Explore the vast range of titles available.

This textbook is designed to fill two basic needs. One is for a clear and straightforward presentation of the rudiments of articulatory phonetics which is geared specifically to the requirements of the (future) language teacher, and not exclusively to the student of linguistics, and in which the basic concepts and terminology are introduced via English as opposed to a variety of languages. An even greater need, perhaps, and one that has gone unfulfilled for too long, is for a simple but reasonably complete overview of the phonetic inventory of North American French.

We investigated early electrophysiological responses to spoken English words embedded in neutral sentence frames, using a lexical decision paradigm. As words unfold in time, similar-sounding lexical items compete for recognition within 200 milliseconds after word onset. A small number of studies have previously investigated event-related potentials in this time window in English and French, with results differing in direction of effects as well as component scalp distribution. Investigations of spoken-word recognition in Swedish have reported an early left-frontally distributed event-related potential that increases in amplitude as a function of the probability of a successful lexical match as the word unfolds. Results from the present study indicate that the same process may occur in English: we propose that increased certainty of a ‘word’ response in a lexical decision task is reflected in the amplitude of an early left-anterior brain potential beginning around 150 milliseconds after word onset. This in turn is proposed to be connected to the probabilistically driven activation of possible upcoming word forms.

Purpose: This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English (n = 43) and Spanish-English (n = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to language development and that these relations would be stronger at the youngest age. Method: Bilingual children participated in free-play sessions in both of their languages at each age, from which vocabulary and grammatical information (number of different words and mean length of utterance) was extracted. Vocabulary information was also obtained from parent inventories completed when the children were 30 months and a standardized receptive vocabulary test administered at 36 and 48 months. The children were also administered nonword repetition tests in both of their languages at each age. Results: Mixed logistic regression indicated that phonological memory was associated with vocabulary and grammar within the same language and phonological memory in the other language. In two of the four statistical models, phonological memory exhibited positive between-language relations, and in one model, it exhibited negative between-language relations to language development. Results also indicated that within-language and between-languages effects remained constant, or between-language associations decreased during the age range studied. Conclusion: Overall, the findings provide some support for cross-language associations between phonological memory and lexical and grammatical skills.

This scholarly edition invites us to reconsider our assumptions about the French language, by showcasing the oeuvre of one of the pioneers of diachronic Spoken French corpus linguistics, William J. Ashby, and the ground-breaking findings to come out of his influential Tours corpora (1976 & 1995).

Input variability is key in many aspects of linguistic learning, yet variability increases input complexity, which may cause difficulty in some learning contexts. The current work investigates this trade-off by comparing speaker variability effects on L2 vocabulary learning in different age groups. Existing literature suggests that speaker variability benefits L2 vocabulary learning in adults, but this may not be the case for younger learners. In this study native English-speaking adults, 7- to 8-year-olds, and 10- to 11-year-olds learned six novel Lithuanian words from a single speaker, and six from eight speakers. In line with previous research, adults showed better production of the multispeaker items at test. No such benefit was found for either group of children, either in production or comprehension. Children also had greater difficulties in processing multiple-speaker cues during training. We conclude that age-related capacity limitations may constrain the ability to utilize speaker variability when learning words in a new language.

In this study, we respond to calls for more research on the motivation to learn a third language (L3), especially regarding how this motivation is influenced by linguistic distance in various second language (L2) contexts. We employed a comparative and mixed-method design to investigate whether L3 learners with a “longer L2–L3 linguistic distance” show significantly different L3 motivational constructs compared with L3 learners with a “shorter L2–L3 linguistic distance”. We recruited sixty university students majoring in English who were enrolled under same program curriculum in China, with half of them selecting French as their L3 and with the other half selecting Japanese. The French L3 group was labeled “shorter L2–L3 linguistic distance”, and the Japanese L3 group was labeled “longer L2–L3 linguistic distance”. We recruited learners from the same Chinese university to complete a Taguchi-based questionnaire on the L3 motivational system. The quantitative results revealed that the ideal L3 self, the ought-to L3 self, family influence and instrumentality promotion were significantly different between these two L3 groups. Qualitative results based on follow-up interviews with four participants showed that shorter L2–L3 linguistic distance contributed to higher instrumentality promotion, and family influence tended to be driven by practical concerns. These findings demonstrate how cross-linguistic factors may impact multilingual learners’ motivation and insights, which may be also of assistance to L3 acquisition and pedagogy.

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the elision of /l/ in third-person subject clitic pronouns (il vient [il vjɛ̃] ∼ [i vjɛ̃] “he is coming”). Speech data are compared and correlated with the results of a social network strength scale designed for the study abroad learning context. Results demonstrate that phonological variation patterns are acquired in a predictable order based on token type and collocation and that social networks with native speakers are statistically significant predictors of phonological variation patterns.

The present study investigated the role of syntactic awareness in reading comprehension among English–French bilinguals learning French as an additional language in Canadian French immersion programs. We examined the direct effect of French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension as well as the indirect effects mediated through French word reading and French vocabulary. We further examined the extent to which English syntactic awareness contributed to French reading comprehension through cross-language transfer, again considering both the direct effect and the indirect effects through French word reading and French vocabulary. Mediation analyses indicated that, within French, the relationship between French syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension was fully mediated by both French word reading and French vocabulary. In contrast, English syntactic awareness contributed directly to French reading comprehension. Finally, French word reading partially mediated the relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension. Our study suggests that children who learn French as an additional language rely on word reading and vocabulary, in addition to French syntactic awareness, to comprehend French texts. Given that English is French immersion children’s stronger language, they use English syntactic awareness to support French reading comprehension both directly and indirectly through French word reading.

Researchers on bilingual processing can benefit from computational tools developed in artificial intelligence. We show that a normalized Levenshtein distance function can efficiently and reliably simulate bilingual orthographic similarity ratings. Orthographic similarity distributions of cognates and non-cognates were identified across pairs of six European languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. Semantic equivalence was determined using the conceptual structure of a translation database. By using a similarity threshold, large numbers of cognates could be selected that nearly completely included the stimulus materials of experimental studies. The identified numbers of form-similar and identical cognates correlated highly with branch lengths of phylogenetic language family trees, supporting the usefulness of the new measure for cross-language comparison. The normalized Levenshtein distance function can be considered as a new formal model of cross-language orthographic similarity.

Inspired by information theoretic analyses of L1 speech and language, this study proposes that L1 and L2 speech exhibit distinct information encoding and transmission profiles in the temporal domain. Both the number and average duration of acoustic syllables (i.e., intensity peaks in the temporal envelope) were automatically measured from L1 and L2 recordings of standard texts in English, French, and Spanish. Across languages, L2 acoustic syllables were greater in number (more acoustic syllables/text) and longer in duration (fewer acoustic syllables/second). While substantial syllable reduction (fewer acoustic than orthographic syllables) was evident in both L1 and L2 speech, L2 speech generally exhibited less syllable reduction, resulting in low information density (more syllables with less information/syllable). Low L2 information density compounded low L2 speech rate yielding very low L2 information transmission rate (i.e., less information/second). Overall, this cross-language comparison establishes low information transmission rate as a language-general, distinguishing feature of L2 speech.