Languages

23 pages, 1305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

by Antje Muntendam and M. Carmen Parafita Couto

Languages 2024, 9(8), 258; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080258 - 25 Jul 2024

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One characteristic of multilingual speakers is that in everyday life, they may integrate elements from their languages in the same sentence or discourse, a practice known as code-switching. This paper examines code-switching at the interfaces, in particular as related to information structure. Despite the fact that a core question of modern linguistic theory is how syntactic and information-structural theories interact in accounting for licensing of different grammatical phenomena, there has been relatively little literature on code-switching and information structure. In this paper, we provide an overview of the available literature on code-switching across different language combinations, focusing in particular on subject pronoun–verb switches, ellipsis, light verbs, topic/focus particles, and code-switching between sign languages. We argue that the study of the interplay between information structure and code-switching sheds light on our understanding of multilingual grammars and language competence more generally. In this regard, we discuss theoretical and methodological considerations to guide future studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntax and Discourse at the Crossroads)

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18 pages, 7008 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Could You Say [læp˺ tɒp˺]? Acquisition of Unreleased Stops by Advanced French Learners of English Using Spectrograms and Gestures

by Maelle Amand and Zakaria Touhami

Languages 2024, 9(8), 257; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080257 - 25 Jul 2024

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Abstract

The present study analyses the production rates of stop-unrelease amongst advanced French learners of English before and after training. Although stop-unrelease may be regarded as a minor issue in English pronunciation teaching, it has received some attention in recent years. Earlier studies showed that amongst “phonetically naive English listeners”, the lack of release of /p/, /t/ and /k/ leads to lower identification scores. The present study analyses the speech of 31 French university students majoring in English to measure the efficiency of an awareness approach on the production of stop-unrelease. The experiment comprised three phases with a test and a control group. During Phase 1, both groups were asked to read pairs of words and sentences containing medial and final voiceless stops. We chose combinations of two identical stops (homorganic) or stops with different places of articulation (heterorganic), as well as stops in utterance-final position. Namely, wait for me at that table over there, that pan, or I like that truck. In Phase 2, one group watched an explanatory video to increase awareness on stop-unrelease in English before reading Phase 1 words and sentences a second time. The remaining group was the control group and did not receive any training. Among the participants, 17 read a French text containing pairs of stops in similar positions to those in the English one, which served as an L1 baseline. In total, six students continued until Phase 3 (reading the same stimuli a month later; three in the control group and three in the test group). The results showed that sentence-final stops were overwhelmingly released (above 90%) in both English and French in Phase 1. Training had a significant impact on sentence-final stop-unrelease (p < 0.001), which rose from 9.65% to 72.2%. Progress was also visible in other contexts as in heterorganic pairs of stops. Based on these results, we strongly recommend the combined use of spectrograms and gestures to raise awareness in a classroom or for online learning so as to reach multiple learner profiles and further increase efficiency in pronunciation learning. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Speech Analysis and Tools in L2 Pronunciation Acquisition)

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19 pages, 2032 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“How Often Do You Encounter the Verb Obnaruzhit’?” Subjective Frequency of Russian Verbs in Heritage Speakers and Other Types of Russian–German Bilinguals

by Christina Clasmeier and Tanja Anstatt

Languages 2024, 9(8), 256; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9080256 - 23 Jul 2024

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Abstract

The literature shows that word frequency data obtained from corpora (corpus frequency, CF) and L1 speaker estimation (subjective frequency, SF) are substantially correlated. However, little is known about languages other than English and the frequency estimation of different types of bilingual speakers. We address both issues and compare the correlation coefficients of the CF and SF for 49 Russian verbs as well as SF data between four groups of Russian speakers: monolinguals (MOs), late bilinguals (LBs), heritage speakers (HSs), and foreign language learners (FLs). We gained SF data from a frequency estimation study with 447 participants and found that despite the reduced exposure to Russian in the three bilingual groups, their SF data were correlated with the CF at the same level (moderately) as the monolinguals’ SF. Interestingly, the correlations between the SF of the MOs, LBs, and HSs were very high, indicating that the SF is extremely stable over different speaker groups and that HSs do not differ from other L1 speakers in this respect. Furthermore, in absolute terms, HSs judged the verbs consistently lower than LBs and MOs, demonstrating that speakers have a finely adjusted ability to estimate the frequency with which they encounter words. The learners, on the other hand, were a clearly distinguished group, with only moderate correlations with all groups of L1 speakers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Heritage Russian Bilingualism across the Lifespan)

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Languages, Volume 9, Issue 8 (August 2024) – 3 articles

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