatical, auditory and verbal memory tests. Furthermore, child-related demographic characteristics were taken into account. The majority of the children with CIs did not reach age-equivalent lexical and morphosyntactic language skills. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that lexical spoken language performance in children with CIs was best predicted by age at testing, phoneme perception, and auditory word closure. The morphosyntactic language outcomes of the CI group were best predicted by lexicon, auditory word closure, and auditory memory for words. Qualitatively good speech perception skills appear to be crucial for lexical and grammatical development in children with CIs. Furthermore, strongly developed vocabulary skills and verbal memory abilities predict morphosyntactic language skills. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Factors Influencing Verbal Intelligence and Spoken Language in Children with Phenylketonuria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soleymani, Zahra; Keramati, Nasrin; Rohani, Farzaneh; Jalaei, Shohre

    2015-05-01

    To determine verbal intelligence and spoken language of children with phenylketonuria and to study the effect of age at diagnosis and phenylalanine plasma level on these abilities. Cross-sectional. Children with phenylketonuria were recruited from pediatric hospitals in 2012. Normal control subjects were recruited from kindergartens in Tehran. 30 phenylketonuria and 42 control subjects aged 4-6.5 years. Skills were compared between 3 phenylketonuria groups categorized by age at diagnosis/treatment, and between the phenylketonuria and control groups. Scores on Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence for verbal and total intelligence, and Test of Language Development-Primary, third edition for spoken language, listening, speaking, semantics, syntax, and organization. The performance of control subjects was significantly better than that of early-treated subjects for all composite quotients from Test of Language Development and verbal intelligence (Pphenylketonuria subjects.

  13. Acquisition of graphic communication by a young girl without comprehension of spoken language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    von Tetzchner, S; Øvreeide, K D; Jørgensen, K K; Ormhaug, B M; Oxholm, B; Warme, R

    To describe a graphic-mode communication intervention involving a girl with intellectual impairment and autism who did not develop comprehension of spoken language. The aim was to teach graphic-mode vocabulary that reflected her interests, preferences, and the activities and routines of her daily life, by providing sufficient cues to the meanings of the graphic representations so that she would not need to comprehend spoken instructions. An individual case study design was selected, including the use of written records, participant observation, and registration of the girl's graphic vocabulary and use of graphic signs and other communicative expressions. While the girl's comprehension (and hence use) of spoken language remained lacking over a 3-year period, she acquired an active use of over 80 photographs and pictograms. The girl was able to cope better with the cognitive and attentional requirements of graphic communication than those of spoken language and manual signs, which had been focused in earlier interventions. Her achievements demonstrate that it is possible for communication-impaired children to learn to use an augmentative and alternative communication system without speech comprehension, provided the intervention utilizes functional strategies and non-language cues to the meaning of the graphic representations that are taught.

  14. Deep bottleneck features for spoken language identification.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bing Jiang

    Full Text Available A key problem in spoken language identification (LID is to design effective representations which are specific to language information. For example, in recent years, representations based on both phonotactic and acoustic features have proven their effectiveness for LID. Although advances in machine learning have led to significant improvements, LID performance is still lacking, especially for short duration speech utterances. With the hypothesis that language information is weak and represented only latently in speech, and is largely dependent on the statistical properties of the speech content, existing representations may be insufficient. Furthermore they may be susceptible to the variations caused by different speakers, specific content of the speech segments, and background noise. To address this, we propose using Deep Bottleneck Features (DBF for spoken LID, motivated by the success of Deep Neural Networks (DNN in speech recognition. We show that DBFs can form a low-dimensional compact representation of the original inputs with a powerful descriptive and discriminative capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of this, we design two acoustic models, termed DBF-TV and parallel DBF-TV (PDBF-TV, using a DBF based i-vector representation for each speech utterance. Results on NIST language recognition evaluation 2009 (LRE09 show significant improvements over state-of-the-art systems. By fusing the output of phonotactic and acoustic approaches, we achieve an EER of 1.08%, 1.89% and 7.01% for 30 s, 10 s and 3 s test utterances respectively. Furthermore, various DBF configurations have been extensively evaluated, and an optimal system proposed.

  15. Sign Language and Spoken Language for Children With Hearing Loss: A Systematic Review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Hamel, Candyce; Stevens, Adrienne; Pratt, Misty; Moher, David; Doucet, Suzanne P; Neuss, Deirdre; Bernstein, Anita; Na, Eunjung

    2016-01-01

    Permanent hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and interferes with typical communication development. Early detection through newborn hearing screening and hearing technology provide most children with the option of spoken language acquisition. However, no consensus exists on optimal interventions for spoken language development. To conduct a systematic review of the effectiveness of early sign and oral language intervention compared with oral language intervention only for children with permanent hearing loss. An a priori protocol was developed. Electronic databases (eg, Medline, Embase, CINAHL) from 1995 to June 2013 and gray literature sources were searched. Studies in English and French were included. Two reviewers screened potentially relevant articles. Outcomes of interest were measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, and speech production skills. All data collection and risk of bias assessments were completed and then verified by a second person. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to judge the strength of evidence. Eleven cohort studies met inclusion criteria, of which 8 included only children with severe to profound hearing loss with cochlear implants. Language development was the most frequently reported outcome. Other reported outcomes included speech and speech perception. Several measures and metrics were reported across studies, and descriptions of interventions were sometimes unclear. Very limited, and hence insufficient, high-quality evidence exists to determine whether sign language in combination with oral language is more effective than oral language therapy alone. More research is needed to supplement the evidence base. Copyright © 2016 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  16. "Now We Have Spoken."

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zimmer, Patricia Moore

    2001-01-01

    Describes the author's experiences directing a play translated and acted in Korean. Notes that she had to get familiar with the sound of the language spoken fluently, to see how an actor's thought is discerned when the verbal language is not understood. Concludes that so much of understanding and communication unfolds in ways other than with…

  17. SPOKEN-LANGUAGE FEATURES IN CASUAL CONVERSATION A Case of EFL Learners‘ Casual Conversation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aris Novi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Spoken text differs from written one in its features of context dependency, turn-taking organization, and dynamic structure. EFL learners; however, sometime find it difficult to produce typical characteristics of spoken language, particularly in casual talk. When they are asked to conduct a conversation, some of them tend to be script-based which is considered unnatural. Using the theory of Thornburry (2005, this paper aims to analyze characteristics of spoken language in casual conversation which cover spontaneity, interactivity, interpersonality, and coherence. This study used discourse analysis to reveal four features in turns and moves of three casual conversations. The findings indicate that not all sub-features used in the conversation. In this case, the spontaneity features were used 132 times; the interactivity features were used 1081 times; the interpersonality features were used 257 times; while the coherence features (negotiation features were used 526 times. Besides, the results also present that some participants seem to dominantly produce some sub-features naturally and vice versa. Therefore, this finding is expected to be beneficial to provide a model of how spoken interaction should be carried out. More importantly, it could raise English teachers or lecturers‘ awareness in teaching features of spoken language, so that, the students could develop their communicative competence as the native speakers of English do.

  18. Developing and Testing EVALOE: A Tool for Assessing Spoken Language Teaching and Learning in the Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gràcia, Marta; Vega, Fàtima; Galván-Bovaira, Maria José

    2015-01-01

    Broadly speaking, the teaching of spoken language in Spanish schools has not been approached in a systematic way. Changes in school practices are needed in order to allow all children to become competent speakers and to understand and construct oral texts that are appropriate in different contexts and for different audiences both inside and…

  19. Intervention Effects on Spoken-Language Outcomes for Children with Autism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hampton, L. H.; Kaiser, A. P.

    2016-01-01

    Background: Although spoken-language deficits are not core to an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, many children with ASD do present with delays in this area. Previous meta-analyses have assessed the effects of intervention on reducing autism symptomatology, but have not determined if intervention improves spoken language. This analysis…

  20. The employment of a spoken language computer applied to an air traffic control task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laveson, J. I.; Silver, C. A.

    1972-01-01

    Assessment of the merits of a limited spoken language (56 words) computer in a simulated air traffic control (ATC) task. An airport zone approximately 60 miles in diameter with a traffic flow simulation ranging from single-engine to commercial jet aircraft provided the workload for the controllers. This research determined that, under the circumstances of the experiments carried out, the use of a spoken-language computer would not improve the controller performance.

  1. Students who are deaf and hard of hearing and use sign language: considerations and strategies for developing spoken language and literacy skills.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nussbaum, Debra; Waddy-Smith, Bettie; Doyle, Jane

    2012-11-01

    There is a core body of knowledge, experience, and skills integral to facilitating auditory, speech, and spoken language development when working with the general population of students who are deaf and hard of hearing. There are additional issues, strategies, and challenges inherent in speech habilitation/rehabilitation practices essential to the population of deaf and hard of hearing students who also use sign language. This article will highlight philosophical and practical considerations related to practices used to facilitate spoken language development and associated literacy skills for children and adolescents who sign. It will discuss considerations for planning and implementing practices that acknowledge and utilize a student's abilities in sign language, and address how to link these skills to developing and using spoken language. Included will be considerations for children from early childhood through high school with a broad range of auditory access, language, and communication characteristics. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

  2. Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hoog, B.E. de; Langereis, M.C.; Weerdenburg, M. van; Keuning, J.; Knoors, H.; Verhoeven, L.

    2016-01-01

    BACKGROUND: Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. AIMS: In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken

  3. Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hoog, B.E. de; Langereis, M.C.; Weerdenburg, M.W.C. van; Keuning, J.; Knoors, H.E.T.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

    2016-01-01

    Background: Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. Aims: In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken

  4. Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pamela Perniss

    2010-12-01

    Full Text Available Current views about language are dominated by the idea of arbitrary connections between linguistic form and meaning. However, if we look beyond the more familiar Indo-European languages and also include both spoken and signed language modalities, we find that motivated, iconic form-meaning mappings are, in fact, pervasive in language. In this paper, we review the different types of iconic mappings that characterize languages in both modalities, including the predominantly visually iconic mappings in signed languages. Having shown that iconic mapping are present across languages, we then proceed to review evidence showing that language users (signers and speakers exploit iconicity in language processing and language acquisition. While not discounting the presence and importance of arbitrariness in language, we put forward the idea that iconicity need also be recognized as a general property of language, which may serve the function of reducing the gap between linguistic form and conceptual representation to allow the language system to hook up to motor and perceptual experience.

  5. Spoken Word Recognition in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loucas, Tom; Riches, Nick; Baird, Gillian; Pickles, Andrew; Simonoff, Emily; Chandler, Susie; Charman, Tony

    2013-01-01

    Spoken word recognition, during gating, appears intact in specific language impairment (SLI). This study used gating to investigate the process in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders plus language impairment (ALI). Adolescents with ALI, SLI, and typical language development (TLD), matched on nonverbal IQ listened to gated words that varied…

  6. The relation of the number of languages spoken to performance in different cognitive abilities in old age.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ihle, Andreas; Oris, Michel; Fagot, Delphine; Kliegel, Matthias

    2016-12-01

    Findings on the association of speaking different languages with cognitive functioning in old age are inconsistent and inconclusive so far. Therefore, the present study set out to investigate the relation of the number of languages spoken to cognitive performance and its interplay with several other markers of cognitive reserve in a large sample of older adults. Two thousand eight hundred and twelve older adults served as sample for the present study. Psychometric tests on verbal abilities, basic processing speed, and cognitive flexibility were administered. In addition, individuals were interviewed on their different languages spoken on a regular basis, educational attainment, occupation, and engaging in different activities throughout adulthood. Higher number of languages regularly spoken was significantly associated with better performance in verbal abilities and processing speed, but unrelated to cognitive flexibility. Regression analyses showed that the number of languages spoken predicted cognitive performance over and above leisure activities/physical demand of job/gainful activity as respective additional predictor, but not over and above educational attainment/cognitive level of job as respective additional predictor. There was no significant moderation of the association of the number of languages spoken with cognitive performance in any model. Present data suggest that speaking different languages on a regular basis may additionally contribute to the build-up of cognitive reserve in old age. Yet, this may not be universal, but linked to verbal abilities and basic cognitive processing speed. Moreover, it may be dependent on other types of cognitive stimulation that individuals also engaged in during their life course.

  7. Tonal Language Background and Detecting Pitch Contour in Spoken and Musical Items

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stevens, Catherine J.; Keller, Peter E.; Tyler, Michael D.

    2013-01-01

    An experiment investigated the effect of tonal language background on discrimination of pitch contour in short spoken and musical items. It was hypothesized that extensive exposure to a tonal language attunes perception of pitch contour. Accuracy and reaction times of adult participants from tonal (Thai) and non-tonal (Australian English) language…

  8. Grammatical Deviations in the Spoken and Written Language of Hebrew-Speaking Children With Hearing Impairments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tur-Kaspa, Hana; Dromi, Esther

    2001-04-01

    The present study reports a detailed analysis of written and spoken language samples of Hebrew-speaking children aged 11-13 years who are deaf. It focuses on the description of various grammatical deviations in the two modalities. Participants were 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classrooms integrated into two elementary schools in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 students with normal hearing (NH) in regular classes in these same schools. Spoken and written language samples were collected from all participants using the same five preplanned elicitation probes. Students with HI were found to display significantly more grammatical deviations than their NH peers in both their spoken and written language samples. Most importantly, between-modality differences were noted. The participants with HI exhibited significantly more grammatical deviations in their written language samples than in their spoken samples. However, the distribution of grammatical deviations across categories was similar in the two modalities. The most common grammatical deviations in order of their frequency were failure to supply obligatory morphological markers, failure to mark grammatical agreement, and the omission of a major syntactic constituent in a sentence. Word order violations were rarely recorded in the Hebrew samples. Performance differences in the two modalities encourage clinicians and teachers to facilitate target linguistic forms in diverse communication contexts. Furthermore, the identification of linguistic targets for intervention must be based on the unique grammatical structure of the target language.

  9. Three-dimensional grammar in the brain: Dissociating the neural correlates of natural sign language and manually coded spoken language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Bola, Łukasz; Mostowski, Piotr; Szwed, Marcin; Boguszewski, Paweł M; Marchewka, Artur; Rutkowski, Paweł

    2015-05-01

    In several countries natural sign languages were considered inadequate for education. Instead, new sign-supported systems were created, based on the belief that spoken/written language is grammatically superior. One such system called SJM (system językowo-migowy) preserves the grammatical and lexical structure of spoken Polish and since 1960s has been extensively employed in schools and on TV. Nevertheless, the Deaf community avoids using SJM for everyday communication, its preferred language being PJM (polski język migowy), a natural sign language, structurally and grammatically independent of spoken Polish and featuring classifier constructions (CCs). Here, for the first time, we compare, with fMRI method, the neural bases of natural vs. devised communication systems. Deaf signers were presented with three types of signed sentences (SJM and PJM with/without CCs). Consistent with previous findings, PJM with CCs compared to either SJM or PJM without CCs recruited the parietal lobes. The reverse comparison revealed activation in the anterior temporal lobes, suggesting increased semantic combinatory processes in lexical sign comprehension. Finally, PJM compared with SJM engaged left posterior superior temporal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe, areas crucial for sentence-level speech comprehension. We suggest that activity in these two areas reflects greater processing efficiency for naturally evolved sign language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. The effect of written text on comprehension of spoken English as a foreign language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diao, Yali; Chandler, Paul; Sweller, John

    2007-01-01

    Based on cognitive load theory, this study investigated the effect of simultaneous written presentations on comprehension of spoken English as a foreign language. Learners' language comprehension was compared while they used 3 instructional formats: listening with auditory materials only, listening with a full, written script, and listening with simultaneous subtitled text. Listening with the presence of a script and subtitles led to better understanding of the scripted and subtitled passage but poorer performance on a subsequent auditory passage than listening with the auditory materials only. These findings indicated that where the intention was learning to listen, the use of a full script or subtitles had detrimental effects on the construction and automation of listening comprehension schemas.

  11. On-Line Syntax: Thoughts on the Temporality of Spoken Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Auer, Peter

    2009-01-01

    One fundamental difference between spoken and written language has to do with the "linearity" of speaking in time, in that the temporal structure of speaking is inherently the outcome of an interactive process between speaker and listener. But despite the status of "linearity" as one of Saussure's fundamental principles, in practice little more…

  12. Early human communication helps in understanding language evolution.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lenti Boero, Daniela

    2014-12-01

    Building a theory on extant species, as Ackermann et al. do, is a useful contribution to the field of language evolution. Here, I add another living model that might be of interest: human language ontogeny in the first year of life. A better knowledge of this phase might help in understanding two more topics among the "several building blocks of a comprehensive theory of the evolution of spoken language" indicated in their conclusion by Ackermann et al., that is, the foundation of the co-evolution of linguistic motor skills with the auditory skills underlying speech perception, and the possible phylogenetic interactions of protospeech production with referential capabilities.

  13. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT TO TEACH SPOKEN RECOUNTS IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eri Rusnawati

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menggambarkan penerapan metode Communicative Language Teaching/CLT untuk pembelajaran spoken recount. Penelitian ini menelaah data yang kualitatif. Penelitian ini mengambarkan fenomena yang terjadi di dalam kelas. Data studi ini adalah perilaku dan respon para siswa dalam pembelajaran spoken recount dengan menggunakan metode CLT. Subjek penelitian ini adalah para siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 1 Kuaro yang terdiri dari 34 siswa. Observasi dan wawancara dilakukan dalam rangka untuk mengumpulkan data dalam mengajarkan spoken recount melalui tiga aktivitas (presentasi, bermain-peran, serta melakukan prosedur. Dalam penelitian ini ditemukan beberapa hal antara lain bahwa CLT meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara siswa dalam pembelajaran recount. Berdasarkan pada grafik peningkatan, disimpulkan bahwa tata bahasa, kosakata, pengucapan, kefasihan, serta performa siswa mengalami peningkatan. Ini berarti bahwa performa spoken recount dari para siswa meningkat. Andaikata presentasi ditempatkan di bagian akhir dari langkah-langkah aktivitas, peforma spoken recount para siswa bahkan akan lebih baik lagi. Kesimpulannya adalah bahwa implementasi metode CLT beserta tiga praktiknya berkontribusi pada peningkatan kemampuan berbicara para siswa dalam pembelajaran recount dan bahkan metode CLT mengarahkan mereka untuk memiliki keberanian dalam mengonstruksi komunikasi yang bermakna dengan percaya diri. Kata kunci: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT, recount, berbicara, respon siswa

  14. Effects of early auditory experience on the spoken language of deaf children at 3 years of age.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nicholas, Johanna Grant; Geers, Ann E

    2006-06-01

    By age 3, typically developing children have achieved extensive vocabulary and syntax skills that facilitate both cognitive and social development. Substantial delays in spoken language acquisition have been documented for children with severe to profound deafness, even those with auditory oral training and early hearing aid use. This study documents the spoken language skills achieved by orally educated 3-yr-olds whose profound hearing loss was identified and hearing aids fitted between 1 and 30 mo of age and who received a cochlear implant between 12 and 38 mo of age. The purpose of the analysis was to examine the effects of age, duration, and type of early auditory experience on spoken language competence at age 3.5 yr. The spoken language skills of 76 children who had used a cochlear implant for at least 7 mo were evaluated via standardized 30-minute language sample analysis, a parent-completed vocabulary checklist, and a teacher language-rating scale. The children were recruited from and enrolled in oral education programs or therapy practices across the United States. Inclusion criteria included presumed deaf since birth, English the primary language of the home, no other known conditions that interfere with speech/language development, enrolled in programs using oral education methods, and no known problems with the cochlear implant lasting more than 30 days. Strong correlations were obtained among all language measures. Therefore, principal components analysis was used to derive a single Language Factor score for each child. A number of possible predictors of language outcome were examined, including age at identification and intervention with a hearing aid, duration of use of a hearing aid, pre-implant pure-tone average (PTA) threshold with a hearing aid, PTA threshold with a cochlear implant, and duration of use of a cochlear implant/age at implantation (the last two variables were practically identical because all children were tested between 40 and 44

  15. Cochlear implants and spoken language processing abilities: review and assessment of the literature.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peterson, Nathaniel R; Pisoni, David B; Miyamoto, Richard T

    2010-01-01

    Cochlear implants (CIs) process sounds electronically and then transmit electric stimulation to the cochlea of individuals with sensorineural deafness, restoring some sensation of auditory perception. Many congenitally deaf CI recipients achieve a high degree of accuracy in speech perception and develop near-normal language skills. Post-lingually deafened implant recipients often regain the ability to understand and use spoken language with or without the aid of visual input (i.e. lip reading). However, there is wide variation in individual outcomes following cochlear implantation, and some CI recipients never develop useable speech and oral language skills. The causes of this enormous variation in outcomes are only partly understood at the present time. The variables most strongly associated with language outcomes are age at implantation and mode of communication in rehabilitation. Thus, some of the more important factors determining success of cochlear implantation are broadly related to neural plasticity that appears to be transiently present in deaf individuals. In this article we review the expected outcomes of cochlear implantation, potential predictors of those outcomes, the basic science regarding critical and sensitive periods, and several new research directions in the field of cochlear implantation.

  16. Development of Mandarin spoken language after pediatric cochlear implantation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Bei; Soli, Sigfrid D; Zheng, Yun; Li, Gang; Meng, Zhaoli

    2014-07-01

    The purpose of this study was to evaluate early spoken language development in young Mandarin-speaking children during the first 24 months after cochlear implantation, as measured by receptive and expressive vocabulary growth rates. Growth rates were compared with those of normally hearing children and with growth rates for English-speaking children with cochlear implants. Receptive and expressive vocabularies were measured with the simplified short form (SSF) version of the Mandarin Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) in a sample of 112 pediatric implant recipients at baseline, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after implantation. Implant ages ranged from 1 to 5 years. Scores were expressed in terms of normal equivalent ages, allowing normalized vocabulary growth rates to be determined. Scores for English-speaking children were re-expressed in these terms, allowing direct comparisons of Mandarin and English early spoken language development. Vocabulary growth rates during the first 12 months after implantation were similar to those for normally hearing children less than 16 months of age. Comparisons with growth rates for normally hearing children 16-30 months of age showed that the youngest implant age group (1-2 years) had an average growth rate of 0.68 that of normally hearing children; while the middle implant age group (2-3 years) had an average growth rate of 0.65; and the oldest implant age group (>3 years) had an average growth rate of 0.56, significantly less than the other two rates. Growth rates for English-speaking children with cochlear implants were 0.68 in the youngest group, 0.54 in the middle group, and 0.57 in the oldest group. Growth rates in the middle implant age groups for the two languages differed significantly. The SSF version of the MCDI is suitable for assessment of Mandarin language development during the first 24 months after cochlear implantation. Effects of implant age and duration of implantation can be compared directly across

  17. Social inclusion for children with hearing loss in listening and spoken Language early intervention: an exploratory study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Constantinescu-Sharpe, Gabriella; Phillips, Rebecca L; Davis, Aleisha; Dornan, Dimity; Hogan, Anthony

    2017-03-14

    Social inclusion is a common focus of listening and spoken language (LSL) early intervention for children with hearing loss. This exploratory study compared the social inclusion of young children with hearing loss educated using a listening and spoken language approach with population data. A framework for understanding the scope of social inclusion is presented in the Background. This framework guided the use of a shortened, modified version of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to measure two of the five facets of social inclusion ('education' and 'interacting with society and fulfilling social goals'). The survey was completed by parents of children with hearing loss aged 4-5 years who were educated using a LSL approach (n = 78; 37% who responded). These responses were compared to those obtained for typical hearing children in the LSAC dataset (n = 3265). Analyses revealed that most children with hearing loss had comparable outcomes to those with typical hearing on the 'education' and 'interacting with society and fulfilling social roles' facets of social inclusion. These exploratory findings are positive and warrant further investigation across all five facets of the framework to identify which factors influence social inclusion.

  18. Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Suiping; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

    2017-07-19

    It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

  19. A Spoken-Language Intervention for School-Aged Boys with Fragile X Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDuffie, Andrea; Machalicek, Wendy; Bullard, Lauren; Nelson, Sarah; Mello, Melissa; Tempero-Feigles, Robyn; Castignetti, Nancy; Abbeduto, Leonard

    2016-01-01

    Using a single case design, a parent-mediated spoken-language intervention was delivered to three mothers and their school-aged sons with fragile X syndrome, the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability. The intervention was embedded in the context of shared storytelling using wordless picture books and targeted three empirically derived…

  20. From spoken narratives to domain knowledge: mining linguistic data for medical image understanding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Xuan; Yu, Qi; Alm, Cecilia Ovesdotter; Calvelli, Cara; Pelz, Jeff B; Shi, Pengcheng; Haake, Anne R

    2014-10-01

    Extracting useful visual clues from medical images allowing accurate diagnoses requires physicians' domain knowledge acquired through years of systematic study and clinical training. This is especially true in the dermatology domain, a medical specialty that requires physicians to have image inspection experience. Automating or at least aiding such efforts requires understanding physicians' reasoning processes and their use of domain knowledge. Mining physicians' references to medical concepts in narratives during image-based diagnosis of a disease is an interesting research topic that can help reveal experts' reasoning processes. It can also be a useful resource to assist with design of information technologies for image use and for image case-based medical education systems. We collected data for analyzing physicians' diagnostic reasoning processes by conducting an experiment that recorded their spoken descriptions during inspection of dermatology images. In this paper we focus on the benefit of physicians' spoken descriptions and provide a general workflow for mining medical domain knowledge based on linguistic data from these narratives. The challenge of a medical image case can influence the accuracy of the diagnosis as well as how physicians pursue the diagnostic process. Accordingly, we define two lexical metrics for physicians' narratives--lexical consensus score and top N relatedness score--and evaluate their usefulness by assessing the diagnostic challenge levels of corresponding medical images. We also report on clustering medical images based on anchor concepts obtained from physicians' medical term usage. These analyses are based on physicians' spoken narratives that have been preprocessed by incorporating the Unified Medical Language System for detecting medical concepts. The image rankings based on lexical consensus score and on top 1 relatedness score are well correlated with those based on challenge levels (Spearman correlation>0.5 and Kendall

  1. Semantic Fluency in Deaf Children Who Use Spoken and Signed Language in Comparison with Hearing Peers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marshall, C. R.; Jones, A.; Fastelli, A.; Atkinson, J.; Botting, N.; Morgan, G.

    2018-01-01

    Background: Deafness has an adverse impact on children's ability to acquire spoken languages. Signed languages offer a more accessible input for deaf children, but because the vast majority are born to hearing parents who do not sign, their early exposure to sign language is limited. Deaf children as a whole are therefore at high risk of language…

  2. Foreign Language Tutoring in Oral Conversations Using Spoken Dialog Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Sungjin; Noh, Hyungjong; Lee, Jonghoon; Lee, Kyusong; Lee, Gary Geunbae

    Although there have been enormous investments into English education all around the world, not many differences have been made to change the English instruction style. Considering the shortcomings for the current teaching-learning methodology, we have been investigating advanced computer-assisted language learning (CALL) systems. This paper aims at summarizing a set of POSTECH approaches including theories, technologies, systems, and field studies and providing relevant pointers. On top of the state-of-the-art technologies of spoken dialog system, a variety of adaptations have been applied to overcome some problems caused by numerous errors and variations naturally produced by non-native speakers. Furthermore, a number of methods have been developed for generating educational feedback that help learners develop to be proficient. Integrating these efforts resulted in intelligent educational robots — Mero and Engkey — and virtual 3D language learning games, Pomy. To verify the effects of our approaches on students' communicative abilities, we have conducted a field study at an elementary school in Korea. The results showed that our CALL approaches can be enjoyable and fruitful activities for students. Although the results of this study bring us a step closer to understanding computer-based education, more studies are needed to consolidate the findings.

  3. Spoken Dialogue Systems

    CERN Document Server

    Jokinen, Kristiina

    2009-01-01

    Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the development of dialogue systems that support robust and efficient human-machine interaction using spoken language. Spoken dialogue technology allows various interactive applications to be built and used for practical purposes, and research focuses on issues that aim to increase the system's communicative competence by including aspects of error correction, cooperation, multimodality, and adaptation in context. This book gives a comprehensive view of state-of-the-art techniques that are used to build spoken dialogue systems. It provides

  4. Native Language Spoken as a Risk Marker for Tooth Decay.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carson, J; Walker, L A; Sanders, B J; Jones, J E; Weddell, J A; Tomlin, A M

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to assess dmft, the number of decayed, missing (due to caries), and/ or filled primary teeth, of English-speaking and non-English speaking patients of a hospital based pediatric dental clinic under the age of 72 months to determine if native language is a risk marker for tooth decay. Records from an outpatient dental clinic which met the inclusion criteria were reviewed. Patient demographics and dmft score were recorded, and the patients were separated into three groups by the native language spoken by their parents: English, Spanish and all other languages. A total of 419 charts were assessed: 253 English-speaking, 126 Spanish-speaking, and 40 other native languages. After accounting for patient characteristics, dmft was significantly higher for the other language group than for the English-speaking (p0.05). Those patients under 72 months of age whose parents' native language is not English or Spanish, have the highest risk for increased dmft when compared to English and Spanish speaking patients. Providers should consider taking additional time to educate patients and their parents, in their native language, on the importance of routine dental care and oral hygiene.

  5. Neural organization of linguistic short-term memory is sensory modality-dependent: evidence from signed and spoken language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pa, Judy; Wilson, Stephen M; Pickell, Herbert; Bellugi, Ursula; Hickok, Gregory

    2008-12-01

    Despite decades of research, there is still disagreement regarding the nature of the information that is maintained in linguistic short-term memory (STM). Some authors argue for abstract phonological codes, whereas others argue for more general sensory traces. We assess these possibilities by investigating linguistic STM in two distinct sensory-motor modalities, spoken and signed language. Hearing bilingual participants (native in English and American Sign Language) performed equivalent STM tasks in both languages during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Distinct, sensory-specific activations were seen during the maintenance phase of the task for spoken versus signed language. These regions have been previously shown to respond to nonlinguistic sensory stimulation, suggesting that linguistic STM tasks recruit sensory-specific networks. However, maintenance-phase activations common to the two languages were also observed, implying some form of common process. We conclude that linguistic STM involves sensory-dependent neural networks, but suggest that sensory-independent neural networks may also exist.

  6. Brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language in children and its disruption in dyslexia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kovelman, Ioulia; Norton, Elizabeth S; Christodoulou, Joanna A; Gaab, Nadine; Lieberman, Daniel A; Triantafyllou, Christina; Wolf, Maryanne; Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan; Gabrieli, John D E

    2012-04-01

    Phonological awareness, knowledge that speech is composed of syllables and phonemes, is critical for learning to read. Phonological awareness precedes and predicts successful transition from language to literacy, and weakness in phonological awareness is a leading cause of dyslexia, but the brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language in children is unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of phonological awareness using an auditory word-rhyming task in children who were typical readers or who had dyslexia (ages 7-13) and a younger group of kindergarteners (ages 5-6). Typically developing children, but not children with dyslexia, recruited left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) when making explicit phonological judgments. Kindergarteners, who were matched to the older children with dyslexia on standardized tests of phonological awareness, also recruited left DLPFC. Left DLPFC may play a critical role in the development of phonological awareness for spoken language critical for reading and in the etiology of dyslexia.

  7. Phonologic-graphemic transcodifier for Portuguese Language spoken in Brazil (PLB)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fragadasilva, Francisco Jose; Saotome, Osamu; Deoliveira, Carlos Alberto

    An automatic speech-to-text transformer system, suited to unlimited vocabulary, is presented. The basic acoustic unit considered are the allophones of the phonemes corresponding to the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil (PLB). The input to the system is a phonetic sequence, from a former step of isolated word recognition of slowly spoken speech. In a first stage, the system eliminates phonetic elements that don't belong to PLB. Using knowledge sources such as phonetics, phonology, orthography, and PLB specific lexicon, the output is a sequence of written words, ordered by probabilistic criterion that constitutes the set of graphemic possibilities to that input sequence. Pronunciation differences of some regions of Brazil are considered, but only those that cause differences in phonological transcription, because those of phonetic level are absorbed, during the transformation to phonological level. In the final stage, all possible written words are analyzed for orthography and grammar point of view, to eliminate the incorrect ones.

  8. Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirschmüller, Sarah; Egloff, Boris

    2015-01-01

    How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality? DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect and defend against mortality salience of one's own contemplated death. Although these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefore analyzed positivity in the final words spoken immediately before execution by 407 death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an objective measure of emotional language use, our results showed that the final words contained a significantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This emotional positivity was significantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses showed that emotional positivity in final statements was associated with a greater frequency of language use that was indicative of self-references, social orientation, and present-oriented time focus as well as with fewer instances of cognitive-processing, past-oriented, and death-related word use. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into how individuals cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality.

  9. Cognitive Predictors of Spoken Word Recognition in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Evans, Julia L; Gillam, Ronald B; Montgomery, James W

    2018-05-10

    This study examined the influence of cognitive factors on spoken word recognition in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing (TD) children. Participants included 234 children (aged 7;0-11;11 years;months), 117 with DLD and 117 TD children, propensity matched for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and maternal education. Children completed a series of standardized assessment measures, a forward gating task, a rapid automatic naming task, and a series of tasks designed to examine cognitive factors hypothesized to influence spoken word recognition including phonological working memory, updating, attention shifting, and interference inhibition. Spoken word recognition for both initial and final accept gate points did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls after controlling target word knowledge in both groups. The 2 groups also did not differ on measures of updating, attention switching, and interference inhibition. Despite the lack of difference on these measures, for children with DLD, attention shifting and interference inhibition were significant predictors of spoken word recognition, whereas updating and receptive vocabulary were significant predictors of speed of spoken word recognition for the children in the TD group. Contrary to expectations, after controlling for target word knowledge, spoken word recognition did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls; however, the cognitive processing factors that influenced children's ability to recognize the target word in a stream of speech differed qualitatively for children with and without DLDs.

  10. Spoken language development in oral preschool children with permanent childhood deafness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarant, Julia Z; Holt, Colleen M; Dowell, Richard C; Rickards, Field W; Blamey, Peter J

    2009-01-01

    This article documented spoken language outcomes for preschool children with hearing loss and examined the relationships between language abilities and characteristics of children such as degree of hearing loss, cognitive abilities, age at entry to early intervention, and parent involvement in children's intervention programs. Participants were evaluated using a combination of the Child Development Inventory, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Preschool Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals depending on their age at the time of assessment. Maternal education, cognitive ability, and family involvement were also measured. Over half of the children who participated in this study had poor language outcomes overall. No significant differences were found in language outcomes on any of the measures for children who were diagnosed early and those diagnosed later. Multiple regression analyses showed that family participation, degree of hearing loss, and cognitive ability significantly predicted language outcomes and together accounted for almost 60% of the variance in scores. This article highlights the importance of family participation in intervention programs to enable children to achieve optimal language outcomes. Further work may clarify the effects of early diagnosis on language outcomes for preschool children.

  11. Expected Test Scores for Preschoolers with a Cochlear Implant Who Use Spoken Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nicholas, Johanna G.; Geers, Ann E.

    2008-01-01

    Purpose: The major purpose of this study was to provide information about expected spoken language skills of preschool-age children who are deaf and who use a cochlear implant. A goal was to provide "benchmarks" against which those skills could be compared, for a given age at implantation. We also examined whether parent-completed…

  12. The Attitudes and Motivation of Children towards Learning Rarely Spoken Foreign Languages: A Case Study from Saudi Arabia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Nofaie, Haifa

    2018-01-01

    This article discusses the attitudes and motivations of two Saudi children learning Japanese as a foreign language (hence JFL), a language which is rarely spoken in the country. Studies regarding children's motivation for learning foreign languages that are not widely spread in their contexts in informal settings are scarce. The aim of the study…

  13. Personality Structure in the Trait Lexicon of Hindi, a Major Language Spoken in India

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Singh, Jitendra K.; Misra, Girishwar; De Raad, Boele

    2013-01-01

    The psycho-lexical approach is extended to Hindi, a major language spoken in India. From both the dictionary and from Hindi novels, a huge set of personality descriptors was put together, ultimately reduced to a manageable set of 295 trait terms. Both self and peer ratings were collected on those

  14. Resting-state low-frequency fluctuations reflect individual differences in spoken language learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Zhizhou; Chandrasekaran, Bharath; Wang, Suiping; Wong, Patrick C M

    2016-03-01

    A major challenge in language learning studies is to identify objective, pre-training predictors of success. Variation in the low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) of spontaneous brain activity measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) has been found to reflect individual differences in cognitive measures. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the extent to which initial spontaneous brain activity is related to individual differences in spoken language learning. We acquired RS-fMRI data and subsequently trained participants on a sound-to-word learning paradigm in which they learned to use foreign pitch patterns (from Mandarin Chinese) to signal word meaning. We performed amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis, graph theory-based analysis, and independent component analysis (ICA) to identify functional components of the LFFs in the resting-state. First, we examined the ALFF as a regional measure and showed that regional ALFFs in the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance, whereas ALFFs in the default mode network (DMN) regions were negatively correlated with learning performance. Furthermore, the graph theory-based analysis indicated that the degree and local efficiency of the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance. Finally, the default mode network and several task-positive resting-state networks (RSNs) were identified via the ICA. The "competition" (i.e., negative correlation) between the DMN and the dorsal attention network was negatively correlated with learning performance. Our results demonstrate that a) spontaneous brain activity can predict future language learning outcome without prior hypotheses (e.g., selection of regions of interest--ROIs) and b) both regional dynamics and network-level interactions in the resting brain can account for individual differences in future spoken language learning success

  15. Resting-state low-frequency fluctuations reflect individual differences in spoken language learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Zhizhou; Chandrasekaran, Bharath; Wang, Suiping; Wong, Patrick C.M.

    2016-01-01

    A major challenge in language learning studies is to identify objective, pre-training predictors of success. Variation in the low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) of spontaneous brain activity measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) has been found to reflect individual differences in cognitive measures. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the extent to which initial spontaneous brain activity is related to individual differences in spoken language learning. We acquired RS-fMRI data and subsequently trained participants on a sound-to-word learning paradigm in which they learned to use foreign pitch patterns (from Mandarin Chinese) to signal word meaning. We performed amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis, graph theory-based analysis, and independent component analysis (ICA) to identify functional components of the LFFs in the resting-state. First, we examined the ALFF as a regional measure and showed that regional ALFFs in the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance, whereas ALFFs in the default mode network (DMN) regions were negatively correlated with learning performance. Furthermore, the graph theory-based analysis indicated that the degree and local efficiency of the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance. Finally, the default mode network and several task-positive resting-state networks (RSNs) were identified via the ICA. The “competition” (i.e., negative correlation) between the DMN and the dorsal attention network was negatively correlated with learning performance. Our results demonstrate that a) spontaneous brain activity can predict future language learning outcome without prior hypotheses (e.g., selection of regions of interest – ROIs) and b) both regional dynamics and network-level interactions in the resting brain can account for individual differences in future spoken language learning success

  16. Code-switched English pronunciation modeling for Swahili spoken term detection

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Kleynhans, N

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Computer Science 81 ( 2016 ) 128 – 135 5th Workshop on Spoken Language Technology for Under-resourced Languages, SLTU 2016, 9-12 May 2016, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Code-switched English Pronunciation Modeling for Swahili Spoken Term Detection Neil...

  17. EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE IN SPOKEN AND SIGNED STORIES TOLD BY A DEAF CHILD WITH A COCHLEAR IMPLANT: WORDS, SIGNS OR PARALINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ritva Takkinen

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available In this paper the use and quality of the evaluative language produced by a bilingual child in a story-telling situation is analysed. The subject, an 11-year-old Finnish boy, Jimmy, is bilingual in Finnish sign language (FinSL and spoken Finnish.He was born deaf but got a cochlear implant at the age of five.The data consist of a spoken and a signed version of “The Frog Story”. The analysis shows that evaluative devices and expressions differ in the spoken and signed stories told by the child. In his Finnish story he uses mostly lexical devices – comments on a character and the character’s actions as well as quoted speech occasionally combined with prosodic features. In his FinSL story he uses both lexical and paralinguistic devices in a balanced way.

  18. 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.

  19. Spoken grammar awareness raising: Does it affect the listening ability of Iranian EFL learners?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mojgan Rashtchi

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Advances in spoken corpora analysis have brought about new insights into language pedagogy and have led to an awareness of the characteristics of spoken language. Current findings have shown that grammar of spoken language is different from written language. However, most listening and speaking materials are concocted based on written grammar and lack core spoken language features. The aim of the present study was to explore the question whether awareness of spoken grammar features could affect learners’ comprehension of real-life conversations. To this end, 45 university students in two intact classes participated in a listening course employing corpus-based materials. The instruction of the spoken grammar features to the experimental group was done overtly through awareness raising tasks, whereas the control group, though exposed to the same materials, was not provided with such tasks for learning the features. The results of the independent samples t tests revealed that the learners in the experimental group comprehended everyday conversations much better than those in the control group. Additionally, the highly positive views of spoken grammar held by the learners, which was elicited by means of a retrospective questionnaire, were generally comparable to those reported in the literature.

  20. Webster's word power better English grammar improve your written and spoken English

    CERN Document Server

    Kirkpatrick, Betty

    2014-01-01

    With questions and answer sections throughout, this book helps you to improve your written and spoken English through understanding the structure of the English language. This is a thorough and useful book with all parts of speech and grammar explained. Used by ELT self-study students.

  1. Ragnar Rommetveit's Approach to Everyday Spoken Dialogue from Within.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kowal, Sabine; O'Connell, Daniel C

    2016-04-01

    The following article presents basic concepts and methods of Ragnar Rommetveit's (born 1924) hermeneutic-dialogical approach to everyday spoken dialogue with a focus on both shared consciousness and linguistically mediated meaning. He developed this approach originally in his engagement of mainstream linguistic and psycholinguistic research of the 1960s and 1970s. He criticized this research tradition for its individualistic orientation and its adherence to experimental methodology which did not allow the engagement of interactively established meaning and understanding in everyday spoken dialogue. As a social psychologist influenced by phenomenological philosophy, Rommetveit opted for an alternative conceptualization of such dialogue as a contextualized, partially private world, temporarily co-established by interlocutors on the basis of shared consciousness. He argued that everyday spoken dialogue should be investigated from within, i.e., from the perspectives of the interlocutors and from a psychology of the second person. Hence, he developed his approach with an emphasis on intersubjectivity, perspectivity and perspectival relativity, meaning potential of utterances, and epistemic responsibility of interlocutors. In his methods, he limited himself for the most part to casuistic analyses, i.e., logical analyses of fictitious examples to argue for the plausibility of his approach. After many years of experimental research on language, he pursued his phenomenologically oriented research on dialogue in English-language publications from the late 1980s up to 2003. During that period, he engaged psycholinguistic research on spoken dialogue carried out by Anglo-American colleagues only occasionally. Although his work remained unfinished and open to development, it provides both a challenging alternative and supplement to current Anglo-American research on spoken dialogue and some overlap therewith.

  2. How Does the Linguistic Distance between Spoken and Standard Language in Arabic Affect Recall and Recognition Performances during Verbal Memory Examination

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taha, Haitham

    2017-01-01

    The current research examined how Arabic diglossia affects verbal learning memory. Thirty native Arab college students were tested using auditory verbal memory test that was adapted according to the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and developed in three versions: Pure spoken language version (SL), pure standard language version (SA), and…

  3. Word frequencies in written and spoken English based on the British National Corpus

    CERN Document Server

    Leech, Geoffrey; Wilson, Andrew (All Of Lancaster University)

    2014-01-01

    Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English is a landmark volume in the development of vocabulary frequency studies. Whereas previous books have in general given frequency information about the written language only, this book provides information on both speech and writing. It not only gives information about the language as a whole, but also about the differences between spoken and written English, and between different spoken and written varieties of the language. The frequencies are derived from a wide ranging and up-to-date corpus of English: the British Na

  4. Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschool Children with Hearing Loss Who Use Spoken Language: Initial Findings from the Early Language and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA) Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Werfel, Krystal L.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare change in emergent literacy skills of preschool children with and without hearing loss over a 6-month period. Method: Participants included 19 children with hearing loss and 14 children with normal hearing. Children with hearing loss used amplification and spoken language. Participants completed…

  5. Attentional Capture of Objects Referred to by Spoken Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salverda, Anne Pier; Altmann, Gerry T. M.

    2011-01-01

    Participants saw a small number of objects in a visual display and performed a visual detection or visual-discrimination task in the context of task-irrelevant spoken distractors. In each experiment, a visual cue was presented 400 ms after the onset of a spoken word. In experiments 1 and 2, the cue was an isoluminant color change and participants…

  6. Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Šimáčková, Š.; Podlipský, V.J.; Chládková, K.

    2012-01-01

    As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany,

  7. A Mother Tongue Spoken Mainly by Fathers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corsetti, Renato

    1996-01-01

    Reviews what is known about Esperanto as a home language and first language. Recorded cases of Esperanto-speaking families are known since 1919, and in nearly all of the approximately 350 families documented, the language is spoken to the children by the father. The data suggests that this "artificial bilingualism" can be as successful…

  8. Spoken Sentence Production in College Students with Dyslexia: Working Memory and Vocabulary Effects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiseheart, Rebecca; Altmann, Lori J. P.

    2018-01-01

    Background: Individuals with dyslexia demonstrate syntactic difficulties on tasks of language comprehension, yet little is known about spoken language production in this population. Aims: To investigate whether spoken sentence production in college students with dyslexia is less proficient than in typical readers, and to determine whether group…

  9. A randomized trial comparison of the effects of verbal and pictorial naturalistic communication strategies on spoken language for young children with autism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schreibman, Laura; Stahmer, Aubyn C

    2014-05-01

    Presently there is no consensus on the specific behavioral treatment of choice for targeting language in young nonverbal children with autism. This randomized clinical trial compared the effectiveness of a verbally-based intervention, Pivotal Response Training (PRT) to a pictorially-based behavioral intervention, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) on the acquisition of spoken language by young (2-4 years), nonverbal or minimally verbal (≤9 words) children with autism. Thirty-nine children were randomly assigned to either the PRT or PECS condition. Participants received on average 247 h of intervention across 23 weeks. Dependent measures included overall communication, expressive vocabulary, pictorial communication and parent satisfaction. Children in both intervention groups demonstrated increases in spoken language skills, with no significant difference between the two conditions. Seventy-eight percent of all children exited the program with more than 10 functional words. Parents were very satisfied with both programs but indicated PECS was more difficult to implement.

  10. Orthographic Facilitation in Chinese Spoken Word Recognition: An ERP Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zou, Lijuan; Desroches, Amy S.; Liu, Youyi; Xia, Zhichao; Shu, Hua

    2012-01-01

    Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition have been previously examined in alphabetic languages. However, it is unknown whether orthographic information affects spoken word recognition in Chinese, which has a clean dissociation between orthography (O) and phonology (P). The present study investigated orthographic effects using event…

  11. Novel Spoken Word Learning in Adults with Developmental Dyslexia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conner, Peggy S.

    2013-01-01

    A high percentage of individuals with dyslexia struggle to learn unfamiliar spoken words, creating a significant obstacle to foreign language learning after early childhood. The origin of spoken-word learning difficulties in this population, generally thought to be related to the underlying literacy deficit, is not well defined (e.g., Di Betta…

  12. Evaluating the spoken English proficiency of graduates of foreign medical schools.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boulet, J R; van Zanten, M; McKinley, D W; Gary, N E

    2001-08-01

    The purpose of this study was to gather additional evidence for the validity and reliability of spoken English proficiency ratings provided by trained standardized patients (SPs) in high-stakes clinical skills examination. Over 2500 candidates who took the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates' (ECFMG) Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) were studied. The CSA consists of 10 or 11 timed clinical encounters. Standardized patients evaluate spoken English proficiency and interpersonal skills in every encounter. Generalizability theory was used to estimate the consistency of spoken English ratings. Validity coefficients were calculated by correlating summary English ratings with CSA scores and other external criterion measures. Mean spoken English ratings were also compared by various candidate background variables. The reliability of the spoken English ratings, based on 10 independent evaluations, was high. The magnitudes of the associated variance components indicated that the evaluation of a candidate's spoken English proficiency is unlikely to be affected by the choice of cases or SPs used in a given assessment. Proficiency in spoken English was related to native language (English versus other) and scores from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The pattern of the relationships, both within assessment components and with external criterion measures, suggests that valid measures of spoken English proficiency are obtained. This result, combined with the high reproducibility of the ratings over encounters and SPs, supports the use of trained SPs to measure spoken English skills in a simulated medical environment.

  13. Phonological Analysis of University Students’ Spoken Discourse

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Clara Herlina

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available The study of discourse is the study of using language in actual use. In this article, the writer is trying to investigate the phonological features, either segmental or supra-segmental, in the spoken discourse of Indonesian university students. The data were taken from the recordings of 15 conversations by 30 students of Bina Nusantara University who are taking English Entrant subject (TOEFL –IBT. Finally, the writer is in opinion that the students are still influenced by their first language in their spoken discourse. This results in English with Indonesian accent. Even though it does not cause misunderstanding at the moment, this may become problematic if they have to communicate in the real world.  

  14. Narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken English: Dissociations between macro and microstructural devices.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, -A C; Toscano, E; Botting, N; Marshall, C-R; Atkinson, J R; Denmark, T; Herman, -R; Morgan, G

    2016-12-01

    Previous research has highlighted that deaf children acquiring spoken English have difficulties in narrative development relative to their hearing peers both in terms of macro-structure and with micro-structural devices. The majority of previous research focused on narrative tasks designed for hearing children that depend on good receptive language skills. The current study compared narratives of 6 to 11-year-old deaf children who use spoken English (N=59) with matched for age and non-verbal intelligence hearing peers. To examine the role of general language abilities, single word vocabulary was also assessed. Narratives were elicited by the retelling of a story presented non-verbally in video format. Results showed that deaf and hearing children had equivalent macro-structure skills, but the deaf group showed poorer performance on micro-structural components. Furthermore, the deaf group gave less detailed responses to inferencing probe questions indicating poorer understanding of the story's underlying message. For deaf children, micro-level devices most strongly correlated with the vocabulary measure. These findings suggest that deaf children, despite spoken language delays, are able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative but have greater difficulty in using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic skills. Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. 'Y' feel me?' How do we understand the person with dementia?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hughes, Julian C

    2013-05-01

    As dementia progresses problems of understanding emerge. Eventually spoken language can be lost. And yet, even into the severer stages of dementia, close carers can often understand the person in a variety of ways. Loss of language is not just a practical problem. It raises philosophical issues too. As Wittgenstein suggested, understanding entails grasping a form of life. Our understanding of agitated, pacing behaviour is similarly based on a unique history, on culture, on context. Hence, a philosophy gestures at the foundations of care. There is the potential to feel the person's meaning, even when it cannot be spoken. This is not simply by means of an alternative to language. The philosophy suggests that our engagement with the person is through and through. Understanding anyone is more like an aesthetic judgement than a cognitive act.

  16. RECEPTION OF SPOKEN ENGLISH. MISHEARINGS IN THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS AND LAW

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    HOREA Ioana-Claudia

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Spoken English may sometimes cause us to face a peculiar problem in respect of the reception and the decoding of auditive signals, which might lead to mishearings. Risen from erroneous perception, from a lack in understanding the communication and an involuntary mental replacement of a certain element or structure by a more familiar one, these mistakes are most frequently encountered in the case of listening to songs, where the melodic line can facilitate the development of confusion by its somewhat altered intonation, which produces the so called mondegreens. Still, instances can be met in all domains of verbal communication, as proven in several examples noticed during classes of English as a foreign language (EFL taught to non-philological subjects. Production and perceptions of language depend on a series of elements that influence the encoding and the decoding of the message. These filters belong to both psychological and semantic categories which can either interfere with the accuracy of emission and reception. Poor understanding of a notion or concept combined with a more familiar relation with a similarly sounding one will result in unconsciously picking the structure which is better known. This means ‘hearing’ something else than it had been said, something closer to the receiver’s preoccupations and baggage of knowledge than the original structure or word. Some mishearings become particularly relevant as they concern teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP. Such are those encountered during classes of Business English or in English for Law. Though not very likely to occur too often, given an intuitively felt inaccuracy - as the terms are known by the users to need to be more specialised -, such examples are still not ignorable. Thus, we consider they deserve a higher degree of attention, as they might become quite relevant in the global context of an increasing work force migration and a spread of multinational companies.

  17. Bilinguals Show Weaker Lexical Access during Spoken Sentence Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shook, Anthony; Goldrick, Matthew; Engstler, Caroline; Marian, Viorica

    2015-01-01

    When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German…

  18. Development of lexical-semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18- and 24-month old children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rämä, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

    2013-04-01

    Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike). The results showed that the N400-like priming effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites. In 18-month-olds the effect was observed similarly to 24-month-olds only in those children with higher word production ability. The results suggest that words are categorically organized in the mental lexicon of children at the age of 2 years and even earlier in children with a high vocabulary. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. Natural language understanding

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Yoshida, S

    1982-04-01

    Language understanding is essential for intelligent information processing. Processing of language itself involves configuration element analysis, syntactic analysis (parsing), and semantic analysis. They are not carried out in isolation. These are described for the Japanese language and their usage in understanding-systems is examined. 30 references.

  20. Who can communicate with whom? Language experience affects infants' evaluation of others as monolingual or multilingual.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pitts, Casey E; Onishi, Kristine H; Vouloumanos, Athena

    2015-01-01

    Adults recognize that people can understand more than one language. However, it is unclear whether infants assume other people understand one or multiple languages. We examined whether monolingual and bilingual 20-month-olds expect an unfamiliar person to understand one or more than one language. Two speakers told a listener the location of a hidden object using either the same or two different languages. When different languages were spoken, monolinguals looked longer when the listener searched correctly, bilinguals did not; when the same language was spoken, both groups looked longer for incorrect searches. Infants rely on their prior language experience when evaluating the language abilities of a novel individual. Monolingual infants assume others can understand only one language, although not necessarily the infants' own; bilinguals do not. Infants' assumptions about which community of conventions people belong to may allow them to recognize effective communicative partners and thus opportunities to acquire language, knowledge, and culture. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Self-Ratings of Spoken Language Dominance: A Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and Preliminary Norms for Young and Aging Spanish-English Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollan, Tamar H.; Weissberger, Gali H.; Runnqvist, Elin; Montoya, Rosa I.; Cera, Cynthia M.

    2012-01-01

    This study investigated correspondence between different measures of bilingual language proficiency contrasting self-report, proficiency interview, and picture naming skills. Fifty-two young (Experiment 1) and 20 aging (Experiment 2) Spanish-English bilinguals provided self-ratings of proficiency level, were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and…

  2. Semantic Richness and Word Learning in Children with Hearing Loss Who Are Developing Spoken Language: A Single Case Design Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lund, Emily; Douglas, W. Michael; Schuele, C. Melanie

    2015-01-01

    Children with hearing loss who are developing spoken language tend to lag behind children with normal hearing in vocabulary knowledge. Thus, researchers must validate instructional practices that lead to improved vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss. The purpose of this study was to investigate how semantic richness of instruction…

  3. Identification of four class emotion from Indonesian spoken language using acoustic and lexical features

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kasyidi, Fatan; Puji Lestari, Dessi

    2018-03-01

    One of the important aspects in human to human communication is to understand emotion of each party. Recently, interactions between human and computer continues to develop, especially affective interaction where emotion recognition is one of its important components. This paper presents our extended works on emotion recognition of Indonesian spoken language to identify four main class of emotions: Happy, Sad, Angry, and Contentment using combination of acoustic/prosodic features and lexical features. We construct emotion speech corpus from Indonesia television talk show where the situations are as close as possible to the natural situation. After constructing the emotion speech corpus, the acoustic/prosodic and lexical features are extracted to train the emotion model. We employ some machine learning algorithms such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes, and Random Forest to get the best model. The experiment result of testing data shows that the best model has an F-measure score of 0.447 by using only the acoustic/prosodic feature and F-measure score of 0.488 by using both acoustic/prosodic and lexical features to recognize four class emotion using the SVM RBF Kernel.

  4. How and When Accentuation Influences Temporally Selective Attention and Subsequent Semantic Processing during On-Line Spoken Language Comprehension: An ERP Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xiao-qing; Ren, Gui-qin

    2012-01-01

    An event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment was carried out to investigate how and when accentuation influences temporally selective attention and subsequent semantic processing during on-line spoken language comprehension, and how the effect of accentuation on attention allocation and semantic processing changed with the degree of…

  5. Beyond Languages, beyond Modalities: Transforming the Study of Semiotic Repertoires

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kusters, Annelies; Spotti, Massimiliano; Swanwick, Ruth; Tapio, Elina

    2017-01-01

    This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key…

  6. Audiovisual spoken word recognition as a clinical criterion for sensory aids efficiency in Persian-language children with hearing loss.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oryadi-Zanjani, Mohammad Majid; Vahab, Maryam; Bazrafkan, Mozhdeh; Haghjoo, Asghar

    2015-12-01

    The aim of this study was to examine the role of audiovisual speech recognition as a clinical criterion of cochlear implant or hearing aid efficiency in Persian-language children with severe-to-profound hearing loss. This research was administered as a cross-sectional study. The sample size was 60 Persian 5-7 year old children. The assessment tool was one of subtests of Persian version of the Test of Language Development-Primary 3. The study included two experiments: auditory-only and audiovisual presentation conditions. The test was a closed-set including 30 words which were orally presented by a speech-language pathologist. The scores of audiovisual word perception were significantly higher than auditory-only condition in the children with normal hearing (Paudiovisual presentation conditions (P>0.05). The audiovisual spoken word recognition can be applied as a clinical criterion to assess the children with severe to profound hearing loss in order to find whether cochlear implant or hearing aid has been efficient for them or not; i.e. if a child with hearing impairment who using CI or HA can obtain higher scores in audiovisual spoken word recognition than auditory-only condition, his/her auditory skills have appropriately developed due to effective CI or HA as one of the main factors of auditory habilitation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Sign language: an international handbook

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pfau, R.; Steinbach, M.; Woll, B.

    2012-01-01

    Sign language linguists show here that all the questions relevant to the linguistic investigation of spoken languages can be asked about sign languages. Conversely, questions that sign language linguists consider - even if spoken language researchers have not asked them yet - should also be asked of

  8. Activating gender stereotypes during online spoken language processing: evidence from Visual World Eye Tracking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pyykkönen, Pirita; Hyönä, Jukka; van Gompel, Roger P G

    2010-01-01

    This study used the visual world eye-tracking method to investigate activation of general world knowledge related to gender-stereotypical role names in online spoken language comprehension in Finnish. The results showed that listeners activated gender stereotypes elaboratively in story contexts where this information was not needed to build coherence. Furthermore, listeners made additional inferences based on gender stereotypes to revise an already established coherence relation. Both results are consistent with mental models theory (e.g., Garnham, 2001). They are harder to explain by the minimalist account (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992) which suggests that people limit inferences to those needed to establish coherence in discourse.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  10. Beyond languages, beyond modalities: transforming the study of semiotic repertoires : Introduction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Spotti, Max

    2017-01-01

    This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the

  11. Language Outcomes in Deaf or Hard of Hearing Teenagers Who Are Spoken Language Users: Effects of Universal Newborn Hearing Screening and Early Confirmation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pimperton, Hannah; Kreppner, Jana; Mahon, Merle; Stevenson, Jim; Terlektsi, Emmanouela; Worsfold, Sarah; Yuen, Ho Ming; Kennedy, Colin R

    This study aimed to examine whether (a) exposure to universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) and b) early confirmation of hearing loss were associated with benefits to expressive and receptive language outcomes in the teenage years for a cohort of spoken language users. It also aimed to determine whether either of these two variables was associated with benefits to relative language gain from middle childhood to adolescence within this cohort. The participants were drawn from a prospective cohort study of a population sample of children with bilateral permanent childhood hearing loss, who varied in their exposure to UNHS and who had previously had their language skills assessed at 6-10 years. Sixty deaf or hard of hearing teenagers who were spoken language users and a comparison group of 38 teenagers with normal hearing completed standardized measures of their receptive and expressive language ability at 13-19 years. Teenagers exposed to UNHS did not show significantly better expressive (adjusted mean difference, 0.40; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.26 to 1.05; d = 0.32) or receptive (adjusted mean difference, 0.68; 95% CI, -0.56 to 1.93; d = 0.28) language skills than those who were not. Those who had their hearing loss confirmed by 9 months of age did not show significantly better expressive (adjusted mean difference, 0.43; 95% CI, -0.20 to 1.05; d = 0.35) or receptive (adjusted mean difference, 0.95; 95% CI, -0.22 to 2.11; d = 0.42) language skills than those who had it confirmed later. In all cases, effect sizes were of small size and in favor of those exposed to UNHS or confirmed by 9 months. Subgroup analysis indicated larger beneficial effects of early confirmation for those deaf or hard of hearing teenagers without cochlear implants (N = 48; 80% of the sample), and these benefits were significant in the case of receptive language outcomes (adjusted mean difference, 1.55; 95% CI, 0.38 to 2.71; d = 0.78). Exposure to UNHS did not account for significant

  12. Biomechanically Preferred Consonant-Vowel Combinations Fail to Appear in Adult Spoken Corpora

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whalen, D. H.; Giulivi, Sara; Nam, Hosung; Levitt, Andrea G.; Hallé, Pierre; Goldstein, Louis M.

    2012-01-01

    Certain consonant/vowel (CV) combinations are more frequent than would be expected from the individual C and V frequencies alone, both in babbling and, to a lesser extent, in adult language, based on dictionary counts: Labial consonants co-occur with central vowels more often than chance would dictate; coronals co-occur with front vowels, and velars with back vowels (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994). Plausible biomechanical explanations have been proposed, but it is also possible that infants are mirroring the frequency of the CVs that they hear. As noted, previous assessments of adult language were based on dictionaries; these “type” counts are incommensurate with the babbling measures, which are necessarily “token” counts. We analyzed the tokens in two spoken corpora for English, two for French and one for Mandarin. We found that the adult spoken CV preferences correlated with the type counts for Mandarin and French, not for English. Correlations between the adult spoken corpora and the babbling results had all three possible outcomes: significantly positive (French), uncorrelated (Mandarin), and significantly negative (English). There were no correlations of the dictionary data with the babbling results when we consider all nine combinations of consonants and vowels. The results indicate that spoken frequencies of CV combinations can differ from dictionary (type) counts and that the CV preferences apparent in babbling are biomechanically driven and can ignore the frequencies of CVs in the ambient spoken language. PMID:23420980

  13. How Can Comorbidity with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Aid Understanding of Language and Speech Disorders?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tomblin, J. Bruce; Mueller, Kathyrn L.

    2012-01-01

    This article provides a background for the topic of comorbidity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and spoken and written language and speech disorders that extends through this issue of "Topics in Language Disorders." Comorbidity is common within developmental disorders and may be explained by many possible reasons. Some of these can be…

  14. What sign language creation teaches us about language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brentari, Diane; Coppola, Marie

    2013-03-01

    How do languages emerge? What are the necessary ingredients and circumstances that permit new languages to form? Various researchers within the disciplines of primatology, anthropology, psychology, and linguistics have offered different answers to this question depending on their perspective. Language acquisition, language evolution, primate communication, and the study of spoken varieties of pidgin and creoles address these issues, but in this article we describe a relatively new and important area that contributes to our understanding of language creation and emergence. Three types of communication systems that use the hands and body to communicate will be the focus of this article: gesture, homesign systems, and sign languages. The focus of this article is to explain why mapping the path from gesture to homesign to sign language has become an important research topic for understanding language emergence, not only for the field of sign languages, but also for language in general. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:201-211. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1212 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  15. Foreign body aspiration and language spoken at home: 10-year review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Choroomi, S; Curotta, J

    2011-07-01

    To review foreign body aspiration cases encountered over a 10-year period in a tertiary paediatric hospital, and to assess correlation between foreign body type and language spoken at home. Retrospective chart review of all children undergoing direct laryngobronchoscopy for foreign body aspiration over a 10-year period. Age, sex, foreign body type, complications, hospital stay and home language were analysed. At direct laryngobronchoscopy, 132 children had foreign body aspiration (male:female ratio 1.31:1; mean age 32 months (2.67 years)). Mean hospital stay was 2.0 days. Foreign bodies most commonly comprised food matter (53/132; 40.1 per cent), followed by non-food matter (44/132; 33.33 per cent), a negative endoscopy (11/132; 8.33 per cent) and unknown composition (24/132; 18.2 per cent). Most parents spoke English (92/132, 69.7 per cent; vs non-English-speaking 40/132, 30.3 per cent), but non-English-speaking patients had disproportionately more food foreign bodies, and significantly more nut aspirations (p = 0.0065). Results constitute level 2b evidence. Patients from non-English speaking backgrounds had a significantly higher incidence of food (particularly nut) aspiration. Awareness-raising and public education is needed in relevant communities to prevent certain foods, particularly nuts, being given to children too young to chew and swallow them adequately.

  16. The language of football

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rossing, Niels Nygaard; Skrubbeltrang, Lotte Stausgaard

    2014-01-01

    levels (Schein, 2004) in which each player and his actions can be considered an artefact - a concrete symbol in motion embedded in espoused values and basic assumptions. Therefore, the actions of each dialect are strongly connected to the underlying understanding of football. By document and video......The language of football: A cultural analysis of selected World Cup nations. This essay describes how actions on the football field relate to the nations’ different cultural understanding of football and how these actions become spoken dialects within a language of football. Saussure reasoned...... language to have two components: a language system and language users (Danesi, 2003). Consequently, football can be characterized as a language containing a system with specific rules of the game and users with actual choices and actions within the game. All football players can be considered language...

  17. LANGUAGE POLICIES PURSUED IN THE AXIS OF OTHERING AND IN THE PROCESS OF CONVERTING SPOKEN LANGUAGE OF TURKS LIVING IN RUSSIA INTO THEIR WRITTEN LANGUAGE / RUSYA'DA YASAYAN TÜRKLERİN KONUSMA DİLLERİNİN YAZI DİLİNE DÖNÜSTÜRÜLME SÜRECİ VE ÖTEKİLESTİRME EKSENİNDE İZLENEN DİL POLİTİKALARI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Süleyman Kaan YALÇIN (M.A.H.

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Language is an object realized in two ways; spokenlanguage and written language. Each language can havethe characteristics of a spoken language, however, everylanguage can not have the characteristics of a writtenlanguage since there are some requirements for alanguage to be deemed as a written language. Theserequirements are selection, coding, standardization andbecoming widespread. It is necessary for a language tomeet these requirements in either natural or artificial wayso to be deemed as a written language (standardlanguage.Turkish language, which developed as a singlewritten language till 13th century, was divided intolanguages as West Turkish and North-East Turkish bymeeting the requirements of a written language in anatural way. Following this separation and through anatural process, it showed some differences in itself;however, the policy of converting the spoken language ofeach Turkish clan into their written language -the policypursued by Russia in a planned way- turned Turkish,which came to 20th century as a few written languagesinto20 different written languages. Implementation ofdiscriminatory language policies suggested by missionerssuch as Slinky and Ostramov to Russian Government,imposing of Cyrillic alphabet full of different andunnecessary signs on each Turkish clan by force andothering activities of Soviet boarding schools opened hadconsiderable effects on the said process.This study aims at explaining that the conversionof spoken languages of Turkish societies in Russia intotheir written languages did not result from a naturalprocess; the historical development of Turkish languagewhich is shaped as 20 separate written languages onlybecause of the pressure exerted by political will; and how the Russian subjected language concept -which is thememory of a nation- to an artificial process.

  18. Error detection in spoken human-machine interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Krahmer, E.J.; Swerts, M.G.J.; Theune, M.; Weegels, M.F.

    2001-01-01

    Given the state of the art of current language and speech technology, errors are unavoidable in present-day spoken dialogue systems. Therefore, one of the main concerns in dialogue design is how to decide whether or not the system has understood the user correctly. In human-human communication,

  19. Error detection in spoken human-machine interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Krahmer, E.; Swerts, M.; Theune, Mariet; Weegels, M.

    Given the state of the art of current language and speech technology, errors are unavoidable in present-day spoken dialogue systems. Therefore, one of the main concerns in dialogue design is how to decide whether or not the system has understood the user correctly. In human-human communication,

  20. Working with the Bilingual Child Who Has a Language Delay. Meeting Learning Challenges

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greenspan, Stanley I.

    2005-01-01

    It is very important to determine if a bilingual child's language delay is simply in English or also in the child's native language. Understandably, many children have higher levels of language development in the language spoken at home. To discover if this is the case, observe the child talking with his parents. Sometimes, even without…

  1. Language Development in Children with Language Disorders: An Introduction to Skinner's Verbal Behavior and the Techniques for Initial Language Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Casey, Laura Baylot; Bicard, David F.

    2009-01-01

    Language development in typically developing children has a very predictable pattern beginning with crying, cooing, babbling, and gestures along with the recognition of spoken words, comprehension of spoken words, and then one word utterances. This predictable pattern breaks down for children with language disorders. This article will discuss…

  2. Semantic and phonological schema influence spoken word learning and overnight consolidation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Havas, Viktória; Taylor, Jsh; Vaquero, Lucía; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Davis, Matthew H

    2018-06-01

    We studied the initial acquisition and overnight consolidation of new spoken words that resemble words in the native language (L1) or in an unfamiliar, non-native language (L2). Spanish-speaking participants learned the spoken forms of novel words in their native language (Spanish) or in a different language (Hungarian), which were paired with pictures of familiar or unfamiliar objects, or no picture. We thereby assessed, in a factorial way, the impact of existing knowledge (schema) on word learning by manipulating both semantic (familiar vs unfamiliar objects) and phonological (L1- vs L2-like novel words) familiarity. Participants were trained and tested with a 12-hr intervening period that included overnight sleep or daytime awake. Our results showed (1) benefits of sleep to recognition memory that were greater for words with L2-like phonology and (2) that learned associations with familiar but not unfamiliar pictures enhanced recognition memory for novel words. Implications for complementary systems accounts of word learning are discussed.

  3. Time course of Chinese monosyllabic spoken word recognition: evidence from ERP analyses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Jingjing; Guo, Jingjing; Zhou, Fengying; Shu, Hua

    2011-06-01

    Evidence from event-related potential (ERP) analyses of English spoken words suggests that the time course of English word recognition in monosyllables is cumulative. Different types of phonological competitors (i.e., rhymes and cohorts) modulate the temporal grain of ERP components differentially (Desroches, Newman, & Joanisse, 2009). The time course of Chinese monosyllabic spoken word recognition could be different from that of English due to the differences in syllable structure between the two languages (e.g., lexical tones). The present study investigated the time course of Chinese monosyllabic spoken word recognition using ERPs to record brain responses online while subjects listened to spoken words. During the experiment, participants were asked to compare a target picture with a subsequent picture by judging whether or not these two pictures belonged to the same semantic category. The spoken word was presented between the two pictures, and participants were not required to respond during its presentation. We manipulated phonological competition by presenting spoken words that either matched or mismatched the target picture in one of the following four ways: onset mismatch, rime mismatch, tone mismatch, or syllable mismatch. In contrast to the English findings, our findings showed that the three partial mismatches (onset, rime, and tone mismatches) equally modulated the amplitudes and time courses of the N400 (a negative component that peaks about 400ms after the spoken word), whereas, the syllable mismatched words elicited an earlier and stronger N400 than the three partial mismatched words. The results shed light on the important role of syllable-level awareness in Chinese spoken word recognition and also imply that the recognition of Chinese monosyllabic words might rely more on global similarity of the whole syllable structure or syllable-based holistic processing rather than phonemic segment-based processing. We interpret the differences in spoken word

  4. Flexibility in embodied language understanding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willems, Roel M; Casasanto, Daniel

    2011-01-01

    Do people use sensori-motor cortices to understand language? Here we review neurocognitive studies of language comprehension in healthy adults and evaluate their possible contributions to theories of language in the brain. We start by sketching the minimal predictions that an embodied theory of language understanding makes for empirical research, and then survey studies that have been offered as evidence for embodied semantic representations. We explore four debated issues: first, does activation of sensori-motor cortices during action language understanding imply that action semantics relies on mirror neurons? Second, what is the evidence that activity in sensori-motor cortices plays a functional role in understanding language? Third, to what extent do responses in perceptual and motor areas depend on the linguistic and extra-linguistic context? And finally, can embodied theories accommodate language about abstract concepts? Based on the available evidence, we conclude that sensori-motor cortices are activated during a variety of language comprehension tasks, for both concrete and abstract language. Yet, this activity depends on the context in which perception and action words are encountered. Although modality-specific cortical activity is not a sine qua non of language processing even for language about perception and action, sensori-motor regions of the brain appear to make functional contributions to the construction of meaning, and should therefore be incorporated into models of the neurocognitive architecture of language.

  5. Flexibility in embodied language understanding

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roel M Willems

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Do people use sensori-motor cortices to understand language? Here we review neurocognitive studies of language comprehension in healthy adults and evaluate their possible contributions to theories of language in the brain. We start by sketching the minimal predictions that an embodied theory of language understanding makes for empirical research, and then survey studies that have been offered as evidence for embodied semantic representations. We explore four debated issues: first, does activation of sensori-motor cortices during action language understanding imply that action semantics relies on mirror neurons? Second, what is the evidence that activity in sensori-motor cortices plays a functional role in understanding language? Third, to what extent do responses in perceptual and motor areas depend on the linguistic and extra-linguistic context? And finally, can embodied theories accommodate language about abstract concepts? Based on the available evidence, we conclude that sensori-motor cortices are activated during a variety of language comprehension tasks, for both concrete and abstract language. Yet, this activity depends on the context in which perception and action words are encountered. Although modality-specific cortical activity is not a sine qua non of language processing even for language about perception and action, sensori-motor regions of the brain appear to make functional contributions to the construction of meaning, and should therefore be incorporated into models of the neurocognitive architecture of language.

  6. Impact of cognitive function and dysarthria on spoken language and perceived speech severity in multiple sclerosis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feenaughty, Lynda

    Purpose: The current study sought to investigate the separate effects of dysarthria and cognitive status on global speech timing, speech hesitation, and linguistic complexity characteristics and how these speech behaviors impose on listener impressions for three connected speech tasks presumed to differ in cognitive-linguistic demand for four carefully defined speaker groups; 1) MS with cognitive deficits (MSCI), 2) MS with clinically diagnosed dysarthria and intact cognition (MSDYS), 3) MS without dysarthria or cognitive deficits (MS), and 4) healthy talkers (CON). The relationship between neuropsychological test scores and speech-language production and perceptual variables for speakers with cognitive deficits was also explored. Methods: 48 speakers, including 36 individuals reporting a neurological diagnosis of MS and 12 healthy talkers participated. The three MS groups and control group each contained 12 speakers (8 women and 4 men). Cognitive function was quantified using standard clinical tests of memory, information processing speed, and executive function. A standard z-score of ≤ -1.50 indicated deficits in a given cognitive domain. Three certified speech-language pathologists determined the clinical diagnosis of dysarthria for speakers with MS. Experimental speech tasks of interest included audio-recordings of an oral reading of the Grandfather passage and two spontaneous speech samples in the form of Familiar and Unfamiliar descriptive discourse. Various measures of spoken language were of interest. Suprasegmental acoustic measures included speech and articulatory rate. Linguistic speech hesitation measures included pause frequency (i.e., silent and filled pauses), mean silent pause duration, grammatical appropriateness of pauses, and interjection frequency. For the two discourse samples, three standard measures of language complexity were obtained including subordination index, inter-sentence cohesion adequacy, and lexical diversity. Ten listeners

  7. A Multilingual Approach to Analysing Standardized Test Results: Immigrant Primary School Children and the Role of Languages Spoken in a Bi-/Multilingual Community

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Angelis, Gessica

    2014-01-01

    The present study adopts a multilingual approach to analysing the standardized test results of primary school immigrant children living in the bi-/multilingual context of South Tyrol, Italy. The standardized test results are from the Invalsi test administered across Italy in 2009/2010. In South Tyrol, several languages are spoken on a daily basis…

  8. Speech perception and reading: two parallel modes of understanding language and implications for acquiring literacy naturally.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Massaro, Dominic W

    2012-01-01

    I review 2 seminal research reports published in this journal during its second decade more than a century ago. Given psychology's subdisciplines, they would not normally be reviewed together because one involves reading and the other speech perception. The small amount of interaction between these domains might have limited research and theoretical progress. In fact, the 2 early research reports revealed common processes involved in these 2 forms of language processing. Their illustration of the role of Wundt's apperceptive process in reading and speech perception anticipated descriptions of contemporary theories of pattern recognition, such as the fuzzy logical model of perception. Based on the commonalities between reading and listening, one can question why they have been viewed so differently. It is commonly believed that learning to read requires formal instruction and schooling, whereas spoken language is acquired from birth onward through natural interactions with people who talk. Most researchers and educators believe that spoken language is acquired naturally from birth onward and even prenatally. Learning to read, on the other hand, is not possible until the child has acquired spoken language, reaches school age, and receives formal instruction. If an appropriate form of written text is made available early in a child's life, however, the current hypothesis is that reading will also be learned inductively and emerge naturally, with no significant negative consequences. If this proposal is true, it should soon be possible to create an interactive system, Technology Assisted Reading Acquisition, to allow children to acquire literacy naturally.

  9. Does it really matter whether students' contributions are spoken versus typed in an intelligent tutoring system with natural language?

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Mello, Sidney K; Dowell, Nia; Graesser, Arthur

    2011-03-01

    There is the question of whether learning differs when students speak versus type their responses when interacting with intelligent tutoring systems with natural language dialogues. Theoretical bases exist for three contrasting hypotheses. The speech facilitation hypothesis predicts that spoken input will increase learning, whereas the text facilitation hypothesis predicts typed input will be superior. The modality equivalence hypothesis claims that learning gains will be equivalent. Previous experiments that tested these hypotheses were confounded by automated speech recognition systems with substantial error rates that were detected by learners. We addressed this concern in two experiments via a Wizard of Oz procedure, where a human intercepted the learner's speech and transcribed the utterances before submitting them to the tutor. The overall pattern of the results supported the following conclusions: (1) learning gains associated with spoken and typed input were on par and quantitatively higher than a no-intervention control, (2) participants' evaluations of the session were not influenced by modality, and (3) there were no modality effects associated with differences in prior knowledge and typing proficiency. Although the results generally support the modality equivalence hypothesis, highly motivated learners reported lower cognitive load and demonstrated increased learning when typing compared with speaking. We discuss the implications of our findings for intelligent tutoring systems that can support typed and spoken input.

  10. Gesture, sign, and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Brentari, Diane

    2017-01-01

    How does sign language compare with gesture, on the one hand, and spoken language on the other? Sign was once viewed as nothing more than a system of pictorial gestures without linguistic structure. More recently, researchers have argued that sign is no different from spoken language, with all of the same linguistic structures. The pendulum is currently swinging back toward the view that sign is gestural, or at least has gestural components. The goal of this review is to elucidate the relationships among sign language, gesture, and spoken language. We do so by taking a close look not only at how sign has been studied over the past 50 years, but also at how the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech have been studied. We conclude that signers gesture just as speakers do. Both produce imagistic gestures along with more categorical signs or words. Because at present it is difficult to tell where sign stops and gesture begins, we suggest that sign should not be compared with speech alone but should be compared with speech-plus-gesture. Although it might be easier (and, in some cases, preferable) to blur the distinction between sign and gesture, we argue that distinguishing between sign (or speech) and gesture is essential to predict certain types of learning and allows us to understand the conditions under which gesture takes on properties of sign, and speech takes on properties of gesture. We end by calling for new technology that may help us better calibrate the borders between sign and gesture.

  11. Development and Relationships Between Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness and Word Reading in Spoken and Standard Arabic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rachel Schiff

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available This study addressed the development of and the relationship between foundational metalinguistic skills and word reading skills in Arabic. It compared Arabic-speaking children’s phonological awareness (PA, morphological awareness, and voweled and unvoweled word reading skills in spoken and standard language varieties separately in children across five grade levels from childhood to adolescence. Second, it investigated whether skills developed in the spoken variety of Arabic predict reading in the standard variety. Results indicate that although individual differences between students in PA are eliminated toward the end of elementary school in both spoken and standard language varieties, gaps in morphological awareness and in reading skills persisted through junior and high school years. The results also show that the gap in reading accuracy and fluency between Spoken Arabic (SpA and Standard Arabic (StA was evident in both voweled and unvoweled words. Finally, regression analyses showed that morphological awareness in SpA contributed to reading fluency in StA, i.e., children’s early morphological awareness in SpA explained variance in children’s gains in reading fluency in StA. These findings have important theoretical and practical contributions for Arabic reading theory in general and they extend the previous work regarding the cross-linguistic relevance of foundational metalinguistic skills in the first acquired language to reading in a second language, as in societal bilingualism contexts, or a second language variety, as in diglossic contexts.

  12. Development and Relationships Between Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness and Word Reading in Spoken and Standard Arabic

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schiff, Rachel; Saiegh-Haddad, Elinor

    2018-01-01

    This study addressed the development of and the relationship between foundational metalinguistic skills and word reading skills in Arabic. It compared Arabic-speaking children’s phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness, and voweled and unvoweled word reading skills in spoken and standard language varieties separately in children across five grade levels from childhood to adolescence. Second, it investigated whether skills developed in the spoken variety of Arabic predict reading in the standard variety. Results indicate that although individual differences between students in PA are eliminated toward the end of elementary school in both spoken and standard language varieties, gaps in morphological awareness and in reading skills persisted through junior and high school years. The results also show that the gap in reading accuracy and fluency between Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA) was evident in both voweled and unvoweled words. Finally, regression analyses showed that morphological awareness in SpA contributed to reading fluency in StA, i.e., children’s early morphological awareness in SpA explained variance in children’s gains in reading fluency in StA. These findings have important theoretical and practical contributions for Arabic reading theory in general and they extend the previous work regarding the cross-linguistic relevance of foundational metalinguistic skills in the first acquired language to reading in a second language, as in societal bilingualism contexts, or a second language variety, as in diglossic contexts. PMID:29686633

  13. Early Sign Language Exposure and Cochlear Implantation Benefits.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geers, Ann E; Mitchell, Christine M; Warner-Czyz, Andrea; Wang, Nae-Yuh; Eisenberg, Laurie S

    2017-07-01

    Most children with hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CI) learn spoken language, and parents must choose early on whether to use sign language to accompany speech at home. We address whether parents' use of sign language before and after CI positively influences auditory-only speech recognition, speech intelligibility, spoken language, and reading outcomes. Three groups of children with CIs from a nationwide database who differed in the duration of early sign language exposure provided in their homes were compared in their progress through elementary grades. The groups did not differ in demographic, auditory, or linguistic characteristics before implantation. Children without early sign language exposure achieved better speech recognition skills over the first 3 years postimplant and exhibited a statistically significant advantage in spoken language and reading near the end of elementary grades over children exposed to sign language. Over 70% of children without sign language exposure achieved age-appropriate spoken language compared with only 39% of those exposed for 3 or more years. Early speech perception predicted speech intelligibility in middle elementary grades. Children without sign language exposure produced speech that was more intelligible (mean = 70%) than those exposed to sign language (mean = 51%). This study provides the most compelling support yet available in CI literature for the benefits of spoken language input for promoting verbal development in children implanted by 3 years of age. Contrary to earlier published assertions, there was no advantage to parents' use of sign language either before or after CI. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  14. Advances in natural language processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirschberg, Julia; Manning, Christopher D

    2015-07-17

    Natural language processing employs computational techniques for the purpose of learning, understanding, and producing human language content. Early computational approaches to language research focused on automating the analysis of the linguistic structure of language and developing basic technologies such as machine translation, speech recognition, and speech synthesis. Today's researchers refine and make use of such tools in real-world applications, creating spoken dialogue systems and speech-to-speech translation engines, mining social media for information about health or finance, and identifying sentiment and emotion toward products and services. We describe successes and challenges in this rapidly advancing area. Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  15. Birds, primates, and spoken language origins: behavioral phenotypes and neurobiological substrates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petkov, Christopher I; Jarvis, Erich D

    2012-01-01

    Vocal learners such as humans and songbirds can learn to produce elaborate patterns of structurally organized vocalizations, whereas many other vertebrates such as non-human primates and most other bird groups either cannot or do so to a very limited degree. To explain the similarities among humans and vocal-learning birds and the differences with other species, various theories have been proposed. One set of theories are motor theories, which underscore the role of the motor system as an evolutionary substrate for vocal production learning. For instance, the motor theory of speech and song perception proposes enhanced auditory perceptual learning of speech in humans and song in birds, which suggests a considerable level of neurobiological specialization. Another, a motor theory of vocal learning origin, proposes that the brain pathways that control the learning and production of song and speech were derived from adjacent motor brain pathways. Another set of theories are cognitive theories, which address the interface between cognition and the auditory-vocal domains to support language learning in humans. Here we critically review the behavioral and neurobiological evidence for parallels and differences between the so-called vocal learners and vocal non-learners in the context of motor and cognitive theories. In doing so, we note that behaviorally vocal-production learning abilities are more distributed than categorical, as are the auditory-learning abilities of animals. We propose testable hypotheses on the extent of the specializations and cross-species correspondences suggested by motor and cognitive theories. We believe that determining how spoken language evolved is likely to become clearer with concerted efforts in testing comparative data from many non-human animal species.

  16. The Road to Language Learning Is Not Entirely Iconic: Iconicity, Neighborhood Density, and Frequency Facilitate Acquisition of Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caselli, Naomi K; Pyers, Jennie E

    2017-07-01

    Iconic mappings between words and their meanings are far more prevalent than once estimated and seem to support children's acquisition of new words, spoken or signed. We asked whether iconicity's prevalence in sign language overshadows two other factors known to support the acquisition of spoken vocabulary: neighborhood density (the number of lexical items phonologically similar to the target) and lexical frequency. Using mixed-effects logistic regressions, we reanalyzed 58 parental reports of native-signing deaf children's productive acquisition of 332 signs in American Sign Language (ASL; Anderson & Reilly, 2002) and found that iconicity, neighborhood density, and lexical frequency independently facilitated vocabulary acquisition. Despite differences in iconicity and phonological structure between signed and spoken language, signing children, like children learning a spoken language, track statistical information about lexical items and their phonological properties and leverage this information to expand their vocabulary.

  17. The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morales, Luis; Paolieri, Daniela; Dussias, Paola E.; Valdés kroff, Jorge R.; Gerfen, Chip; Bajo, María Teresa

    2016-01-01

    We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed. PMID:28018132

  18. Language Development: Understanding Language Diversity in the Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levey, Sandra; Polirstok, Susan

    2010-01-01

    Language Development: Understanding Language Diversity in the Classroom offers comprehensive coverage of the language development process for pre- and in-service teachers while emphasizing the factors that further academic success in the classroom, including literacy skills, phonological awareness, and narrative. With chapters written by respected…

  19. Phase transition in a sexual age-structured model of learning foreign languages

    OpenAIRE

    Schwammle, Veit

    2005-01-01

    The understanding of language competition helps us to predict extinction and survival of languages spoken by minorities. A simple agent-based model of a sexual population, based on the Penna model, is built in order to find out under which circumstances one language dominates other ones. This model considers that only young people learn foreign languages. The simulations show a first order phase transition where the ratio between the number of speakers of different languages is the order para...

  20. Music and Early Language Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brandt, Anthony; Gebrian, Molly; Slevc, L. Robert

    2012-01-01

    Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability – one dependent on or derivative of language. In contrast, we argue that it is more productive from a developmental perspective to describe spoken language as a special type of music. A review of existing studies presents a compelling case that musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition. In addition, we challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language and is more difficult; instead, we argue that music learning matches the speed and effort of language acquisition. We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development. PMID:22973254

  1. Serbian heritage language schools in the Netherlands through the eyes of the parents

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Palmen, Andrej

    It is difficult to find the exact number of other languages spoken besides Dutch in the Netherlands. A study showed that a total of 96 other languages are spoken by students attending Dutch primary and secondary schools. The variety of languages spoken shows the growth of linguistic diversity in the

  2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE (ASL AND BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE (BSL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zora JACHOVA

    2008-06-01

    Full Text Available In the communication of deaf people between them­selves and hearing people there are three ba­sic as­pects of interaction: gesture, finger signs and writing. The gesture is a conditionally agreed manner of communication with the help of the hands followed by face and body mimic. The ges­ture and the move­ments pre-exist the speech and they had the purpose to mark something, and later to emphasize the speech expression.Stokoe was the first linguist that realised that the signs are not a whole that can not be analysed. He analysed signs in insignificant parts that he called “chemeres”, and many linguists today call them pho­nemes. He created three main phoneme catego­ries: hand position, location and movement.Sign languages as spoken languages have back­ground from the distant past. They developed par­allel with the development of spoken language and undertook many historical changes. Therefore, to­day they do not represent a replacement of the spoken language, but are languages themselves in the real sense of the word.Although the structures of the English language used in USA and in Great Britain is the same, still their sign languages-ASL and BSL are different.

  3. Rapid modulation of spoken word recognition by visual primes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J

    2016-02-01

    In a masked cross-modal priming experiment with ERP recordings, spoken Japanese words were primed with words written in one of the two syllabary scripts of Japanese. An early priming effect, peaking at around 200ms after onset of the spoken word target, was seen in left lateral electrode sites for Katakana primes, and later effects were seen for both Hiragana and Katakana primes on the N400 ERP component. The early effect is thought to reflect the efficiency with which words in Katakana script make contact with sublexical phonological representations involved in spoken language comprehension, due to the particular way this script is used by Japanese readers. This demonstrates fast-acting influences of visual primes on the processing of auditory target words, and suggests that briefly presented visual primes can influence sublexical processing of auditory target words. The later N400 priming effects, on the other hand, most likely reflect cross-modal influences on activity at the level of whole-word phonology and semantics.

  4. Lexicon Optimization for Dutch Speech Recognition in Spoken Document Retrieval

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.

    In this paper, ongoing work concerning the language modelling and lexicon optimization of a Dutch speech recognition system for Spoken Document Retrieval is described: the collection and normalization of a training data set and the optimization of our recognition lexicon. Effects on lexical coverage

  5. Lexicon optimization for Dutch speech recognition in spoken document retrieval

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Dalsgaard, P.; Lindberg, B.; Benner, H.

    2001-01-01

    In this paper, ongoing work concerning the language modelling and lexicon optimization of a Dutch speech recognition system for Spoken Document Retrieval is described: the collection and normalization of a training data set and the optimization of our recognition lexicon. Effects on lexical coverage

  6. Automated Metadata Extraction for Semantic Access to Spoken Word Archives

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Heeren, W.F.L.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Nijholt, Antinus; Ruiz Miyares, L.; Alvarez Silva, M.R.

    2011-01-01

    Archival practice is shifting from the analogue to the digital world. A specific subset of heritage collections that impose interesting challenges for the field of language and speech technology are spoken word archives. Given the enormous backlog at audiovisual archives of unannotated materials and

  7. L[subscript 1] and L[subscript 2] Spoken Word Processing: Evidence from Divided Attention Paradigm

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafiee Nahrkhalaji, Saeedeh; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza; Koosha, Mansour

    2016-01-01

    The present study aims to reveal some facts concerning first language (L[subscript 1]) and second language (L[subscript 2]) spoken-word processing in unbalanced proficient bilinguals using behavioral measures. The intention here is to examine the effects of auditory repetition word priming and semantic priming in first and second languages of…

  8. Inuit Sign Language: a contribution to sign language typology

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schuit, J.; Baker, A.; Pfau, R.

    2011-01-01

    Sign language typology is a fairly new research field and typological classifications have yet to be established. For spoken languages, these classifications are generally based on typological parameters; it would thus be desirable to establish these for sign languages. In this paper, different

  9. Enhancing Foreign Language Learning through Listening Strategies Delivered in L1: An Experimental Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bozorgian, Hossein; Pillay, Hitendra

    2013-01-01

    Listening used in language teaching refers to a complex process that allows us to understand spoken language. The current study, conducted in Iran with an experimental design, investigated the effectiveness of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1 (Persian) and its effect on listening comprehension in L2. Five listening strategies:…

  10. Spoken language identification based on the enhanced self-adjusting extreme learning machine approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tiun, Sabrina; AL-Dhief, Fahad Taha; Sammour, Mahmoud A. M.

    2018-01-01

    Spoken Language Identification (LID) is the process of determining and classifying natural language from a given content and dataset. Typically, data must be processed to extract useful features to perform LID. The extracting features for LID, based on literature, is a mature process where the standard features for LID have already been developed using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC), the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and ending with the i-vector based framework. However, the process of learning based on extract features remains to be improved (i.e. optimised) to capture all embedded knowledge on the extracted features. The Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is an effective learning model used to perform classification and regression analysis and is extremely useful to train a single hidden layer neural network. Nevertheless, the learning process of this model is not entirely effective (i.e. optimised) due to the random selection of weights within the input hidden layer. In this study, the ELM is selected as a learning model for LID based on standard feature extraction. One of the optimisation approaches of ELM, the Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine (SA-ELM) is selected as the benchmark and improved by altering the selection phase of the optimisation process. The selection process is performed incorporating both the Split-Ratio and K-Tournament methods, the improved SA-ELM is named Enhanced Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine (ESA-ELM). The results are generated based on LID with the datasets created from eight different languages. The results of the study showed excellent superiority relating to the performance of the Enhanced Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine LID (ESA-ELM LID) compared with the SA-ELM LID, with ESA-ELM LID achieving an accuracy of 96.25%, as compared to the accuracy of SA-ELM LID of only 95.00%. PMID:29672546

  11. Spoken language identification based on the enhanced self-adjusting extreme learning machine approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Albadr, Musatafa Abbas Abbood; Tiun, Sabrina; Al-Dhief, Fahad Taha; Sammour, Mahmoud A M

    2018-01-01

    Spoken Language Identification (LID) is the process of determining and classifying natural language from a given content and dataset. Typically, data must be processed to extract useful features to perform LID. The extracting features for LID, based on literature, is a mature process where the standard features for LID have already been developed using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Shifted Delta Cepstral (SDC), the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and ending with the i-vector based framework. However, the process of learning based on extract features remains to be improved (i.e. optimised) to capture all embedded knowledge on the extracted features. The Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is an effective learning model used to perform classification and regression analysis and is extremely useful to train a single hidden layer neural network. Nevertheless, the learning process of this model is not entirely effective (i.e. optimised) due to the random selection of weights within the input hidden layer. In this study, the ELM is selected as a learning model for LID based on standard feature extraction. One of the optimisation approaches of ELM, the Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine (SA-ELM) is selected as the benchmark and improved by altering the selection phase of the optimisation process. The selection process is performed incorporating both the Split-Ratio and K-Tournament methods, the improved SA-ELM is named Enhanced Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine (ESA-ELM). The results are generated based on LID with the datasets created from eight different languages. The results of the study showed excellent superiority relating to the performance of the Enhanced Self-Adjusting Extreme Learning Machine LID (ESA-ELM LID) compared with the SA-ELM LID, with ESA-ELM LID achieving an accuracy of 96.25%, as compared to the accuracy of SA-ELM LID of only 95.00%.

  12. Predictors of spoken language development following pediatric cochlear implantation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boons, Tinne; Brokx, Jan P L; Dhooge, Ingeborg; Frijns, Johan H M; Peeraer, Louis; Vermeulen, Anneke; Wouters, Jan; van Wieringen, Astrid

    2012-01-01

    regression model accounted for 52% of the variance in receptive language scores and 58% of the variance in expressive language scores. On the basis of language test scores of this large group of children, an LQ of 0.60 or lower was considered a risk criterion for problematic language development compared with other deaf children using CIs. Children attaining LQs below 0.60 should be monitored more closely and perhaps their rehabilitation programs should be reconsidered. Improved language outcomes were related to implantation under the age of two, contralateral stimulation, monolingualism, sufficient involvement of the parents, and oral communication by the parents. The presence of an additional learning disability had a negative influence on language development. Understanding these causes of variation can help clinicians and parents to create the best possible circumstances for children with CIs to acquire language.

  13. Approaches for Language Identification in Mismatched Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-09-08

    domain adaptation, unsupervised learning , deep neural networks, bottleneck features 1. Introduction and task Spoken language identification (LID) is...the process of identifying the language in a spoken speech utterance. In recent years, great improvements in LID system performance have been seen...be the case in practice. Lastly, we conduct an out-of-set experiment where VoA data from 9 other languages (Amharic, Creole, Croatian, English

  14. Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschool Children With Hearing Loss Who Use Spoken Language: Initial Findings From the Early Language and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA) Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Werfel, Krystal L

    2017-10-05

    The purpose of this study was to compare change in emergent literacy skills of preschool children with and without hearing loss over a 6-month period. Participants included 19 children with hearing loss and 14 children with normal hearing. Children with hearing loss used amplification and spoken language. Participants completed measures of oral language, phonological processing, and print knowledge twice at a 6-month interval. A series of repeated-measures analyses of variance were used to compare change across groups. Main effects of time were observed for all variables except phonological recoding. Main effects of group were observed for vocabulary, morphosyntax, phonological memory, and concepts of print. Interaction effects were observed for phonological awareness and concepts of print. Children with hearing loss performed more poorly than children with normal hearing on measures of oral language, phonological memory, and conceptual print knowledge. Two interaction effects were present. For phonological awareness and concepts of print, children with hearing loss demonstrated less positive change than children with normal hearing. Although children with hearing loss generally demonstrated a positive growth in emergent literacy skills, their initial performance was lower than that of children with normal hearing, and rates of change were not sufficient to catch up to the peers over time.

  15. Visual Sonority Modulates Infants' Attraction to Sign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stone, Adam; Petitto, Laura-Ann; Bosworth, Rain

    2018-01-01

    The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing…

  16. "We communicated that way for a reason": language practices and language ideologies among hearing adults whose parents are deaf.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pizer, Ginger; Walters, Keith; Meier, Richard P

    2013-01-01

    Families with deaf parents and hearing children are often bilingual and bimodal, with both a spoken language and a signed one in regular use among family members. When interviewed, 13 American hearing adults with deaf parents reported widely varying language practices, sign language abilities, and social affiliations with Deaf and Hearing communities. Despite this variation, the interviewees' moral judgments of their own and others' communicative behavior suggest that these adults share a language ideology concerning the obligation of all family members to expend effort to overcome potential communication barriers. To our knowledge, such a language ideology is not similarly pervasive among spoken-language bilingual families, raising the question of whether there is something unique about family bimodal bilingualism that imposes different rights and responsibilities on family members than spoken-language family bilingualism does. This ideology unites an otherwise diverse group of interviewees, where each one preemptively denied being a "typical CODA [children of deaf adult]."

  17. What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: The Risk of Language Deprivation by Impairing Sign Language Development in Deaf Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, Wyatte C

    2017-05-01

    A long-standing belief is that sign language interferes with spoken language development in deaf children, despite a chronic lack of evidence supporting this belief. This deserves discussion as poor life outcomes continue to be seen in the deaf population. This commentary synthesizes research outcomes with signing and non-signing children and highlights fully accessible language as a protective factor for healthy development. Brain changes associated with language deprivation may be misrepresented as sign language interfering with spoken language outcomes of cochlear implants. This may lead to professionals and organizations advocating for preventing sign language exposure before implantation and spreading misinformation. The existence of one-time-sensitive-language acquisition window means a strong possibility of permanent brain changes when spoken language is not fully accessible to the deaf child and sign language exposure is delayed, as is often standard practice. There is no empirical evidence for the harm of sign language exposure but there is some evidence for its benefits, and there is growing evidence that lack of language access has negative implications. This includes cognitive delays, mental health difficulties, lower quality of life, higher trauma, and limited health literacy. Claims of cochlear implant- and spoken language-only approaches being more effective than sign language-inclusive approaches are not empirically supported. Cochlear implants are an unreliable standalone first-language intervention for deaf children. Priorities of deaf child development should focus on healthy growth of all developmental domains through a fully-accessible first language foundation such as sign language, rather than auditory deprivation and speech skills.

  18. Spoken sentence production in college students with dyslexia: working memory and vocabulary effects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiseheart, Rebecca; Altmann, Lori J P

    2018-03-01

    Individuals with dyslexia demonstrate syntactic difficulties on tasks of language comprehension, yet little is known about spoken language production in this population. To investigate whether spoken sentence production in college students with dyslexia is less proficient than in typical readers, and to determine whether group differences can be attributable to cognitive differences between groups. Fifty-one college students with and without dyslexia were asked to produce sentences from stimuli comprising a verb and two nouns. Verb types varied in argument structure and morphological form and nouns varied in animacy. Outcome measures were precision (measured by fluency, grammaticality and completeness) and efficiency (measured by response times). Vocabulary and working memory tests were also administered and used as predictors of sentence production performance. Relative to non-dyslexic peers, students with dyslexia responded significantly slower and produced sentences that were significantly less precise in terms of fluency, grammaticality and completeness. The primary predictors of precision and efficiency were working memory, which differed between groups, and vocabulary, which did not. College students with dyslexia were significantly less facile and flexible on this spoken sentence-production task than typical readers, which is consistent with previous studies of school-age children with dyslexia. Group differences in performance were traced primarily to limited working memory, and were somewhat mitigated by strong vocabulary. © 2017 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

  19. A Comparison between Written and Spoken Narratives in Aphasia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Behrns, Ingrid; Wengelin, Asa; Broberg, Malin; Hartelius, Lena

    2009-01-01

    The aim of the present study was to explore how a personal narrative told by a group of eight persons with aphasia differed between written and spoken language, and to compare this with findings from 10 participants in a reference group. The stories were analysed through holistic assessments made by 60 participants without experience of aphasia…

  20. 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

  1. The road to language learning is iconic: evidence from British Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Robin L; Vinson, David P; Woll, Bencie; Vigliocco, Gabriella

    2012-12-01

    An arbitrary link between linguistic form and meaning is generally considered a universal feature of language. However, iconic (i.e., nonarbitrary) mappings between properties of meaning and features of linguistic form are also widely present across languages, especially signed languages. Although recent research has shown a role for sign iconicity in language processing, research on the role of iconicity in sign-language development has been mixed. In this article, we present clear evidence that iconicity plays a role in sign-language acquisition for both the comprehension and production of signs. Signed languages were taken as a starting point because they tend to encode a higher degree of iconic form-meaning mappings in their lexicons than spoken languages do, but our findings are more broadly applicable: Specifically, we hypothesize that iconicity is fundamental to all languages (signed and spoken) and that it serves to bridge the gap between linguistic form and human experience.

  2. On the Conventionalization of Mouth Actions in Australian Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, Trevor; van Roekel, Jane; Schembri, Adam

    2016-03-01

    This study investigates the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Signed languages were once thought of as simply manual languages because the hands produce the signs which individually and in groups are the symbolic units most easily equated with the words, phrases and clauses of spoken languages. However, it has long been acknowledged that non-manual activity, such as movements of the body, head and the face play a very important role. In this context, mouth actions that occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of questions for linguists: are the silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the respective majority community spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of spoken words conventionalized linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-conventional gestural units shared by signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even gestures and expressions common to all humans? We use a corpus-based approach to gather evidence of the extent of the use of mouth actions in naturalistic Australian Sign Language-making comparisons with other signed languages where data is available--and the form/meaning pairings that these mouth actions instantiate.

  3. MINORITY LANGUAGES IN ESTONIAN SEGREGATIVE LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elvira Küün

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The goal of this project in Estonia was to determine what languages are spoken by students from the 2nd to the 5th year of basic school at their homes in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. At the same time, this problem was also studied in other segregated regions of Estonia: Kohtla-Järve and Maardu. According to the database of the population census from the year 2000 (Estonian Statistics Executive Office's census 2000, there are representatives of 142 ethnic groups living in Estonia, speaking a total of 109 native languages. At the same time, the database doesn’t state which languages are spoken at homes. The material presented in this article belongs to the research topic “Home Language of Basic School Students in Tallinn” from years 2007–2008, specifically financed and ordered by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (grant No. ETF 7065 in the framework of an international study called “Multilingual Project”. It was determined what language is dominating in everyday use, what are the factors for choosing the language for communication, what are the preferred languages and language skills. This study reflects the actual trends of the language situation in these cities.

  4. The benefits of sign language for deaf learners with language challenges

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Van Staden, Annalene

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available This article argues the importance of allowing deaf children to acquire sign language from an early age. It demonstrates firstly that the critical/sensitive period hypothesis for language acquisition can be applied to specific language aspects of spoken language as well as sign languages (i.e. phonology, grammatical processing and syntax. This makes early diagnosis and early intervention of crucial importance. Moreover, research findings presented in this article demonstrate the advantage that sign language offers in the early years of a deaf child’s life by comparing the language development milestones of deaf learners exposed to sign language from birth to those of late-signers, orally trained deaf learners and hearing learners exposed to spoken language. The controversy over the best medium of instruction for deaf learners is briefly discussed, with emphasis placed on the possible value of bilingual-bicultural programmes to facilitate the development of deaf learners’ literacy skills. Finally, this paper concludes with a discussion of the implications/recommendations of sign language teaching and Deaf education in South Africa.

  5. Bilingualism alters brain functional connectivity between "control" regions and "language" regions: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Le; Abutalebi, Jubin; Zou, Lijuan; Yan, Xin; Liu, Lanfang; Feng, Xiaoxia; Wang, Ruiming; Guo, Taomei; Ding, Guosheng

    2015-05-01

    Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed that bilingualism induces both structural and functional neuroplasticity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the left caudate nucleus (LCN), both of which are associated with cognitive control. Since these "control" regions should work together with other language regions during language processing, we hypothesized that bilingualism may also alter the functional interaction between the dACC/LCN and language regions. Here we tested this hypothesis by exploring the functional connectivity (FC) in bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals using functional MRI when they either performed a picture naming task with spoken language or were in resting state. We found that for bimodal bilinguals who use spoken and sign languages, the FC of the dACC with regions involved in spoken language (e.g. the left superior temporal gyrus) was stronger in performing the task, but weaker in the resting state as compared to monolinguals. For the LCN, its intrinsic FC with sign language regions including the left inferior temporo-occipital part and right inferior and superior parietal lobules was increased in the bilinguals. These results demonstrate that bilingual experience may alter the brain functional interaction between "control" regions and "language" regions. For different control regions, the FC alters in different ways. The findings also deepen our understanding of the functional roles of the dACC and LCN in language processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. A Prerequisite to L1 Homophone Effects in L2 Spoken-Word Recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nakai, Satsuki; Lindsay, Shane; Ota, Mitsuhiko

    2015-01-01

    When both members of a phonemic contrast in L2 (second language) are perceptually mapped to a single phoneme in one's L1 (first language), L2 words containing a member of that contrast can spuriously activate L2 words in spoken-word recognition. For example, upon hearing cattle, Dutch speakers of English are reported to experience activation…

  7. Language Games and Musical Understanding

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alessandro Arbo

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Wittgenstein has often explored language games that have to do with musical objects of different sizes (phrases, themes, formal sections or entire works. These games can refer to a technical language or to common parlance and correspond to different targets. One of these coincides with the intention to suggest a way of conceiving musical understanding. His model takes the form of the invitation to "hear (something as (something": typically, to hear a musical passage as an introduction or as a conclusion or in a certain tonality. However one may ask to what extent or in what terms (literal or metaphorical these procedures, and usually the intervention of language games, is requested by our common ways of understanding music. This article shows through the use of some examples that aspectual perception inherent to musical understanding does not require language games as a necessary condition (although in many cases the link between them seems very strong, in contradiction with the thesis of an essential linguistic character of music. At a basic level, it seems more appropriate to insist on the notion of a game: to understand music means to enter into the orbit of "music games" which show an autonomous functioning. Language games have, however, an important function when we develop this comprehension in the light of the criteria of judgment that substantiate the manner in which music is incorporated in and operates within specific forms of life.

  8. Phonological Sketch of the Sida Language of Luang Namtha, Laos

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nathan Badenoch

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes the phonology of the Sida language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by approximately 3,900 people in Laos and Vietnam. The data presented here are the variety spoken in Luang Namtha province of northwestern Laos, and focuses on a synchronic description of the fundamentals of the Sida phonological systems. Several issues of diachronic interest are also discussed in the context of the diversity of the Southern Loloish group of languages, many of which are spoken in Laos and have not yet been described in detail.

  9. Spoken word recognition without a TRACE

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hannagan, Thomas; Magnuson, James S.; Grainger, Jonathan

    2013-01-01

    How do we map the rapid input of spoken language onto phonological and lexical representations over time? Attempts at psychologically-tractable computational models of spoken word recognition tend either to ignore time or to transform the temporal input into a spatial representation. TRACE, a connectionist model with broad and deep coverage of speech perception and spoken word recognition phenomena, takes the latter approach, using exclusively time-specific units at every level of representation. TRACE reduplicates featural, phonemic, and lexical inputs at every time step in a large memory trace, with rich interconnections (excitatory forward and backward connections between levels and inhibitory links within levels). As the length of the memory trace is increased, or as the phoneme and lexical inventory of the model is increased to a realistic size, this reduplication of time- (temporal position) specific units leads to a dramatic proliferation of units and connections, begging the question of whether a more efficient approach is possible. Our starting point is the observation that models of visual object recognition—including visual word recognition—have grappled with the problem of spatial invariance, and arrived at solutions other than a fully-reduplicative strategy like that of TRACE. This inspires a new model of spoken word recognition that combines time-specific phoneme representations similar to those in TRACE with higher-level representations based on string kernels: temporally independent (time invariant) diphone and lexical units. This reduces the number of necessary units and connections by several orders of magnitude relative to TRACE. Critically, we compare the new model to TRACE on a set of key phenomena, demonstrating that the new model inherits much of the behavior of TRACE and that the drastic computational savings do not come at the cost of explanatory power. PMID:24058349

  10. The relationship between spoken English proficiency and participation in higher education, employment and income from two Australian censuses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blake, Helen L; Mcleod, Sharynne; Verdon, Sarah; Fuller, Gail

    2018-04-01

    Proficiency in the language of the country of residence has implications for an individual's level of education, employability, income and social integration. This paper explores the relationship between the spoken English proficiency of residents of Australia on census day and their educational level, employment and income to provide insight into multilingual speakers' ability to participate in Australia as an English-dominant society. Data presented are derived from two Australian censuses i.e. 2006 and 2011 of over 19 million people. The proportion of Australians who reported speaking a language other than English at home was 21.5% in the 2006 census and 23.2% in the 2011 census. Multilingual speakers who also spoke English very well were more likely to have post-graduate qualifications, full-time employment and high income than monolingual English-speaking Australians. However, multilingual speakers who reported speaking English not well were much less likely to have post-graduate qualifications or full-time employment than monolingual English-speaking Australians. These findings provide insight into the socioeconomic and educational profiles of multilingual speakers, which will inform the understanding of people such as speech-language pathologists who provide them with support. The results indicate spoken English proficiency may impact participation in Australian society. These findings challenge the "monolingual mindset" by demonstrating that outcomes for multilingual speakers in education, employment and income are higher than for monolingual speakers.

  11. Long-term memory traces for familiar spoken words in tonal languages as revealed by the Mismatch Negativity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Naiphinich Kotchabhakdi

    2004-11-01

    Full Text Available Mismatch negativity (MMN, a primary response to an acoustic change and an index of sensory memory, was used to investigate the processing of the discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar Consonant-Vowel (CV speech contrasts. The MMN was elicited by rare familiar words presented among repetitive unfamiliar words. Phonetic and phonological contrasts were identical in all conditions. MMN elicited by the familiar word deviant was larger than that elicited by the unfamiliar word deviant. The presence of syllable contrast did significantly alter the word-elicited MMN in amplitude and scalp voltage field distribution. Thus, our results indicate the existence of word-related MMN enhancement largely independent of the word status of the standard stimulus. This enhancement may reflect the presence of a longterm memory trace for familiar spoken words in tonal languages.

  12. How Does the Linguistic Distance Between Spoken and Standard Language in Arabic Affect Recall and Recognition Performances During Verbal Memory Examination.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taha, Haitham

    2017-06-01

    The current research examined how Arabic diglossia affects verbal learning memory. Thirty native Arab college students were tested using auditory verbal memory test that was adapted according to the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and developed in three versions: Pure spoken language version (SL), pure standard language version (SA), and phonologically similar version (PS). The result showed that for immediate free-recall, the performances were better for the SL and the PS conditions compared to the SA one. However, for the parts of delayed recall and recognition, the results did not reveal any significant consistent effect of diglossia. Accordingly, it was suggested that diglossia has a significant effect on the storage and short term memory functions but not on long term memory functions. The results were discussed in light of different approaches in the field of bilingual memory.

  13. 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.

  14. Moving conceptualizations of language and literacy in SLA

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Laursen, Helle Pia

    in various technological environments, we see an increase in scholarship that highlights the mixing and chaining of spoken, written and visual modalities and how written and visual often precede or overrule spoken language. There seems to be a mismatch between current day language practices......, in language education and in language practices. As a consequence of this and in the light of the increasing mobility and linguistic diversity in Europe, in this colloquium, we address the need for a (re)conceptualization of the relation between language and literacy. Drawing on data from different settings...

  15. Effects of Auditory and Visual Priming on the Identification of Spoken Words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shigeno, Sumi

    2017-04-01

    This study examined the effects of preceding contextual stimuli, either auditory or visual, on the identification of spoken target words. Fifty-one participants (29% males, 71% females; mean age = 24.5 years, SD = 8.5) were divided into three groups: no context, auditory context, and visual context. All target stimuli were spoken words masked with white noise. The relationships between the context and target stimuli were as follows: identical word, similar word, and unrelated word. Participants presented with context experienced a sequence of six context stimuli in the form of either spoken words or photographs. Auditory and visual context conditions produced similar results, but the auditory context aided word identification more than the visual context in the similar word relationship. We discuss these results in the light of top-down processing, motor theory, and the phonological system of language.

  16. Automated Scoring of L2 Spoken English with Random Forests

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kobayashi, Yuichiro; Abe, Mariko

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of the present study is to assess second language (L2) spoken English using automated scoring techniques. Automated scoring aims to classify a large set of learners' oral performance data into a small number of discrete oral proficiency levels. In automated scoring, objectively measurable features such as the frequencies of lexical and…

  17. Morphosyntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ravid, Dorit; Zilberbuch, Shoshana

    2003-05-01

    This study examined the distribution of two Hebrew nominal structures-N-N compounds and denominal adjectives-in spoken and written texts of two genres produced by 90 native-speaking participants in three age groups: eleven/twelve-year-olds (6th graders), sixteen/seventeen-year-olds (11th graders), and adults. The two constructions are later linguistic acquisitions, part of the profound lexical and syntactic changes that occur in language development during the school years. They are investigated in the context of learning how modality (speech vs. writing) and genre (biographical vs. expository texts) affect the production of continuous discourse. Participants were asked to speak and write about two topics, one biographical, describing the life of a public figure or of a friend; and another, expository, discussing one of ten topics such as the cinema, cats, or higher academic studies. N-N compounding was found to be the main device of complex subcategorization in Hebrew discourse, unrelated to genre. Denominal adjectives are a secondary subcategorizing device emerging only during the late teen years, a linguistic resource untapped until very late, more restricted to specific text types than N-N compounding, and characteristic of expository writing. Written texts were found to be denser than spoken texts lexically and syntactically as measured by number of novel N-N compounds and denominal adjectives per clause, and in older age groups this difference was found to be more pronounced. The paper contributes to our understanding of how the syntax/lexicon interface changes with age, modality and genre in the context of later language acquisition.

  18. The comprehension skills of children learning English as an additional language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burgoyne, K; Kelly, J M; Whiteley, H E; Spooner, A

    2009-12-01

    Data from national test results suggests that children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) experience relatively lower levels of educational attainment in comparison to their monolingual, English-speaking peers. The relative underachievement of children who are learning EAL demands that the literacy needs of this group are identified. To this end, this study aimed to explore the reading- and comprehension-related skills of a group of EAL learners. Data are reported from 92 Year 3 pupils, of whom 46 children are learning EAL. Children completed standardized measures of reading accuracy and comprehension, listening comprehension, and receptive and expressive vocabulary. Results indicate that many EAL learners experience difficulties in understanding written and spoken text. These comprehension difficulties are not related to decoding problems but are related to significantly lower levels of vocabulary knowledge experienced by this group. Many EAL learners experience significantly lower levels of English vocabulary knowledge which has a significant impact on their ability to understand written and spoken text. Greater emphasis on language development is therefore needed in the school curriculum to attempt to address the limited language skills of children learning EAL.

  19. Monitoring the Performance of Human and Automated Scores for Spoken Responses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Zhen; Zechner, Klaus; Sun, Yu

    2018-01-01

    As automated scoring systems for spoken responses are increasingly used in language assessments, testing organizations need to analyze their performance, as compared to human raters, across several dimensions, for example, on individual items or based on subgroups of test takers. In addition, there is a need in testing organizations to establish…

  20. Bimodal Bilingual Language Development of Hearing Children of Deaf Parents

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hofmann, Kristin; Chilla, Solveig

    2015-01-01

    Adopting a bimodal bilingual language acquisition model, this qualitative case study is the first in Germany to investigate the spoken and sign language development of hearing children of deaf adults (codas). The spoken language competence of six codas within the age range of 3;10 to 6;4 is assessed by a series of standardised tests (SETK 3-5,…

  1. Directionality effects in simultaneous language interpreting: the case of sign language interpreters in The Netherlands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Dijk, Rick; Boers, Eveline; Christoffels, Ingrid; Hermans, Daan

    2011-01-01

    The quality of interpretations produced by sign language interpreters was investigated. Twenty-five experienced interpreters were instructed to interpret narratives from (a) spoken Dutch to Sign Language of The Netherlands (SLN), (b) spoken Dutch to Sign Supported Dutch (SSD), and (c) SLN to spoken Dutch. The quality of the interpreted narratives was assessed by 5 certified sign language interpreters who did not participate in the study. Two measures were used to assess interpreting quality: the propositional accuracy of the interpreters' interpretations and a subjective quality measure. The results showed that the interpreted narratives in the SLN-to-Dutch interpreting direction were of lower quality (on both measures) than the interpreted narratives in the Dutch-to-SLN and Dutch-to-SSD directions. Furthermore, interpreters who had begun acquiring SLN when they entered the interpreter training program performed as well in all 3 interpreting directions as interpreters who had acquired SLN from birth.

  2. Teaching and Learning Sign Language as a “Foreign” Language ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    In recent years, there has been a growing debate in the United States, Europe, and Australia about the nature of the Deaf community as a cultural community,1 and the recognition of signed languages as “real” or “legitimate” languages comparable in all meaningful ways to spoken languages. An important element of this ...

  3. Implications of Hegel's Theories of Language on Second Language Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Manfred

    2016-01-01

    This article explores the implications of Hegel's theories of language on second language (L2) teaching. Three among the various concepts in Hegel's theories of language are selected. They are the crucial role of intersubjectivity; the primacy of the spoken over the written form; and the importance of the training of form or grammar. Applying…

  4. "Nobody Told Me They Didn't Speak English!": Teacher Language Views and Student Linguistic Repertoires in Hutterite Colony Schools in Canada

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sterzuk, Andrea; Nelson, Cynthia A.

    2016-01-01

    This article presents a qualitative study of five monolingual teachers' understandings of the linguistic repertoires of their multilingual students. These teachers deliver the Saskatchewan provincial curricula in English to Hutterite colony students who are users of three languages: (a) spoken Hutterisch as a home and community language, (b)…

  5. METONYMY BASED ON CULTURAL BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE AND PRAGMATIC INFERENCING: EVIDENCE FROM SPOKEN DISCOURSE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arijana Krišković

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Th e characterization of metonymy as a conceptual tool for guiding inferencing in language has opened a new fi eld of study in cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. To appreciate the value of metonymy for pragmatic inferencing, metonymy should not be viewed as performing only its prototypical referential function. Metonymic mappings are operative in speech acts at the level of reference, predication, proposition and illocution. Th e aim of this paper is to study the role of metonymy in pragmatic inferencing in spoken discourse in televison interviews. Case analyses of authentic utterances classifi ed as illocutionary metonymies following the pragmatic typology of metonymic functions are presented. Th e inferencing processes are facilitated by metonymic connections existing between domains or subdomains in the same functional domain. It has been widely accepted by cognitive linguists that universal human knowledge and embodiment are essential for the interpretation of metonymy. Th is analysis points to the role of cultural background knowledge in understanding target meanings. All these aspects of metonymic connections are exploited in complex inferential processes in spoken discourse. In most cases, metaphoric mappings are also a part of utterance interpretation.

  6. Dual Language versus English-Only Support for Bilingual Children with Hearing Loss Who Use Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bunta, Ferenc; Douglas, Michael; Dickson, Hanna; Cantu, Amy; Wickesberg, Jennifer; Gifford, René H.

    2016-01-01

    Background: There is a critical need to understand better speech and language development in bilingual children learning two spoken languages who use cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs). The paucity of knowledge in this area poses a significant barrier to providing maximal communicative outcomes to a growing number of children who have…

  7. UNDERSTANDING TENOR IN SPOKEN TEXTS IN YEAR XII ENGLISH TEXTBOOK TO IMPROVE THE APPROPRIACY OF THE TEXTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Noeris Meristiani

    2011-07-01

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT: The goal of English Language Teaching is communicative competence. To reach this goal students should be supplied with good model texts. These texts should consider the appropriacy of language use. By analyzing the context of situation which is focused on tenor the meanings constructed to build the relationships among the interactants in spoken texts can be unfolded. This study aims at investigating the interpersonal relations (tenor of the interactants in the conversation texts as well as the appropriacy of their realization in the given contexts. The study was conducted under discourse analysis by applying a descriptive qualitative method. There were eight conversation texts which function as examples in five chapters of a textbook. The data were analyzed by using lexicogrammatical analysis, described, and interpreted contextually. Then, the realization of the tenor of the texts was further analyzed in terms of appropriacy to suggest improvement. The results of the study show that the tenor indicates relationships between friend-friend, student-student, questioners-respondents, mother-son, and teacher-student; the power is equal and unequal; the social distances show frequent contact, relatively frequent contact, relatively low contact, high and low affective involvement, using informal, relatively informal, relatively formal, and formal language. There are also some indications of inappropriacy of tenor realization in all texts. It should be improved in the use of degree of formality, the realization of societal roles, status, and affective involvement. Keywords: context of situation, tenor, appropriacy.

  8. Teachers' understanding of the communicative language teaching ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Teachers' understanding of the communicative language teaching approach: The case of English language teachers in Thohoyandou. ... with CLT theories and practice. Keywords: communicative competence, approach versus method, Grammar translation method, direct method, first additional language, second language ...

  9. Syllable frequency and word frequency effects in spoken and written word production in a non-alphabetic script

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qingfang eZhang

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available The effects of word frequency and syllable frequency are well-established phenomena in domain such as spoken production in alphabetic languages. Chinese, as a non-alphabetic language, presents unique lexical and phonological properties in speech production. For example, the proximate unit of phonological encoding is syllable in Chinese but segments in Dutch, French or English. The present study investigated the effects of word frequency and syllable frequency, and their interaction in Chinese written and spoken production. Significant facilitatory word frequency and syllable frequency effects were observed in spoken as well as in written production. The syllable frequency effect in writing indicated that phonological properties (i.e., syllabic frequency constrain orthographic output via a lexical route, at least, in Chinese written production. However, the syllable frequency effect over repetitions was divergent in both modalities: it was significant in the former two repetitions in spoken whereas it was significant in the second repetition only in written. Due to the fragility of the syllable frequency effect in writing, we suggest that the phonological influence in handwritten production is not mandatory and universal, and it is modulated by experimental manipulations. This provides evidence for the orthographic autonomy hypothesis, rather than the phonological mediation hypothesis. The absence of an interaction between word frequency and syllable frequency showed that the syllable frequency effect is independent of the word frequency effect in spoken and written output modalities. The implications of these results on written production models are discussed.

  10. Sentence Repetition in Deaf Children with Specific Language Impairment in British Sign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marshall, Chloë; Mason, Kathryn; Rowley, Katherine; Herman, Rosalind; Atkinson, Joanna; Woll, Bencie; Morgan, Gary

    2015-01-01

    Children with specific language impairment (SLI) perform poorly on sentence repetition tasks across different spoken languages, but until now, this methodology has not been investigated in children who have SLI in a signed language. Users of a natural sign language encode different sentence meanings through their choice of signs and by altering…

  11. Componential Skills in Second Language Development of Bilingual Children with Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenge, Judit; van Leeuwe, Jan; van Balkom, Hans

    2017-01-01

    In this study, we investigated which componential skills can be distinguished in the second language (L2) development of 140 bilingual children with specific language impairment in the Netherlands, aged 6-11 years, divided into 3 age groups. L2 development was assessed by means of spoken language tasks representing different language skills…

  12. Language configurations of degree-related denotations in the spoken production of a group of Colombian EFL university students: A corpus-based study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wilder Yesid Escobar

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Recognizing that developing the competences needed to appropriately use linguistic resources according to contextual characteristics (pragmatics is as important as the cultural-imbedded linguistic knowledge itself (semantics and that both are equally essential to form competent speakers of English in foreign language contexts, we feel this research relies on corpus linguistics to analyze both the scope and the limitations of the sociolinguistic knowledge and the communicative skills of English students at the university level. To such end, a linguistic corpus was assembled, compared to an existing corpus of native speakers, and analyzed in terms of the frequency, overuse, underuse, misuse, ambiguity, success, and failure of the linguistic parameters used in speech acts. The findings herein describe the linguistic configurations employed to modify levels and degrees of descriptions (salient sematic theme exhibited in the EFL learners´ corpus appealing to the sociolinguistic principles governing meaning making and language use which are constructed under the social conditions of the environments where the language is naturally spoken for sociocultural exchange.

  13. Role of Working Memory in Children's Understanding Spoken Narrative: A Preliminary Investigation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Montgomery, James W.; Polunenko, Anzhela; Marinellie, Sally A.

    2009-01-01

    The role of phonological short-term memory (PSTM), attentional resource capacity/allocation, and processing speed on children's spoken narrative comprehension was investigated. Sixty-seven children (6-11 years) completed a digit span task (PSTM), concurrent verbal processing and storage (CPS) task (resource capacity/allocation), auditory-visual…

  14. Brain-to-text: Decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the brain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christian eHerff

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available It has long been speculated whether communication between humans and machines based on natural speech related cortical activity is possible. Over the past decade, studies have suggested that it is feasible to recognize isolated aspects of speech from neural signals, such as auditory features, phones or one of a few isolated words. However, until now it remained an unsolved challenge to decode continuously spoken speech from the neural substrate associated with speech and language processing. Here, we show for the first time that continuously spoken speech can be decoded into the expressed words from intracranial electrocorticographic (ECoG recordings. Specifically, we implemented a system, which we call Brain-To-Text that models single phones, employs techniques from automatic speech recognition (ASR, and thereby transforms brain activity while speaking into the corresponding textual representation. Our results demonstrate that our system achieved word error rates as low as 25% and phone error rates below 50%. Additionally, our approach contributes to the current understanding of the neural basis of continuous speech production by identifying those cortical regions that hold substantial information about individual phones. In conclusion, the Brain-To-Text system described in this paper represents an important step towards human-machine communication based on imagined speech.

  15. Auditory-cognitive training improves language performance in prelingually deafened cochlear implant recipients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ingvalson, Erin M; Young, Nancy M; Wong, Patrick C M

    2014-10-01

    Phonological and working memory skills have been shown to be important for the development of spoken language. Children who use a cochlear implant (CI) show performance deficits relative to normal hearing (NH) children on all constructs: phonological skills, working memory, and spoken language. Given that phonological skills and working memory have been shown to be important for spoken language development in NH children, we hypothesized that training these foundational skills would result in improved spoken language performance in CI-using children. Nineteen prelingually deafened CI-using children aged 4- to 7-years-old participated. All children had been using their implants for at least one year and were matched on pre-implant hearing thresholds, hearing thresholds at study enrollment, and non-verbal IQ. Children were assessed on expressive vocabulary, listening language, spoken language, and composite language. Ten children received four weeks of training on phonological skills including rhyme, sound blending, and sound discrimination and auditory working memory. The remaining nine children continued with their normal classroom activities for four weeks. Language assessments were repeated following the training/control period. Children who received combined phonological-working memory training showed significant gains on expressive and composite language scores. Children who did not receive training showed no significant improvements at post-test. On average, trained children had gain scores of 6.35 points on expressive language and gain scores of 6.15 points whereas the untrained children had test-retest gain scores of 2.89 points for expressive language and 2.56 for composite language. Our results suggest that training to improve the phonological and working memory skills in CI-using children may lead to improved language performance. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Let's all speak together! Exploring the masking effects of various languages on spoken word identification in multi-linguistic babble.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gautreau, Aurore; Hoen, Michel; Meunier, Fanny

    2013-01-01

    This study aimed to characterize the linguistic interference that occurs during speech-in-speech comprehension by combining offline and online measures, which included an intelligibility task (at a -5 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and 2 lexical decision tasks (at a -5 dB and 0 dB SNR) that were performed with French spoken target words. In these 3 experiments we always compared the masking effects of speech backgrounds (i.e., 4-talker babble) that were produced in the same language as the target language (i.e., French) or in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) to the masking effects of corresponding non-speech backgrounds (i.e., speech-derived fluctuating noise). The fluctuating noise contained similar spectro-temporal information as babble but lacked linguistic information. At -5 dB SNR, both tasks revealed significantly divergent results between the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) with Italian and French hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish led to significantly better performances on these tasks. By comparing the performances obtained with speech and fluctuating noise backgrounds, we were able to evaluate the effect of each language. The intelligibility task showed a significant difference between babble and fluctuating noise for French, Irish and Italian, suggesting acoustic and linguistic effects for each language. However, the lexical decision task, which reduces the effect of post-lexical interference, appeared to be more accurate, as it only revealed a linguistic effect for French. Thus, although French and Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. This finding suggests that the differences observed between the masking effects of Italian and Irish can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level.

  17. L1 and L2 Spoken Word Processing: Evidence from Divided Attention Paradigm.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafiee Nahrkhalaji, Saeedeh; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza; Koosha, Mansour

    2016-10-01

    The present study aims to reveal some facts concerning first language (L 1 ) and second language (L 2 ) spoken-word processing in unbalanced proficient bilinguals using behavioral measures. The intention here is to examine the effects of auditory repetition word priming and semantic priming in first and second languages of these bilinguals. The other goal is to explore the effects of attention manipulation on implicit retrieval of perceptual and conceptual properties of spoken L 1 and L 2 words. In so doing, the participants performed auditory word priming and semantic priming as memory tests in their L 1 and L 2 . In a half of the trials of each experiment, they carried out the memory test while simultaneously performing a secondary task in visual modality. The results revealed that effects of auditory word priming and semantic priming were present when participants processed L 1 and L 2 words in full attention condition. Attention manipulation could reduce priming magnitude in both experiments in L 2 . Moreover, L 2 word retrieval increases the reaction times and reduces accuracy on the simultaneous secondary task to protect its own accuracy and speed.

  18. How appropriate are the English language test requirements for non-UK-trained nurses? A qualitative study of spoken communication in UK hospitals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sedgwick, Carole; Garner, Mark

    2017-06-01

    Non-native speakers of English who hold nursing qualifications from outside the UK are required to provide evidence of English language competence by achieving a minimum overall score of Band 7 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) academic test. To describe the English language required to deal with the daily demands of nursing in the UK. To compare these abilities with the stipulated levels on the language test. A tracking study was conducted with 4 nurses, and focus groups with 11 further nurses. The transcripts of the interviews and focus groups were analysed thematically for recurrent themes. These findings were then compared with the requirements of the IELTS spoken test. The study was conducted outside the participants' working shifts in busy London hospitals. The participants in the tracking study were selected opportunistically;all were trained in non-English speaking countries. Snowball sampling was used for the focus groups, of whom 4 were non-native and 7 native speakers of English. In the tracking study, each of the 4 nurses was interviewed on four occasions, outside the workplace, and as close to the end of a shift as possible. They were asked to recount their spoken interactions during the course of their shift. The participants in the focus groups were asked to describe their typical interactions with patients, family members, doctors, and nursing colleagues. They were prompted to recall specific instances of frequently-occurring communication problems. All interactions were audio-recorded, with the participants' permission,and transcribed. Nurses are at the centre of communication for patient care. They have to use appropriate registers to communicate with a range of health professionals, patients and their families. They must elicit information, calm and reassure, instruct, check procedures, ask for and give opinions,agree and disagree. Politeness strategies are needed to avoid threats to face. They participate in medical

  19. Shared language:Towards more effective communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thomas, Joyce; McDonagh, Deana

    2013-01-01

    The ability to communicate to others and express ourselves is a basic human need. As we develop our understanding of the world, based on our upbringing, education and so on, our perspective and the way we communicate can differ from those around us. Engaging and interacting with others is a critical part of healthy living. It is the responsibility of the individual to ensure that they are understood in the way they intended.Shared language refers to people developing understanding amongst themselves based on language (e.g. spoken, text) to help them communicate more effectively. The key to understanding language is to first notice and be mindful of your language. Developing a shared language is an ongoing process that requires intention and time, which results in better understanding.Shared language is critical to collaboration, and collaboration is critical to business and education. With whom and how many people do you connect? Your 'shared language' makes a difference in the world. So, how do we successfully do this? This paper shares several strategies.Your sphere of influence will carry forward what and how you are communicating. Developing and nurturing a shared language is an essential element to enhance communication and collaboration whether it is simply between partners or across the larger community of business and customers. Constant awareness and education is required to maintain the shared language. We are living in an increasingly smaller global community. Business is built on relationships. If you invest in developing shared language, your relationships and your business will thrive.

  20. The Relationship between Intrinsic Couplings of the Visual Word Form Area with Spoken Language Network and Reading Ability in Children and Adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu Li

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Reading plays a key role in education and communication in modern society. Learning to read establishes the connections between the visual word form area (VWFA and language areas responsible for speech processing. Using resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC and Granger Causality Analysis (GCA methods, the current developmental study aimed to identify the difference in the relationship between the connections of VWFA-language areas and reading performance in both adults and children. The results showed that: (1 the spontaneous connectivity between VWFA and the spoken language areas, i.e., the left inferior frontal gyrus/supramarginal gyrus (LIFG/LSMG, was stronger in adults compared with children; (2 the spontaneous functional patterns of connectivity between VWFA and language network were negatively correlated with reading ability in adults but not in children; (3 the causal influence from LIFG to VWFA was negatively correlated with reading ability only in adults but not in children; (4 the RSFCs between left posterior middle frontal gyrus (LpMFG and VWFA/LIFG were positively correlated with reading ability in both adults and children; and (5 the causal influence from LIFG to LSMG was positively correlated with reading ability in both groups. These findings provide insights into the relationship between VWFA and the language network for reading, and the role of the unique features of Chinese in the neural circuits of reading.

  1. Digital Language Death

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kornai, András

    2013-01-01

    Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide. PMID:24167559

  2. Digital language death.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    András Kornai

    Full Text Available Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide.

  3. The role of planum temporale in processing accent variation in spoken language comprehension.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Adank, P.M.; Noordzij, M.L.; Hagoort, P.

    2012-01-01

    A repetitionsuppression functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm was used to explore the neuroanatomical substrates of processing two types of acoustic variationspeaker and accentduring spoken sentence comprehension. Recordings were made for two speakers and two accents: Standard Dutch and a

  4. Spanish as a Second Language when L1 Is Quechua: Endangered Languages and the SLA Researcher

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalt, Susan E.

    2012-01-01

    Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Quechua is the largest indigenous language family to constitute the first language (L1) of second language (L2) Spanish speakers. Despite sheer number of speakers and typologically interesting contrasts, Quechua-Spanish second language acquisition is a nearly untapped research area,…

  5. Understanding Cognitive Language Learning Strategies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sergio Di Carlo

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Over time, definitions and taxonomies of language learning strategies have been critically examined. This article defines and classifies cognitive language learning strategies on a more grounded basis. Language learning is a macro-process for which the general hypotheses of information processing are valid. Cognitive strategies are represented by the pillars underlying the encoding, storage and retrieval of information. In order to understand the processes taking place on these three dimensions, a functional model was elaborated from multiple theoretical contributions and previous models: the Smart Processing Model. This model operates with linguistic inputs as well as with any other kind of information. It helps to illustrate the stages, relations, modules and processes that occur during the flow of information. This theoretical advance is a core element to classify cognitive strategies. Contributions from cognitive neuroscience have also been considered to establish the proposed classification which consists of five categories. Each of these categories has a different predominant function: classification, preparation, association, elaboration and transfer-practice. This better founded taxonomy opens the doors to potential studies that would allow a better understanding of the interdisciplinary complexity of language learning. Pedagogical and methodological implications are also discussed.

  6. The role of planum temporale in processing accent variation in spoken language comprehension

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Adank, P.M.; Noordzij, M.L.; Hagoort, P.

    2012-01-01

    A repetition–suppression functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm was used to explore the neuroanatomical substrates of processing two types of acoustic variation—speaker and accent—during spoken sentence comprehension. Recordings were made for two speakers and two accents: Standard Dutch and

  7. Enhancing Foreign Language Learning through Listening Strategies Delivered in L1: An Experimental Study

    OpenAIRE

    Hitendra Pillay; Hossein Bozorgian

    2013-01-01

    Listening used in language teaching refers to a complex process that allows us to understand spoken language. The current study, conducted in Iran with an experimental design, investigated the effectiveness of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1 (Persian) and its effect on listening comprehension in L2. Five listening strategies: Guessing, making inferences, identifying topics, repetition, and note-taking were taught over 14 weeks during a semester. Sixty lower intermediate female p...

  8. The socially-weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meghan eSumner

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic representations and to social representations. In doing so, we illuminate a paradox that results in the literature from, we argue, the focus on representations and the peripheral treatment of word-level phonetic variation. We consider phonetic variation more fully and highlight a growing body of work that is problematic for current theory: Words with different pronunciation variants are recognized equally well in immediate processing tasks, while an atypical, infrequent, but socially-idealized form is remembered better in the long-term. We suggest that the perception of spoken words is socially-weighted, resulting in sparse, but high-resolution clusters of socially-idealized episodes that are robust in immediate processing and are more strongly encoded, predicting memory inequality. Our proposal includes a dual-route approach to speech perception in which listeners map acoustic patterns in speech to linguistic and social representations in tandem. This approach makes novel predictions about the extraction of information from the speech signal, and provides a framework with which we can ask new questions. We propose that language comprehension, broadly, results from the integration of both linguistic and social information.

  9. The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: a dual-route approach to speech perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sumner, Meghan; Kim, Seung Kyung; King, Ed; McGowan, Kevin B

    2013-01-01

    Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic representations and to social representations. In doing so, we illuminate a paradox that results in the literature from, we argue, the focus on representations and the peripheral treatment of word-level phonetic variation. We consider phonetic variation more fully and highlight a growing body of work that is problematic for current theory: words with different pronunciation variants are recognized equally well in immediate processing tasks, while an atypical, infrequent, but socially idealized form is remembered better in the long-term. We suggest that the perception of spoken words is socially weighted, resulting in sparse, but high-resolution clusters of socially idealized episodes that are robust in immediate processing and are more strongly encoded, predicting memory inequality. Our proposal includes a dual-route approach to speech perception in which listeners map acoustic patterns in speech to linguistic and social representations in tandem. This approach makes novel predictions about the extraction of information from the speech signal, and provides a framework with which we can ask new questions. We propose that language comprehension, broadly, results from the integration of both linguistic and social information.

  10. Spoken sentence comprehension in aphasia: Event-related potential evidence for a lexical integration deficit

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Swaab, T.Y.; Brown, C.; Hagoort, P.

    1997-01-01

    In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line

  11. Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Neural Representation of Human Language: Evidence from Users of Signed Languages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corina, David P.; Lawyer, Laurel A.; Cates, Deborah

    2013-01-01

    Studies of deaf individuals who are users of signed languages have provided profound insight into the neural representation of human language. Case studies of deaf signers who have incurred left- and right-hemisphere damage have shown that left-hemisphere resources are a necessary component of sign language processing. These data suggest that, despite frank differences in the input and output modality of language, core left perisylvian regions universally serve linguistic function. Neuroimaging studies of deaf signers have generally provided support for this claim. However, more fine-tuned studies of linguistic processing in deaf signers are beginning to show evidence of important differences in the representation of signed and spoken languages. In this paper, we provide a critical review of this literature and present compelling evidence for language-specific cortical representations in deaf signers. These data lend support to the claim that the neural representation of language may show substantive cross-linguistic differences. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings with respect to an emerging understanding of the neurobiology of language. PMID:23293624

  12. Limited english proficiency, primary language at home, and disparities in children's health care: how language barriers are measured matters.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flores, Glenn; Abreu, Milagros; Tomany-Korman, Sandra C

    2005-01-01

    Approximately 3.5 million U.S. schoolchildren are limited in English proficiency (LEP). Disparities in children's health and health care are associated with both LEP and speaking a language other than English at home, but prior research has not examined which of these two measures of language barriers is most useful in examining health care disparities. Our objectives were to compare primary language spoken at home vs. parental LEP and their associations with health status, access to care, and use of health services in children. We surveyed parents at urban community sites in Boston, asking 74 questions on children's health status, access to health care, and use of health services. Some 98% of the 1,100 participating children and families were of non-white race/ethnicity, 72% of parents were LEP, and 13 different primary languages were spoken at home. "Dose-response" relationships were observed between parental English proficiency and several child and parental sociodemographic features, including children's insurance coverage, parental educational attainment, citizenship and employment, and family income. Similar "dose-response" relationships were noted between the primary language spoken at home and many but not all of the same sociodemographic features. In multivariate analyses, LEP parents were associated with triple the odds of a child having fair/poor health status, double the odds of the child spending at least one day in bed for illness in the past year, and significantly greater odds of children not being brought in for needed medical care for six of nine access barriers to care. None of these findings were observed in analyses of the primary language spoken at home. Individual parental LEP categories were associated with different risks of adverse health status and outcomes. Parental LEP is superior to the primary language spoken at home as a measure of the impact of language barriers on children's health and health care. Individual parental LEP

  13. Verbal short-term memory development and spoken language outcomes in deaf children with cochlear implants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harris, Michael S; Kronenberger, William G; Gao, Sujuan; Hoen, Helena M; Miyamoto, Richard T; Pisoni, David B

    2013-01-01

    Cochlear implants (CIs) help many deaf children achieve near-normal speech and language (S/L) milestones. Nevertheless, high levels of unexplained variability in S/L outcomes are limiting factors in improving the effectiveness of CIs in deaf children. The objective of this study was to longitudinally assess the role of verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) capacity as a progress-limiting source of variability in S/L outcomes after CI in children. Longitudinal study of 66 children with CIs for prelingual severe-to-profound hearing loss. Outcome measures included performance on digit span forward (DSF), digit span backward (DSB), and four conventional S/L measures that examined spoken-word recognition (Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten word test), receptive vocabulary (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test ), sentence-recognition skills (Hearing in Noise Test), and receptive and expressive language functioning (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Fourth Edition Core Language Score; CELF). Growth curves for DSF and DSB in the CI sample over time were comparable in slope, but consistently lagged in magnitude relative to norms for normal-hearing peers of the same age. For DSF and DSB, 50.5% and 44.0%, respectively, of the CI sample scored more than 1 SD below the normative mean for raw scores across all ages. The first (baseline) DSF score significantly predicted all endpoint scores for the four S/L measures, and DSF slope (growth) over time predicted CELF scores. DSF baseline and slope accounted for an additional 13 to 31% of variance in S/L scores after controlling for conventional predictor variables such as: chronological age at time of testing, age at time of implantation, communication mode (auditory-oral communication versus total communication), and maternal education. Only DSB baseline scores predicted endpoint language scores on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and CELF. DSB slopes were not significantly related to any endpoint S/L measures

  14. Early use of orthographic information in spoken word recognition: Event-related potential evidence from the Korean language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwon, Youan; Choi, Sungmook; Lee, Yoonhyoung

    2016-04-01

    This study examines whether orthographic information is used during prelexical processes in spoken word recognition by investigating ERPs during spoken word processing for Korean words. Differential effects due to orthographic syllable neighborhood size and sound-to-spelling consistency on P200 and N320 were evaluated by recording ERPs from 42 participants during a lexical decision task. The results indicate that P200 was smaller for words whose orthographic syllable neighbors are large in number rather than those that are small. In addition, a word with a large orthographic syllable neighborhood elicited a smaller N320 effect than a word with a small orthographic syllable neighborhood only when the word had inconsistent sound-to-spelling mapping. The results provide support for the assumption that orthographic information is used early during the prelexical spoken word recognition process. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  15. Parental mode of communication is essential for speech and language outcomes in cochlear implanted children

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Percy-Smith, Lone; Cayé-Thomasen, Per; Breinegaard, Nina

    2010-01-01

    The present study demonstrates a very strong effect of the parental communication mode on the auditory capabilities and speech/language outcome for cochlear implanted children. The children exposed to spoken language had higher odds of scoring high in all tests applied and the findings suggest...... a very clear benefit of spoken language communication with a cochlear implanted child....

  16. Family Language Policy and School Language Choice: Pathways to Bilingualism and Multilingualism in a Canadian Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slavkov, Nikolay

    2017-01-01

    This article reports on a survey with 170 school-age children growing up with two or more languages in the Canadian province of Ontario where English is the majority language, French is a minority language, and numerous other minority languages may be spoken by immigrant or Indigenous residents. Within this context the study focuses on minority…

  17. Rhythm in language acquisition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Langus, Alan; Mehler, Jacques; Nespor, Marina

    2017-10-01

    Spoken language is governed by rhythm. Linguistic rhythm is hierarchical and the rhythmic hierarchy partially mimics the prosodic as well as the morpho-syntactic hierarchy of spoken language. It can thus provide learners with cues about the structure of the language they are acquiring. We identify three universal levels of linguistic rhythm - the segmental level, the level of the metrical feet and the phonological phrase level - and discuss why primary lexical stress is not rhythmic. We survey experimental evidence on rhythm perception in young infants and native speakers of various languages to determine the properties of linguistic rhythm that are present at birth, those that mature during the first year of life and those that are shaped by the linguistic environment of language learners. We conclude with a discussion of the major gaps in current knowledge on linguistic rhythm and highlight areas of interest for future research that are most likely to yield significant insights into the nature, the perception, and the usefulness of linguistic rhythm. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. 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…

  19. SPOKEN BAHASA INDONESIA BY GERMAN STUDENTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I Nengah Sudipa

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available This article investigates the spoken ability for German students using Bahasa Indonesia (BI. They have studied it for six weeks in IBSN Program at Udayana University, Bali-Indonesia. The data was collected at the time the students sat for the mid-term oral test and was further analyzed with reference to the standard usage of BI. The result suggests that most students managed to express several concepts related to (1 LOCATION; (2 TIME; (3 TRANSPORT; (4 PURPOSE; (5 TRANSACTION; (6 IMPRESSION; (7 REASON; (8 FOOD AND BEVERAGE, and (9 NUMBER AND PERSON. The only problem few students might encounter is due to the influence from their own language system called interference, especially in word order.

  20. Language understanding and vocabulary of early cochlear implanted children

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Percy-Smith, L; Busch, GW; Sandahl, M

    2013-01-01

    The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level.......The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level....

  1. Textese and use of texting by children with typical language development and Specific Language Impairment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blom, E.; van Dijk, C.; Vasić, N.; van Witteloostuijn, M.; Avrutin, S.

    The purpose of this study was to investigate texting and textese, which is the special register used for sending brief text messages, across children with typical development (TD) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Using elicitation techniques, texting and spoken language messages

  2. Textese and use of texting by children with typical language development and Specific Language Impairment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blom, W.B.T.; van Dijk, Chantal; Vasic, Nada; van Witteloostuijn, Merel; Avrutin, S.

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate texting and textese, which is the special register used for sending brief text messages, across children with typical development (TD) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Using elicitation techniques, texting and spoken language messages

  3. Will smart surveillance systems listen, understand and speak Slovene?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Simon Dobrišek

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The paper deals with the spoken language technologies that could enable the so-called smart (intelligent surveillance systems to listen, understand and speak Slovenian in the near future. Advanced computational methods of artificial perception and pattern recognition enable such systems to be at least to some extent aware of the environment, the presence of people and other phenomena that could be subject to surveillance. Speech is one such phenomenon that has the potential to be a key source of information in certain security situations. Technologies that enable automatic speech and speaker recognition as well as their psychophysical state by computer analysis of acoustic speech signals provide an entirely new dimension to the development of smart surveillance systems. Automatic recognition of spoken threats, screaming and crying for help, as well as a suspicious psycho-physical state of a speaker provide such systems to some extent with intelligent behaviour. The paper investigates the current state of development of these technologies and the requirements and possibilities of these systems to be used for the Slovenian spoken language, as well as different possible security application scenarios. It also addresses the broader legal and ethical issues raised by the development and use of such technologies, especially as audio surveillance is one of the most sensitive issues of privacy protection.

  4. Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

    2011-01-01

    The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

  5. Germanic heritage languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change

    OpenAIRE

    Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Salmons, Joseph C.; Westergaard, Marit; Anderssen, Merete; Arnbjörnsdóttir, Birna; Allen, Brent; Pierce, Marc; Boas, Hans C.; Roesch, Karen; Brown, Joshua R.; Putnam, Michael; Åfarli, Tor A.; Newman, Zelda Kahan; Annear, Lucas; Speth, Kristin

    2015-01-01

    This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processe...

  6. First Steps to Endangered Language Documentation: The Kalasha Language, a Case Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mela-Athanasopoulou, Elizabeth

    2011-01-01

    The present paper based on extensive fieldwork D conducted on Kalasha, an endangered language spoken in the three small valleys in Chitral District of Northwestern Pakistan, exposes a spontaneous dialogue-based elicitation of linguistic material used for the description and documentation of the language. After a brief display of the basic typology…

  7. Notes from the Field: Lolak--Another Moribund Language of Indonesia, with Supporting Audio

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lobel, Jason William; Paputungan, Ade Tatak

    2017-01-01

    This paper consists of a short multimedia introduction to Lolak, a near-extinct Greater Central Philippine language traditionally spoken in three small communities on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. In addition to being one of the most underdocumented languages in the area, it is also spoken by one of the smallest native speaker populations…

  8. Understanding of Foreign Language Learning of Generation Y

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bozavli, Ebubekir

    2016-01-01

    Different generations are constituted depending on social changes and they are designed sociologically as traditional, baby boomer, X, Y and Z. Many studies have been reported on understanding of foreign language learning generation Y. This study aims to realise the gap in and contribute to the research on language learning understanding of…

  9. INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN COOPERATIVE LEARNING: MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO PRODUCE SPOKEN ENGLISH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Puji Astuti

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available The contribution of cooperative learning (CL in promoting second and foreign language learning has been widely acknowledged. Little scholarly attention, however, has been given to revealing how this teaching method works and promotes learners’ improved communicative competence. This qualitative case study explores the important role that individual accountability in CL plays in giving English as a Foreign Language (EFL learners in Indonesia the opportunity to use the target language of English. While individual accountability is a principle of and one of the activities in CL, it is currently under studied, thus little is known about how it enhances EFL learning. This study aims to address this gap by conducting a constructivist grounded theory analysis on participant observation, in-depth interview, and document analysis data drawn from two secondary school EFL teachers, 77 students in the observed classrooms, and four focal students. The analysis shows that through individual accountability in CL, the EFL learners had opportunities to use the target language, which may have contributed to the attainment of communicative competence—the goal of the EFL instruction. More specifically, compared to the use of conventional group work in the observed classrooms, through the activities of individual accountability in CL, i.e., performances and peer interaction, the EFL learners had more opportunities to use spoken English. The present study recommends that teachers, especially those new to CL, follow the preset procedure of selected CL instructional strategies or structures in order to recognize the activities within individual accountability in CL and understand how these activities benefit students.

  10. Use of spoken and written Japanese did not protect Japanese-American men from cognitive decline in late life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crane, Paul K; Gruhl, Jonathan C; Erosheva, Elena A; Gibbons, Laura E; McCurry, Susan M; Rhoads, Kristoffer; Nguyen, Viet; Arani, Keerthi; Masaki, Kamal; White, Lon

    2010-11-01

    Spoken bilingualism may be associated with cognitive reserve. Mastering a complicated written language may be associated with additional reserve. We sought to determine if midlife use of spoken and written Japanese was associated with lower rates of late life cognitive decline. Participants were second-generation Japanese-American men from the Hawaiian island of Oahu, born 1900-1919, free of dementia in 1991, and categorized based on midlife self-reported use of spoken and written Japanese (total n included in primary analysis = 2,520). Cognitive functioning was measured with the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument scored using item response theory. We used mixed effects models, controlling for age, income, education, smoking status, apolipoprotein E e4 alleles, and number of study visits. Rates of cognitive decline were not related to use of spoken or written Japanese. This finding was consistent across numerous sensitivity analyses. We did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that multilingualism is associated with cognitive reserve.

  11. Use of Spoken and Written Japanese Did Not Protect Japanese-American Men From Cognitive Decline in Late Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gruhl, Jonathan C.; Erosheva, Elena A.; Gibbons, Laura E.; McCurry, Susan M.; Rhoads, Kristoffer; Nguyen, Viet; Arani, Keerthi; Masaki, Kamal; White, Lon

    2010-01-01

    Objectives. Spoken bilingualism may be associated with cognitive reserve. Mastering a complicated written language may be associated with additional reserve. We sought to determine if midlife use of spoken and written Japanese was associated with lower rates of late life cognitive decline. Methods. Participants were second-generation Japanese-American men from the Hawaiian island of Oahu, born 1900–1919, free of dementia in 1991, and categorized based on midlife self-reported use of spoken and written Japanese (total n included in primary analysis = 2,520). Cognitive functioning was measured with the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument scored using item response theory. We used mixed effects models, controlling for age, income, education, smoking status, apolipoprotein E e4 alleles, and number of study visits. Results. Rates of cognitive decline were not related to use of spoken or written Japanese. This finding was consistent across numerous sensitivity analyses. Discussion. We did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that multilingualism is associated with cognitive reserve. PMID:20639282

  12. Word level language identification in online multilingual communication

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Nguyen, Dong-Phuong; Dogruoz, A. Seza

    2013-01-01

    Multilingual speakers switch between languages in online and spoken communication. Analyses of large scale multilingual data require automatic language identification at the word level. For our experiments with multilingual online discussions, we first tag the language of individual words using

  13. Aphasia

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... cannot find the words he needs. (2) Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia) involves difficulty understanding spoken or written language. ... cannot find the words he needs. (2) Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia) involves difficulty understanding spoken or written language. ...

  14. Language and Literacy: The Case of India.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sridhar, Kamal K.

    Language and literacy issues in India are reviewed in terms of background, steps taken to combat illiteracy, and some problems associated with literacy. The following facts are noted: India has 106 languages spoken by more than 685 million people, there are several minor script systems, a major language has different dialects, a language may use…

  15. Micro Language Planning and Cultural Renaissance in Botswana

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alimi, Modupe M.

    2016-01-01

    Many African countries exhibit complex patterns of language use because of linguistic pluralism. The situation is often compounded by the presence of at least one foreign language that is either the official or second language. The language situation in Botswana depicts this complex pattern. Out of the 26 languages spoken in the country, including…

  16. Criteria for the segmentation of spoken input into individual utterances

    OpenAIRE

    Mast, Marion; Maier, Elisabeth; Schmitz, Birte

    1995-01-01

    This report describes how spoken language turns are segmented into utterances in the framework of the verbmobil project. The problem of segmenting turns is directly related to the task of annotating a discourse with dialogue act information: an utterance can be characterized as a stretch of dialogue that is attributed one dialogue act. Unfortunately, this rule in many cases is insufficient and many doubtful cases remain. We tried to at least reduce the number of unclear cases by providing a n...

  17. Phonotactic spoken language identification with limited training data

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Peche, M

    2007-08-01

    Full Text Available The authors investigate the addition of a new language, for which limited resources are available, to a phonotactic language identification system. Two classes of approaches are studied: in the first class, only existing phonetic recognizers...

  18. Iconic Factors and Language Word Order

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moeser, Shannon Dawn

    1975-01-01

    College students were presented with an artificial language in which spoken nonsense words were correlated with visual references. Inferences regarding vocabulary acquisition were drawn, and it was suggested that the processing of the language was mediated through a semantic memory system. (CK)

  19. Introducing Spoken Dialogue Systems into Intelligent Environments

    CERN Document Server

    Heinroth, Tobias

    2013-01-01

    Introducing Spoken Dialogue Systems into Intelligent Environments outlines the formalisms of a novel knowledge-driven framework for spoken dialogue management and presents the implementation of a model-based Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Manager(ASDM) called OwlSpeak. The authors have identified three stakeholders that potentially influence the behavior of the ASDM: the user, the SDS, and a complex Intelligent Environment (IE) consisting of various devices, services, and task descriptions. The theoretical foundation of a working ontology-based spoken dialogue description framework, the prototype implementation of the ASDM, and the evaluation activities that are presented as part of this book contribute to the ongoing spoken dialogue research by establishing the fertile ground of model-based adaptive spoken dialogue management. This monograph is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdocs as well as academic and industrial researchers and developers in speech and multimodal interactive ...

  20. The Functional Organisation of the Fronto-Temporal Language System: Evidence from Syntactic and Semantic Ambiguity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodd, Jennifer M.; Longe, Olivia A.; Randall, Billi; Tyler, Lorraine K.

    2010-01-01

    Spoken language comprehension is known to involve a large left-dominant network of fronto-temporal brain regions, but there is still little consensus about how the syntactic and semantic aspects of language are processed within this network. In an fMRI study, volunteers heard spoken sentences that contained either syntactic or semantic ambiguities…

  1. The language of football

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rossing, Niels Nygaard; Skrubbeltrang, Lotte Stausgaard

    2017-01-01

    This essay aims to describe how actions in the football field relate to the different national teams’ and countries’ cultural understanding of football and how these actions become spoken dialects within a language of football. Inspired by Edgar Schein’s framework of culture, the Brazilian...... and Italian national team football cultures were examined. The basis of the analysis was both document and video analysis. The documents were mostly research studies and popular books on the national football cultures, while the video analysis included all matches including Italy and Brazil from the World Cup...... in 2010 and 2014. The cultural analysis showed some coherence between the national football cultures and the national teams, which suggested a national dialect with the language of the game. Each national dialect seemed to be based on different basic assumptions and to some extent specific symbolic...

  2. A grammar of Abui : A Papuan language of Alor

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kratochvil, František

    2007-01-01

    This work contains the first comprehensive description of Abui, a language of the Trans New Guinea family spoken approximately by 16,000 speakers in the central part of the Alor Island in Eastern Indonesia. The description focuses on the northern dialect of Abui as spoken in the village

  3. Between Syntax and Pragmatics: The Causal Conjunction Protože in Spoken and Written Czech

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Čermáková, Anna; Komrsková, Zuzana; Kopřivová, Marie; Poukarová, Petra

    -, 25.04.2017 (2017), s. 393-414 ISSN 2509-9507 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA15-01116S Institutional support: RVO:68378092 Keywords : Causality * Discourse marker * Spoken language * Czech Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics OBOR OECD: Linguistics https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs41701-017-0014-y.pdf

  4. THE INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDE ON THE MAINTENANCE OF COMMUNITY LANGUAGES SPOKEN BY MIGRANT STUDENTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leni Amalia Suek

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available The maintenance of community languages of migrant students is heavily determined by language use and language attitudes. The superiority of a dominant language over a community language contributes to attitudes of migrant students toward their native languages. When they perceive their native languages as unimportant language, they will reduce the frequency of using that language even though at home domain. Solutions provided for a problem of maintaining community languages should be related to language use and attitudes of community languages, which are developed mostly in two important domains, school and family. Hence, the valorization of community language should be promoted not only in family but also school domains. Several programs such as community language school and community language program can be used for migrant students to practice and use their native languages. Since educational resources such as class session, teachers and government support are limited; family plays significant roles to stimulate positive attitudes toward community language and also to develop the use of native languages.

  5. Young children's communication and literacy: a qualitative study of language in the inclusive preschool.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kliewer, C

    1995-06-01

    Interactive and literacy-based language use of young children within the context of an inclusive preschool classroom was explored. An interpretivist framework and qualitative research methods, including participant observation, were used to examine and analyze language in five preschool classes that were composed of children with and without disabilities. Children's language use included spoken, written, signed, and typed. Results showed complex communicative and literacy language use on the part of young children outside conventional adult perspectives. Also, children who used expressive methods other than speech were often left out of the contexts where spoken language was richest and most complex.

  6. Neural systems supporting linguistic structure, linguistic experience, and symbolic communication in sign language and gesture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newman, Aaron J; Supalla, Ted; Fernandez, Nina; Newport, Elissa L; Bavelier, Daphne

    2015-09-15

    Sign languages used by deaf communities around the world possess the same structural and organizational properties as spoken languages: In particular, they are richly expressive and also tightly grammatically constrained. They therefore offer the opportunity to investigate the extent to which the neural organization for language is modality independent, as well as to identify ways in which modality influences this organization. The fact that sign languages share the visual-manual modality with a nonlinguistic symbolic communicative system-gesture-further allows us to investigate where the boundaries lie between language and symbolic communication more generally. In the present study, we had three goals: to investigate the neural processing of linguistic structure in American Sign Language (using verbs of motion classifier constructions, which may lie at the boundary between language and gesture); to determine whether we could dissociate the brain systems involved in deriving meaning from symbolic communication (including both language and gesture) from those specifically engaged by linguistically structured content (sign language); and to assess whether sign language experience influences the neural systems used for understanding nonlinguistic gesture. The results demonstrated that even sign language constructions that appear on the surface to be similar to gesture are processed within the left-lateralized frontal-temporal network used for spoken languages-supporting claims that these constructions are linguistically structured. Moreover, although nonsigners engage regions involved in human action perception to process communicative, symbolic gestures, signers instead engage parts of the language-processing network-demonstrating an influence of experience on the perception of nonlinguistic stimuli.

  7. Teaching natural language to computers

    OpenAIRE

    Corneli, Joseph; Corneli, Miriam

    2016-01-01

    "Natural Language," whether spoken and attended to by humans, or processed and generated by computers, requires networked structures that reflect creative processes in semantic, syntactic, phonetic, linguistic, social, emotional, and cultural modules. Being able to produce novel and useful behavior following repeated practice gets to the root of both artificial intelligence and human language. This paper investigates the modalities involved in language-like applications that computers -- and ...

  8. E-cigarette use and disparities by race, citizenship status and language among adolescents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alcalá, Héctor E; Albert, Stephanie L; Ortega, Alexander N

    2016-06-01

    E-cigarette use among adolescents is on the rise in the U.S. However, limited attention has been given to examining the role of race, citizenship status and language spoken at home in shaping e-cigarette use behavior. Data are from the 2014 Adolescent California Health Interview Survey, which interviewed 1052 adolescents ages 12-17. Lifetime e-cigarette use was examined by sociodemographic characteristics. Separate logistic regression models predicted odds of ever-smoking e-cigarettes from race, citizenship status and language spoken at home. Sociodemographic characteristics were then added to these models as control variables and a model with all three predictors and controls was run. Similar models were run with conventional smoking as an outcome. 10.3% of adolescents ever used e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use was higher among ever-smokers of conventional cigarettes, individuals above 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, US citizens and those who spoke English-only at home. Multivariate analyses demonstrated that citizenship status and language spoken at home were associated with lifetime e-cigarette use, after accounting for control variables. Only citizenship status was associated with e-cigarette use, when controls variables race and language spoken at home were all in the same model. Ever use of e-cigarettes in this study was higher than previously reported national estimates. Action is needed to curb the use of e-cigarettes among adolescents. Differences in lifetime e-cigarette use by citizenship status and language spoken at home suggest that less acculturated individuals use e-cigarettes at lower rates. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Strangers in Stranger Lands: Language, Learning, Culture

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hong Li

    2007-02-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates international students’ perceptions of the issues they face using English as a second language while attending American higher education institutions. In order to fully understand those challenges involved in learning English as a Second Language, it is necessary to know the extent to which international students have mastered the English language before they start their study in America. Most international students experience an overload of English language input upon arrival in the United States. Cultural differences influence international students’ learning of English in other ways, including international students’ isolation within their communities and America’s lack of teaching listening skills to its own students. Other factors also affect international students’ learning of English, such as the many forms of informal English spoken in the USA, as well as a variety of dialects. Moreover, since most international students have learned English in an environment that precluded much contact with spoken English, they often speak English with an accent that reveals their own language. This study offers informed insight into the complicated process of simultaneously learning the language and culture of another country. Readers will find three main voices in addition to the international students who “speak” (in quotation marks throughout this article. Hong Li, a Chinese doctoral student in English Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, authored the “regular” text. Second, Roy F. Fox’s voice appears in italics. Fox is Professor of English Education and Chair of the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Third, Dario J. Almarza’s voice appears in boldface. Almarza, a native of Venezuela, is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the same institution.

  10. Language structure is partly determined by social structure.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gary Lupyan

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Languages differ greatly both in their syntactic and morphological systems and in the social environments in which they exist. We challenge the view that language grammars are unrelated to social environments in which they are learned and used. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We conducted a statistical analysis of >2,000 languages using a combination of demographic sources and the World Atlas of Language Structures--a database of structural language properties. We found strong relationships between linguistic factors related to morphological complexity, and demographic/socio-historical factors such as the number of language users, geographic spread, and degree of language contact. The analyses suggest that languages spoken by large groups have simpler inflectional morphology than languages spoken by smaller groups as measured on a variety of factors such as case systems and complexity of conjugations. Additionally, languages spoken by large groups are much more likely to use lexical strategies in place of inflectional morphology to encode evidentiality, negation, aspect, and possession. Our findings indicate that just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, language structures appear to adapt to the environment (niche in which they are being learned and used. As adults learn a language, features that are difficult for them to acquire, are less likely to be passed on to subsequent learners. Languages used for communication in large groups that include adult learners appear to have been subjected to such selection. Conversely, the morphological complexity common to languages used in small groups increases redundancy which may facilitate language learning by infants. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We hypothesize that language structures are subjected to different evolutionary pressures in different social environments. Just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, language structures appear to adapt to the

  11. Schools and Languages in India.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harrison, Brian

    1968-01-01

    A brief review of Indian education focuses on special problems caused by overcrowded schools, insufficient funding, and the status of education itself in the Indian social structure. Language instruction in India, a complex issue due largely to the numerous official languages currently spoken, is commented on with special reference to the problem…

  12. Individual differences in children's emotion understanding: Effects of age and language

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pons, Francisco; Lawson, J.: Harris, P.; Rosnay, M. de

    2003-01-01

    Over the last two decades, it has been established that children's emotion understanding changes as they develop. Recent studies have also begun to address individual differences in children's emotion understanding. The first goal of this study was to examine the development of these individual...... differences across a wide age range with a test assessing nine different components of emotion understanding. The second goal was to examine the relation between language ability and individual differences in emotion understanding. Eighty children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years were tested. Children...... displayed a clear improvement with age in both their emotion understanding and language ability. In each age group, there were clear individual differences in emotion understanding and language ability. Age and language ability together explained 72% of emotion understanding variance; 20% of this variance...

  13. Australian Aboriginal Deaf People and Aboriginal Sign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Power, Des

    2013-01-01

    Many Australian Aboriginal people use a sign language ("hand talk") that mirrors their local spoken language and is used both in culturally appropriate settings when speech is taboo or counterindicated and for community communication. The characteristics of these languages are described, and early European settlers' reports of deaf…

  14. Language Planning for Venezuela: The Role of English.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kelsey, Irving; Serrano, Jose

    A rationale for teaching foreign languages in Venezuelan schools is discussed. An included sociolinguistic profile of Venezuela indicates that Spanish is the sole language of internal communication needs. Other languages spoken in Venezuela serve primarily a group function among the immigrant and indigenous communities. However, the teaching of…

  15. 125 The Fading Phase of Igbo Language and Culture: Path to its ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Tracie1

    favour of foreign language (and culture). They also ... native language, and children are unable to learn a language not spoken ... shielding them off their mother tongue”. ..... the effect endangered language has on the existence of the owners.

  16. MORPOHOLOGICAL POS TAGGING IN ORAL LANGUAGE CORPUS: CHALLENGES FOR AELIUS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gabriel de Ávila Othero

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we present the results of our work with automatic morphological annotation of excerpts from a corpus of spoken language – belonging to the VARSUL project – using the free morphosyntatic tagger Aelius. We present 20 texts containing 154,530 words, annotated automatically and corrected manually. This paper presents the tagger Aelius and our work of manual review of the texts, as well as our suggestions for improvements of the tool, concerning aspects of oral texts. We verify the performance of morphosyntactic tagging a spoken language corpus, an unprecedented challenge for the tagger. Based on the errors of the tagger, we try to infer certain patterns of annotation to overcome limitations presented by the program, and we propose suggestions for implementations in order to allow Aelius to tag spoken language corpora in a more effective way, specially treating cases such as interjections, apheresis, onomatopeia and conversational markers.

  17. Estimating Spoken Dialog System Quality with User Models

    CERN Document Server

    Engelbrecht, Klaus-Peter

    2013-01-01

    Spoken dialog systems have the potential to offer highly intuitive user interfaces, as they allow systems to be controlled using natural language. However, the complexity inherent in natural language dialogs means that careful testing of the system must be carried out from the very beginning of the design process.   This book examines how user models can be used to support such early evaluations in two ways:  by running simulations of dialogs, and by estimating the quality judgments of users. First, a design environment supporting the creation of dialog flows, the simulation of dialogs, and the analysis of the simulated data is proposed.  How the quality of user simulations may be quantified with respect to their suitability for both formative and summative evaluation is then discussed. The remainder of the book is dedicated to the problem of predicting quality judgments of users based on interaction data. New modeling approaches are presented, which process the dialogs as sequences, and which allow knowl...

  18. Structural borrowing: The case of Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) and ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) is a visual gestural language used by members of the deaf community in Kenya. Kiswahili on the other hand is a Bantu language that is used as the national language of Kenya. The two are world's apart, one being a spoken language and the other a signed language and thus their “… basic ...

  19. Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

    2015-01-01

    Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.

  20. Spoken Narrative Assessment: A Supplementary Measure of Children's Creativity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wong, Miranda Kit-Yi; So, Wing Chee

    2016-01-01

    This study developed a spoken narrative (i.e., storytelling) assessment as a supplementary measure of children's creativity. Both spoken and gestural contents of children's spoken narratives were coded to assess their verbal and nonverbal creativity. The psychometric properties of the coding system for the spoken narrative assessment were…

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. Selected Topics from LVCSR Research for Asian Languages at Tokyo Tech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Furui, Sadaoki

    This paper presents our recent work in regard to building Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition (LVCSR) systems for the Thai, Indonesian, and Chinese languages. For Thai, since there is no word boundary in the written form, we have proposed a new method for automatically creating word-like units from a text corpus, and applied topic and speaking style adaptation to the language model to recognize spoken-style utterances. For Indonesian, we have applied proper noun-specific adaptation to acoustic modeling, and rule-based English-to-Indonesian phoneme mapping to solve the problem of large variation in proper noun and English word pronunciation in a spoken-query information retrieval system. In spoken Chinese, long organization names are frequently abbreviated, and abbreviated utterances cannot be recognized if the abbreviations are not included in the dictionary. We have proposed a new method for automatically generating Chinese abbreviations, and by expanding the vocabulary using the generated abbreviations, we have significantly improved the performance of spoken query-based search.

  4. Speaking the language of the kingdom of God in the context of a society in transition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Friedrich (Fritz W. de Wet

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available Venturing to speak the biblical language of the kingdom of God, with its distinct covenantal intensity, in the context of a South African society in transition from paternalistic power structures to liberal democratic structures is not easy. How should the language of the kingdom of God be spoken in a society that demands ‘non-intrusive’ and ‘politically correct’ speech without – in the process – rendering the intense intentionality of its covenantal roots to that of a speech without zeal? Having to face the daunting task of ‘translating’ kingdom language into a type of language that suits the present-day context without sacrificing or diminishing its powerful intentionality demands the development of a new sensitivity. Such a sensitivity is required to incentivise the accommodation of the dimensions of truthful, authoritative and authentic communication in spoken language. In this research article, the implications of the speech act theory, as pioneered by scholars such as J.L. Austin and J. Searle, are utilised to identify possible markers for such a venture. Insight into the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions present in speech acts is indicated as a relevant starting point for attempting to obtain a more comprehensive and perspective-rich understanding into speaking the language of the kingdom of God in a way that fits the present South African context.

  5. Improving Language Models in Speech-Based Human-Machine Interaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raquel Justo

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available This work focuses on speech-based human-machine interaction. Specifically, a Spoken Dialogue System (SDS that could be integrated into a robot is considered. Since Automatic Speech Recognition is one of the most sensitive tasks that must be confronted in such systems, the goal of this work is to improve the results obtained by this specific module. In order to do so, a hierarchical Language Model (LM is considered. Different series of experiments were carried out using the proposed models over different corpora and tasks. The results obtained show that these models provide greater accuracy in the recognition task. Additionally, the influence of the Acoustic Modelling (AM in the improvement percentage of the Language Models has also been explored. Finally the use of hierarchical Language Models in a language understanding task has been successfully employed, as shown in an additional series of experiments.

  6. Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning during Spoken Word Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Devereux, Barry J.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Randall, Billi; Geertzen, Jeroen; Tyler, Lorraine K.

    2016-01-01

    Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

  7. Learning a Minoritized Language in a Majority Language Context: Student Agency and the Creation of Micro-Immersion Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    DePalma, Renée

    2015-01-01

    This study investigates the self-reported experiences of students participating in a Galician language and culture course. Galician, a language historically spoken in northwestern Spain, has been losing ground with respect to Spanish, particularly in urban areas and among the younger generations. The research specifically focuses on informal…

  8. Translingualism and Second Language Acquisition: Language Ideologies of Gaelic Medium Education Teachers in a Linguistically Liminal Setting

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knipe, John

    2017-01-01

    Scottish Gaelic, among the nearly 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, is endangered. In the 1980s the Gaelic Medium Education (GME) movement emerged with an emphasis on teaching students all subjects via this ancient tongue with the hope of revitalizing the language. Concomitantly, many linguists have called for problematizing traditional…

  9. Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels.

    Science.gov (United States)

    El Aissati, Abder; McQueen, James M; Cutler, Anne

    2012-07-01

    Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in certain languages that allow stand-alone vowelless open-class words. One such language is Berber (where t is indeed a word). Berber listeners here detected words affixed to nonsense contexts with or without vowels. Length effects seen in other languages replicated in Berber, but in contrast to prior findings, word detection was not hindered by vowelless contexts. When words can be vowelless, otherwise universal constraints disfavoring vowelless words do not feature in spoken-word recognition. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. Speech, gesture and the origins of language

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Levelt, W.J.M.

    2004-01-01

    During the second half of the 19th century, the psychology of language was invented as a discipline for the sole purpose of explaining the evolution of spoken language. These efforts culminated in Wilhelm Wundt’s monumental Die Sprache of 1900, which outlined the psychological mechanisms involved in

  11. Guest Comment: Universal Language Requirement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherwood, Bruce Arne

    1979-01-01

    Explains that reading English among Scientists is almost universal, however, there are enormous problems with spoken English. Advocates the use of Esperanto as a viable alternative, and as a language requirement for graduate work. (GA)

  12. A word by any other intonation: fMRI evidence for implicit memory traces for pitch contours of spoken words in adult brains.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael Inspector

    Full Text Available OBJECTIVES: Intonation may serve as a cue for facilitated recognition and processing of spoken words and it has been suggested that the pitch contour of spoken words is implicitly remembered. Thus, using the repetition suppression (RS effect of BOLD-fMRI signals, we tested whether the same spoken words are differentially processed in language and auditory brain areas depending on whether or not they retain an arbitrary intonation pattern. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Words were presented repeatedly in three blocks for passive and active listening tasks. There were three prosodic conditions in each of which a different set of words was used and specific task-irrelevant intonation changes were applied: (i All words presented in a set flat monotonous pitch contour (ii Each word had an arbitrary pitch contour that was set throughout the three repetitions. (iii Each word had a different arbitrary pitch contour in each of its repetition. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The repeated presentations of words with a set pitch contour, resulted in robust behavioral priming effects as well as in significant RS of the BOLD signals in primary auditory cortex (BA 41, temporal areas (BA 21 22 bilaterally and in Broca's area. However, changing the intonation of the same words on each successive repetition resulted in reduced behavioral priming and the abolition of RS effects. CONCLUSIONS: Intonation patterns are retained in memory even when the intonation is task-irrelevant. Implicit memory traces for the pitch contour of spoken words were reflected in facilitated neuronal processing in auditory and language associated areas. Thus, the results lend support for the notion that prosody and specifically pitch contour is strongly associated with the memory representation of spoken words.

  13. El Espanol como Idioma Universal (Spanish as a Universal Language)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mijares, Jose

    1977-01-01

    A proposal to transform Spanish into a universal language because it possesses the prerequisites: it is a living language, spoken in several countries; it is a natural language; and it uses the ordinary alphabet. Details on simplification and standardization are given. (Text is in Spanish.) (AMH)

  14. Spectrotemporal processing drives fast access to memory traces for spoken words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tavano, A; Grimm, S; Costa-Faidella, J; Slabu, L; Schröger, E; Escera, C

    2012-05-01

    The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potentials is generated when a detectable spectrotemporal feature of the incoming sound does not match the sensory model set up by preceding repeated stimuli. MMN is enhanced at frontocentral scalp sites for deviant words when compared to acoustically similar deviant pseudowords, suggesting that automatic access to long-term memory traces for spoken words contributes to MMN generation. Does spectrotemporal feature matching also drive automatic lexical access? To test this, we recorded human auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to disyllabic spoken words and pseudowords within a passive oddball paradigm. We first aimed at replicating the word-related MMN enhancement effect for Spanish, thereby adding to the available cross-linguistic evidence (e.g., Finnish, English). We then probed its resilience to spectrotemporal perturbation by inserting short (20 ms) and long (120 ms) silent gaps between first and second syllables of deviant and standard stimuli. A significantly enhanced, frontocentrally distributed MMN to deviant words was found for stimuli with no gap. The long gap yielded no deviant word MMN, showing that prior expectations of word form limits in a given language influence deviance detection processes. Crucially, the insertion of a short gap suppressed deviant word MMN enhancement at frontocentral sites. We propose that spectrotemporal point-wise matching constitutes a core mechanism for fast serial computations in audition and language, bridging sensory and long-term memory systems. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. The Value of Bilingualism in Pupils' Understanding of Scientific Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kearsey, John; Turner, Sheila

    1999-01-01

    Argues that, although some bilingual pupils may be at a disadvantage in understanding scientific language, there may be some circumstances where being bilingual is an advantage in understanding scientific language. Presents evidence of circumstances where being bilingual was an advantage and circumstances where it was a disadvantage in…

  16. Language and Culture in the Multiethnic Community: Spoken Language Assessment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matluck, Joseph H.; Mace-Matluck, Betty J.

    This paper discusses the sociolinguistic problems inherent in multilingual testing, and the accompanying dangers of cultural bias in either the visuals or the language used in a given test. The first section discusses English-speaking Americans' perception of foreign speakers in terms of: (1) physical features; (2) speech, specifically vocabulary,…

  17. Language cannot be reduced to biology: perspectives from neuro-developmental disorders affecting language learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vasanta, D

    2005-02-01

    The study of language knowledge guided by a purely biological perspective prioritizes the study of syntax. The essential process of syntax is recursion--the ability to generate an infinite array of expressions from a limited set of elements. Researchers working within the biological perspective argue that this ability is possible only because of an innately specified genetic makeup that is specific to human beings. Such a view of language knowledge may be fully justified in discussions on biolinguistics, and in evolutionary biology. However, it is grossly inadequate in understanding language-learning problems, particularly those experienced by children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as developmental dyslexia, Williams syndrome, specific language impairment and autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, syntax-centered definitions of language knowledge completely ignore certain crucial aspects of language learning and use, namely, that language is embedded in a social context; that the role of envrironmental triggering as a learning mechanism is grossly underestimated; that a considerable extent of visuo-spatial information accompanies speech in day-to-day communication; that the developmental process itself lies at the heart of knowledge acquisition; and that there is a tremendous variation in the orthographic systems associated with different languages. All these (socio-cultural) factors can influence the rate and quality of spoken and written language acquisition resulting in much variation in phenotypes associated with disorders known to have a genetic component. Delineation of such phenotypic variability requires inputs from varied disciplines such as neurobiology, neuropsychology, linguistics and communication disorders. In this paper, I discuss published research that questions cognitive modularity and emphasises the role of the environment for understanding linguistic capabilities of children with neuro-developmental disorders. The discussion pertains

  18. Theoretical approaches to natural language understanding

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    1985-01-01

    This book discusses the following: Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science and the current state of natural language understanding. Three topics form the focus for discussion; these topics include aspects of grammars, aspects of semantics/pragmatics, and knowledge representation.

  19. Achieving mutual understanding in Argentine Sign Language (LSA)

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Manrique Cordeje, M.E.

    2017-01-01

    How does (mis)understanding works in conversation? Problems of understanding occur all the time in our everyday social life. How does miscommunication happen and how do we deal with it? This thesis reports on how sign language users manage to understand each other based on a large Conversational

  20. Toward a critical ethical reflexivity: phenomenology and language in Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murray, Stuart J; Holmes, Dave

    2013-07-01

    Working within the tradition of continental philosophy, this article argues in favour of a phenomenological understanding of language as a crucial component of bioethical inquiry. The authors challenge the 'commonsense' view of language, in which thinking appears as prior to speaking, and speech the straightforward vehicle of pre-existing thoughts. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1908-1961) phenomenology of language, the authors claim that thinking takes place in and through the spoken word, in and through embodied language. This view resituates bioethics as a matter of bodies that speak. It also refigures the meaning of ethical self-reflexion, and in so doing offers an alternative view on reflexivity and critique. Referring to the Kantian critical tradition and its reception by Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, we advance a position we call 'critical ethical reflexivity'. We contend that Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of language offers valuable insight into ethical reflexivity and subject formation. Moreover, his understanding of language may foster new qualitative empirical research in bioethics, lead to more nuanced methods for interpreting personal narratives, and promote critical self-reflexion as necessary for bioethical inquiry. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  1. Speaking two languages with different number naming systems: What implications for magnitude judgments in bilinguals at different stages of language acquisition?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Rinsveld, Amandine; Schiltz, Christine; Landerl, Karin; Brunner, Martin; Ugen, Sonja

    2016-08-01

    Differences between languages in terms of number naming systems may lead to performance differences in number processing. The current study focused on differences concerning the order of decades and units in two-digit number words (i.e., unit-decade order in German but decade-unit order in French) and how they affect number magnitude judgments. Participants performed basic numerical tasks, namely two-digit number magnitude judgments, and we used the compatibility effect (Nuerk et al. in Cognition 82(1):B25-B33, 2001) as a hallmark of language influence on numbers. In the first part we aimed to understand the influence of language on compatibility effects in adults coming from German or French monolingual and German-French bilingual groups (Experiment 1). The second part examined how this language influence develops at different stages of language acquisition in individuals with increasing bilingual proficiency (Experiment 2). Language systematically influenced magnitude judgments such that: (a) The spoken language(s) modulated magnitude judgments presented as Arabic digits, and (b) bilinguals' progressive language mastery impacted magnitude judgments presented as number words. Taken together, the current results suggest that the order of decades and units in verbal numbers may qualitatively influence magnitude judgments in bilinguals and monolinguals, providing new insights into how number processing can be influenced by language(s).

  2. Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew L Hall

    Full Text Available Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL. Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2 signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect. Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming operates similarly in sign and speech.

  3. Three languages from America in contact with Spanish

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bakker, D.; Sakel, J.; Stolz, T.

    2012-01-01

    Long before Europeans reached the American shores for the first time, and forced their cultures upon the indigenous population, including their languages, a great many other languages were spoken on that continent. These dated back to the original discoverers of America, who probably came from the

  4. Mutual intelligibility between closely related language in Europe.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gooskens, Charlotte; van Heuven, Vincent; Golubovic, Jelena; Schüppert, Anja; Swarte, Femke; Voigt, Stefanie

    2018-01-01

    By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual

  5. Predictors of Spoken Language Development Following Pediatric Cochlear Implantation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Johan Frijns; prof. Dr. Louis Peeraer; van Wieringen; Ingeborg Dhooge; Vermeulen; Jan Brokx; Tinne Boons; Wouters

    2012-01-01

    Objectives: Although deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) are able to develop good language skills, the large variability in outcomes remains a significant concern. The first aim of this study was to evaluate language skills in children with CIs to establish benchmarks. The second aim was to

  6. Recording voiceover the spoken word in media

    CERN Document Server

    Blakemore, Tom

    2015-01-01

    The only book on the market to specifically address its audience, Recording Voiceover is the comprehensive guide for engineers looking to understand the aspects of capturing the spoken word.Discussing all phases of the recording session, Recording Voiceover addresses everything from microphone recommendations for voice recording to pre-production considerations, including setting up the studio, working with and directing the voice talent, and strategies for reducing or eliminating distracting noise elements found in human speech.Recording Voiceover features in-depth, specific recommendations f

  7. I Feel You: The Design and Evaluation of a Domotic Affect-Sensitive Spoken Conversational Agent

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juan Manuel Montero

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available We describe the work on infusion of emotion into a limited-task autonomous spoken conversational agent situated in the domestic environment, using a need-inspired task-independent emotion model (NEMO. In order to demonstrate the generation of affect through the use of the model, we describe the work of integrating it with a natural-language mixed-initiative HiFi-control spoken conversational agent (SCA. NEMO and the host system communicate externally, removing the need for the Dialog Manager to be modified, as is done in most existing dialog systems, in order to be adaptive. The first part of the paper concerns the integration between NEMO and the host agent. The second part summarizes the work on automatic affect prediction, namely, frustration and contentment, from dialog features, a non-conventional source, in the attempt of moving towards a more user-centric approach. The final part reports the evaluation results obtained from a user study, in which both versions of the agent (non-adaptive and emotionally-adaptive were compared. The results provide substantial evidences with respect to the benefits of adding emotion in a spoken conversational agent, especially in mitigating users’ frustrations and, ultimately, improving their satisfaction.

  8. "We call it Springbok-German!": language contact in the German communities in South Africa.

    OpenAIRE

    Franke, Katharina

    2017-01-01

    Varieties of German are spoken all over the world, some of which have been maintained for prolonged periods of time. As a result, these transplanted varieties often show traces of the ongoing language contact as specific to their particular context. This thesis explores one such transplanted German language variety – Springbok- German – as spoken by a small subset of German Lutherans in South Africa. Specifically, this study takes as its focus eight rural German communities acr...

  9. Social Class and Language Attitudes in Hong Kong

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lai, Mee Ling

    2010-01-01

    This article examines the relation between social class and language attitudes through a triangulated study that analyses the attitudes of 836 secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds toward the 3 official spoken languages used in postcolonial Hong Kong (HK; i.e., Cantonese, English, and Putonghua). The respondents were…

  10. Syllable Frequency and Spoken Word Recognition: An Inhibitory Effect.

    Science.gov (United States)

    González-Alvarez, Julio; Palomar-García, María-Angeles

    2016-08-01

    Research has shown that syllables play a relevant role in lexical access in Spanish, a shallow language with a transparent syllabic structure. Syllable frequency has been shown to have an inhibitory effect on visual word recognition in Spanish. However, no study has examined the syllable frequency effect on spoken word recognition. The present study tested the effect of the frequency of the first syllable on recognition of spoken Spanish words. A sample of 45 young adults (33 women, 12 men; M = 20.4, SD = 2.8; college students) performed an auditory lexical decision on 128 Spanish disyllabic words and 128 disyllabic nonwords. Words were selected so that lexical and first syllable frequency were manipulated in a within-subject 2 × 2 design, and six additional independent variables were controlled: token positional frequency of the second syllable, number of phonemes, position of lexical stress, number of phonological neighbors, number of phonological neighbors that have higher frequencies than the word, and acoustical durations measured in milliseconds. Decision latencies and error rates were submitted to linear mixed models analysis. Results showed a typical facilitatory effect of the lexical frequency and, importantly, an inhibitory effect of the first syllable frequency on reaction times and error rates. © The Author(s) 2016.

  11. Task-Oriented Spoken Dialog System for Second-Language Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kwon, Oh-Woog; Kim, Young-Kil; Lee, Yunkeun

    2016-01-01

    This paper introduces a Dialog-Based Computer Assisted second-Language Learning (DB-CALL) system using task-oriented dialogue processing technology. The system promotes dialogue with a second-language learner for a specific task, such as purchasing tour tickets, ordering food, passing through immigration, etc. The dialog system plays a role of a…

  12. How Facebook Can Revitalise Local Languages: Lessons from Bali

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stern, Alissa Joy

    2017-01-01

    For a language to survive, it must be spoken and passed down to the next generation. But how can we engage teenagers--so crucial for language transmission--to use and value their local tongue when they are bombarded by pressures from outside and from within their society to only speak national and international languages? This paper analyses the…

  13. Universality versus language-specificity in listening to running speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cutler, A.; Demuth, K.; McQueen, J.M.

    2002-01-01

    Recognizing spoken language involves automatic activation of multiple candidate words. The process of selection between candidates is made more efficient by inhibition of embedded words (like egg in beg) which leave a portion of the input stranded (here, b). Results from European languages suggest

  14. The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Emmorey, Karen; Giezen, Marcel R; Petrich, Jennifer A F; Spurgeon, Erin; O'Grady Farnady, Lucinda

    2017-06-01

    This study investigated the relation between linguistic and spatial working memory (WM) resources and language comprehension for signed compared to spoken language. Sign languages are both linguistic and visual-spatial, and therefore provide a unique window on modality-specific versus modality-independent contributions of WM resources to language processing. Deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL), hearing monolingual English speakers, and hearing ASL-English bilinguals completed several spatial and linguistic serial recall tasks. Additionally, their comprehension of spatial and non-spatial information in ASL and spoken English narratives was assessed. Results from the linguistic serial recall tasks revealed that the often reported advantage for speakers on linguistic short-term memory tasks does not extend to complex WM tasks with a serial recall component. For English, linguistic WM predicted retention of non-spatial information, and both linguistic and spatial WM predicted retention of spatial information. For ASL, spatial WM predicted retention of spatial (but not non-spatial) information, and linguistic WM did not predict retention of either spatial or non-spatial information. Overall, our findings argue against strong assumptions of independent domain-specific subsystems for the storage and processing of linguistic and spatial information and furthermore suggest a less important role for serial encoding in signed than spoken language comprehension. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Analytic study of the Tadoma method: language abilities of three deaf-blind subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chomsky, C

    1986-09-01

    This study reports on the linguistic abilities of 3 adult deaf-blind subjects. The subjects perceive spoken language through touch, placing a hand on the face of the speaker and monitoring the speaker's articulatory motions, a method of speechreading known as Tadoma. Two of the subjects, deaf-blind since infancy, acquired language and learned to speak through this tactile system; the third subject has used Tadoma since becoming deaf-blind at age 7. Linguistic knowledge and productive language are analyzed, using standardized tests and several tests constructed for this study. The subjects' language abilities prove to be extensive, comparing favorably in many areas with hearing individuals. The results illustrate a relatively minor effect of limited language exposure on eventual language achievement. The results also demonstrate the adequacy of the tactile sense, in these highly trained Tadoma users, for transmitting information about spoken language sufficient to support the development of language and learning to produce speech.

  16. Signed language and human action processing: evidence for functional constraints on the human mirror-neuron system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corina, David P; Knapp, Heather Patterson

    2008-12-01

    In the quest to further understand the neural underpinning of human communication, researchers have turned to studies of naturally occurring signed languages used in Deaf communities. The comparison of the commonalities and differences between spoken and signed languages provides an opportunity to determine core neural systems responsible for linguistic communication independent of the modality in which a language is expressed. The present article examines such studies, and in addition asks what we can learn about human languages by contrasting formal visual-gestural linguistic systems (signed languages) with more general human action perception. To understand visual language perception, it is important to distinguish the demands of general human motion processing from the highly task-dependent demands associated with extracting linguistic meaning from arbitrary, conventionalized gestures. This endeavor is particularly important because theorists have suggested close homologies between perception and production of actions and functions of human language and social communication. We review recent behavioral, functional imaging, and neuropsychological studies that explore dissociations between the processing of human actions and signed languages. These data suggest incomplete overlap between the mirror-neuron systems proposed to mediate human action and language.

  17. Making a Difference: Language Teaching for Intercultural and International Dialogue

    Science.gov (United States)

    Byram, Michael; Wagner, Manuela

    2018-01-01

    Language teaching has long been associated with teaching in a country or countries where a target language is spoken, but this approach is inadequate. In the contemporary world, language teaching has a responsibility to prepare learners for interaction with people of other cultural backgrounds, teaching them skills and attitudes as well as…

  18. Regional Sign Language Varieties in Contact: Investigating Patterns of Accommodation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Evans, Bronwen G.; Cormier, Kearsy

    2016-01-01

    Short-term linguistic accommodation has been observed in a number of spoken language studies. The first of its kind in sign language research, this study aims to investigate the effects of regional varieties in contact and lexical accommodation in British Sign Language (BSL). Twenty-five participants were recruited from Belfast, Glasgow,…

  19. Dilemmatic Aspects of Language Policies in a Trilingual Preschool Group

    Science.gov (United States)

    Puskás, Tünde; Björk-Willén, Polly

    2017-01-01

    This article explores dilemmatic aspects of language policies in a preschool group in which three languages (Swedish, Romani and Arabic) are spoken on an everyday basis. The article highlights the interplay between policy decisions on the societal level, the teachers' interpretations of these policies, as well as language practices on the micro…

  20. Language Planning for the 21st Century: Revisiting Bilingual Language Policy for Deaf Children

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Knoors, H.E.T.; Marschark, M.

    2012-01-01

    For over 25 years in some countries and more recently in others, bilingual education involving sign language and the written/spoken vernacular has been considered an essential educational intervention for deaf children. With the recent growth in universal newborn hearing screening and technological

  1. Lexical access in sign language: a computational model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caselli, Naomi K; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M

    2014-01-01

    PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORIES HAVE PREDOMINANTLY BEEN BUILT UPON DATA FROM SPOKEN LANGUAGE, WHICH LEAVES OPEN THE QUESTION: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012) presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012), and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either (1) the time course of sign perception or (2) the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

  2. Lexical access in sign language: A computational model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Naomi Kenney Caselli

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available Psycholinguistic theories have predominantly been built upon data from spoken language, which leaves open the question: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012 presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012, and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either 1 the time course of sign perception or 2 the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

  3. Towards Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems

    CERN Document Server

    Schmitt, Alexander

    2013-01-01

    In Monitoring Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems, authors Alexander Schmitt and Wolfgang Minker investigate statistical approaches that allow for recognition of negative dialog patterns in Spoken Dialog Systems (SDS). The presented stochastic methods allow a flexible, portable and  accurate use.  Beginning with the foundations of machine learning and pattern recognition, this monograph examines how frequently users show negative emotions in spoken dialog systems and develop novel approaches to speech-based emotion recognition using hybrid approach to model emotions. The authors make use of statistical methods based on acoustic, linguistic and contextual features to examine the relationship between the interaction flow and the occurrence of emotions using non-acted  recordings several thousand real users from commercial and non-commercial SDS. Additionally, the authors present novel statistical methods that spot problems within a dialog based on interaction patterns. The approaches enable future SDS to offer m...

  4. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in Europe

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gooskens, C.; Heuven, van V.J.J.P.; Golubović, J.; Schüppert, A.; Swarte, F.; Voigt, S.

    2017-01-01

    By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual

  5. Spoken Language Activation Alters Subsequent Sign Language Activation in L2 Learners of American Sign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Williams, Joshua T.; Newman, Sharlene D.

    2017-01-01

    A large body of literature has characterized unimodal monolingual and bilingual lexicons and how neighborhood density affects lexical access; however there have been relatively fewer studies that generalize these findings to bimodal (M2) second language (L2) learners of sign languages. The goal of the current study was to investigate parallel…

  6. The interface between spoken and written language: developmental disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hulme, Charles; Snowling, Margaret J

    2014-01-01

    We review current knowledge about reading development and the origins of difficulties in learning to read. We distinguish between the processes involved in learning to decode print, and the processes involved in reading for meaning (reading comprehension). At a cognitive level, difficulties in learning to read appear to be predominantly caused by deficits in underlying oral language skills. The development of decoding skills appears to depend critically upon phonological language skills, and variations in phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge and rapid automatized naming each appear to be causally related to problems in learning to read. Reading comprehension difficulties in contrast appear to be critically dependent on a range of oral language comprehension skills (including vocabulary knowledge and grammatical, morphological and pragmatic skills).

  7. Language Shift or Increased Bilingualism in South Africa: Evidence from Census Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Posel, Dorrit; Zeller, Jochen

    2016-01-01

    In the post-apartheid era, South Africa has adopted a language policy that gives official status to 11 languages (English, Afrikaans, and nine Bantu languages). However, English has remained the dominant language of business, public office, and education, and some research suggests that English is increasingly being spoken in domestic settings.…

  8. The representation of language within language : A syntactico-pragmatic typology of direct speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Vries, M.

    The recursive phenomenon of direct speech (quotation) comes in many different forms, and it is arguably an important and widely used ingredient of both spoken and written language. This article builds on (and provides indirect support for) the idea that quotations are to be defined pragmatically as

  9. Development of brain networks involved in spoken word processing of Mandarin Chinese.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cao, Fan; Khalid, Kainat; Lee, Rebecca; Brennan, Christine; Yang, Yanhui; Li, Kuncheng; Bolger, Donald J; Booth, James R

    2011-08-01

    Developmental differences in phonological and orthographic processing of Chinese spoken words were examined in 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Rhyming and spelling judgments were made to two-character words presented sequentially in the auditory modality. Developmental comparisons between adults and both groups of children combined showed that age-related changes in activation in visuo-orthographic regions depended on a task. There were developmental increases in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the right inferior occipital gyrus in the spelling task, suggesting more extensive visuo-orthographic processing in a task that required access to these representations. Conversely, there were developmental decreases in activation in the left fusiform gyrus and left middle occipital gyrus in the rhyming task, suggesting that the development of reading is marked by reduced involvement of orthography in a spoken language task that does not require access to these orthographic representations. Developmental decreases may arise from the existence of extensive homophony (auditory words that have multiple spellings) in Chinese. In addition, we found that 11-year-olds and adults showed similar activation in the left superior temporal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing greater activation than 9-year-olds. This pattern suggests early development of perceptual representations of phonology. In contrast, 11-year-olds and 9-year-olds showed similar activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing weaker activation than adults. This pattern suggests late development of controlled retrieval and selection of lexical representations. Altogether, this study suggests differential effects of character acquisition on development of components of the language network in Chinese as compared to previous reports on alphabetic languages. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  10. A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kolipakam, Vishnupriya

    2018-01-01

    The Dravidian language family consists of about 80 varieties (Hammarström H. 2016 Glottolog 2.7) spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries (Steever SB. 1998 In The Dravidian languages (ed. SB Steever), pp. 1–39: 1). Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. The history of these languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, because despite their current restricted range, these languages played a significant role in influencing other language groups including Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) and Munda (Austroasiatic) speakers. Here, we report the results of a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of cognate-coded lexical data, elicited first hand from native speakers, to investigate the subgrouping of the Dravidian language family, and provide dates for the major points of diversification. Our results indicate that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4500 years old, a finding that corresponds well with earlier linguistic and archaeological studies. The main branches of the Dravidian language family (North, Central, South I, South II) are recovered, although the placement of languages within these main branches diverges from previous classifications. We find considerable uncertainty with regard to the relationships between the main branches. PMID:29657761

  11. Language Education Policies and Inequality in Africa: Cross-National Empirical Evidence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coyne, Gary

    2015-01-01

    This article examines the relationship between inequality and education through the lens of colonial language education policies in African primary and secondary school curricula. The languages of former colonizers almost always occupy important places in society, yet they are not widely spoken as first languages, meaning that most people depend…

  12. Visual cortex entrains to sign language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brookshire, Geoffrey; Lu, Jenny; Nusbaum, Howard C; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Casasanto, Daniel

    2017-06-13

    Despite immense variability across languages, people can learn to understand any human language, spoken or signed. What neural mechanisms allow people to comprehend language across sensory modalities? When people listen to speech, electrophysiological oscillations in auditory cortex entrain to slow ([Formula: see text]8 Hz) fluctuations in the acoustic envelope. Entrainment to the speech envelope may reflect mechanisms specialized for auditory perception. Alternatively, flexible entrainment may be a general-purpose cortical mechanism that optimizes sensitivity to rhythmic information regardless of modality. Here, we test these proposals by examining cortical coherence to visual information in sign language. First, we develop a metric to quantify visual change over time. We find quasiperiodic fluctuations in sign language, characterized by lower frequencies than fluctuations in speech. Next, we test for entrainment of neural oscillations to visual change in sign language, using electroencephalography (EEG) in fluent speakers of American Sign Language (ASL) as they watch videos in ASL. We find significant cortical entrainment to visual oscillations in sign language sign is strongest over occipital and parietal cortex, in contrast to speech, where coherence is strongest over the auditory cortex. Nonsigners also show coherence to sign language, but entrainment at frontal sites is reduced relative to fluent signers. These results demonstrate that flexible cortical entrainment to language does not depend on neural processes that are specific to auditory speech perception. Low-frequency oscillatory entrainment may reflect a general cortical mechanism that maximizes sensitivity to informational peaks in time-varying signals.

  13. Business Spoken English Learning Strategies for Chinese Enterprise Staff

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Han Li

    2013-01-01

    This study addresses the issue of promoting effective Business Spoken English of Enterprise Staff in China.It aims to assess the assessment of spoken English learning methods and identify the difficulties of learning English oral expression concerned business area.It also provides strategies for enhancing Enterprise Staff’s level of Business Spoken English.

  14. The Plausibility of Tonal Evolution in the Malay Dialect Spoken in Thailand: Evidence from an Acoustic Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Phanintra Teeranon

    2007-12-01

    Full Text Available The F0 values of vowels following voiceless consonants are higher than those of vowels following voiced consonants; high vowels have a higher F0 than low vowels. It has also been found that when high vowels follow voiced consonants, the F0 values decrease. In contrast, low vowels following voiceless consonants show increasing F0 values. In other words, the voicing of initial consonants has been found to counterbalance the intrinsic F0 values of high and low vowels (House and Fairbanks 1953, Lehiste and Peterson 1961, Lehiste 1970, Laver 1994, Teeranon 2006. To test whether these three findings are applicable to a disyllabic language, the F0 values of high and low vowels following voiceless and voiced consonants were studied in a Malay dialect of the Austronesian language family spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand. The data was collected from three male informants, aged 30-35. The Praat program was used for acoustic analysis. The findings revealed the influence of the voicing of initial consonants on the F0 of vowels to be greater than that of the influence of vowel height. Evidence from this acoustic study shows the plausibility for the Malay dialect spoken in Pathumthani to become a tonal language by the influence of initial consonants rather by the influence of the high-low vowel dimension.

  15. A Shared Platform for Studying Second Language Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    MacWhinney, Brian

    2017-01-01

    The study of second language acquisition (SLA) can benefit from the same process of datasharing that has proven effective in areas such as first language acquisition and aphasiology. Researchers can work together to construct a shared platform that combines data from spoken and written corpora, online tutors, and Web-based experimentation. Many of…

  16. Corpus Based Authenicity Analysis of Language Teaching Course Books

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emrah PEKSOY

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In this study, the resemblance of the language learning course books used in Turkey to authentic language spoken by native speakers is explored by using a corpus-based approach. For this, the 10-million-word spoken part of the British National Corpus was selected as reference corpus. After that, all language learning course books used in high schools in Turkey were scanned and transferred to SketchEngine, an online corpus query tool. Lastly, certain grammar points were extracted first from British National Corpus and then from course books; similaritites and differences were compared. At the end of the study, it was found that the language learning course books have little similarity to authentic language in terms of certain grammatical items and frequency of their collocations. In this way, the points to be revised and changed were explored. In addition, this study emphasized the role of corpus approach as a material development and analysis tool; and tested the functionality of course books for writers and for Ministry of National Education.

  17. Japanese Non Resident Language Refresher Course; 210 Hour Course.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

    This military intelligence unit refresher course in Japanese is designed for 210 hours of audiolingual instruction. The materials, prepared by the Defense Language Institute, are intended for students with considerable intensive training in spoken and written Japanese who are preparing for a military language assignment. [Not available in hard…

  18. Altering Practices to Include Bimodal-bilingual (ASL-Spoken English) Programming at a Small School for the Deaf in Canada.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Priestley, Karen; Enns, Charlotte; Arbuckle, Shauna

    2018-01-01

    Bimodal-bilingual programs are emerging as one way to meet broader needs and provide expanded language, educational and social-emotional opportunities for students who are deaf and hard of hearing (Marschark, M., Tang, G. & Knoors, H. (Eds). (2014). Bilingualism and bilingual Deaf education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Paludneviciene & Harris, R. (2011). Impact of cochlear implants on the deaf community. In Paludneviciene, R. & Leigh, I. (Eds.), Cochlear implants evolving perspectives (pp. 3-19). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press). However, there is limited research on students' spoken language development, signed language growth, academic outcomes or the social-emotional factors associated with these programs (Marschark, M., Tang, G. & Knoors, H. (Eds). (2014). Bilingualism and bilingual Deaf education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Nussbaum, D & Scott, S. (2011). The cochlear implant education center: Perspectives on effective educational practices. In Paludneviciene, R. & Leigh, I. (Eds.) Cochlear implants evolving perspectives (pp. 175-205). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. The cochlear implant education center: Perspectives on effective educational practices. In Paludnevicience & Leigh (Eds). Cochlear implants evolving perspectives (pp. 175-205). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press; Spencer, P. & Marschark, M. (Eds.) (2010). Evidence-based practice in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing students. New York, NY: Oxford University Press). The purpose of this case study was to look at formal and informal student outcomes as well as staff and parent perceptions during the first 3 years of implementing a bimodal-bilingual (ASL and spoken English) program within an ASL milieu at a small school for the deaf. Speech and language assessment results for five students were analyzed over a 3-year period and indicated that the students made significant positive gains in all areas, although results were variable. Staff and parent

  19. The Language of Information Literacy: Do Students Understand?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schaub, Gayle; Cadena, Cara; Bravender, Patricia; Kierkus, Christopher

    2017-01-01

    To effectively access and use the resources of the academic library and to become information-literate, students must understand the language of information literacy. This study analyzes undergraduate students' understanding of fourteen commonly used information-literacy terms. It was found that some of the terms least understood by students are…

  20. Language studies in higher education in the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zwarts, Frans; Silkens, B.

    1995-01-01

    Dutch is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands. It is the mother tongue of 15 million Dutchmen and 5,5 million Belgians. The second official language is Frisian, which is spoken by the 500,000 inhabitants of Friesland - a province of the Netherlands, 1,248 square miles in area, in the

  1. Cortical networks for vision and language in dyslexic and normal children of variable socio-economic status.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Monzalvo, Karla; Fluss, Joel; Billard, Catherine; Dehaene, Stanislas; Dehaene-Lambertz, Ghislaine

    2012-05-15

    In dyslexia, anomalous activations have been described in both left temporo-parietal language cortices and in left ventral visual occipito-temporal cortex. However, the reproducibility, task-dependency, and presence of these brain anomalies in childhood rather than adulthood remain debated. We probed the large-scale organization of ventral visual and spoken language areas in dyslexic children using minimal target-detection tasks that were performed equally well by all groups. In 23 normal and 23 dyslexic 10-year-old children from two different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, we compared fMRI activity to visually presented houses, faces, and written strings, and to spoken sentences in the native or in a foreign language. Our results confirm a disorganization of both ventral visual and spoken language areas in dyslexic children. Visually, dyslexic children showed a normal lateral-to-medial mosaic of preferences, as well as normal responses to houses and checkerboards, but a reduced activation to words in the visual word form area (VWFA) and to faces in the right fusiform face area (FFA). Auditorily, dyslexic children exhibited reduced responses to speech in posterior temporal cortex, left insula and supplementary motor area, as well as reduced responses to maternal language in subparts of the planum temporale, left basal language area and VWFA. By correlating these two findings, we identify spoken-language predictors of VWFA activation to written words, which differ for dyslexic and normal readers. Similarities in fMRI deficits in both SES groups emphasize the existence of a core set of brain activation anomalies in dyslexia, regardless of culture, language and SES, without however resolving whether these anomalies are a cause or a consequence of impaired reading. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Language choice in bimodal bilingual development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diane eLillo-Martin

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children.Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending – expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously – an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children’s language choices.This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult.Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant

  3. Coaching Parents to Use Naturalistic Language and Communication Strategies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akamoglu, Yusuf; Dinnebeil, Laurie

    2017-01-01

    Naturalistic language and communication strategies (i.e., naturalistic teaching strategies) refer to practices that are used to promote the child's language and communication skills either through verbal (e.g., spoken words) or nonverbal (e.g., gestures, signs) interactions between an adult (e.g., parent, teacher) and a child. Use of naturalistic…

  4. Language Immersion in the Self-Study Mode E-Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sobolev, Olga

    2016-01-01

    This paper assesses the efficiency of the "Language Immersion e-Course" developed at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Language Centre. The new self-study revision e-course, promoting students' proficiency in spoken and aural Russian through autonomous learning, is based on the Michel Thomas method, and is…

  5. Towards a Sign Language Synthesizer: a Bridge to Communication Gap of the Hearing/Speech Impaired Community

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maarif, H. A.; Akmeliawati, R.; Gunawan, T. S.; Shafie, A. A.

    2013-12-01

    Sign language synthesizer is a method to visualize the sign language movement from the spoken language. The sign language (SL) is one of means used by HSI people to communicate to normal people. But, unfortunately the number of people, including the HSI people, who are familiar with sign language is very limited. These cause difficulties in the communication between the normal people and the HSI people. The sign language is not only hand movement but also the face expression. Those two elements have complimentary aspect each other. The hand movement will show the meaning of each signing and the face expression will show the emotion of a person. Generally, Sign language synthesizer will recognize the spoken language by using speech recognition, the grammatical process will involve context free grammar, and 3D synthesizer will take part by involving recorded avatar. This paper will analyze and compare the existing techniques of developing a sign language synthesizer, which leads to IIUM Sign Language Synthesizer.

  6. Bridging the Gap: The Development of Appropriate Educational Strategies for Minority Language Communities in the Philippines

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dekker, Diane; Young, Catherine

    2005-01-01

    There are more than 6000 languages spoken by the 6 billion people in the world today--however, those languages are not evenly divided among the world's population--over 90% of people globally speak only about 300 majority languages--the remaining 5700 languages being termed "minority languages". These languages represent the…

  7. The Relationship Between Second Language Anxiety and International Nursing Students Stress

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khawaja, Nigar G.; Chan, Sabrina; Stein, Georgia

    2017-01-01

    We examined the relationship between second language anxiety and international nursing student stress after taking into account the demographic, cognitive, and acculturative factors. International nursing students (N = 152) completed an online questionnaire battery. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that spoken second language anxiety and…

  8. Imitation, Sign Language Skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holmer, Emil; Heimann, Mikael; Rudner, Mary

    2016-01-01

    Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL) than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL) signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL) than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1) we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2). Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills were taken into

  9. Imitation, sign language skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emil eHolmer

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU model (Rönnberg et al., 2013 pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1 we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2. Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at the T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills

  10. Universal brain signature of proficient reading: Evidence from four contrasting languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rueckl, Jay G; Paz-Alonso, Pedro M; Molfese, Peter J; Kuo, Wen-Jui; Bick, Atira; Frost, Stephen J; Hancock, Roeland; Wu, Denise H; Mencl, William Einar; Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni; Lee, Jun-Ren; Oliver, Myriam; Zevin, Jason D; Hoeft, Fumiko; Carreiras, Manuel; Tzeng, Ovid J L; Pugh, Kenneth R; Frost, Ram

    2015-12-15

    We propose and test a theoretical perspective in which a universal hallmark of successful literacy acquisition is the convergence of the speech and orthographic processing systems onto a common network of neural structures, regardless of how spoken words are represented orthographically in a writing system. During functional MRI, skilled adult readers of four distinct and highly contrasting languages, Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Chinese, performed an identical semantic categorization task to spoken and written words. Results from three complementary analytic approaches demonstrate limited language variation, with speech-print convergence emerging as a common brain signature of reading proficiency across the wide spectrum of selected languages, whether their writing system is alphabetic or logographic, whether it is opaque or transparent, and regardless of the phonological and morphological structure it represents.

  11. Predicting reading ability in teenagers who are deaf or hard of hearing: A longitudinal analysis of language and reading.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Worsfold, Sarah; Mahon, Merle; Pimperton, Hannah; Stevenson, Jim; Kennedy, Colin

    2018-04-13

    Deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) children and young people are known to show group-level deficits in spoken language and reading abilities relative to their hearing peers. However, there is little evidence on the longitudinal predictive relationships between language and reading in this population. To determine the extent to which differences in spoken language ability in childhood predict reading ability in D/HH adolescents. and procedures: Participants were drawn from a population-based cohort study and comprised 53 D/HH teenagers, who used spoken language, and a comparison group of 38 normally hearing teenagers. All had completed standardised measures of spoken language (expression and comprehension) and reading (accuracy and comprehension) at 6-10 and 13-19 years of age. and results: Forced entry stepwise regression showed that, after taking reading ability at age 8 years into account, language scores at age 8 years did not add significantly to the prediction of Reading Accuracy z-scores at age 17 years (change in R 2  = 0.01, p = .459) but did make a significant contribution to the prediction of Reading Comprehension z-scores at age 17 years (change in R 2  = 0.17, p skills in middle childhood predict reading comprehension ability in adolescence. Continued intervention to support language development beyond primary school has the potential to benefit reading comprehension and hence educational access for D/HH adolescents. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  12. V2S: Voice to Sign Language Translation System for Malaysian Deaf People

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mean Foong, Oi; Low, Tang Jung; La, Wai Wan

    The process of learning and understand the sign language may be cumbersome to some, and therefore, this paper proposes a solution to this problem by providing a voice (English Language) to sign language translation system using Speech and Image processing technique. Speech processing which includes Speech Recognition is the study of recognizing the words being spoken, regardless of whom the speaker is. This project uses template-based recognition as the main approach in which the V2S system first needs to be trained with speech pattern based on some generic spectral parameter set. These spectral parameter set will then be stored as template in a database. The system will perform the recognition process through matching the parameter set of the input speech with the stored templates to finally display the sign language in video format. Empirical results show that the system has 80.3% recognition rate.

  13. Examining Transcription, Autonomy and Reflective Practice in Language Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cooke, Simon D.

    2013-01-01

    This pilot study explores language development among a class of L2 students who were required to transcribe and reflect upon spoken performances. The class was given tasks for self and peer-evaluation and afforded the opportunity to assume more responsibility for assessing language development of both themselves and their peers. Several studies…

  14. Teaching English as a "Second Language" in Kenya and the United States: Convergences and Divergences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roy-Campbell, Zaline M.

    2015-01-01

    English is spoken in five countries as the native language and in numerous other countries as an official language and the language of instruction. In countries where English is the native language, it is taught to speakers of other languages as an additional language to enable them to participate in all domains of life of that country. In many…

  15. Continuous-speech segmentation at the beginning of language acquisition: electrophysiological evidence

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kooijman, V.M.

    2007-01-01

    Word segmentation, or detecting word boundaries in continuous speech, is not an easy task. Spoken language does not contain silences to indicate word boundaries and words partly overlap due to coarticalution. Still, adults listening to their native language perceive speech as individual words. They

  16. Neural dynamics of morphological processing in spoken word comprehension: Laterality and automaticity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caroline M. Whiting

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available Rapid and automatic processing of grammatical complexity is argued to take place during speech comprehension, engaging a left-lateralised fronto-temporal language network. Here we address how neural activity in these regions is modulated by the grammatical properties of spoken words. We used combined magneto- and electroencephalography (MEG, EEG to delineate the spatiotemporal patterns of activity that support the recognition of morphologically complex words in English with inflectional (-s and derivational (-er affixes (e.g. bakes, baker. The mismatch negativity (MMN, an index of linguistic memory traces elicited in a passive listening paradigm, was used to examine the neural dynamics elicited by morphologically complex words. Results revealed an initial peak 130-180 ms after the deviation point with a major source in left superior temporal cortex. The localisation of this early activation showed a sensitivity to two grammatical properties of the stimuli: 1 the presence of morphological complexity, with affixed words showing increased left-laterality compared to non-affixed words; and 2 the grammatical category, with affixed verbs showing greater left-lateralisation in inferior frontal gyrus compared to affixed nouns (bakes vs. beaks. This automatic brain response was additionally sensitive to semantic coherence (the meaning of the stem vs. the meaning of the whole form in fronto-temporal regions. These results demonstrate that the spatiotemporal pattern of neural activity in spoken word processing is modulated by the presence of morphological structure, predominantly engaging the left-hemisphere’s fronto-temporal language network, and does not require focused attention on the linguistic input.

  17. ORIGINAL ARTICLES How do doctors learn the spoken language of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    2009-07-01

    Jul 1, 2009 ... and cultural metaphors of illness as part of language learning. The theory of .... role.21 Even in a military setting, where soldiers learnt Korean or Spanish as part of ... own language – a cross-cultural survey. Brit J Gen Pract ...

  18. Listening in first and second language

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Farrell, J.; Cutler, A.; Liontas, J.I.

    2018-01-01

    Listeners' recognition of spoken language involves complex decoding processes: The continuous speech stream must be segmented into its component words, and words must be recognized despite great variability in their pronunciation (due to talker differences, or to influence of phonetic context, or to

  19. Competition dynamics of second-language listening

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Broersma, M.; Cutler, A.

    2011-01-01

    Spoken-word recognition in a nonnative language is particularly difficult where it depends on discrimination between confusable phonemes. Four experiments here examine whether this difficulty is in part due to phantom competition from onear-wordso in speech. Dutch listeners confuse English /ae/ and

  20. d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners: The Development of Communication and Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pizzo, Lianna

    2016-01-01

    The author examines the theory and research relevant to educating d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners (DMLs). There is minimal research on this population, yet a synthesis of related theory, research, and practice on spoken-language bilinguals can be used to add to the body of knowledge on these learners. Specifically, the author reports on three major areas: (a) population characteristics of DMLs, (b) theories relevant to understanding the language development of DMLs, and (c) considerations for programs in designing and implementing educational services for DMLs. In the interest of ensuring that children receive the foundation for linguistic success, aspects of linguistically responsive teaching (Lucas & Villegas, 2013) are addressed, with a focus on adopting an asset-based perspective on educating DMLs that honors all of a child's language, identity, and cultural memberships.

  1. Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe. 2017 Edition. Eurydice Report

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baïdak, Nathalie; Balcon, Marie-Pascale; Motiejunaite, Akvile

    2017-01-01

    Linguistic diversity is part of Europe's DNA. It embraces not only the official languages of Member States, but also the regional and/or minority languages spoken for centuries on European territory, as well as the languages brought by the various waves of migrants. The coexistence of this variety of languages constitutes an asset, but it is also…

  2. Morphosyntactic correctness of written language production in adults with moderate to severe congenital hearing loss

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Huysmans, Elke; de Jong, Jan; Festen, Joost M.; Coene, Martine M.R.; Goverts, S. Theo

    2017-01-01

    Objective To examine whether moderate to severe congenital hearing loss (MSCHL) leads to persistent morphosyntactic problems in the written language production of adults, as it does in their spoken language production. Design Samples of written language in Dutch were analysed for morphosyntactic

  3. Alpha and theta brain oscillations index dissociable processes in spoken word recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strauß, Antje; Kotz, Sonja A; Scharinger, Mathias; Obleser, Jonas

    2014-08-15

    Slow neural oscillations (~1-15 Hz) are thought to orchestrate the neural processes of spoken language comprehension. However, functional subdivisions within this broad range of frequencies are disputed, with most studies hypothesizing only about single frequency bands. The present study utilizes an established paradigm of spoken word recognition (lexical decision) to test the hypothesis that within the slow neural oscillatory frequency range, distinct functional signatures and cortical networks can be identified at least for theta- (~3-7 Hz) and alpha-frequencies (~8-12 Hz). Listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task on a set of items that formed a word-pseudoword continuum: ranging from (1) real words over (2) ambiguous pseudowords (deviating from real words only in one vowel; comparable to natural mispronunciations in speech) to (3) pseudowords (clearly deviating from real words by randomized syllables). By means of time-frequency analysis and spatial filtering, we observed a dissociation into distinct but simultaneous patterns of alpha power suppression and theta power enhancement. Alpha exhibited a parametric suppression as items increasingly matched real words, in line with lowered functional inhibition in a left-dominant lexical processing network for more word-like input. Simultaneously, theta power in a bilateral fronto-temporal network was selectively enhanced for ambiguous pseudowords only. Thus, enhanced alpha power can neurally 'gate' lexical integration, while enhanced theta power might index functionally more specific ambiguity-resolution processes. To this end, a joint analysis of both frequency bands provides neural evidence for parallel processes in achieving spoken word recognition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Language Planning for the 21st Century: Revisiting Bilingual Language Policy for Deaf Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knoors, Harry; Marschark, Marc

    2012-01-01

    For over 25 years in some countries and more recently in others, bilingual education involving sign language and the written/spoken vernacular has been considered an essential educational intervention for deaf children. With the recent growth in universal newborn hearing screening and technological advances such as digital hearing aids and…

  5. Language and the origin of numerical concepts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gelman, Rochel; Gallistel, C R

    2004-10-15

    Reports of research with the Pirahã and Mundurukú Amazonian Indians of Brazil lend themselves to discussions of the role of language in the origin of numerical concepts. The research findings indicate that, whether or not humans have an extensive counting list, they share with nonverbal animals a language-independent representation of number, with limited, scale-invariant precision. What causal role, then, does knowledge of the language of counting serve? We consider the strong Whorfian proposal, that of linguistic determinism; the weak Whorfian hypothesis, that language influences how we think; and that the "language of thought" maps to spoken language or symbol systems.

  6. Socio-Pragmatic Problems in Foreign Language Teaching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    İsmail ÇAKIR

    2006-10-01

    Full Text Available It is a fact that language is a means of communication for human beings. People who needto have social interaction should share the same language, beliefs, values etc., in a given society.It can be stated that when learning a foreign language, mastering only linguistic features of FLprobably does not ensure true spoken and written communication. This study aims to deal withsocio-pragmatic problems which the learners may be confront with while learning and using theforeign language. Particularly cultural and cultural values of the target language such as idioms,proverbs and metaphors and their role in foreign language teaching have been focused on.

  7. Channel-dependent GMM and multi-class logistic: Regression models for language recognition

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Leeuwen, D.A. van; Brümmer, Niko

    2006-01-01

    This paper describes two new approaches to spoken language recognition. These were both successfully applied in the NIST 2005 Language Recognition Evaluation. The first approach extends the Gaussian Mixture Model technique with channel dependency, which results in actual detection costs (CDET) of

  8. Play to Learn: Self-Directed Home Language Literacy Acquisition through Online Games

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eisenchlas, Susana A.; Schalley, Andrea C.; Moyes, Gordon

    2016-01-01

    Home language literacy education in Australia has been pursued predominantly through Community Language Schools. At present, some 1,000 of these, attended by over 100,000 school-age children, cater for 69 of the over 300 languages spoken in Australia. Despite good intentions, these schools face a number of challenges. For instance, children may…

  9. Neural correlates of British sign language comprehension: spatial processing demands of topographic language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    MacSweeney, Mairéad; Woll, Bencie; Campbell, Ruth; Calvert, Gemma A; McGuire, Philip K; David, Anthony S; Simmons, Andrew; Brammer, Michael J

    2002-10-01

    In all signed languages used by deaf people, signs are executed in "sign space" in front of the body. Some signed sentences use this space to map detailed "real-world" spatial relationships directly. Such sentences can be considered to exploit sign space "topographically." Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we explored the extent to which increasing the topographic processing demands of signed sentences was reflected in the differential recruitment of brain regions in deaf and hearing native signers of the British Sign Language. When BSL signers performed a sentence anomaly judgement task, the occipito-temporal junction was activated bilaterally to a greater extent for topographic than nontopographic processing. The differential role of movement in the processing of the two sentence types may account for this finding. In addition, enhanced activation was observed in the left inferior and superior parietal lobules during processing of topographic BSL sentences. We argue that the left parietal lobe is specifically involved in processing the precise configuration and location of hands in space to represent objects, agents, and actions. Importantly, no differences in these regions were observed when hearing people heard and saw English translations of these sentences. Despite the high degree of similarity in the neural systems underlying signed and spoken languages, exploring the linguistic features which are unique to each of these broadens our understanding of the systems involved in language comprehension.

  10. A grammar of Tadaksahak a northern Songhay language of Mali

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Christiansen-Bolli, Regula

    2010-01-01

    This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of the language Tadaksahak spoken by about 30,000 people living in the most eastern part of Mali. The four chapters of the book give 1. Information about the background of the group. 2. The phonological features of the language with the inventory of the

  11. State-of-the-art in the development of the Lokono language

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rybka, K.

    2015-01-01

    Lokono is a critically endangered Northern Arawakan language spoken in the peri- coastal areas of the Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). Today, in every Lokono village there remains only a small number of elderly native speakers. However, in spite of the ongoing language loss, across the

  12. The Differences Between Men And Women Language Styles In Writing Twitter Updates

    OpenAIRE

    FATIN, MARSHELINA

    2014-01-01

    Fatin, Marshelina. 2013. The Differences between Men and Women LanguageStyles in Writing Twitter Updates. Study Program of English, UniversitasBrawijaya. Supervisor: Isti Purwaningtyas; Co-supervisor: Muhammad Rozin.Keywords: Twitter, Twitter updates, Language style, Men language, Womenlanguage. The language which is used by people has so many differences. The differences itself are associated with men and women which belong to gender. If there are differences in spoken language, written lang...

  13. The Arabic Natural Language Processing: Introduction and Challenges

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Boukhatem Nadera

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by more than 330 million people as a native language, in an area extending from the Arabian/Persian Gulf in the East to the Atlantic Ocean in the West. Moreover, it is the language in which 1.4 billion Muslims around the world perform their daily prayers. Over the last few years, Arabic natural language processing (ANLP has gained increasing importance, and several state of the art systems have been developed for a wide range of applications.

  14. IMPACT ON THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN NIGERIA ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    In the face of globalisation, the scale of communication is increasing from being merely .... capital goods and services across national frontiers involving too, political contexts of ... auditory and audiovisual entertainment, the use of English dominates. The language .... manners, entertainment, sports, the legal system, etc.

  15. Singing can facilitate foreign language learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ludke, Karen M; Ferreira, Fernanda; Overy, Katie

    2014-01-01

    This study presents the first experimental evidence that singing can facilitate short-term paired-associate phrase learning in an unfamiliar language (Hungarian). Sixty adult participants were randomly assigned to one of three "listen-and-repeat" learning conditions: speaking, rhythmic speaking, or singing. Participants in the singing condition showed superior overall performance on a collection of Hungarian language tests after a 15-min learning period, as compared with participants in the speaking and rhythmic speaking conditions. This superior performance was statistically significant (p sing" learning method can facilitate verbatim memory for spoken foreign language phrases.

  16. Phonological memory in sign language relies on the visuomotor neural system outside the left hemisphere language network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kanazawa, Yuji; Nakamura, Kimihiro; Ishii, Toru; Aso, Toshihiko; Yamazaki, Hiroshi; Omori, Koichi

    2017-01-01

    Sign language is an essential medium for everyday social interaction for deaf people and plays a critical role in verbal learning. In particular, language development in those people should heavily rely on the verbal short-term memory (STM) via sign language. Most previous studies compared neural activations during signed language processing in deaf signers and those during spoken language processing in hearing speakers. For sign language users, it thus remains unclear how visuospatial inputs are converted into the verbal STM operating in the left-hemisphere language network. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study investigated neural activation while bilinguals of spoken and signed language were engaged in a sequence memory span task. On each trial, participants viewed a nonsense syllable sequence presented either as written letters or as fingerspelling (4-7 syllables in length) and then held the syllable sequence for 12 s. Behavioral analysis revealed that participants relied on phonological memory while holding verbal information regardless of the type of input modality. At the neural level, this maintenance stage broadly activated the left-hemisphere language network, including the inferior frontal gyrus, supplementary motor area, superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, for both letter and fingerspelling conditions. Interestingly, while most participants reported that they relied on phonological memory during maintenance, direct comparisons between letters and fingers revealed strikingly different patterns of neural activation during the same period. Namely, the effortful maintenance of fingerspelling inputs relative to letter inputs activated the left superior parietal lobule and dorsal premotor area, i.e., brain regions known to play a role in visuomotor analysis of hand/arm movements. These findings suggest that the dorsal visuomotor neural system subserves verbal learning via sign language by relaying gestural inputs to

  17. ASSESSING THE SO CALLED MARKED INFLECTIONAL FEATURES OF NIGERIAN ENGLISH: A SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY ACCOUNT

    OpenAIRE

    Boluwaji Oshodi

    2014-01-01

    There are conflicting claims among scholars on whether the structural outputs of the types of English spoken in countries where English is used as a second language gives such speech forms the status of varieties of English. This study examined those morphological features considered to be marked features of the variety spoken in Nigeria according to Kirkpatrick (2011) and the variety spoken in Malaysia by considering the claims of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) a Second Lan...

  18. The influence of talker and foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bent, Tessa; Holt, Rachael Frush

    2013-03-01

    In spoken word identification and memory tasks, stimulus variability from numerous sources impairs performance. In the current study, the influence of foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification was evaluated in two experiments. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design to test word identification in noise in single-talker and two multiple-talker conditions: multiple talkers with the same accent and multiple talkers with different accents. Identification performance was highest in the single-talker condition, but there was no difference between the single-accent and multiple-accent conditions. Experiment 2 further explored word recognition for multiple talkers in single-accent versus multiple-accent conditions using a mixed design. A detriment to word recognition was observed in the multiple-accent condition compared to the single-accent condition, but the effect differed across the language backgrounds tested. These results demonstrate that the processing of foreign-accent variation may influence word recognition in ways similar to other sources of variability (e.g., speaking rate or style) in that the inclusion of multiple foreign accents can result in a small but significant performance decrement beyond the multiple-talker effect.

  19. Language and Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: Successes and Challenges

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lederberg, Amy R.; Schick, Brenda; Spencer, Patricia E.

    2013-01-01

    Childhood hearing loss presents challenges to language development, especially spoken language. In this article, we review existing literature on deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children's patterns and trajectories of language as well as development of theory of mind and literacy. Individual trajectories vary significantly, reflecting access to…

  20. Deficits in narrative abilities in child British Sign Language users with specific language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Herman, Ros; Rowley, Katherine; Mason, Kathryn; Morgan, Gary

    2014-01-01

    This study details the first ever investigation of narrative skills in a group of 17 deaf signing children who have been diagnosed with disorders in their British Sign Language development compared with a control group of 17 deaf child signers matched for age, gender, education, quantity, and quality of language exposure and non-verbal intelligence. Children were asked to generate a narrative based on events in a language free video. Narratives were analysed for global structure, information content and local level grammatical devices, especially verb morphology. The language-impaired group produced shorter, less structured and grammatically simpler narratives than controls, with verb morphology particularly impaired. Despite major differences in how sign and spoken languages are articulated, narrative is shown to be a reliable marker of language impairment across the modality boundaries. © 2014 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

  1. The Link between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Robin L.; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

    2009-01-01

    Signed languages exploit iconicity (the transparent relationship between meaning and form) to a greater extent than spoken languages. where it is largely limited to onomatopoeia. In a picture-sign matching experiment measuring reaction times, the authors examined the potential advantage of iconicity both for 1st- and 2nd-language learners of…

  2. The Ecology of Language in Classrooms at a University in Eastern Ukraine

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tarnopolsky, Oleg B.; Goodman, Bridget A.

    2014-01-01

    Using an ecology of language framework, the purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which English as a medium of instruction (EMI) at a private university in eastern Ukraine allows for the use of Ukrainian, the state language, or Russian, the predominantly spoken language, in large cities in eastern Ukraine. Uses of English and Russian…

  3. Mapudungun According to Its Speakers: Mapuche Intellectuals and the Influence of Standard Language Ideology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lagos, Cristián; Espinoza, Marco; Rojas, Darío

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, we analyse the cultural models (or folk theory of language) that the Mapuche intellectual elite have about Mapudungun, the native language of the Mapuche people still spoken today in Chile as the major minority language. Our theoretical frame is folk linguistics and studies of language ideology, but we have also taken an applied…

  4. The role of foreign and indigenous languages in primary schools ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This article investigates the use of English and other African languages in Kenyan primary schools. English is a .... For a long time, the issue of the medium of instruction, in especially primary schools, has persisted in spite of .... mother tongue, they use this language for spoken classroom interaction in order to bring about.

  5. Idiom understanding in adulthood: examining age-related differences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hung, Pei-Fang; Nippold, Marilyn A

    2014-03-01

    Idioms are figurative expressions such as hold your horses, kick the bucket, and lend me a hand, which commonly occur in everyday spoken and written language. Hence, the understanding of these expressions is essential for daily communication. In this study, we examined idiom understanding in healthy adults in their 20s, 40s, 60s and 80s (n=30 per group) to determine if performance would show an age-related decline. Participants judged their own familiarity with a set of 20 idioms, explained the meaning of each, described a situation in which the idiom could be used, and selected the appropriate interpretation from a set of choices. There was no evidence of an age-related decline on any tasks. Rather, the 60s group reported greater familiarity and offered better explanations than did the 20s group. Moreover, greater familiarity with idioms was associated with better understanding in adults.

  6. Figurative Idiomatic Language: Strategies and Difficulties of Understanding English Idioms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nisreen Al-Khawaldeh

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Learning idioms which is considered a very essential part of learning and using language (Sridhar and Karunakaran, 2013 has recently attracted a great attention of English learning researchers particularly the assessment of how well Asian language learners acquire and use idioms in communication (Tran, 2013. Understanding and using them fluently could be viewed as a sign towards language proficiency as they could be an effective way to give students better conditions to enhance their communication skills in the daily context (Beloussova, 2015. Investigating how idiomatic expressions are dealt with and processed in a second language or foreign language is an issue worth examining further since it may give language teachers a better idea of some of the strategies language learners use in order to interpret figurative language. Despite their importance, learning and using English idioms by Arab EFL learners have not been investigated extensively, and no research has been conducted on Jordanian students’ idiomatic competency. Thus, the researcher decided to work on these un-tackled issues in the Jordanian context. Most idioms-based investigations are the difficulties Jordanians learners of English face when translating them into Arabic (Hussein, Khanji, and Makhzoumi, 2000; Bataineh and Bataineh, 2002; Alrishan and Smadi, 2015. The analysis of the test showed students’ very poor idiomatic competence; particularly a very limited awareness of the most frequently used idioms despite their overwhelming desire to learn them. Data analysis of the questionnaire revealed the strategies students use and the problems they face in understanding and learning idioms.

  7. A study of syllable codas in South African Sign Language

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Kate H

    A South African Sign Language Dictionary for Families with Young Deaf Children (SLED 2006) was used with permission ... Figure 1: Syllable structure of a CVC syllable in the word “bed”. In spoken languages .... often than not, there is a societal emphasis on 'fixing' a child's deafness and attempting to teach deaf children to ...

  8. Intonational Division of a Speech Flow in the Kazakh Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bazarbayeva, Zeynep M.; Zhalalova, Akshay M.; Ormakhanova, Yenlik N.; Ospangaziyeva, Nazgul B.; Karbozova, Bulbul D.

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this research is to analyze the speech intonation of the French, Kazakh, English and Russian languages. The study considers intonation component functions (of melodics, duration, and intensity) in poetry and language spoken. It is defined that a set of prosodic means are used in order to convey the intonational specifics of sounding…

  9. Grammar of Kove: An Austronesian Language of the West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sato, Hiroko

    2013-01-01

    This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Kove, an Austronesian language spoken in the West New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea. Kove is primarily spoken in 18 villages, including some on the small islands north of New Britain. There are about 9,000 people living in the area, but many are not fluent speakers of Kove. The dissertation…

  10. African languages — is the writing on the screen? | Bosch | Southern ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The trends emerging in the natural language processing (NLP) of African languages spoken in South Africa, are explored in order to determine whether research in and development of such NLP is keeping abreast of international developments. This is done by investigating the past, present and future of NLP of African ...

  11. Bikol Dictionary. PALI Language Texts: Philippines.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mintz, Malcolm W.

    The Bikol language of the Philippines, spoken in the southernmost peninsula of Luzon Island and extending into the island provinces of Catanduanes and Masbate, is presented in this bilingual dictionary. An introduction explains the Bikol alphabet, orthographic representation (including policies adopted in writing Spanish and English loan words),…

  12. Mother and Infant Talk about Mental States Relates to Desire Language and Emotion Understanding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taumoepeau, Mele; Ruffman, Ted

    2006-01-01

    This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15--24-month-olds. At both times point, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental…

  13. The Peculiarities of the Adverbs Functioning of the Dialect Spoken in the v. Shevchenkove, Kiliya district, Odessa Region

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maryna Delyusto

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available The article gives new evidence about the adverb as a part of the grammatical system of the Ukrainian steppe dialect spread in the area between the Danube and the Dniester rivers. The author proves that the grammatical system of the dialect spoken in the v. Shevchenkove, Kiliya district, Odessa region is determined by the historical development of the Ukrainian language rather than the influence of neighboring dialects.

  14. Beyond the language given: the neural correlates of inferring speaker meaning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bašnáková, Jana; Weber, Kirsten; Petersson, Karl Magnus; van Berkum, Jos; Hagoort, Peter

    2014-10-01

    Even though language allows us to say exactly what we mean, we often use language to say things indirectly, in a way that depends on the specific communicative context. For example, we can use an apparently straightforward sentence like "It is hard to give a good presentation" to convey deeper meanings, like "Your talk was a mess!" One of the big puzzles in language science is how listeners work out what speakers really mean, which is a skill absolutely central to communication. However, most neuroimaging studies of language comprehension have focused on the arguably much simpler, context-independent process of understanding direct utterances. To examine the neural systems involved in getting at contextually constrained indirect meaning, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging as people listened to indirect replies in spoken dialog. Relative to direct control utterances, indirect replies engaged dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right temporo-parietal junction and insula, as well as bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right medial temporal gyrus. This suggests that listeners take the speaker's perspective on both cognitive (theory of mind) and affective (empathy-like) levels. In line with classic pragmatic theories, our results also indicate that currently popular "simulationist" accounts of language comprehension fail to explain how listeners understand the speaker's intended message. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  15. Language-driven anticipatory eye movements in virtual reality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eichert, Nicole; Peeters, David; Hagoort, Peter

    2018-06-01

    Predictive language processing is often studied by measuring eye movements as participants look at objects on a computer screen while they listen to spoken sentences. This variant of the visual-world paradigm has revealed that information encountered by a listener at a spoken verb can give rise to anticipatory eye movements to a target object, which is taken to indicate that people predict upcoming words. The ecological validity of such findings remains questionable, however, because these computer experiments used two-dimensional stimuli that were mere abstractions of real-world objects. Here we present a visual-world paradigm study in a three-dimensional (3-D) immersive virtual reality environment. Despite significant changes in the stimulus materials and the different mode of stimulus presentation, language-mediated anticipatory eye movements were still observed. These findings thus indicate that people do predict upcoming words during language comprehension in a more naturalistic setting where natural depth cues are preserved. Moreover, the results confirm the feasibility of using eyetracking in rich and multimodal 3-D virtual environments.

  16. Auditory Perception and Word Recognition in Cantonese-Chinese Speaking Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kidd, Joanna C.; Shum, Kathy K.; Wong, Anita M.-Y.; Ho, Connie S.-H.

    2017-01-01

    Auditory processing and spoken word recognition difficulties have been observed in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), raising the possibility that auditory perceptual deficits disrupt word recognition and, in turn, phonological processing and oral language. In this study, fifty-seven kindergarten children with SLI and fifty-three language-typical…

  17. Aphasia, an acquired language disorder

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    2009-10-11

    Oct 11, 2009 ... In this article we will review the types of aphasia, an approach to its diagnosis, aphasia subtypes, rehabilitation and prognosis. ... language processing in both the written and spoken forms.6 ... The angular gyrus (Brodman area 39) is located at the .... of his or her quality of life, emotional state, sense of well-.

  18. From language to society: An analysis of interpreting quality and the ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Since Zimbabwe was a British colony, colonial policies ensured the entrenchment of English as the language of sports, education, records and law. English is spoken mainly as a second or even third language by the majority of Zimbabweans. Even for those who speak English fluently, or with near fluency, the technical ...

  19. CROSSROADS BETWEEN EDUCATION POLICIES AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES MAINTENANCE IN ARGENTINA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana Carolina Hecht

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Process of language shift is explained by many researchers since linguistic and anthropological perspectives. This area focuses on the correlations between social processes and changes in systems of use of a language. This article aims to address these issues. In particular, we analyze the links between educational-linguistic policy and the maintenance of the languages spoken in Argentina. In doing so, we explore this field taking into account the linguistic and educational policies implemented about indigenous languages in Argentina.

  20. Instructional Benefits of Spoken Words: A Review of Cognitive Load Factors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalyuga, Slava

    2012-01-01

    Spoken words have always been an important component of traditional instruction. With the development of modern educational technology tools, spoken text more often replaces or supplements written or on-screen textual representations. However, there could be a cognitive load cost involved in this trend, as spoken words can have both benefits and…

  1. The Influence of Teacher Power on English Language Learners' Self-Perceptions of Learner Empowerment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diaz, Abel; Cochran, Kathryn; Karlin, Nancy

    2016-01-01

    English language learners (ELL) are students with a primary language spoken other than English enrolled in U.S. educational settings. As ELL students take on the challenges of learning English and U.S. culture, they must also learn academic content. The expectation to succeed academically in a foreign culture and language, while learning to speak…

  2. When words fail us: insights into language processing from developmental and acquired disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bishop, Dorothy V M; Nation, Kate; Patterson, Karalyn

    2014-01-01

    Acquired disorders of language represent loss of previously acquired skills, usually with relatively specific impairments. In children with developmental disorders of language, we may also see selective impairment in some skills; but in this case, the acquisition of language or literacy is affected from the outset. Because systems for processing spoken and written language change as they develop, we should beware of drawing too close a parallel between developmental and acquired disorders. Nevertheless, comparisons between the two may yield new insights. A key feature of connectionist models simulating acquired disorders is the interaction of components of language processing with each other and with other cognitive domains. This kind of model might help make sense of patterns of comorbidity in developmental disorders. Meanwhile, the study of developmental disorders emphasizes learning and change in underlying representations, allowing us to study how heterogeneity in cognitive profile may relate not just to neurobiology but also to experience. Children with persistent language difficulties pose challenges both to our efforts at intervention and to theories of learning of written and spoken language. Future attention to learning in individuals with developmental and acquired disorders could be of both theoretical and applied value.

  3. Word order in Russian Sign Language

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kimmelman, V.

    2012-01-01

    The article discusses word order, the syntactic arrangement of words in a sentence, clause, or phrase as one of the most crucial aspects of grammar of any spoken language. It aims to investigate the order of the primary constituents which can either be subject, object, or verb of a simple

  4. The language of human law in the thought of Francisco Suárez

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fernando Centenera Sánchez-Seco

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available The subject of this article is the language of human law in the thought of Francisco Suárez. Its chief focus is on the Treatise on Laws and on God the Lawgiver and its views on the prescriptive nature of legislative language, written and spoken language, the lexical-semantic level, and linguistic clarity from the viewpoints of convenience, the essence of the law and justice. The issues Suárez deals with in relation to these points have continued to attract attention up to the present day, and a reading of the Treatise confirms the impression that some of them are still valid. Accordingly, as well as setting out, describing and offering a guide to understanding Suárez ideas, the article offers a comparative and contemplative analysis of them, without forgetting that their author belonged to the early modern period.

  5. Belief Reasoning and Emotion Understanding in Balanced Bilingual and Language-Dominant Mexican American Young Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weimer, Amy A; Gasquoine, Philip G

    2016-01-01

    Belief reasoning and emotion understanding were measured among 102 Mexican American bilingual children ranging from 4 to 7 years old. All children were tested in English and Spanish after ensuring minimum comprehension in each language. Belief reasoning was assessed using 2 false and 1 true belief tasks. Emotion understanding was measured using subtests from the Test for Emotion Comprehension. The influence of family background variables of yearly income, parental education level, and number of siblings on combined Spanish and English vocabulary, belief reasoning, and emotion understanding was assessed by regression analyses. Age and emotion understanding predicted belief reasoning. Vocabulary and belief reasoning predicted emotion understanding. When the sample was divided into language-dominant and balanced bilingual groups on the basis of language proficiency difference scores, there were no significant differences on belief reasoning or emotion understanding. Language groups were demographically similar with regard to child age, parental educational level, and family income. Results suggest Mexican American language-dominant and balanced bilinguals develop belief reasoning and emotion understanding similarly.

  6. Working memory affects older adults' use of context in spoken-word recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Janse, Esther; Jesse, Alexandra

    2014-01-01

    Many older listeners report difficulties in understanding speech in noisy situations. Working memory and other cognitive skills may modulate older listeners' ability to use context information to alleviate the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition. In the present study, we investigated whether verbal working memory predicts older adults' ability to immediately use context information in the recognition of words embedded in sentences, presented in different listening conditions. In a phoneme-monitoring task, older adults were asked to detect as fast and as accurately as possible target phonemes in sentences spoken by a target speaker. Target speech was presented without noise, with fluctuating speech-shaped noise, or with competing speech from a single distractor speaker. The gradient measure of contextual probability (derived from a separate offline rating study) affected the speed of recognition. Contextual facilitation was modulated by older listeners' verbal working memory (measured with a backward digit span task) and age across listening conditions. Working memory and age, as well as hearing loss, were also the most consistent predictors of overall listening performance. Older listeners' immediate benefit from context in spoken-word recognition thus relates to their ability to keep and update a semantic representation of the sentence content in working memory.

  7. Marking of verb tense in the English of preschool English-Mandarin bilingual children: evidence from language development profiles within subgroups on the Singapore English Action Picture Test.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brebner, Chris; McCormack, Paul; Liow, Susan Rickard

    2016-01-01

    The phonological and morphosyntactic structures of English and Mandarin contrast maximally and an increasing number of bilinguals speak these two languages. Speech and language therapists need to understand bilingual development for children speaking these languages in order reliably to assess and provide intervention for this population. To examine the marking of verb tense in the English of two groups of bilingual pre-schoolers learning these languages in a multilingual setting where the main educational language is English. The main research question addressed was: are there differences in the rate and pattern of acquisition of verb-tense marking for English-language 1 children compared with Mandarin-language 1 children? Spoken language samples in English from 481 English-Mandarin bilingual children were elicited using a 10-item action picture test and analysed for each child's use of verb tense markers: present progressive '-ing', regular past tense '-ed', third-person singular '-s', and irregular past tense and irregular past-participle forms. For 4-6 year olds the use of inflectional markers by the different language dominance groups was compared statistically using non-parametric tests. This study provides further evidence that bilingual language development is not the same as monolingual language development. The results show that there are very different rates and patterns of verb-tense marking in English for English-language 1 and Mandarin-language 1 children. Furthermore, they show that bilingual language development in English in Singapore is not the same as monolingual language development in English, and that there are differences in development depending on language dominance. Valid and reliable assessment of bilingual children's language skills needs to consider the characteristics of all languages spoken, obtaining accurate information on language use over time and accurately establishing language dominance is essential in order to make a

  8. Real-Time Processing of ASL Signs: Delayed First Language Acquisition Affects Organization of the Mental Lexicon

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lieberman, Amy M.; Borovsky, Arielle; Hatrak, Marla; Mayberry, Rachel I.

    2015-01-01

    Sign language comprehension requires visual attention to the linguistic signal and visual attention to referents in the surrounding world, whereas these processes are divided between the auditory and visual modalities for spoken language comprehension. Additionally, the age-onset of first language acquisition and the quality and quantity of…

  9. Web-based mini-games for language learning that support spoken interaction

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Strik, H

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available The European ‘Lifelong Learning Programme’ (LLP) project ‘Games Online for Basic Language learning’ (GOBL) aimed to provide youths and adults wishing to improve their basic language skills access to materials for the development of communicative...

  10. Attention to spoken word planning: Chronometric and neuroimaging evidence

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Roelofs, A.P.A.

    2008-01-01

    This article reviews chronometric and neuroimaging evidence on attention to spoken word planning, using the WEAVER++ model as theoretical framework. First, chronometric studies on the time to initiate vocal responding and gaze shifting suggest that spoken word planning may require some attention,

  11. State-of-the-Art in the Development of the Lokono Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rybka, Konrad

    2015-01-01

    Lokono is a critically endangered Northern Arawakan language spoken in the pericoastal areas of the Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). Today, in every Lokono village there remains only a small number of elderly native speakers. However, in spite of the ongoing language loss, across the three Guianas as well as in the Netherlands, where a…

  12. Development of a spoken language identification system for South African languages

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Peché, M

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available , and complicates the design of the system as a whole. Current benchmark results are established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Language Recognition Evaluation (LRE) [12]. Initially started in 1996, the next evaluation was in 2003..., Gunnar Evermann, Mark Gales, Thomas Hain, Dan Kershaw, Gareth Moore, Julian Odell, Dave Ollason, Dan Povey, Valtcho Valtchev, and Phil Woodland: “The HTK book. Revised for HTK version 3.3”, Online: http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/., 2005. [11] M.A. Zissman...

  13. Phonological reduplication in sign language: rules rule

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Iris eBerent

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Productivity—the hallmark of linguistic competence—is typically attributed to algebraic rules that support broad generalizations. Past research on spoken language has documented such generalizations in both adults and infants. But whether algebraic rules form part of the linguistic competence of signers remains unknown. To address this question, here we gauge the generalization afforded by American Sign Language (ASL. As a case study, we examine reduplication (X→XX—a rule that, inter alia, generates ASL nouns from verbs. If signers encode this rule, then they should freely extend it to novel syllables, including ones with features that are unattested in ASL. And since reduplicated disyllables are preferred in ASL, such rule should favor novel reduplicated signs. Novel reduplicated signs should thus be preferred to nonreduplicative controls (in rating, and consequently, such stimuli should also be harder to classify as nonsigns (in the lexical decision task. The results of four experiments support this prediction. These findings suggest that the phonological knowledge of signers includes powerful algebraic rules. The convergence between these conclusions and previous evidence for phonological rules in spoken language suggests that the architecture of the phonological mind is partly amodal.

  14. language choice, code-switching and code- mixing in biase

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Ada

    Finance and Economic Planning, Cross River and Akwa ... See Table 1. Table 1: Indigenous Languages Spoken in Biase ... used in education, in business, in religion, in the media ... far back as the seventeenth (17th) century (King. 1844).

  15. Intercomprehension - When Everyone Speaks Their Own Language and Understands Others

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nataša Pirih Svetina

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Intercomprehension is a communication practice where two persons speak their mother tongue and are able to understand each other without being taught the language of their adressee. It is a usual practice between languages that belong to the same linguistic family, for example Slavic, Romance or Germanic languages. In the article, the authors present the notion of intercomprehension as an alternative to communication in English as a lingua franca. That kind of communication was known among Scandinavians, whereas the first teaching method was developped for Romance languages (EuRomCom at the beginning of the 21st century. Today, more methods exist including German and Slavic languages. In the article, the authors are enumerating some of them and also give a short outline of existing practices.

  16. A qualitative exploration of trial-related terminology in a study involving Deaf British Sign Language users.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Young, Alys; Oram, Rosemary; Dodds, Claire; Nassimi-Green, Catherine; Belk, Rachel; Rogers, Katherine; Davies, Linda; Lovell, Karina

    2016-04-27

    Internationally, few clinical trials have involved Deaf people who use a signed language and none have involved BSL (British Sign Language) users. Appropriate terminology in BSL for key concepts in clinical trials that are relevant to recruitment and participant information materials, to support informed consent, do not exist. Barriers to conceptual understanding of trial participation and sources of misunderstanding relevant to the Deaf community are undocumented. A qualitative, community participatory exploration of trial terminology including conceptual understanding of 'randomisation', 'trial', 'informed choice' and 'consent' was facilitated in BSL involving 19 participants in five focus groups. Data were video-recorded and analysed in source language (BSL) using a phenomenological approach. Six necessary conditions for developing trial information to support comprehension were identified. These included: developing appropriate expressions and terminology from a community basis, rather than testing out previously derived translations from a different language; paying attention to language-specific features which support best means of expression (in the case of BSL expectations of specificity, verb directionality, handshape); bilingual influences on comprehension; deliberate orientation of information to avoid misunderstanding not just to promote accessibility; sensitivity to barriers to discussion about intelligibility of information that are cultural and social in origin, rather than linguistic; the importance of using contemporary language-in-use, rather than jargon-free or plain language, to support meaningful understanding. The study reinforces the ethical imperative to ensure trial participants who are Deaf are provided with optimum resources to understand the implications of participation and to make an informed choice. Results are relevant to the development of trial information in other signed languages as well as in spoken/written languages when

  17. Theory of Mind and Language in Children with Cochlear Implants

    Science.gov (United States)

    Remmel, Ethan; Peters, Kimberly

    2009-01-01

    Thirty children with cochlear implants (CI children), age range 3-12 years, and 30 children with normal hearing (NH children), age range 4-6 years, were tested on theory of mind and language measures. The CI children showed little to no delay on either theory of mind, relative to the NH children, or spoken language, relative to hearing norms. The…

  18. FONOLOGI DAN MORFOLOGI BAHASA ARAB 'AMIYAH MESIR

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mufrodi Mufrodi

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The use of Arabic language, it is divided into two, namely Arabic fuṣhâ and ‘âmiyah. Arabic fuṣhâ  used as a written language, and Arabic ‘âmiyah used as a spoken language. In daily activities, Arab people used Arabic ‘âmiyah more frequently. This is due to a fairly high level of formality that is owned by Arabic fuṣhâ, that should be in the spoken language is communicative, consultative, relaxed and intimate, both in term of morphological and syntactical. In the Egyptian Arabic occur in phonological and morphological differences were deemed difficult for students who only learn Arabic fuṣhâ. The difficulty that arises due to the ignorance of students to the differences that occur between Arabic fuṣhâ  and Egyptian dialect. With an understanding of phonological and morphological of Arabic ‘âmiyah expected that the students of Arabic language or people who have learned fuṣhâ can understand-at least a few understanding-spoken language so that communication will run smoothly.DOI: 10.15408/a.v2i2.2184

  19. Language-mediated visual orienting behavior in low and high literates

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Falk eHuettig

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available The influence of formal literacy on spoken language-mediated visual orienting was investigated by using a simple look and listen task (cf. Huettig & Altmann, 2005 which resembles every day behavior. In Experiment 1, high and low literates listened to spoken sentences containing a target word (e.g., 'magar', crocodile while at the same time looking at a visual display of four objects (a phonological competitor of the target word, e.g., 'matar', peas; a semantic competitor, e.g., 'kachuwa', turtle, and two unrelated distractors. In Experiment 2 the semantic competitor was replaced with another unrelated distractor. Both groups of participants shifted their eye gaze to the semantic competitors (Experiment 1. In both experiments high literates shifted their eye gaze towards phonological competitors as soon as phonological information became available and moved their eyes away as soon as the acoustic information mismatched. Low literates in contrast only used phonological information when semantic matches between spoken word and visual referent were impossible (Experiment 2 but in contrast to high literates these phonologically-mediated shifts in eye gaze were not closely time-locked to the speech input. We conclude that in high literates language-mediated shifts in overt attention are co-determined by the type of information in the visual environment, the timing of cascaded processing in the word- and object-recognition systems, and the temporal unfolding of the spoken language. Our findings indicate that low literates exhibit a similar cognitive behavior but instead of participating in a tug-of-war among multiple types of cognitive representations, word-object mapping is achieved primarily at the semantic level. If forced, for instance by a situation in which semantic matches are not present (Experiment 2, low literates may on occasion have to rely on phonological information but do so in a much less proficient manner than their highly literate

  20. Developing a tagset and tagger for the African languages of South ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    annotations in the form of linguistic tags and annotations. That is, the annotations are used to direct the searches to specific grammatical and lexical phenomena in a corpus. In this article, we propose a corpus-based approach and a tagset to be used on a corpus of spoken language for the African languages of South Africa.

  1. Relationship between the linguistic environments and early bilingual language development of hearing children in deaf-parented families.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kanto, Laura; Huttunen, Kerttu; Laakso, Marja-Leena

    2013-04-01

    We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount and type of language input and language acquisition among the children. Language exposure and increases in productive vocabulary and syntactic complexity were interconnected. Language acquisition was found to be more dependent on the amount of exposure in sign language than in spoken language. This was judged to be related to the status of sign language as a minority language. The results are discussed in terms of parents' language choices, family dynamics in Deaf-parented families and optimal conditions for bilingual development.

  2. Understanding and representing natural language meaning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Waltz, D. L.; Maran, L. R.; Dorfman, M. H.; Dinitz, R.; Farwell, D.

    1982-12-01

    During this contract period the authors have: (1) continued investigation of events and actions by means of representation schemes called 'event shape diagrams'; (2) written a parsing program which selects appropriate word and sentence meanings by a parallel process know as activation and inhibition; (3) begun investigation of the point of a story or event by modeling the motivations and emotional behaviors of story characters; (4) started work on combining and translating two machine-readable dictionaries into a lexicon and knowledge base which will form an integral part of our natural language understanding programs; (5) made substantial progress toward a general model for the representation of cognitive relations by comparing English scene and event descriptions with similar descriptions in other languages; (6) constructed a general model for the representation of tense and aspect of verbs; (7) made progress toward the design of an integrated robotics system which accepts English requests, and uses visual and tactile inputs in making decisions and learning new tasks.

  3. Resourcing speech-language pathologists to work with multilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McLeod, Sharynne

    2014-06-01

    Speech-language pathologists play important roles in supporting people to be competent communicators in the languages of their communities. However, with over 7000 languages spoken throughout the world and the majority of the global population being multilingual, there is often a mismatch between the languages spoken by children and families and their speech-language pathologists. This paper provides insights into service provision for multilingual children within an English-dominant country by viewing Australia's multilingual population as a microcosm of ethnolinguistic minorities. Recent population studies of Australian pre-school children show that their most common languages other than English are: Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, and Greek. Although 20.2% of services by Speech Pathology Australia members are offered in languages other than English, there is a mismatch between the language of the services and the languages of children within similar geographical communities. Australian speech-language pathologists typically use informal or English-based assessments and intervention tools with multilingual children. Thus, there is a need for accessible culturally and linguistically appropriate resources for working with multilingual children. Recent international collaborations have resulted in practical strategies to support speech-language pathologists during assessment, intervention, and collaboration with families, communities, and other professionals. The International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech was assembled to prepare a position paper to address issues faced by speech-language pathologists when working with multilingual populations. The Multilingual Children's Speech website ( http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech ) addresses one of the aims of the position paper by providing free resources and information for speech-language pathologists about more than 45 languages. These international

  4. A geographical analysis of speech-language pathology services to support multilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verdon, Sarah; McLeod, Sharynne; McDonald, Simon

    2014-06-01

    The speech-language pathology workforce strives to provide equitable, quality services to multilingual people. However, the extent to which this is being achieved is unknown. Participants in this study were 2849 members of Speech Pathology Australia and 4386 children in the Birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Statistical and geospatial analyses were undertaken to identify the linguistic diversity and geographical distribution of Australian speech-language pathology services and Australian children. One fifth of services offered by Speech Pathology Australia members (20.2%) were available in a language other than English. Services were most commonly offered in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (4.3%), French (3.1%), Italian (2.2%), Greek (1.6%), and Cantonese (1.5%). Among 4-5-year-old children in the nationally representative LSAC, 15.3% regularly spoke and/or understood a language other than English. The most common languages spoken by the children were Arabic (1.5%), Italian (1.2%), Greek (0.9%), Spanish (0.9%), and Vietnamese (0.9%). There was a mismatch between the location of and languages in which multilingual services were offered, and the location of and languages spoken by children. These findings highlight the need for SLPs to be culturally competent in providing equitable services to all clients, regardless of the languages they speak.

  5. Assessment of Dyslexia in the Urdu Language

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Haidry, Sana

    2017-01-01

    Urdu is spoken by more than 500 million people around the world but still is an under-researched language. The studies presented in this thesis focus on typical and poor literacy development in Urdu-speaking children during early reading acquisition. In the first study, we developed and validated a

  6. Extrinsic Cognitive Load Impairs Spoken Word Recognition in High- and Low-Predictability Sentences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hunter, Cynthia R; Pisoni, David B

    Listening effort (LE) induced by speech degradation reduces performance on concurrent cognitive tasks. However, a converse effect of extrinsic cognitive load on recognition of spoken words in sentences has not been shown. The aims of the present study were to (a) examine the impact of extrinsic cognitive load on spoken word recognition in a sentence recognition task and (b) determine whether cognitive load and/or LE needed to understand spectrally degraded speech would differentially affect word recognition in high- and low-predictability sentences. Downstream effects of speech degradation and sentence predictability on the cognitive load task were also examined. One hundred twenty young adults identified sentence-final spoken words in high- and low-predictability Speech Perception in Noise sentences. Cognitive load consisted of a preload of short (low-load) or long (high-load) sequences of digits, presented visually before each spoken sentence and reported either before or after identification of the sentence-final word. LE was varied by spectrally degrading sentences with four-, six-, or eight-channel noise vocoding. Level of spectral degradation and order of report (digits first or words first) were between-participants variables. Effects of cognitive load, sentence predictability, and speech degradation on accuracy of sentence-final word identification as well as recall of preload digit sequences were examined. In addition to anticipated main effects of sentence predictability and spectral degradation on word recognition, we found an effect of cognitive load, such that words were identified more accurately under low load than high load. However, load differentially affected word identification in high- and low-predictability sentences depending on the level of sentence degradation. Under severe spectral degradation (four-channel vocoding), the effect of cognitive load on word identification was present for high-predictability sentences but not for low

  7. The contribution of phonological knowledge, memory, and language background to reading comprehension in deaf populations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elizabeth Ann Hirshorn

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available While reading is challenging for many deaf individuals, some become proficient readers. Yet we do not know the component processes that support reading comprehension in these individuals. Speech-based phonological knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in hearing individuals, yet its role in deaf readers is controversial. This could reflect the highly varied language backgrounds among deaf readers as well as the difficulty of disentangling the relative contribution of phonological versus orthographic knowledge of spoken language, in our case ‘English’, in this population. Here we assessed the impact of language experience on reading comprehension in deaf readers by recruiting oral deaf individuals, who use spoken English as their primary mode of communication, and deaf native signers of American Sign Language. First, to address the contribution of spoken English phonological knowledge in deaf readers, we present novel tasks that evaluate phonological versus orthographic knowledge. Second, the impact of this knowledge, as well as verbal short-term memory and long-term memory skills, on reading comprehension was evaluated. The best predictor of reading comprehension differed as a function of language experience, with long-term memory, as measured by free recall, being a better predictor in deaf native signers than in oral deaf. In contrast, the measures of English phonological knowledge, independent of orthographic knowledge, best predicted reading comprehension in oral deaf individuals. These results suggest successful reading strategies differ across deaf readers as a function of their language experience, and highlight a possible alternative route to literacy in deaf native signers.

  8. Toddlers' sensitivity to within-word coarticulation during spoken word recognition: Developmental differences in lexical competition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zamuner, Tania S; Moore, Charlotte; Desmeules-Trudel, Félix

    2016-12-01

    To understand speech, listeners need to be able to decode the speech stream into meaningful units. However, coarticulation causes phonemes to differ based on their context. Because coarticulation is an ever-present component of the speech stream, it follows that listeners may exploit this source of information for cues to the identity of the words being spoken. This research investigates the development of listeners' sensitivity to coarticulation cues below the level of the phoneme in spoken word recognition. Using a looking-while-listening paradigm, adults and 2- and 3-year-old children were tested on coarticulation cues that either matched or mismatched the target. Both adults and children predicted upcoming phonemes based on anticipatory coarticulation to make decisions about word identity. The overall results demonstrate that coarticulation cues are a fundamental component of children's spoken word recognition system. However, children did not show the same resolution as adults of the mismatching coarticulation cues and competitor inhibition, indicating that children's processing systems are still developing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. The Effects of Captions on EFL Learners' Comprehension of English-Language Television Programs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodgers, Michael P. H.; Webb, Stuart

    2017-01-01

    The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

  10. Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lauren B. Collister

    2008-09-01

    Full Text Available Twenty listeners were exposed to spoken and sung passages in English produced by three trained vocalists. Passages included representative words extracted from a large database of vocal lyrics, including both popular and classical repertoires. Target words were set within spoken or sung carrier phrases. Sung carrier phrases were selected from classical vocal melodies. Roughly a quarter of all words sung by an unaccompanied soloist were misheard. Sung passages showed a seven-fold decrease in intelligibility compared with their spoken counterparts. The perceptual mistakes occurring with vowels replicate previous studies showing the centralization of vowels. Significant confusions are also evident for consonants, especially voiced stops and nasals.

  11. Exchange students' motivations and language learning success

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Caudery, Tim; Petersen, Margrethe; Shaw, Philip

    One point investigated in our research project on the linguistic experiences of exchange students in Denmark and Sweden is the reasons students have for coming on exchange. Traditionally, an important goal of student exchange was to acquire improved language skills usually in the language spoken...... in the host country. To what extent is this true when students plan to study in English in a non-English speaking country? Do they hope and expect to improve their English skills, their knowledge of the local language, both, or neither? to what extent are these expectations fulfilled? Results form the project...

  12. Parental mode of communication is essential for speech and language outcomes in cochlear implanted children

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Percy-Smith, Lone; Cayé-Thomasen, Per; Breinegaard, Nina

    2010-01-01

    The present study demonstrates a very strong effect of the parental communication mode on the auditory capabilities and speech/language outcome for cochlear implanted children. The children exposed to spoken language had higher odds of scoring high in all tests applied and the findings suggest...

  13. The development and Writing of a Children's Story to Promote an Awareness of Deaf Culture and AMerican SIgn Language

    OpenAIRE

    Taylor, Blaine J.

    1993-01-01

    Many advocates of the deaf fear that a whole generation of deaf children will be lost emotionally. socially. and educationally. This fear stems from the fact that many children who are deaf are not having their linguistic. sociocultural. and communicative needs met at home or at school (King, 1993). Their needs are not met primarily for three reasons. First. the hearing culture is often inaccessible to them because they do not understand most of the spoken language around them. When children ...

  14. LANGUAGE PLANNING IN DIASPORA: THE CASE OF KURDISH KURMANJI DIALECT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Salih Akin

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we study a particular case of language planning in Diaspora through the activities of the Committee for Standardization of Kurdish Kurmanji dialect spoken by the majority of Kurds living in Turkey, in Syria and by part of the Kurds living in Iran and in Iraq. Despite its sizeable speaker community,Kurmanji is not officially recognized and public education is not provided in this dialect in the countries where it is spoken. The absence of official recognition and structural variation within Kurmanji led Kurdish intellectuals and researchers living in exile to form the Committee in 1987. Holding two meetings per year in a European city, the Committee tries to standardize and to revitalize the Kurmanji dialect without relying on government support. We examine the activities of the committee in the light of its research in the field of language policy and planning. The activities will be assessed by three typologies of language planning: 1 Haugen’s classical model of language planning (1991 [1983]; 2 Hornberger’s integrative framework of language planning (1988; 3 Nahir’s Language Planning Goals (2000. Our contribution focuses on two aspects of the activities: corpus planning and dissemination of results in exile. We study the practices of collection of vocabulary and neology in different scientific domains as well as the influences of these activities on the development of Kurmanji.

  15. Language modeling for automatic speech recognition of inflective languages an applications-oriented approach using lexical data

    CERN Document Server

    Donaj, Gregor

    2017-01-01

    This book covers language modeling and automatic speech recognition for inflective languages (e.g. Slavic languages), which represent roughly half of the languages spoken in Europe. These languages do not perform as well as English in speech recognition systems and it is therefore harder to develop an application with sufficient quality for the end user. The authors describe the most important language features for the development of a speech recognition system. This is then presented through the analysis of errors in the system and the development of language models and their inclusion in speech recognition systems, which specifically address the errors that are relevant for targeted applications. The error analysis is done with regard to morphological characteristics of the word in the recognized sentences. The book is oriented towards speech recognition with large vocabularies and continuous and even spontaneous speech. Today such applications work with a rather small number of languages compared to the nu...

  16. Time and place in the prehistory of the Aslian languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dunn, Michael; Kruspe, Nicole; Burenhult, Niclas

    2013-01-01

    The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers. Copyright © 2013 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

  17. Language and reading development in the brain today: neuromarkers and the case for prediction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buchweitz, Augusto

    2016-01-01

    The goal of this article is to provide an account of language development in the brain using the new information about brain function gleaned from cognitive neuroscience. This account goes beyond describing the association between language and specific brain areas to advocate the possibility of predicting language outcomes using brain-imaging data. The goal is to address the current evidence about language development in the brain and prediction of language outcomes. Recent studies will be discussed in the light of the evidence generated for predicting language outcomes and using new methods of analysis of brain data. The present account of brain behavior will address: (1) the development of a hardwired brain circuit for spoken language; (2) the neural adaptation that follows reading instruction and fosters the "grafting" of visual processing areas of the brain onto the hardwired circuit of spoken language; and (3) the prediction of language development and the possibility of translational neuroscience. Brain imaging has allowed for the identification of neural indices (neuromarkers) that reflect typical and atypical language development; the possibility of predicting risk for language disorders has emerged. A mandate to develop a bridge between neuroscience and health and cognition-related outcomes may pave the way for translational neuroscience. Copyright © 2016 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

  18. Impact of family language and testing language on reading performance in a bilingual educational context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elosua Oliden, Paula; Mujika Lizaso, Josu

    2014-01-01

    When different languages co-exist in one area, or when one person speaks more than one language, the impact of language on psychological and educational assessment processes can be considerable. The aim of this work was to study the impact of testing language in a community with two official languages: Spanish and Basque. By taking the PISA 2009 Reading Comprehension Test as a basis for analysis, four linguistic groups were defined according to the language spoken at home and the test language. Psychometric equivalence between test forms and differences in results among the four language groups were analyzed. The comparison of competence means took into account the effects of the index of socioeconomic and cultural status (ISEC) and gender. One reading unit with differential item functioning was detected. The reading competence means were considerably higher in the monolingual Spanish-Spanish group. No differences were found between the language groups based on family language when the test was conducted in Basque. The study illustrates the importance of taking into account psychometric, linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in linguistically diverse assessment contexts.

  19. Enhancing Language Material Availability Using Computers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miyashita, Mizuki; Moll, Laura A.

    This paper describes the use of computer technology to produce an updated online Tohono O'odham dictionary. Spoken in southern Arizona and northern Mexico, Tohono O'odham (formerly Papago) and its close relative Akimel O'odham (Pima) had a total of about 25,000 speakers in 1988. Although the language is taught to school children through community…

  20. RAPPORT-BUILDING THROUGH CALL IN TEACHING CHINESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wenying Jiang

    2005-05-01

    Full Text Available Technological advances have brought about the ever-increasing utilisation of computer-assisted language learning (CALL media in the learning of a second language (L2. Computer-mediated communication, for example, provides a practical means for extending the learning of spoken language, a challenging process in tonal languages such as Chinese, beyond the realms of the classroom. In order to effectively improve spoken language competency, however, CALL applications must also reproduce the social interaction that lies at the heart of language learning and language use. This study draws on data obtained from the utilisation of CALL in the learning of L2 Chinese to explore whether this medium can be used to extend opportunities for rapport-building in language teaching beyond the face-to-face interaction of the classroom. Rapport's importance lies in its potential to enhance learning, motivate learners, and reduce learner anxiety. To date, CALL's potential in relation to this facet of social interaction remains a neglected area of research. The results of this exploratory study suggest that CALL may help foster learner-teacher rapport and that scaffolding, such as strategically composing rapport-fostering questions in sound-files, is conducive to this outcome. The study provides an instruction model for this application of CALL.

  1. Bilateral versus unilateral cochlear implants in children: a study of spoken language outcomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarant, Julia; Harris, David; Bennet, Lisa; Bant, Sharyn

    2014-01-01

    Although it has been established that bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) offer additional speech perception and localization benefits to many children with severe to profound hearing loss, whether these improved perceptual abilities facilitate significantly better language development has not yet been clearly established. The aims of this study were to compare language abilities of children having unilateral and bilateral CIs to quantify the rate of any improvement in language attributable to bilateral CIs and to document other predictors of language development in children with CIs. The receptive vocabulary and language development of 91 children was assessed when they were aged either 5 or 8 years old by using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (fourth edition), and either the Preschool Language Scales (fourth edition) or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (fourth edition), respectively. Cognitive ability, parent involvement in children's intervention or education programs, and family reading habits were also evaluated. Language outcomes were examined by using linear regression analyses. The influence of elements of parenting style, child characteristics, and family background as predictors of outcomes were examined. Children using bilateral CIs achieved significantly better vocabulary outcomes and significantly higher scores on the Core and Expressive Language subscales of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (fourth edition) than did comparable children with unilateral CIs. Scores on the Preschool Language Scales (fourth edition) did not differ significantly between children with unilateral and bilateral CIs. Bilateral CI use was found to predict significantly faster rates of vocabulary and language development than unilateral CI use; the magnitude of this effect was moderated by child age at activation of the bilateral CI. In terms of parenting style, high levels of parental involvement, low amounts of screen time, and more time spent

  2. Bilateral Versus Unilateral Cochlear Implants in Children: A Study of Spoken Language Outcomes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harris, David; Bennet, Lisa; Bant, Sharyn

    2014-01-01

    Objectives: Although it has been established that bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) offer additional speech perception and localization benefits to many children with severe to profound hearing loss, whether these improved perceptual abilities facilitate significantly better language development has not yet been clearly established. The aims of this study were to compare language abilities of children having unilateral and bilateral CIs to quantify the rate of any improvement in language attributable to bilateral CIs and to document other predictors of language development in children with CIs. Design: The receptive vocabulary and language development of 91 children was assessed when they were aged either 5 or 8 years old by using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (fourth edition), and either the Preschool Language Scales (fourth edition) or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (fourth edition), respectively. Cognitive ability, parent involvement in children’s intervention or education programs, and family reading habits were also evaluated. Language outcomes were examined by using linear regression analyses. The influence of elements of parenting style, child characteristics, and family background as predictors of outcomes were examined. Results: Children using bilateral CIs achieved significantly better vocabulary outcomes and significantly higher scores on the Core and Expressive Language subscales of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (fourth edition) than did comparable children with unilateral CIs. Scores on the Preschool Language Scales (fourth edition) did not differ significantly between children with unilateral and bilateral CIs. Bilateral CI use was found to predict significantly faster rates of vocabulary and language development than unilateral CI use; the magnitude of this effect was moderated by child age at activation of the bilateral CI. In terms of parenting style, high levels of parental involvement, low amounts of

  3. Loops of Spoken Language i Danish Broadcasting Corporation News

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    le Fevre Jakobsen, Bjarne

    2012-01-01

    The tempo of Danish television news broadcasts has changed markedly over the past 40 years, while the language has essentially always been conservative, and remains so today. The development in the tempo of the broadcasts has gone through a number of phases from a newsreader in a rigid structure...

  4. On language acquisition in speech and sign:development drives combinatorial structure in both modalities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gary eMorgan

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Languages are composed of a conventionalized system of parts which allow speakers and signers to compose an infinite number of form-meaning mappings through phonological and morphological combinations. This level of linguistic organization distinguishes language from other communicative acts such as gestures. In contrast to signs, gestures are made up of meaning units that are mostly holistic. Children exposed to signed and spoken languages from early in life develop grammatical structure following similar rates and patterns. This is interesting, because signed languages are perceived and articulated in very different ways to their spoken counterparts with many signs displaying surface resemblances to gestures. The acquisition of forms and meanings in child signers and talkers might thus have been a different process. Yet in one sense both groups are faced with a similar problem: 'how do I make a language with combinatorial structure’? In this paper I argue first language development itself enables this to happen and by broadly similar mechanisms across modalities. Combinatorial structure is the outcome of phonological simplifications and productivity in using verb morphology by children in sign and speech.

  5. Reliability of the Dutch-language version of the Communication Function Classification System and its association with language comprehension and method of communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vander Zwart, Karlijn E; Geytenbeek, Joke J; de Kleijn, Maaike; Oostrom, Kim J; Gorter, Jan Willem; Hidecker, Mary Jo Cooley; Vermeulen, R Jeroen

    2016-02-01

    The aims of this study were to determine the intra- and interrater reliability of the Dutch-language version of the Communication Function Classification System (CFCS-NL) and to investigate the association between the CFCS level and (1) spoken language comprehension and (2) preferred method of communication in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Participants were 93 children with CP (50 males, 43 females; mean age 7y, SD 2y 6mo, range 2y 9mo-12y 10mo; unilateral spastic [n=22], bilateral spastic [n=51], dyskinetic [n=15], ataxic [n=3], not specified [n=2]; Gross Motor Function Classification System level I [n=16], II [n=14], III, [n=7], IV [n=24], V [n=31], unknown [n=1]), recruited from rehabilitation centres throughout the Netherlands. Because some centres only contributed to part of the study, different numbers of participants are presented for different aspects of the study. Parents and speech and language therapists (SLTs) classified the communication level using the CFCS. Kappa was used to determine the intra- and interrater reliability. Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to determine the association between CFCS level and spoken language comprehension, and Fisher's exact test was used to examine the association between the CFCS level and method of communication. Interrater reliability of the CFCS-NL between parents and SLTs was fair (r=0.54), between SLTs good (r=0.78), and the intrarater (SLT) reliability very good (r=0.85). The association between the CFCS and spoken language comprehension was strong for SLTs (r=0.63) and moderate for parents (r=0.51). There was a statistically significant difference between the CFCS level and the preferred method of communication of the child (pcommunication in children with CP. Preferably, professionals should classify the child's CFCS level in collaboration with the parents to acquire the most comprehensive information about the everyday communication of the child in various situations both with familiar and

  6. Thoughts about Central Andean Formative Languages and Societies

    OpenAIRE

    Kaulicke, Peter

    2012-01-01

    This paper deals with the general problem of the Formative Period and presents a proposal for subdivision based upon characterizations of material cultures and their distributions as interaction spheres and traditions. These reflect significant changes that may be related to changes in the mechanisms of language dispersal. It hypothesizes that a pre-protomochica was spoken in northern Perú; that multilingualism prevailed at the site of Chavín site; and that different languages existed in the ...

  7. The Meta Language of Accounting: What's the Level of Students' Understanding?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elson, Raymond J.; O'Callaghan, Susanne; Walker, John P.; Williams, Robert

    2013-01-01

    Students rely on rote knowledge to learn accounting concepts. However, this approach does not allow them to understanding the meta language of accounting. Meta language is simply the concepts and terms that are used in a profession and are easily understood by its users. Terms such as equity, assets, and balance sheet are part of the accounting…

  8. Language Impairments in the Development of Sign: Do They Reside in a Specific Modality or Are They Modality-Independent Deficits?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woll, Bencie; Morgan, Gary

    2012-01-01

    Various theories of developmental language impairments have sought to explain these impairments in modality-specific ways--for example, that the language deficits in SLI or Down syndrome arise from impairments in auditory processing. Studies of signers with language impairments, especially those who are bilingual in a spoken language as well as a…

  9. Finding Relevant Data in a Sea of Languages

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-04-26

    and information retrieval to automate language processing tasks so that the limited number of linguists available for analyzing text and spoken...HLT literature that a research team would do a study and stop short,” says Williams. “Each study was trying to solve a very specific problem. No

  10. Delay or deficit? Spelling processes in children with specific language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Larkin, Rebecca F; Williams, Gareth J; Blaggan, Samarita

    2013-01-01

    Few studies have explored the phonological, morphological and orthographic spellings skills of children with specific language impairment (SLI) simultaneously. Fifteen children with SLI (mean age=113.07 months, SD=8.61) completed language and spelling tasks alongside chronological-age controls and spelling-age controls. While the children with SLI showed a deficit in phonological spelling, they performed comparably to spelling-age controls on morphological spelling skills, and there were no differences between the three groups in producing orthographically legal spellings. The results also highlighted the potential importance of adequate non-word repetition skills in relation to effective spelling skills, and demonstrated that not all children with spoken language impairments show marked spelling difficulties. Findings are discussed in relation to theory, educational assessment and practice. As a result of this activity, readers will describe components of spoken language that predict children's morphological and phonological spelling performance. As a result of this activity, readers will describe how the spelling skills of children with SLI compare to age-matched and spelling age-matched control children. Readers will be able to interpret the variability in spelling performance seen in children with SLI. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. A Transcription Scheme for Languages Employing the Arabic Script Motivated by Speech Processing Application

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Ganjavi, Shadi; Georgiou, Panayiotis G; Narayanan, Shrikanth

    2004-01-01

    ... (The DARPA Babylon Program; Narayanan, 2003). In this paper, we discuss transcription systems needed for automated spoken language processing applications in Persian that uses the Arabic script for writing...

  12. One Language for the United States? (Un Idioma para Los Estados Unidos?) CSG Backgrounder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ford, Mark L.

    The United States has become increasingly multilingual in recent decades, and while English is the most commonly spoken language, almost 11 percent of Americans prefer to speak another language at home. Bilingualism is promoted by governmental units at the federal, state, and local levels through a variety of programs, particularly in education…

  13. Language, Space, Power: Reflections on Linguistic and Spatial Turns in Urban Research

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vuolteenaho, Jani; Ameel, Lieven; Newby, Andrew

    2012-01-01

    to conceptualise the power-embeddedness of urban spaces, processes and identities. More recently, however, the ramifications of the linguistic turn across urban research have proliferated as a result of approaches in which specific place-bound language practices and language-based representations about cities have......) and thematic interests (from place naming to interactional uses of spoken language) that have been significant channels in re-directing urban scholars’ attention to the concrete workings of language. As regards the spatial turn, we highlight the relevance of the connectivity-, territoriality-, attachment...

  14. Language development in deaf children’s interactions with deaf and hearing adults. A Dutch longitudinal study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Klatter-Folmer, H.A.K.; Hout, R.W.N.M. van; Kolen, E.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

    2006-01-01

    The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual

  15. Measuring and Comparing Academic Language Development and Conceptual Understanding via Science Notebooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huerta, Margarita; Tong, Fuhui; Irby, Beverly J.; Lara-Alecio, Rafael

    2016-01-01

    The authors of this quantitative study measured and compared the academic language development and conceptual understanding of fifth-grade economically disadvantaged English language learners (ELL), former ELLs, and native English-speaking (ES) students as reflected in their science notebook scores. Using an instrument they developed, the authors…

  16. A Bibliography of English as a Second Language Materials: Grades K-3.

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Arlington, VA.

    This annotated bibliography of English as a second language (ESL) materials for grades K-3 is divided into four parts. The first part, ESL texts, lists a number of series or single texts that are designed to teach the spoken language and reading to the elementary school child. The second part is a list of readers that, although were mostly…

  17. From Monologue to Dialogue: Natural Language Generation in OVIS

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Theune, Mariet; Freedman, R.; Callaway, C.

    This paper describes how a language generation system that was originally designed for monologue generation, has been adapted for use in the OVIS spoken dialogue system. To meet the requirement that in a dialogue, the system’s utterances should make up a single, coherent dialogue turn, several

  18. Perceived Conventionality in Co-speech Gestures Involves the Fronto-Temporal Language Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dhana Wolf

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Face-to-face communication is multimodal; it encompasses spoken words, facial expressions, gaze, and co-speech gestures. In contrast to linguistic symbols (e.g., spoken words or signs in sign language relying on mostly explicit conventions, gestures vary in their degree of conventionality. Bodily signs may have a general accepted or conventionalized meaning (e.g., a head shake or less so (e.g., self-grooming. We hypothesized that subjective perception of conventionality in co-speech gestures relies on the classical language network, i.e., the left hemispheric inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, Broca's area and the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG, Wernicke's area and studied 36 subjects watching video-recorded story retellings during a behavioral and an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI experiment. It is well documented that neural correlates of such naturalistic videos emerge as intersubject covariance (ISC in fMRI even without involving a stimulus (model-free analysis. The subjects attended either to perceived conventionality or to a control condition (any hand movements or gesture-speech relations. Such tasks modulate ISC in contributing neural structures and thus we studied ISC changes to task demands in language networks. Indeed, the conventionality task significantly increased covariance of the button press time series and neuronal synchronization in the left IFG over the comparison with other tasks. In the left IFG, synchronous activity was observed during the conventionality task only. In contrast, the left pSTG exhibited correlated activation patterns during all conditions with an increase in the conventionality task at the trend level only. Conceivably, the left IFG can be considered a core region for the processing of perceived conventionality in co-speech gestures similar to spoken language. In general, the interpretation of conventionalized signs may rely on neural mechanisms that engage during language comprehension.

  19. On Not Understanding Extraordinary Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Richard K. Payne

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available The question motivating this essay is how tantric Buddhist practitioners in Japan understood language such as to believe that mantra, dhāraṇī, and related forms are efficacious. “Extraordinary language” is introduced as a cover term for these several similar language uses found in tantric Buddhist practices in Japan. The essay proceeds to a critical examination of Anglo-American philosophy of language to determine whether the concepts, categories, and concerns of that field can contribute to the analysis and understanding of extraordinary language. However, that philosophy of language does not contribute to this analysis, as it is constrained by its continuing focus on its founding concepts, dating particularly from the work of Frege. Comparing it to Indic thought regarding language reveals a distinct mismatch, further indicating the limiting character of the philosophy of language. The analysis then turns to examine two other explanations of tantric language use found in religious studies literature: magical language and performative language. These also, however, prove to be unhelpful. While the essay is primarily critical, one candidate for future constructive study is historical pragmatics, as suggested by Ronald Davidson. The central place of extraordinary language indicates that Indic reflections on the nature of language informed tantric Buddhist practice in Japan and are not simply cultural baggage.

  20. Nadsat - the language of violence: from novel to film

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Israel Alves Correa Noletto

    2017-01-01

    Nadsat, an artificial language constructed by Anthony Burgess, is used in his novel, apparently, as means both of immersion of the reader, alienation and repulsion. Kubrick’s filmic adaption of A clockwork orange recognizes the paramount role of Nadsat, and gives life to it as a spoken language through the lines of Alex and his droogs in his homonymous production. The aim of the present article is thus to examine the author’s artificial language, its occurrences in the novel as well as in the filmic adaptation following the contributions of Gualda (2010 and Hutchings (1991 to the cinema study, while tracing the glossopoeia’s meanings and effects on the audience, and how both the author and director seem to manipulate the implications of the reception theory as formulated by Wolfgang Iser (1978. The questions answered by this article are: Does the role played by Nadsat in the novel correspond to that played in the film? How are the implications of Iser’s reception theory in the novel and the film? The results will show that without an understanding of Nadsat the reader/viewer will not be able to fill the gaps of interpretation left by Burgess and Kubrick.

  1. La langue aymara: Des cimes andines a l'intelligence des ordinateurs (The Aymara Language: Andean Peaks for the Intelligence of Computers).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barbin, Christina

    1987-01-01

    Research suggests that Aymara, an ancient language still spoken in parts of South America, may be well suited for use as a "bridge" language in translation because of its extremely regular and coherent grammar. A machine translation program using the language has already been developed. (MSE)

  2. Second Language Learners' Attitudes towards English Varieties

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Weimin; Hu, Guiling

    2008-01-01

    This pilot project investigates second language (L2) learners' attitudes towards three varieties of English: American (AmE), British (BrE) and Australian (AuE). A 69-word passage spoken by a female speaker of each variety was used. Participants were 30 Chinese students pursuing Masters or Doctoral degrees in the United States, who listened to each…

  3. The English Language of the Nigeria Police

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chinwe, Udo Victoria

    2015-01-01

    In the present day Nigeria, the quality of the English language spoken by Nigerians, is perceived to have been deteriorating and needs urgent attention. The proliferation of books and articles in the recent years can be seen as the native outcrop of its received attention and recognition as a matter of discourse. Evidently, every profession,…

  4. A cross-language study of the speech sounds in Yorùbá and Malay: Implications for Second Language Acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Boluwaji Oshodi

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Acquiring a language begins with the knowledge of its sounds system which falls under the branch of linguistics known as phonetics. The knowledge of the sound system becomes very important to prospective learners particularly L2 learners whose L1 exhibits different sounds and features from the target L2 because this knowledge is vital in order to internalise the correct pronunciation of words. This study examined and contrasted the sound systems of Yorùbá a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria to that of Malay (Peninsular variety, an Austronesian language spoken in Malaysia with emphasis on the areas of differences. The data for this study were collected from ten participants; five native female Malay speakers who are married to Yorùbá native speakers but live in Malaysia and five Yorùbá native speakers who reside in Nigeria. The findings revealed that speakers from both sides have difficulties with sounds and features in the L2 which are not attested in their L1 and they tended to substitute them for similar ones in their L1 through transfer. This confirms the fact that asymmetry between the sound systems of L1 and L2 is a major source of error in L2 acquisition.

  5. Technology-assisted language intervention for children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing; a pilot study of augmentative and alternative communication for enhancing language development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meinzen-Derr, Jareen; Wiley, Susan; McAuley, Rose; Smith, Laura; Grether, Sandra

    2017-11-01

    Pilot study to assess the effect of augmentative and alternative communication technology to enhance language development in children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Five children ages 5-10 years with permanent bilateral hearing loss who were identified with language underperformance participated in an individualized 24-week structured program using the application TouchChat WordPower on iPads ® . Language samples were analyzed for changes in mean length of utterance, vocabulary words and mean turn length. Repeated measures models assessed change over time. The baseline median mean length of utterance was 2.41 (range 1.09-6.63; mean 2.88) and significantly increased over time (p = 0.002) to a median of 3.68 at final visit (range 1.97-6.81; mean 3.62). At baseline, the median total number of words spoken per language sample was 251 (range 101-458), with 100 (range 36-100) different words spoken. Total words and different words significantly increased over time (β = 26.8 (7.1), p = 0.001 for total words; β = 8.0 (2.7), p = 0.008 for different words). Mean turn length values also slightly increased over time. Using augmentative and alternative communication technology on iPads ® shows promise in supporting rapid language growth among elementary school-age children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing with language underperformance.

  6. Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    El Aissati, A.; McQueen, J.M.; Cutler, A.

    2012-01-01

    Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the

  7. A grammar of Gaahmg, a Nilo-Saharan language of Sudan

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stirtz, Timothy M.

    2012-01-01

    This thesis investigates the grammar of Gaahmg, a Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic language spoken in the Blue Nile Province of North Sudan. The comprehensive description provides an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax. Ten texts of various genre are given to help illustrated the

  8. Mother tongue education in the official minority languages in ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The government of Zimbabwe officially declared that with effect from January 2002, it was to implement the use and teaching of the officia minority languages, namely Venda, Tonga, Nambya, Kalanga, Sotho and Shangani, as the media of instruction and subjects in primary schools in areas where they are spoken.

  9. Speaker Input Variability Does Not Explain Why Larger Populations Have Simpler Languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atkinson, Mark; Kirby, Simon; Smith, Kenny

    2015-01-01

    A learner's linguistic input is more variable if it comes from a greater number of speakers. Higher speaker input variability has been shown to facilitate the acquisition of phonemic boundaries, since data drawn from multiple speakers provides more information about the distribution of phonemes in a speech community. It has also been proposed that speaker input variability may have a systematic influence on individual-level learning of morphology, which can in turn influence the group-level characteristics of a language. Languages spoken by larger groups of people have less complex morphology than those spoken in smaller communities. While a mechanism by which the number of speakers could have such an effect is yet to be convincingly identified, differences in speaker input variability, which is thought to be larger in larger groups, may provide an explanation. By hindering the acquisition, and hence faithful cross-generational transfer, of complex morphology, higher speaker input variability may result in structural simplification. We assess this claim in two experiments which investigate the effect of such variability on language learning, considering its influence on a learner's ability to segment a continuous speech stream and acquire a morphologically complex miniature language. We ultimately find no evidence to support the proposal that speaker input variability influences language learning and so cannot support the hypothesis that it explains how population size determines the structural properties of language.

  10. Language Networks as Models of Cognition: Understanding Cognition through Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beckage, Nicole M.; Colunga, Eliana

    Language is inherently cognitive and distinctly human. Separating the object of language from the human mind that processes and creates language fails to capture the full language system. Linguistics traditionally has focused on the study of language as a static representation, removed from the human mind. Network analysis has traditionally been focused on the properties and structure that emerge from network representations. Both disciplines could gain from looking at language as a cognitive process. In contrast, psycholinguistic research has focused on the process of language without committing to a representation. However, by considering language networks as approximations of the cognitive system we can take the strength of each of these approaches to study human performance and cognition as related to language. This paper reviews research showcasing the contributions of network science to the study of language. Specifically, we focus on the interplay of cognition and language as captured by a network representation. To this end, we review different types of language network representations before considering the influence of global level network features. We continue by considering human performance in relation to network structure and conclude with theoretical network models that offer potential and testable explanations of cognitive and linguistic phenomena.

  11. Mirandese language and genetic differentiation in Iberia

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pinto, J C; Alves E Silva Pereira, Vania; Marques, S L

    2015-01-01

    BACKGROUND: In the Iberian Peninsula, the Mirandese dialect, spoken in Miranda do Douro (Portugal) close to the north-eastern border with Spain, has attracted much attention. Aim, subjects and methods: This study focuses on providing further insight into the connections forged between Miranda do......, which can be a discreet sign of isolation of that population over the years that might have led the way to the preservation of a language not spoken anywhere else in the country. The analysis of X-STRs particularly brought to light the presence of a subtle population sub-structure at the micro......-geographical area encompassing the north-eastern border, which seems to portray the importance of the political border as a mechanism withholding gene flow between the two countries....

  12. Linguistic Profiles of Children with CI as Compared with Children with Hearing or Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoog, Brigitte E.; Langereis, Margreet C.; Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; Knoors, Harry E. T.; Verhoeven, Ludo

    2016-01-01

    Background: The spoken language difficulties of children with moderate or severe to profound hearing loss are mainly related to limited auditory speech perception. However, degraded or filtered auditory input as evidenced in children with cochlear implants (CIs) may result in less efficient or slower language processing as well. To provide insight…

  13. Socialization, Language, and Scenic Understanding

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Olesen, Henning Salling; Weber, Kirsten

    2012-01-01

    resumida brevemente, enfatizando el rol de los argumentos del investigador en descubrir el significado socialmente inconsciente en la interacción social. Finalmente, una mirada a los problemas epistemológicos contemporáneos. El enfoque de LORENZER para teorizar e investigar al sujeto como una entidad......The article is a guided tour to Alfred LORENZER's proposal for an "in-depth hermeneutic" cultural analysis methodology which was launched in an environment with an almost complete split between social sciences and psychology/psychoanalysis. It presents the background in his materialist...... socialization theory, which combines a social reinterpretation of the core insights in classical psychoanalysis—the unconscious, the drives—with a theory of language acquisition. His methodology is based on a transformation of the "scenic understanding" from a clinical to a text interpretation, which seeks...

  14. Practitioner review: the assessment of language pragmatics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adams, Catherine

    2002-11-01

    The assessment of pragmatics expressed in spoken language is a central issue in the evaluation of children with communication impairments and related disorders. A developmental approach to assessment has remained problematic due to the complex interaction of social, linguistic, cognitive and cultural influences on pragmatics. A selective review and critique of current formal and informal testing methods and pragmatic analytic procedures. Formal testing of pragmatics has limited potential to reveal the typical pragmatic abnormalities in interaction but has a significant role to play in the assessment of comprehension of pragmatic intent. Clinical assessment of pragmatics with the pre-school child should focus on elicitation of communicative intent via naturalistic methods as part of an overall assessment of social communication skills. Assessments for older children should include a comprehensive investigation of speech acts, conversational and narrative abilities, the understanding of implicature and intent as well as the child's ability to employ contextual cues to understanding. Practical recommendations are made regarding the choice of a core set of pragmatic assessments and elicitation techniques. The practitioner's attention is drawn to the lack of the usual safeguards of reliability and validity that have persisted in some language pragmatics assessments. A core set of pragmatic assessment tools can be identified from the proliferation of instruments in current use. Further research is required to establish clearer norms and ranges in the development of pragmatic ability, particularly with respect to the understanding of inference, topic management and coherence.

  15. Ancestry and Language in the United States: November 1979. Current Population Reports, Special Studies. Series P-23. No. 116.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levin, Michael J.; Sweet, Nancy S.

    Information on the ancestry, languages, and literacy of the U.S. population based on data collected by the Bureau of the Census in 1979 is reported. Items surveyed include ancestry, country of birth of the individual and parents, citizenship, year of immigration, native language, language spoken in the home, ability to speak English, and ability…

  16. Do Adolescents with Specific Language Impairment Understand Driving Terminology?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pandolfe, Jessica M.; Wittke, Kacie; Spaulding, Tammie J.

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: This study examined if adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) understand driving vocabulary as well as their typically developing (TD) peers. Method: A total of 16 adolescents with SLI and 16 TD comparison adolescents completed a receptive vocabulary task focused on driving terminology derived from statewide driver's manuals.…

  17. Neural Basis of Action Understanding: Evidence from Sign Language Aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rogalsky, Corianne; Raphel, Kristin; Tomkovicz, Vivian; O'Grady, Lucinda; Damasio, Hanna; Bellugi, Ursula; Hickok, Gregory

    2013-01-01

    The neural basis of action understanding is a hotly debated issue. The mirror neuron account holds that motor simulation in fronto-parietal circuits is critical to action understanding including speech comprehension, while others emphasize the ventral stream in the temporal lobe. Evidence from speech strongly supports the ventral stream account, but on the other hand, evidence from manual gesture comprehension (e.g., in limb apraxia) has led to contradictory findings. Here we present a lesion analysis of sign language comprehension. Sign language is an excellent model for studying mirror system function in that it bridges the gap between the visual-manual system in which mirror neurons are best characterized and language systems which have represented a theoretical target of mirror neuron research. Twenty-one life long deaf signers with focal cortical lesions performed two tasks: one involving the comprehension of individual signs and the other involving comprehension of signed sentences (commands). Participants' lesions, as indicated on MRI or CT scans, were mapped onto a template brain to explore the relationship between lesion location and sign comprehension measures. Single sign comprehension was not significantly affected by left hemisphere damage. Sentence sign comprehension impairments were associated with left temporal-parietal damage. We found that damage to mirror system related regions in the left frontal lobe were not associated with deficits on either of these comprehension tasks. We conclude that the mirror system is not critically involved in action understanding.

  18. Maternal Mental State Language and Preschool Children's Attachment Security: Relation to Children's Mental State Language and Expressions of Emotional Understanding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mcquaid, Nancy; Bigelow, Ann E.; McLaughlin, Jessica; MacLean, Kim

    2008-01-01

    Mothers' mental state language in conversation with their preschool children, and children's preschool attachment security were examined for their effects on children's mental state language and expressions of emotional understanding in their conversation. Children discussed an emotionally salient event with their mothers and then relayed the…

  19. Vývoj sociální kognice českých neslyšících dětí — uživatelů českého znakového jazyka a uživatelů mluvené češtiny: adaptace testové baterie : Development of Social Cognition in Czech Deaf Children — Czech Sign Language Users and Czech Spoken Language Users: Adaptation of a Test Battery

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea Hudáková

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available The present paper describes the process of an adaptation of a set of tasks for testing theory-of-mind competencies, Theory of Mind Task Battery, for the use with the population of Czech Deaf children — both users of Czech Sign Language as well as those using spoken Czech.

  20. Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carter, Ronald; McCarthy, Michael

    2017-01-01

    This article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin…

  1. Use of Automated Scoring in Spoken Language Assessments for Test Takers with Speech Impairments. Research Report. ETS RR-17-42

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loukina, Anastassia; Buzick, Heather

    2017-01-01

    This study is an evaluation of the performance of automated speech scoring for speakers with documented or suspected speech impairments. Given that the use of automated scoring of open-ended spoken responses is relatively nascent and there is little research to date that includes test takers with disabilities, this small exploratory study focuses…

  2. The Neural Correlates of Highly Iconic Structures and Topographic Discourse in French Sign Language as Observed in Six Hearing Native Signers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Courtin, C.; Herve, P. -Y.; Petit, L.; Zago, L.; Vigneau, M.; Beaucousin, V.; Jobard, G.; Mazoyer, B.; Mellet, E.; Tzourio-Mazoyer, N.

    2010-01-01

    "Highly iconic" structures in Sign Language enable a narrator to act, switch characters, describe objects, or report actions in four-dimensions. This group of linguistic structures has no real spoken-language equivalent. Topographical descriptions are also achieved in a sign-language specific manner via the use of signing-space and…

  3. The contribution of phonological knowledge, memory, and language background to reading comprehension in deaf populations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirshorn, Elizabeth A.; Dye, Matthew W. G.; Hauser, Peter; Supalla, Ted R.; Bavelier, Daphne

    2015-01-01

    While reading is challenging for many deaf individuals, some become proficient readers. Little is known about the component processes that support reading comprehension in these individuals. Speech-based phonological knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in hearing individuals, yet its role in deaf readers is controversial. This could reflect the highly varied language backgrounds among deaf readers as well as the difficulty of disentangling the relative contribution of phonological versus orthographic knowledge of spoken language, in our case ‘English,’ in this population. Here we assessed the impact of language experience on reading comprehension in deaf readers by recruiting oral deaf individuals, who use spoken English as their primary mode of communication, and deaf native signers of American Sign Language. First, to address the contribution of spoken English phonological knowledge in deaf readers, we present novel tasks that evaluate phonological versus orthographic knowledge. Second, the impact of this knowledge, as well as memory measures that rely differentially on phonological (serial recall) and semantic (free recall) processing, on reading comprehension was evaluated. The best predictor of reading comprehension differed as a function of language experience, with free recall being a better predictor in deaf native signers than in oral deaf. In contrast, the measures of English phonological knowledge, independent of orthographic knowledge, best predicted reading comprehension in oral deaf individuals. These results suggest successful reading strategies differ across deaf readers as a function of their language experience, and highlight a possible alternative route to literacy in deaf native signers. Highlights: 1. Deaf individuals vary in their orthographic and phonological knowledge of English as a function of their language experience. 2. Reading comprehension was best predicted by different factors in oral deaf and

  4. Basic speech recognition for spoken dialogues

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Van Heerden, C

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available Spoken dialogue systems (SDSs) have great potential for information access in the developing world. However, the realisation of that potential requires the solution of several challenging problems, including the development of sufficiently accurate...

  5. Addressing the Language Description Deficit

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Ali Bolgiin

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Well-described language features are key to successful teaching and learning, especially for achieving advanced levels of proficiency. Other measures, such as simply increasing the number of reading and listening passages in a language program alone are not enough to bring the student to a higher level in a given skill. In fact, even being present in the target culture does not suffice. Angelelli and Degueldre (2002 argue that at advanced levels, even spending time in a country where the language is spoken is not necessarily sufficient for learners: "They do not need just exposure; they need answers to questions and explanations that they can rarely get by simply being immersed in a language/ culture." Less commonly taught languages (LCTLs lack descriptions that have such answers and explanations (cf. Fotos, 2002. It is argued in this paper that corpuslinguistic analyses help to provide actual usage-based, rather than intuition-based, descriptions and explanations of language features. Such approach is illustrated through English and Turkish examples.

  6. Understanding Language: A Primer for the Language Arts Teacher.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Malmstrom, Jean

    This volume aims to bridge the gap between language arts teaching and linguistic theory. Part one discusses selected aspects of linguistics that are relevant to language arts teaching: the acquisition and development of language during childhood; the English sound system and its relation to spellings and meanings; traditional, structural, and…

  7. ASSESSING THE SO CALLED MARKED INFLECTIONAL FEATURES OF NIGERIAN ENGLISH: A SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY ACCOUNT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Boluwaji Oshodi

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available There are conflicting claims among scholars on whether the structural outputs of the types of English spoken in countries where English is used as a second language gives such speech forms the status of varieties of English. This study examined those morphological features considered to be marked features of the variety spoken in Nigeria according to Kirkpatrick (2011 and the variety spoken in Malaysia by considering the claims of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH a Second Language Acquisition theory which accounts for the cause of the variable use of such inflections among L2 learners. Results from oral and written composition tasks administered on selected undergraduate students of Nigerian and Malaysian universities revealed that what is regarded as morphological features are actually a deviation from the L2 target forms. According to the MSIH the variability in the use of such inflections is due to problems of lexical retrieval a psycholinguistic problem which manifests among L2 learners of English generally which results in wrong surface representations.

  8. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EXISTING INTENSIVE METHODS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria Mytnyk

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with the study and analysis of comparable existing intensive methods of teaching foreign languages. This work is carried out to identify the positive and negative aspects of intensive methods of teaching foreign languages. The author traces the idea of rational organization and intensification of teaching foreign languages from their inception to the moment of their preparation in an integrated system. advantages and disadvantages of the most popular methods of intensive training also analyzed the characteristic of different historical periods, namely cugestopedichny method G. Lozanov method activation of reserve possibilities of students G. Kitaygorodskoy, emotional-semantic method I. Schechter, an intensive course of learning a foreign language L. Gegechkori , sugestokibernetichny integral method of accelerated learning a foreign language B. Petrusinskogo, a crash course in the study of spoken language by immersion A. Plesnevich. Analyzed the principles of learning and the role of each method in the development of methods of intensive foreign language training. The author identified a number of advantages and disadvantages of intensive methods of teaching foreign languages: 1 the assimilation of a large number of linguistic, lexical and grammatical units; 2 active use of acquired knowledge, skills and abilities in the practice of oral speech communication in a foreign language; 3 the ability to use language material resulting not only in his speech, but also in understanding the interlocutor; 4 overcoming psychological barriers, including fear of the possibility of making a mistake; 5 high efficiency and fast learning; 6 too much new language material that is presented; 7 training of oral forms of communication; 8 decline of grammatical units and models.

  9. Name signs in Danish Sign Language

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bakken Jepsen, Julie

    2018-01-01

    in spoken languages, where a person working as a blacksmith by his friends might be referred to as ‘The Blacksmith’ (‘Here comes the Blacksmith!’) instead of using the person’s first name. Name signs are found not only in Danish Sign Language (DSL) but in most, if not all, sign languages studied to date....... This article provides examples of the creativity of the users of Danish Sign Language, including some of the processes in the use of metaphors, visual motivation and influence from Danish when name signs are created.......A name sign is a personal sign assigned to deaf, hearing impaired and hearing persons who enter the deaf community. The mouth action accompanying the sign reproduces all or part of the formal first name that the person has received by baptism or naming. Name signs can be compared to nicknames...

  10. LEAPing on with language: An on-line language programme to support classroom teachers and parents of primary school children (aged 5-11 years).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clare Allen, M; Kendrick, Andrew; Archbold, Sue; Harrigan, Suzanne

    2014-05-01

    The Leaping on with Language programme provides a combination of strategies and activities to accelerate children's spoken language use from simple sentences to complex language. Using a conversational philosophy it expands the building blocks of language (vocabulary, grammar, speech), whilst emphasising the importance of developing independent social communication and acknowledging a child's developing self esteem and self identity between the ages of 4-11. Three pilot projects evaluated the programme with a total of 51 delegates. The outcomes were hugely positive. Changes in behaviour were reported from the 3rd pilot 1 month later. Comments regarding the length of training, practical strategies and more film clips were implemented. Leaping on with language is now a free to access resource available on line.

  11. Study on Mobile Augmented Reality Adoption for Mayo Language Learning

    OpenAIRE

    Miranda Bojórquez, Erasmo; Vergara Villegas, Osslan Osiris; Cruz Sánchez, Vianey Guadalupe; García-Alcaraz, Jorge Luis; Favela Vara, Jesús

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents the results of a study applied to undergraduates in order to know how the cultural dimensions affect their perceptions of the acceptance and use of new technologies in a student-centered learning environment. A total of 85 undergraduate students from the Autonomous Indigenous University of Mexico (UAIM) participated in the study. Each student was asked to use a mobile augmented reality (MAR) application designed to learn Mayo language (language spoken in Northwestern Mexic...

  12. A Systematic Review of Cross-Linguistic and Multilingual Speech and Language Outcomes for Children with Hearing Loss

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crowe, Kathryn; McLeod, Sharynne

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors affecting the language, speech intelligibility, speech production, and lexical tone development of children with hearing loss who use spoken languages other than English. Relevant studies of children with hearing loss published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed with reference to…

  13. NOVUS ORTUS: THE AWAKENING OF LAZ LANGUAGE IN TURKEY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nurdan KAVAKLI

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Laz (South Caucasian language, which is spoken primarily on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea in Turkey, is being threatened by language endangerment. Having no official status, Laz language is considered to be an ethnic minority language in Turkey. All Laz people residing in Turkey are bilingual with the official language in the country, Turkish, and use Laz most frequently in intrafamilial conversations. In this article, Laz language is removed from the dusty pages of Turkish history as a response to the threat of language attrition in the world. Accordingly, language endangerment is viewed in terms of a sociolinguistic phenomenon within the boundaries of both language-internal and -external factors. Laz language revitalization acts have also been scrutinized. Having a dekko at the history of modern Turkey will enlighten whether those revitalization acts and/or movements can offer a novus ortus (new birth for the current situation of Laz language.

  14. On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dediu, Dan; Levinson, Stephen C.

    2013-01-01

    It is usually assumed that modern language is a recent phenomenon, coinciding with the emergence of modern humans themselves. Many assume as well that this is the result of a single, sudden mutation giving rise to the full “modern package.” However, we argue here that recognizably modern language is likely an ancient feature of our genus pre-dating at least the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals about half a million years ago. To this end, we adduce a broad range of evidence from linguistics, genetics, paleontology, and archaeology clearly suggesting that Neandertals shared with us something like modern speech and language. This reassessment of the antiquity of modern language, from the usually quoted 50,000–100,000 years to half a million years, has profound consequences for our understanding of our own evolution in general and especially for the sciences of speech and language. As such, it argues against a saltationist scenario for the evolution of language, and toward a gradual process of culture-gene co-evolution extending to the present day. Another consequence is that the present-day linguistic diversity might better reflect the properties of the design space for language and not just the vagaries of history, and could also contain traces of the languages spoken by other human forms such as the Neandertals. PMID:23847571

  15. On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dan eDediu

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available It is usually assumed that modern language is a recent phenomenon, coinciding with the emergence of modern humans themselves. Many assume as well that this is the result of a single, sudden mutation giving rise to the full modern package. However, we argue here that recognizably modern language is likely an ancient feature of our genus pre-dating at least the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals about half a million years ago. To this end, we adduce a broad range of evidence from linguistics, genetics, palaeontology and archaeology clearly suggesting that Neandertals shared with us something like modern speech and language. This reassessment of the antiquity of modern language, from the usually quoted 50,000-100,000 years to half a million years, has profound consequences for our understanding of our own evolution in general and especially for the sciences of speech and language. As such, it argues against a saltationist scenario for the evolution of language, and towards a gradual process of culture-gene co-evolution extending to the present day. Another consequence is that the present-day linguistic diversity might better reflect the properties of the design space for language and not just the vagaries of history, and could also contain traces of the languages spoken by other human forms such as the Neandertals.

  16. The Effects of Electronic Communication on American Sign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schneider, Erin; Kozak, L. Viola; Santiago, Roberto; Stephen, Anika

    2012-01-01

    Technological and language innovation often flow in concert with one another. Casual observation by researchers has shown that electronic communication memes, in the form of abbreviations, have found their way into spoken English. This study focuses on the current use of electronic modes of communication, such as cell smartphones, and e-mail, and…

  17. Comprehending Implied Meaning in English as a Foreign Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taguchi, Naoko

    2005-01-01

    This study investigated whether second language (L2) proficiency affects pragmatic comprehension, namely the ability to comprehend implied meaning in spoken dialogues, in terms of accuracy and speed of comprehension. Participants included 46 native English speakers at a U.S. university and 160 Japanese students of English in a college in Japan who…

  18. Unsupervised Language Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Marcken, Carl

    1996-11-01

    This thesis presents a computational theory of unsupervised language acquisition, precisely defining procedures for learning language from ordinary spoken or written utterances, with no explicit help from a teacher. The theory is based heavily on concepts borrowed from machine learning and statistical estimation. In particular, learning takes place by fitting a stochastic, generative model of language to the evidence. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining conditions that must hold for this general learning strategy to arrive at linguistically desirable grammars. The thesis introduces a variety of technical innovations, among them a common representation for evidence and grammars, and a learning strategy that separates the ``content'' of linguistic parameters from their representation. Algorithms based on it suffer from few of the search problems that have plagued other computational approaches to language acquisition. The theory has been tested on problems of learning vocabularies and grammars from unsegmented text and continuous speech, and mappings between sound and representations of meaning. It performs extremely well on various objective criteria, acquiring knowledge that causes it to assign almost exactly the same structure to utterances as humans do. This work has application to data compression, language modeling, speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, and other tasks that rely on either structural or stochastic descriptions of language.

  19. A Multimodal Dialog System for Language Assessment: Current State and Future Directions. Research Report. ETS RR-17-21

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suendermann-Oeft, David; Ramanarayanan, Vikram; Yu, Zhou; Qian, Yao; Evanini, Keelan; Lange, Patrick; Wang, Xinhao; Zechner, Klaus

    2017-01-01

    We present work in progress on a multimodal dialog system for English language assessment using a modular cloud-based architecture adhering to open industry standards. Among the modules being developed for the system, multiple modules heavily exploit machine learning techniques, including speech recognition, spoken language proficiency rating,…

  20. Removing obstacles for African American English-speaking children through greater understanding of language difference.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pearson, Barbara Zurer; Conner, Tracy; Jackson, Janice E

    2013-01-01

    Language difference among speakers of African American English (AAE) has often been considered language deficit, based on a lack of understanding about the AAE variety. Following Labov (1972), Wolfram (1969), Green (2002, 2011), and others, we define AAE as a complex rule-governed linguistic system and briefly discuss language structures that it shares with general American English (GAE) and others that are unique to AAE. We suggest ways in which mistaken ideas about the language variety add to children's difficulties in learning the mainstream dialect and, in effect, deny them the benefits of their educational programs. We propose that a linguistically informed approach that highlights correspondences between AAE and the mainstream dialect and trains students and teachers to understand language varieties at a metalinguistic level creates environments that support the academic achievement of AAE-speaking students. Finally, we present 3 program types that are recommended for helping students achieve the skills they need to be successful in multiple linguistic environments.

  1. Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

    2010-12-12

    'Language shift' is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100-120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the 'natural wastage' as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission.

  2. Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

    2010-01-01

    Language shift’ is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100–120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the ‘natural wastage’ as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission. PMID:21041210

  3. Gradient language dominance affects talker learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bregman, Micah R; Creel, Sarah C

    2014-01-01

    Traditional conceptions of spoken language assume that speech recognition and talker identification are computed separately. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies imply some separation between the two faculties, but recent perceptual studies suggest better talker recognition in familiar languages than unfamiliar languages. A familiar-language benefit in talker recognition potentially implies strong ties between the two domains. However, little is known about the nature of this language familiarity effect. The current study investigated the relationship between speech and talker processing by assessing bilingual and monolingual listeners' ability to learn voices as a function of language familiarity and age of acquisition. Two effects emerged. First, bilinguals learned to recognize talkers in their first language (Korean) more rapidly than they learned to recognize talkers in their second language (English), while English-speaking participants showed the opposite pattern (learning English talkers faster than Korean talkers). Second, bilinguals' learning rate for talkers in their second language (English) correlated with age of English acquisition. Taken together, these results suggest that language background materially affects talker encoding, implying a tight relationship between speech and talker representations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Recognizing Young Readers' Spoken Questions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Wei; Mostow, Jack; Aist, Gregory

    2013-01-01

    Free-form spoken input would be the easiest and most natural way for young children to communicate to an intelligent tutoring system. However, achieving such a capability poses a challenge both to instruction design and to automatic speech recognition. To address the difficulties of accepting such input, we adopt the framework of predictable…

  5. Oral and written language in late adulthood: findings from the Nun Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mitzner, Tracy L; Kemper, Susan

    2003-01-01

    As a part of the Nun Study, a longitudinal investigation of aging and Alzheimer's disease, oral and written autobiographies from 118 older women were analyzed to examine the relationship between spoken and written language. The written language samples were more complex than the oral samples, both conceptually and grammatically. The relationship between the linguistic measures and participant characteristics was also examined. The results suggest that the grammatical and conceptual characteristics of oral and written language are affected by participant differences in education, cognitive status, and physical function and that written language samples have greater power than oral language samples to differentiate between high- and low-ability older adults.

  6. Right Hemisphere Grey Matter Volume and Language Functions in Stroke Aphasia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sladjana Lukic

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The role of the right hemisphere (RH in recovery from aphasia is incompletely understood. The present study quantified RH grey matter (GM volume in individuals with chronic stroke-induced aphasia and cognitively healthy people using voxel-based morphometry. We compared group differences in GM volume in the entire RH and in RH regions-of-interest. Given that lesion site is a critical source of heterogeneity associated with poststroke language ability, we used voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM to examine the relation between lesion site and language performance in the aphasic participants. Finally, using results derived from the VLSM as a covariate, we evaluated the relation between GM volume in the RH and language ability across domains, including comprehension and production processes both at the word and sentence levels and across spoken and written modalities. Between-subject comparisons showed that GM volume in the RH SMA was reduced in the aphasic group compared to the healthy controls. We also found that, for the aphasic group, increased RH volume in the MTG and the SMA was associated with better language comprehension and production scores, respectively. These data suggest that the RH may support functions previously performed by LH regions and have important implications for understanding poststroke reorganization.

  7. Cross-Sensory Correspondences and Symbolism in Spoken and Written Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walker, Peter

    2016-01-01

    Lexical sound symbolism in language appears to exploit the feature associations embedded in cross-sensory correspondences. For example, words incorporating relatively high acoustic frequencies (i.e., front/close rather than back/open vowels) are deemed more appropriate as names for concepts associated with brightness, lightness in weight,…

  8. Acquisition of speech rhythm in a second language by learners with rhythmically different native languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ordin, Mikhail; Polyanskaya, Leona

    2015-08-01

    The development of speech rhythm in second language (L2) acquisition was investigated. Speech rhythm was defined as durational variability that can be captured by the interval-based rhythm metrics. These metrics were used to examine the differences in durational variability between proficiency levels in L2 English spoken by French and German learners. The results reveal that durational variability increased as L2 acquisition progressed in both groups of learners. This indicates that speech rhythm in L2 English develops from more syllable-timed toward more stress-timed patterns irrespective of whether the native language of the learner is rhythmically similar to or different from the target language. Although both groups showed similar development of speech rhythm in L2 acquisition, there were also differences: German learners achieved a degree of durational variability typical of the target language, while French learners exhibited lower variability than native British speakers, even at an advanced proficiency level.

  9. The Priority of Listening Comprehension over Speaking in the Language Acquisition Process

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Fang

    2011-01-01

    By elaborating the definition of listening comprehension, the characteristic of spoken discourse, the relationship between STM and LTM and Krashen's comprehensible input, the paper puts forward the point that the priority of listening comprehension over speaking in the language acquisition process is very necessary.

  10. Attitude change through understanding (cognition of the influence of the persuasive language of liturgy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ferdi Kruger

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this article is to argue that the use of language in liturgy during worship services should be meaningful to contribute to persuasion in the lives of the participants in liturgy. Language is a prominent medium to convey meaning. In fact, the essence of liturgy that has to lead to the liturgy of life is in itself a meaningful act. The question regarding the meaning of worship services that people often raise is another reason why research on the influence of liturgy is crucial. This investigation is anchored in research on the importance of cognition in persuasive language use to promote attitude change. The research gathers insights from the fields of language philosophy and cognitive psychology. It is clear that the meaning of words in language can never be separated from people’s understanding of the meaning of language. Communication and communion are not opposites. In the normative phase of this investigation, perspectives from Romans 12 are offered. The renewal of the mind that leads to discernment of God’s will must also lead to a new cognition (understanding or phronesis of each believer’s place within the Body of Christ. The insights gained from language philosophy, cognitive psychology and the normative grounding make it evident that people always try to make sense of what they are experiencing and of what they are observing. The attempt to understand necessitates further reflection on the importance of cognition. Finally, practical theological perspectives are offered to indicate that cognition is important to create a meaningful liturgy. This cognition is anchored in God’s presence during worship services and, therefore, it requires meaningful words from liturgists.

  11. Unpacking the Right to plain and understandable Language in the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Philip N Stoop

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 came into effect on 1 April 2011. The purpose of this Act is, among other things, to promote fairness, openness and respectable business practice between the suppliers of goods or services and the consumers of such good and services. In consumer protection legislation fairness is usually approached from two directions, namely substantive and procedural fairness. Measures aimed at procedural fairness address conduct during the bargaining process and generally aim at ensuring transparency. Transparency in relation to the terms of a contract relates to whether the terms of the contract terms accessible, in clear language, well-structured, and cross-referenced, with prominence being given to terms that are detrimental to the consumer or because they grant important rights. One measure in the Act aimed at addressing procedural fairness is the right to plain and understandable language. The consumer’s right to being given information in plain and understandable language, as it is expressed in section 22, is embedded under the umbrella right of information and disclosure in the Act. Section 22 requires that notices, documents or visual representations that are required in terms of the Act or other law are to be provided in plain and understandable language as well as in the prescribed form, where such a prescription exists. In the analysis of the concept “plain and understandable language” the following aspects are considered in this article: the development of plain language measures in Australia and the United Kingdom; the structure and purpose of section 22; the documents that must be in plain language; the definition of plain language; the use of official languages in consumer contracts; and plain language guidelines (based on the law of the states of Pennsylvania and Connecticut in the United States of America.

  12. Aware Computing in Spatial Language Understanding Guided by Cognitively Inspired Knowledge Representation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Masao Yokota

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Mental image directed semantic theory (MIDST has proposed an omnisensory mental image model and its description language Lmd. This language is designed to represent and compute human intuitive knowledge of space and can provide multimedia expressions with intermediate semantic descriptions in predicate logic. It is hypothesized that such knowledge and semantic descriptions are controlled by human attention toward the world and therefore subjective to each human individual. This paper describes Lmd expression of human subjective knowledge of space and its application to aware computing in cross-media operation between linguistic and pictorial expressions as spatial language understanding.

  13. Talker and background noise specificity in spoken word recognition memory

    OpenAIRE

    Cooper, Angela; Bradlow, Ann R.

    2017-01-01

    Prior research has demonstrated that listeners are sensitive to changes in the indexical (talker-specific) characteristics of speech input, suggesting that these signal-intrinsic features are integrally encoded in memory for spoken words. Given that listeners frequently must contend with concurrent environmental noise, to what extent do they also encode signal-extrinsic details? Native English listeners’ explicit memory for spoken English monosyllabic and disyllabic words was assessed as a fu...

  14. The determinants of spoken and written picture naming latencies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bonin, Patrick; Chalard, Marylène; Méot, Alain; Fayol, Michel

    2002-02-01

    The influence of nine variables on the latencies to write down or to speak aloud the names of pictures taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) was investigated in French adults. The major determinants of both written and spoken picture naming latencies were image variability, image agreement and age of acquisition. To a lesser extent, name agreement was also found to have an impact in both production modes. The implications of the findings for theoretical views of both spoken and written picture naming are discussed.

  15. Language contact phenomena in the language use of speakers of German descent and the significance of their language attitudes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ries, Veronika

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Within the scope of my investigation on language use and language attitudes of People of German Descent from the USSR, I find almost regular different language contact phenomena, such as viel bliny habn=wir gbackt (engl.: 'we cooked lots of pancakes' (cf. Ries 2011. The aim of analysis is to examine both language use with regard to different forms of language contact and the language attitudes of the observed speakers. To be able to analyse both of these aspects and synthesize them, different types of data are required. The research is based on the following two data types: everyday conversations and interviews. In addition, the individual speakers' biography is a key part of the analysis, because it allows one to draw conclusions about language attitudes and use. This qualitative research is based on morpho-syntactic and interactional linguistic analysis of authentic spoken data. The data arise from a corpus compiled and edited by myself. My being a member of the examined group allowed me to build up an authentic corpus. The natural language use is analysed from the perspective of different language contact phenomena and potential functions of language alternations. One central issue is: How do speakers use the languages available to them, German and Russian? Structural characteristics such as code switching and discursive motives for these phenomena are discussed as results, together with the socio-cultural background of the individual speaker. Within the scope of this article I present exemplarily the data and results of one speaker.

  16. Language Education Policy and Practice in East and Southeast Asia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kirkpatrick, Andy; Liddicoat, Anthony J.

    2017-01-01

    East and Southeast Asia represents a linguistically and culturally diverse region. For example, more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia alone. It is against this backdrop of diversity that the ten countries that comprise Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have recently signed the ASEAN Charter which, while calling for respect…

  17. Educational language planning and linguistic identity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sutton, Peter

    1991-03-01

    There are cases in which a "high" form of a language is taught and used in formal situations, but linguistic variation is also caused by geography, ethnicity and socioeconomic class. Certain variants are regarded as inferior and restricted in expressive capacity, and are disadvantageous. The paper suggests that it is possible to map each person's linguistic identity in two dimensions: the number of languages spoken, and the situation-specific variants of each language. Further, it is argued that the distance between a "low" variant and a "high" standard form of a language may present to the "low" learner of a standardized mother tongue a barrier just as great as that posed by the learning of a related foreign language to a speaker of the high variant. It is proposed that greater tolerance be exercised in acceptance of variation and in recognition of linguistic identity, so that this can be built on in the necessary and desirable expansion of linguistic competence, rather than being devalued. The relevance of the communicative approach to language teaching is touched on.

  18. Interaction and common ground in dementia: Communication across linguistic and cultural diversity in a residential dementia care setting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Strandroos, Lisa; Antelius, Eleonor

    2017-09-01

    Previous research concerning bilingual people with a dementia disease has mainly focused on the importance of sharing a spoken language with caregivers. While acknowledging this, this article addresses the multidimensional character of communication and interaction. As using spoken language is made difficult as a consequence of the dementia disease, this multidimensionality becomes particularly important. The article is based on a qualitative analysis of ethnographic fieldwork at a dementia care facility. It presents ethnographic examples of different communicative forms, with particular focus on bilingual interactions. Interaction is understood as a collective and collaborative activity. The text finds that a shared spoken language is advantageous, but is not the only source of, nor a guarantee for, creating common ground and understanding. Communicative resources other than spoken language are for example body language, embodiment, artefacts and time. Furthermore, forms of communication are not static but develop, change and are created over time. Ability to communicate is thus not something that one has or has not, but is situationally and collaboratively created. To facilitate this, time and familiarity are central resources, and the results indicate the importance of continuity in interpersonal relations.

  19. Processing spoken lectures in resource-scarce environments

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Van Heerden, CJ

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available and then adapting or training new models using the segmented spoken lectures. The eventual systems perform quite well, aligning more than 90% of a selected set of target words successfully....

  20. The Use of New Technologies for the Teaching of the Igbo Language in Schools: Challenges and Prospects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iloene, Modesta I.; Iloene, George O.; Mbah, Evelyn E.; Mbah, Boniface M.

    2013-01-01

    This paper examines the experience of teachers in the use of new technologies to teach the Igbo language spoken in South East Nigeria. The study investigates the extent to which new technologies are available and accessible to Igbo teachers, the competence of the Igbo language teachers in the new technologies and the challenges they face that…