Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Interactional Competence In Japanese As An Additional Language: An Overview, Tim Greer, Midori Ishida, Yumiko Tateyama

Faculty Publications

Speaking a language involves more than just knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation: It also requires the abilities to interpret what your interlocutor is saying, to formulate a relevant response, and to deliver it in a timely manner. In addition, it entails skills such as dealing with trouble in talk when it arises and being able to identify an appropriate moment to start speaking. In short, it requires interactional competence (IC). As this applies to speaking a language other than one's first, this volume of Pragmatics & Interaction examines specific interactional competences {ICs) that speakers of Japanese as an additional …

Developing Recipient Competence During Study Abroad, Midori Ishida

Faculty Publications

Partly as a response to Kinginger's (2009) call for studies that examine the interaction in which L2 speakers participate during study abroad and its relationship with long-term development, this chapter explores what features of social interaction might afford L2 speakers opportunities to "form new practices" (Pallotti & Wagner, 2011, p. 1), especially when using receipts.

Measuring Social Interaction During Study Abroad: Quantitative Methods And Challenges, Dan Dewey, Dan Dewey

Faculty Publications

language use during study abroad. It reviews the development of instruments for such measurement and describes some of the connections that have been made between quantitative measures of social second language use and language development while abroad. Measures addressed include the Language Contact Profile, language logs, the Social Network Questionnaire, the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire, online social media, photo elicitation, mobile phone surveys, and other computational methodologies. The paper encourages mixed methods for clearer and more elaborate understanding and more detailed documentation of tools and procedures for better understanding of cross- study similarities and differences.

Estas Rimas Son Para Ti: Exploring Learners Comprehension Of Spanish Language Music Containing Dialectical Features, Avizia Y. Long, Megan Harsh

Faculty Publications

This paper reports the findings of a study that examined native English‐speaking learners’ comprehension of Spanish language music containing Caribbean dialectal features. Twenty‐one learners enrolled in 300‐ and 400‐level Spanish content courses at a large, Midwestern public university in the US participated in this study. Each participant completed the following five tasks: (1) listening task, (2) listening task difficulty questionnaire, (3) vocabulary familiarity task, (4) Spanish language proficiency test, and (5) background questionnaire. The listening task contained short clips of Spanish language music, several of which contained dialectal features present in Caribbean speech and music. The results revealed that comprehension …

Comparing Malleability Of Phonetic Category Between [I] And [U], Reiko Kataoka, Hahn Koo

Faculty Publications

This study reports differential category retuning effect between [i] and [u]. Two groups of American listeners were exposed to ambiguous vowels ([i/u]) within words that index a phoneme /i/ (e.g., athl[i/u]t) (i-group) or /u/ (e.g., aftern[i/u]n) (u-group). Before and after the exposure these listeners categorized sounds from a [bip]-[bup] continuum. The i-group significantly increased /bip/ responses after exposure, but the u-group did not change their responses significantly. These results suggest that the way mental representation handles phonetic variation may influence malleability of each category, highlighting the complex relationship among distribution of sounds, their mental representation, and speech perception.

Tblt And L2 Pronunciation: Do The Benefits Of Tasks Extend Beyond Grammar And Lexis?, Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Long, Megan Solon

Faculty Publications

Introduction to the Special Issue.

Rethinking Mono-Sensory, Implicational Approaches To Ideophones In Pastaza Quichua, Janis B. Nuckolls, Sydney Jensen, Emily Peterson, Matthew Millar

Faculty Publications

This paper will evaluate a claim about a possible areal bias for the semantic typolgies of ideohone systems. According to this claim, ideophone systems of the Americas are mainly dedicatied to encoding sound and motion, while for Africa and Asia, they cover a broader range of sensory imagery , including visual patterns, textures, and cognitive states. Additionally, and implicational hieracry for ideophone systems' se,amtics has been posted. We demonstrate with data from Pasta Quichua, that ideophones' semantics span the full range of senory and cognitive possibilities. Further, the mono-sensory schematization of ideophones' semantics make the implicational hierarchy problematic as presently …

The Role Of Contextual Frequency In The Articulation Of Initial /F/ In Modern Spanish: The Same Effect As In The Reduction Of Latin /F/?, Earl K. Brown, Matthew C. Alba

Faculty Publications

The acoustic energy of 996 tokens of word-initial /f/ in the speech of 38 speakers of Mexican Spanish was analyzed. The results suggest that the frequency with which words occur in phonological contexts favorable to reduction (Frequency in a Reducing Context or FRC) conditions the reduction of /f/, even after taking into account the immediate phonological context. Despite this, it is also found that the conditioning effect of FRC is less robust than the influence of the immediate phonological context, thus confirming the preeminence in these data of the online articulatory factors in comparison to the usage-based frequency factors.

In Search Of Cowboy B: Bilabial Implosives In American English, David Eddington, Michael Turner

Faculty Publications

This article presents acoustic evidence for the existence of a bilabial implosive, [∫], in one variety of U.S. English. One articulatory observation is that vocal chord vibration of the English bilabial stop, /b/, can only be maintained for a maximum of about 82 ms. Increasing the vibration beyond this threshold is only possible by increasing the size of the vocal cavity, which in turn is often enabled by lowering the glottis, a gesture characteristic of implosive stops. The authors compare the voiced bilabial stops of five white males from the Western United States, three of whom impressionistically appear to have …

Nominalized Adverbs In Spanish: The Intriguing Case Of Detrás Mío And Its Cohorts, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Instances of adverbs modified by adjectives (e.g. detrás mío, delante tuyo) were extracted from the Corpus del Español. The corpus analysis reveals that these constructions are attested in all 21 Spanish-speaking countries to varying degrees, but are most frequent in Argentina and Uruguay. Adjectives following the adverbs in questions are predominantly masculine; however, in Peninsular varieties feminine forms are quite common. Although alrededor and lado are both adverbs as well as masculine nouns, they are occasionally followed by feminine adjectives (e.g. al lado suya), which is arguably due to the use of the feminine in other constructions such as encima …

Lexicography In-Your-Face: The Active Semantics Of Pastaza Quichua Ideophones, Janis B. Nuckolls, Tod D. Swanson, Diana Shelton, Alexander Rice, Sarah Hatton

Faculty Publications

English:

We argue that a multimodal approach to defining a depictive class of words called ‘ideophones’ by linguists is essential for grasping their meanings. Our argument for this approach is based on the formal properties of Pastaza Quichua ideophones, which set them apart from the non-ideophonic lexicon, and on the cultural assumptions brought by speakers to their use. We analyze deficiencies in past attempts to define this language’s ideophones, which have used only audio data. We offer, instead, an audiovisual corpus which we call an ‘antidictionary’, because it defines words not with other words, but with clips featuring actual contexts …

Joselito And Calentito: Diminutive Enigmas, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Two exceptional diminutives exist that have received little attention in the relevant literature. Joselito is unusual because it takes the suffix -lito, which may come from the /l/ in José Luís since the two are the most frequent collocates. The early appearance of Joselito, along with the fact that most of the other words that take -lito were later borrowings into Spanish, suggests that Joselito was the first diminutive of its kind. It then served as an analog for the diminutives of subsequent borrowings that ended in stressed vowels (e.g. cafelito, bebelito). The diminutive variant -tito (e.g. cafetito, sofatito) is …