Native Speaker

Cerebral organization during sentence processing in English and in American Sign Language (ASL) was characterized by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4 T. Effects of deafness, age of language acquisition, and bilingualism were assessed by comparing results from (i) normally hearing, monolingual, native speakers of English, (ii) congenitally, genetically deaf, native signers of ASL who learned English late and through the visual modality, and (iii) normally hearing bilinguals who were native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All groups, hearing and deaf, processing their native language, English or ASL, displayed strong and repeated activation within classical language areas of the left hemisphere. Deaf subjects reading English did not display activation in these regions. These results suggest that the early acquisition of a natural language is important in the expression of the strong bias for these areas to mediate language, independently of the form of the language. In addition, native signers, hearing and deaf, displayed extensive activation of homologous areas within the right hemisphere, indicating that the specific processing requirements of the language also in part determine the organization of the language systems of the brain.

This paper studies the role of the pitch cue for perceiving the Estonian quantities. In addition to the importance of the tonal component we investigate the differences in native vs. learned discrimination of the quantities. Perception tests were carried out with manipulated natural speech stimuli on a group of Estonian native speakers and a group of non-native Estonian speakers. The

This study reports findings of a survey about keigo, Japanese honorifics, and L2‐Japanese speakers; survey respondents were teachers of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). Researchers have studied keigo ideologies within Japanese society and documented approaches to keigo instruction and learners' efforts to master or resist keigo. However, researchers have not studied teachers' beliefs about keigo and neither the impact of keigo ideologies on classroom practice nor teachers' views of students as legitimate Japanese speakers have been studied. The survey examines JFL teachers' beliefs about keigo, approaches to teaching keigo, and beliefs about keigo's relevance for L2 speakers. Conducted within a qualitative framework, analysis of thematic coding and descriptive statistics demonstrate that respondents report different standards for L2 speakers that convey implicit native‐speaker bias. Findings underscore the importance of foreign language teachers reflecting on language ideologies that affect classroom practices and advocating for L2 speaker legitimacy.

The Shiraz project included an evaluation component: two 'glass-box' evaluations have been performed during the project as well as a black-box evaluation at the end of the project. The evaluations were based on the use of a bilingual tagged test corpus of 3000 sentences. Evaluation tools were developed in order to automate the evaluation process. The glass-box evaluations included the

ABSTRACT This article offers an alternative to the two approaches to teaching Spanish to adolescent and college level bilingual native speakers interested in developing their Spanish abilities. The argument is made that both the “limited normative” and the “comprehensive” approaches to Spanish for native speakers (SNS) strongly reflect synthetic and banking education curricular perspectives. Consequently, students are denied a voice in a curriculum that ignores social, historical and individual matters of concern. An alternative approach to SNS is identified and discussed. This approach draws heavily from Paulo Freire's problem-posing procedure for critical dialogue, and Lev Vygotsky's theory of social learning. The Freirian perspective gives primacy to critical reflection and action, with language development as a by-product of authentic purposeful social interaction among students and between the teacher and the students about topics that matter to students. The Vygotskian perspective shows why social interaction leads to individual learning and language development. Together, the two perspectives offer a viable alternative to extant approaches to teaching Spanish to native bilingual speakers.

The majority of the indigenous languages in our country are no longer be-ing learned at home, and the last generation of native speakers are growing older and older., At the same time, there are increasingly strong efforts by communi-ties to keep their languages alive by developing teaching programs of various sorts in the schools and in the community. The problem is, who will teach the language? Some communities are lucky enough to still have young and middle aged adult speakers who also have or can get training in language teaching prac-tices. But as the speakers age, increasingly, the energy and the burden for lan-guage revitalization is among the younger adult generations who are not fluent in their language. It is sad, but it is true, and we can do no less than honor and support those with the drive and the bravery to take on this task. This paper is an attempt to support these efforts by discussing the problem that such heroes must face: how to teach a language when the teache...

The majority of the indigenous languages in our country are no longer be-ing learned at home, and the last generation of native speakers are growing older and older., At the same time, there are increasingly strong efforts by communi-ties to keep their languages alive by developing teaching programs of various sorts in the schools and in the community. The problem is, who will teach the language? Some communities are lucky enough to still have young and middle aged adult speakers who also have or can get training in language teaching prac-tices. But as the speakers age, increasingly, the energy and the burden for lan-guage revitalization is among the younger adult generations who are not fluent in their language. It is sad, but it is true, and we can do no less than honor and support those with the drive and the bravery to take on this task. This paper is an attempt to support these efforts by discussing the problem that such heroes must face: how to teach a language when the teache...

The goal of this work is to examine how second-language learners acquire grammatical knowledge. To measure this knowledge, our research examines how native speakers of English choose between constructions that have similar meanings, but occur in different discourse contexts. An example is the dative alternation (give someone the book vs. give the book to someone). The distribution of these two constructions is explained by a four-factor model that describes the patterns or rules that underlie native-speaker usage. We hypothesized that training examples could be selected to instantiate these four factors in a way that would lead to improved learning of the dative alternation. In addition, we predicted that explicit instruction of the four grammar principles would further enhance learning. Two studies were conducted. Results showed rapid learning and good retention across a week-long delay. Examples that were labeled as “easy” or prototypical by the grammar model were learned faster t...

This paper examines intrinsic vowel pitch (IF0) in Moroccan Standard Arabic and Belgian Standard Dutch in order to investigate the hypothesis that IF0 may depend on the size of the vowel inventory. The results of a production task with 11 Moroccan native speakers of Standard Arabic and 10 Belgian native speakers of Dutch reveal that IF0 in Arabic is significantly smaller (1.28 ST) than in Dutch (2.78 ST). These results are suggestive of a possible influence on IF0 of the size of the vowel inventory in a language. The effect of speaker sex on IF0 was not significant, while the front-back distinction in the articulation of vowels was significant in Belgian Dutch.

This study explores whether a shift is taking place in terms of how the native speaker construct is viewed in relation to Asian Englishes. It investigates this issue through a speech ratings task. The goal of the current research is not to judge nativeness or ultimate attainment of the participants. Rather, the study investigates whether the construct of native speaker is being redefined as new varieties of English are gaining acceptance as legitimate varieties of English. The study comprises ratings of speech samples from 33 native speakers of English from Asia and 7 native speakers of English from Inner Circle countries. A total of 45 listeners rated each sample for nativeness on a 9-point Likert scale. The study also examined how listeners' perceptions of where the speaker was from and which the variety they felt the speaker spoke influenced ratings, as well as how the listeners' own backgrounds influenced ratings.

This paper investigates the politeness strategies and mitigation devices used by native and non-native speakers (advanced learners) of Greek when refusing an invitation from an intimate and their consequences for the expression of politeness. Furthermore, it examines whether length of residence or intensity of interaction with native speakers affect non-native speakers’ performance. The data are drawn from role plays performed by native speakers and non-native speakers of two different groups: one with extended length of residence but limited opportunities for social interaction with native speakers and one with less extended length of residence but considerably more frequent opportunities for social interaction. On the basis of these data, it is argued that with regard to the speech act of declining an invitation from a friend, length of residence can be an insufficient measure whereas intensity of interaction can guarantee better results as regards pragmatic appropriateness and politeness. The significant deviations observed between native speakers and non-native speakers with limited opportunities for intimate interaction are attributed to the fact that the latter being economic migrants, who suffer from social seclusion, cannot rely on length of residence alone, in order to acquire sociocultural norms and develop pragmatic ability in the use of speech acts like the one investigated here. This fact combined with the finding that both groups of non-native speakers displayed an underdeveloped pragmatic ability in relation to mitigation devices, such as lexical/phrasal downgraders highlights the need for pedagogical intervention which aims at providing learners with metapragmatic information and meaningful opportunities for interaction that may promote their pragmatic development.

This study investigates the contribution of the temporal patterning of speech to the reduced intelligibility of foreign-accented utterances. Short English phrases spoken by a native Chinese speaker were instrumentally modified, using LPC resynthesis and dynamic time warping, so as to align the duration of acoustic segments with tokens of the same phrases spoken by a native English speaker, while retaining the spectral and source characteristics of the Chinese speaker. Similarly, the native speaker’s productions were distorted to match the durational patterns of the non-native speaker. Intelligibility of these stimuli was measured, based on native English listeners’ performance in a forced-choice identification test with four alternatives: the correct phrase plus three phonetically similar distractor phrases suggested by listening to the Chinese productions. Intelligibility of the unmodified Chinese-accented phrases was poor (39% correct), but improved significantly (to 58%) after temporal correction. Performance on the native productions was high (94%), but declined significantly (to 83%) after temporal distortion according to the Chinese speaker’s timing. These results suggest that intelligibility of foreign-language speakers may be enhanced if explicit training is provided on temporal properties of their speech.

In this study, I researched on the concept of the native speaker and its application to Singaporeans. In doing so, I am also examining language ideologies as what people think about languages ultimately leads to their personal definition of the term native speaker. I first did a literature review on the concept of the native speaker, language ideology and identity, English in Singapore, the Singaporean identity towards English and the idea of Singaporeans as native speakers. I followed up with research by interviews to analyse both Singaporeans’ and non-Singaporeans’ views on the same topics. Among the non-Singaporeans are people from Inner Circle countries as well as Expanding Circle countries, since people from Inner Circle countries are widely accepted to be the so-called native speakers and those from Expanding Circle countries are widely recognised as non-native speakers. I conclude with findings that suggest that non-Singaporeans who would not agree that Singaporeans can be considered native speakers usually do so because of a lack of understanding of the language situation in Singapore, and that Singaporeans who see it as a part of their identity as being English native speakers first have to convince themselves that they are so before confidently informing others that.

Celtic Sociolinguistics Symposium 2018, NUI Galway

Proponents of the 'new speaker' concept have heralded a shift away from language learning ideologies that focus on emulation of native-speaker models, which they describe as 'essentialism' (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013; O'Rourke and Walsh 2015), or 'native authenticism' (Hornsby and Quentel 2013). These ideologies are presented as potentially harmful and counter-productive both to native speakers (by romanticizing and museifying them) and to second-language learners and speakers (by stigmatizing hybridized new speaker varieties and focusing on language deficits rather than skills).

It is claimed by new speaker scholars that more 'social constructionist' ideologies are gaining ground among some L2 speaker communities, and that these offer a path away from more essentialist models. However, as these scholars also acknowledge, 'essentialist' deference to native-speaker models remains a prominent strand in the ideologies of new speakers. Focusing on the Celtic languages, this paper will argue that the case against 'essentialist' ideologies may be reductive and overstated, and that new speaker scholars have not adequately considered how a shift away from native-speaker models might play out in practice, e.g. in corpus planning and pedagogy.

'Essentialist' or 'native authenticist' ideologies may potentially have benefits in language learning, identity construction, and in some cases are clearly closely linked to deeply-held motivations for acquiring the second language. 'Native authenticists' are often among the most committed language activists and may play an out-sized role in development of resources and networks. Scholars should pay more attention to ways in which ideological clarification might take place, bringing actors with differing language ideologies and backgrounds together constructively.

Sociolinguistic studies show that adult speakers' behaviour does not necessary reflect their evaluation of linguistic variants. The present study investigated the influence of children's social backgrounds on both production and evaluation of two types of liaisons: the variable or optional liaison, which is a sociolinguistic variable, and the obligatory liaison, which does not vary with social characteristics in adults. This

Expressions of gratitude in corpus and DCT data:
Vocabulary, formulaic sequences, and pedagogy

Gila A. Schauer a,*, Svenja Adolphs b,1

a Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YT, United Kingdom
b School of English Studies, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom

Abstract

Our study explores the similarities and differences between a discourse completion task (DCT)
and corpus data and discusses potential implications for using the two in a pedagogic context.
The DCT has traditionally been used an instrument for the study of interlanguage pragmatics while
both spoken and written corpora have mainly been used to facilitate language description. Corpora
also have a place in the language-teaching context as they can provide the learner with patterns of
language use in social interactions some of which are not open to intuition. By contrasting native
speakers’ expressions of gratitude elicited by a DCT with those found in a five million word corpus
of spoken English, we examine the advantages and disadvantages of both data sets with regard to the
language-teaching context. The results suggest that a combined use of both instruments might aid
the teaching of formulaic sequences in the classroom.

Keywords: Language patterns; Corpus linguistics; Data collection; Second language instruction; Language teaching
methods; Lexicon

This study examines the interaction of mixed groups (two native speakers of English with two non-native speakers) both in traditional face-to-face conversation and in an online chat format to note any differences between the two groups. Because of the accumulating research pointing to computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a forum that provides hesitant learners with greater opportunities, it was expected that online interaction would prove to be more equitable than face-to-face conversation. Words and turns were recorded for each four-member group and then counted to measure equity. Besides differences in word and turn distribution, the transcripts revealed a number of interesting qualitative differences between the two groups. From the observations made in this study, we note that language learners not only contribute more often online, but we infer that they also feel more comfortable contributing and are less concerned about any language deficiencies that might cause them to refrain from speaking in a face-to-face setting. These findings are important to language/ESL teachers who plan language learning activities that mix NSs and NNSs together.