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Opmerkelijke voornamen in de Gemeentelijke Basis Adminsitratie (1). Grenzen aan de vorm?
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Perceptual development of the Finnish /t-t:/ distinction in Dutch 12-year-old children: a training study
No full textThis paper addresses the issue of how perceptual sensitivity develops in child L2 learners along an acoustic dimension that contrasts two non-native speech sounds, and of how their language learning compares to that of adult learners, as investigated in [Heeren and Schouten (2008), Perceptual development of phoneme contrasts: How sensitivity changes along acoustic dimensions that contrast phoneme categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124, 2291-2302]. A pretest-training-posttest design was used to tap into the learning process, and development was predicted to occur mainly through increased sensitivity in the newly trained category boundary region, i.e. acquired distinctiveness, rather than through a decrease in sensitivity within the new categories, i.e. acquired similarity. This prediction was borne out by both adult and 12-year-old learners of the Finnish quantity contrast, but changes remained small. Even though the manner and speed of learning were comparable between age groups, adults showed higher discrimination scores than children did
The acquisition of subset and superset phonotactic knowledge in a second language
No full textCan second language (L2) learners acquire a grammar that allows a subset of the structures allowed by their native grammar? This question is addressed here with respect to acquisition of phonotactics. On the assumption that the L2 initial state equals the native grammar's final state, learnability theory would predict that a lack of negative evidence for phonotactic structures that are illegal in the target language precludes acquisition of the target grammar. This prediction is tested for L1-Russian (superset) and L1-Spanish (subset) L2 learners of Dutch by means of word-likeness judgments and lexical decision experiments. Participants responded to nonwords containing consonant clusters in onsets and codas that are legal (1) only in Russian, (2) only in Russian and Dutch, or (3) in all three languages. The results converge to show that advanced L1-Russian and L1-Spanish L2 learners possess native-like phonotactic knowledge. Analysis shows that this knowledge cannot be attributed to transfer of lexical statistics from the native language. The results suggest that L2 phonotactic acquisition is not affected by subset/superset relations between the native language and target language. Some possible explanations for our findings are discussed
Do children go for the nice guys? The influence of speaker benevolence and certainty on selective word learning
Full text linkThis study investigated how speaker certainty (a rational cue) and speaker benevolence (an emotional cue) influence children's willingness to learn words in a selective learning paradigm. In two experiments four- to six-year-olds learnt novel labels from two speakers and, after a week, their memory for these labels was reassessed. Results demonstrated that children retained the label–object pairings for at least a week. Furthermore, children preferred to learn from certain over uncertain speakers, but they had no significant preference for nice over nasty speakers. When the cues were combined, children followed certain speakers, even if they were nasty. However, children did prefer to learn from nice and certain speakers over nasty and certain speakers. These results suggest that rational cues regarding a speaker's linguistic competence trump emotional cues regarding a speaker's affective status in word learning. However, emotional cues were found to have a subtle influence on this process
Linguistic knowledge, fluency and metacognitive knowledge as components of reading comprehension in adolescent low achievers: differences between monolinguals and bilinguals
No full textIn this study we investigate the role of linguistic knowledge, fluency and meta-cognitive knowledge in Dutch reading comprehension of monolingual and bilingual adolescent academic low achievers in the Netherlands. Results show that these components are substantially associated with reading comprehension. However, their role appears to be different for the monolingual and bilingual low achievers. There are interactions between knowledge and fluency components with membership of the monolingual or bilingual group of low achievers, indicating that knowledge is more important in explaining reading comprehension of bilinguals, whereas fluency is more important in explaining the monolinguals’ reading comprehension. Explanations of this difference between monolingual and bilingual low achievers are discussed
The acquisition of adjunct control is colored by the task
Full text linkPrevious studies on children’s interpretations of PRO in adjunct clauses have found that 4- to 6-year old children exhibit non-adultlike interpretations of adjunct PRO. For sentences with adjunct control, as in John bumped Mary after PRO tripping on the sidewalk, these studies have argued that children’s knowledge is not adultlike. In this paper, we use a new task to reduce the demands involved in making a response. With this task, we find improved performance for sentences with adjunct control. These results suggest that children’s knowledge of adjunct control is adultlike, but has been obscured by the tasks used in previous studies
A New Method for Testing Language Comprehension Reveals Better Performance on Passive and Principle B Constructions
No full textItem does not contain fulltextBoston University Conference on Language Developmen
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