Langues, linguistique et traduction

The study explored ESL tutoring sessions in the context of the Elluminate platform, a synchronous language management system (SLMS). The participants were ESL pre-service teachers from Québec who provided tutoring to small groups of secondary 1 ESL students located in Mexico. The study focused on three research questions: (1) the types of scaffolding provided by the tutors, (2) the tutors’ perceptions of teaching within this environment, and (3) the learners` perception of their learning experience. Data collection included screen capture of the online sessions and surveys. In addition to the four types of scaffolding previously identified by Pawan (2008) – linguistic, conceptual, social and cultural, a fifth type, particular to the SLMS environment – technical scaffolding, also emerged. Both tutors and ESL students were generally positive about their online experiences.

Previous studies have argued that high vowel deletion (HVD) in Québec French is constrained by iterative iambic footing (Guzzo, Goad & Garcia 2016, Garcia, Goad & Guzzo 2017; see also Verluyten 1982), since it preferentially applies in even-numbered syllables from the right edge of the word. In this paper, we compare this hypothesis with an alternative hypothesis: HVD is constrained by the optionally-realized phrase-initial H tone (Jun & Fougeron 2000, Thibault & Ouellet 1996). We report on a judgement task in which two- and four-syllable nouns with HVD in the initial syllable are placed in phrases of different profiles (No determiner, Determiner + noun, Determiner + adjective + noun). If tonal profile plays a role in HVD, HVD in four-syllable nouns in phrases where the noun is in isolation or preceded by a determiner alone should be dispreferred, since the initial syllable of the noun is assigned the optional H tone in these contexts. Our results do not confirm this: HVD is favored...

Critical thinking is widely regarded as one of the main objectives of education in general terms, and also of science education. The idea of thinking critically, that is, to evaluate adequately and eventually embrace a certain claim only if there are good reasons for it, however, seems to contradict some popular conceptions about other educational ideal: open-mindedness. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how critical thinking and open-mindedness are not exclusionary ideals, and how those ideas are important for science education.

This paper examines the role of weight in stress assignment in the Portuguese lexicon, and proposes a probabilistic approach to stress. I show that weight effects are gradient, and weaken monotonically as we move away from the right edge of the word. Such effects depend on the position of a syllable in the word, as well as on the number of segments the syllable contains. The probabilistic model proposed in this paper is based on a single predictor, namely weight, and yields more accurate results than a categorical analysis, where weight is treated as binary. Finally, I discuss implications for the grammar of Portuguese.

The existence of foot structure in (Québec) French is disputed, since the only position of obligatory prominence in the language is the right edge of the phonological phrase. In this paper, we propose that a segmental process, namely, high vowel deletion (HVD), supports the existence of iterative iambic footing in Québec French. We report on a judgement task with auditorily-presented stimuli in which native speakers judged whether words with and without HVD sounded natural. The results show that (i) HVD is preferred in even-numbered syllables from the right word edge, (ii) HVD is preferred when the resulting consonantal cluster mirrors an ill-formed branching onset, and (iii) although non-deletion is overall preferred to deletion, deletion is preferred in one context: when the target vowel is at a suffix boundary and in foot-dependent positions. 

This article shows that first language (L1) transfer may not be effectively maintained in the interlanguage due to confounding factors in the second language (L2). When two factors, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], are correlated in the L2, second language learners may only acquire [Formula: see text], even if [Formula: see text] is present in the L1. Transfer may not be effective because [Formula: see text], being more robust in the input, conceals [Formula: see text]. Native speakers, on the other hand, generalize [Formula: see text] in spite of [Formula: see text]. The variables in question are weight-sensitivity ([Formula: see text]) and positional bias ([Formula: see text]) in English, both of which can predict the location of stress in the language. I show that two seemingly target-like groups of second language learners of English (speakers of Mandarin and speakers Portuguese) fail to accurately generalize weight-sensitivity in the language, and instead display re...

In a variety of Brazilian Portuguese in contact with Veneto, variable vowel reduction in clitic position can be partially accounted for by the phonotactic profile of clitic structures. We show that, when phonotactic profile is controlled for, vowel reduction is statistically more frequent in non-pronominal than in pronominal clitics, which indicates that these clitic types are represented in separate prosodic domains. We propose that this difference in frequency of reduction between clitic types is only possible due to contact with Veneto, which, unlike standard BP, does not exhibit vowel reduction in clitic position. Contact thus provides speakers with the possibility of producing clitic vowels without reduction, and the resulting variation is used to signal prosodic distinctions between clitic types. We show that the difference in frequency of reduction is larger for older speakers, who are more proficient in Veneto and use the language regularly.

Neste artigo, apresentamos os conceitos fundamentais de uma análise estatística bayesiana e demonstramos como rodar um modelo de regressão utilizando a linguagem R a partir de códigos comentados em detalhe e de pacotes amigáveis que otimizam a implementação de modelos completos. Ao longo do artigo, comparamos estatística bayesiana e estatística frequentista, destacamos as diferentes vantagens apresentadas por uma abordagem bayesiana, que dispensa valores de p e estima distribuições a posteriori de efeitos estatisticamente plausíveis com base nos dados modelados. Por fim, demonstramos como rodar um modelo simples e visualizar efeitos de interesse em gráficos intuitivos. Ao longo do artigo, sugerimos leituras adicionais aos interessados neste tipo de análise.In this paper, we introduce the basics of Bayesian data analysis and demonstrate how to run a regression model in R using linguistic data. We provide commented code and employ user-friendly packages that optimize the implementatio...

In Brazilian Portuguese, neoclassical elements (NCEs) may combine with both independent lexical words (e.g., psico in psicolinguística ‘psycholinguistics’) and non-lexical words (e.g., psico in psicologia ‘psychology’). This has led to the proposal that they have distinct prosodic representations depending on the type of structure that they form: NCE+Indep(endent lexical word) prosodizes recursively in the PWd, whereas NCE+Dep(endent form) prosodizes as a simple PWd. However, both NCE+Indep and NCE+Dep are subject to vowel reduction processes that yield similar surface forms: the NCE in NCE+Indep is targeted by word-final raising, and the NCE in NCE+Dep is targeted by raising in pretonic position. This similarity in surface forms poses a problem for the proposal of separate prosodic representations, as different forms of prosodization imply different phonological behavior. We analyze native speakers’ judgements and productions with respect to reduction of the NCE-final vowel under t...

Research on second language (L2) acquisition has shown that learners’ interlanguage grammars can accommodate variable phonological processes (see e.g., Beebe 1980, Bayley 1996, Romaine 2003). However, the acquisition of a variable process can be challenging if the factors that condition it are subtle. In this paper, we focus on such a case, High Vowel Deletion (HVD) in Québec French. HVD is conditioned by prosodic factors that are not reliably signaled in output strings. In previous work (Garcia, Goad and Guzzo to appear), we observed that HVD in Québec French optimally applies in even-numbered syllables from the right word edge. We argued that this finding motivates iterative iambic footing in the language. In other words, native speakers judge as more natural words in which HVD applies in the dependent position within an iambic foot. This analysis is consistent with the cross-linguistic observation that deletion targets weak positions (e.g., Harris 1997). However, Québec French (l...

This thesis examines weight effects on stress and proposes a probabilistic approach based on the notion that weight is gradient, not categorical. Arguments for this proposal are divided into three main chapters, which examine and statistically model weight in the lexicon (Chapter 1), weight in the grammar (Chapter 2), and the interaction of weight and footing (Chapter 3). The statistical analyses in Chapters 2 and 3 also discuss how our linguistic expectations regarding weight effects can be incorporated in statistical models through the use of mildly informative priors, and to what extent the fit of such models compare with that of models based on non-informative priors.

Metaphony targeting upper-mid vowels /e, o/ is a characteristic of Central Veneto, a dialect of Veneto spoken in northeastern Italy. In a closely related understudied dialect spoken in southern Brazil, namely Brazilian Veneto (locally known as Talian), metaphony is also observed. Although the phenomenon is reported as variable for both dialects, little is known about how such variation is structured. In this paper, we explore the structural conditioning of metaphony in Talian through a corpus study. We show that metaphony in this dialect is asymmetrical, as /e, o/ exhibit different rates of application, which are conditioned by number of syllables in the word and morphology. We formalize this asymmetry using a MaxEnt Grammar. Finally, we introduce the Talian Corpus, a corpus of written materials in Talian that promotes the linguistic study of this variety.

Categorical approaches to lexical stress typically assume that words have either regular or irregular stress, and imply that only the latter needs to be stored in the lexicon, while the former can be derived by rule. In this paper, we compare these two groups of words in a lexical decision task in Portuguese to examine whether the dichotomy in question affects lexical retrieval latencies in native speakers, which could indirectly reveal different processing patterns. Our results show no statistically credible effect of stress regularity on reaction times, even when lexical frequency, neighborhood density, and phonotactic probability are taken into consideration. The lack of an effect is consistent with a probabilistic approach to stress, not with a categorical (traditional) approach where syllables are either light or heavy and stress is either regular or irregular. We show that the posterior distribution of credible effect sizes of regularity is almost entirely (97.05%) within a re...

This chapter introduces Bayesian data analysis and shows how such an approach can better deal with the intricacies of L n acquisition data. The data analyzed is simulated based on Rothman (2010) to demonstrate how we can use Bayesian models to estimate variables of interest in R. The chapter discusses (a) how to tackle smaller sample sizes and (b) how to incorporate theoretical principles and assumptions into our statistical analysis. As will be shown, in addition to its general advantages, Bayesian data analysis provides an effective toolset to address both (a) and (b). It also offers a much more nuanced and comprehensive approach to meet the methodological needs in the field. All files and code used are available at OSF.

In this paper we offer a prosodic account of some well-known L2 findings relating to discourse requirements on pronouns in null subject languages like Italian. Discourse plays a role in determining when a null or overt pronoun in acceptable: in biclausal sentences, null subjects are strongly preferred when the antecedent is the subject in another clause (-topic shift). Overt subjects, in contrast, imply a change of topic and a preference for non-subject antecedents. Carminati (2002) expresses this as the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH), a processing constraint whereby null pronouns prefer antecedents in Spec IP whereas overt pronouns prefer their antecedents to be elsewhere. Previous methodology used tasks where participants made judgments based on sentences they read to themselves, making it impossible to determine what prosody had been adopted. Our results suggest that there are prosodic effects on pronoun interpretation; hence, prosodic factors should be taken into consid...

In this paper, we offer a prosodic account to supplement some well-known findings relating to choice of antecedents for pronouns in Italian. We argue that methodologies previously used to assess pronoun interpretation are flawed in that they rely only on written language to assess interpretation. In biclausal sentences like (1a), null pronouns are preferred when the antecedent is the discourse topic and subject of a higher clause; otherwise, overt pronouns are preferred. Sorace and Filiaci (2006) and Belletti et al. (2007) report that second language (L2) speakers of Italian overuse overt pronouns in contexts where null pronouns would be appropriate; they attribute this overuse to problems at the syntax-discourse interface (a failure to fully appreciate the discourse requirements on overt pronouns) and/or to processing problems relating to the Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS) proposed by Carminati (2002). In addition to the behaviour of the L2ers with respect to overt pronouns,...