1,721,184 research outputs found
Ricognizioni sull’orizzonte designativo di biolinguistica: lessicografia e pubblicazioni a confronto
No full textInvestigations on the referential status of biolinguistics. A comparative overview of publications and lexicography
No full textIn the last ten years ongoing attention has been paid to the
study of language structure, acquisition and evolution from a biolinguistic perspective. As a consequence, since the late Nineties many articles and books on biolinguistics started to be published, and many conferences on the same topic have been organized. The widespread and recent interest
towards biolinguistics induce to wonder about the true and actual meaning of the term itself. In particular it is crucial to determine whether the term “biolinguistics” is currently being used to designate a new approach to the study of language which developed in the late Nineties (together with the editorial “boom” on biolinguistics), i.e. a well-established paradigm of linguistic research, or just a neighbouring discipline of linguistics. The present research provides the answer to this question. The comparison between the data drawn from recent publications and those coming from lexicography indicates that biolinguistics is an umbrella term
encompassing both generative grammar and all the disciplines concerned with the bio-neurological basis of language and with the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of language
Quando acquisire non significa “ampliare” le conoscenze, bensì “selezionarle”
No full textL’acquisizione rappresenta assieme alla struttura e all’evoluzione del
linguaggio uno dei territori più a lungo esplorati dalla ricerca
biolinguistica. È dagli anni ‘50 infatti che Chomsky si interroga sulle
modalità di acquisizione della conoscenza linguistica e, incurante
delle critiche mosse dai suoi detrattori, si esprime a favore della
possibilità di ascrivere a meccanismi e a processi indipendenti dal
feedback ambientale la creatività del linguaggio umano, la rapidità e
l’uniformità con cui i bambini raggiungono il complesso ed astratto
sistema di regole della loro lingua. In questa sede, verrà dunque
presentata la soluzione al problema logico dell’acquisizione
linguistica; saranno altresì chiarite le procedure che consentono al
bambino di conseguire la conoscenza degli aspetti sintattici della L1;
ci si soffermerà infine sulla natura del processo acquisizionale e sulle
affinità tra la proposta biolinguistica ed altre forme di apprendimento
che prevedono l’intervento di meccanismi selettivi
Age and Rhtymic Variations: A study on Italian
Get PDFAge-related variations in the speech production mechanism
affecting acoustic cues such as pitch, speech rate, formant
frequencies have been extensively investigated. Changes in
speech rhythm and in utterance composition in terms of vowel
and consonant portions are, instead, scarcely examined. Given
the relevance of the vowel percentage (%V) in the utterance
and of the interval between two vowel onset points (VtoV) for
the perception of language rhythm, this study aims to
investigate the relationship between rhythmic variations and
speaker age. It also attempts to determine whether %V can be
affected by different speech rates. Four young adult and four
old speakers of Italian read four sentences of different length,
at four different speech rates. The whole corpus was
segmented in vocalic and consonantal portions and in VtoV
intervals. The analysis results have shown that aged voice
accompanies with significant increase in %V, despite speech
rate variations. With advancing age, Italian speech tends to
shift from the isosyllabic towards the isomoraic rhythmic
pattern
"Quando parlo italiano, capiscono subito che sono straniero" Parametri soprasegmentali e tempi di reazione ai diversi gradi di accento straniero
No full textOver the years a great deal of research on the perception and production of foreign ac-cent has focused mainly on segments misarticulation by L2 speakers and on the phonological transfer from L1 to L2. Nevertheless, increasing attention has been recently paid to the contribution of prosody in the perception of foreign accent. In light of this renewed interest, the present research aimed to identify the suprasegmental features that make Chinese accented-Italian perceptively deviating from Italian native speech. In addition it focused on Italian listeners’ reaction times to foreign accent.
To the purpose, 16 Chinese learners of L2 Italian, aged between 18-22, with an inter-mediate level of linguistic competence and 2 Italian native speakers were recorded while reading a 50-word text. After that, 56 Italian listeners were asked to rate the degree of accentedness of every speaker using a four-point scale (0= no accent; 1= mild accent; 2= strong accent; 3=very strong accent). Spectro-acoustic analysis was conducted on the cor-pus of L1-L2 Italian and the following rhythmic-prosodic parameters were calculated: ar-ticulation rate speech rate, fluency, tonal range, percentage of silence, mean duration of si-lent pauses.
The comparison between the spectro-acoustic analysis and the results of the perception test showed that fluency, tonal range, percentage of silence and disfluences are relevant parameters to differentiate the degree of accentedness. The heavier the accent the lower the tonal range and the fluency and the higher the percentage of silence and disfluencies.
As for the listeners’ reaction times to foreign accent, a second perception test, based on the same corpus of the first test was administered to different native listeners who were not familiar with Chinese-accented Italian. The results showed that 5 seconds (on average) are needed to detect the speaker’s provenience. Native listeners instead take longer - more than 10 seconds - to rate the degree of foreign accentedness
The perception of foreign accented speech. Segmental and suprasegmental features affecting degree of foreign accent in L2 Italian
No full textThe factors affecting the degree of foreign accent have been a matter of debate for years. This study is intended to investigate the role of suprasegmental and segmental features that make L2 Italian speech perceptively deviating from Italian native speech. Fifty-six Italian listeners listened to the excerpts of read speech produced by 8 Chinese learners and 2 Italian native speakers and rated them for degree of accentedness. The L1 and L2 corpora were spectro-acoustically analyzed. At suprasegmental level, we calculated the following rhythmic and prosodic parameters: articulation and speech rate, fluency, tonal range, percentage of silence and mean duration of empty pauses. At segmental level, we measured the duration of stressed and unstressed vowels and syllables and the length of stressed open and closed syllable. We also considered the syllable composition and pronunciation mistakes. The comparison between the results of the perception test and the data from the spectro-acoustic analyses have shown that both some suprasegmental parameters (i.e. fluency, tonal range and composition of speech time) and some segmental ones (i.e. duration of stressed and unstressed vowels and syllables, percentage of mispronunciations mistake) are relevant features differentiating the strength of perceived foreign accent of Chinese speakers
Self-imitation in prosody training: A study on Japanese learners of Italian
No full textThe proficiency in a second language is fully attained only if
students have learnt to modulate the rhythmic and prosodic
parameters equivalent to those of the native speakers. This
study is aimed to test the pedagogical effectiveness of the selfimitation
technique for the purpose of developing a native-like
prosodic competence. Seven intermediate Japanese learners of
Italian (NNSs) and 2 native Italian speakers (NSs) were
involved in a read speech activity. NSs and NNSs were asked
to read and record two Italian sentences conveying three
different pragmatic functions (granting, order, request). NNSs
performed the task twice, before and after the self-imitation
prosodic training. The items used for the training were
obtained by transferring the suprasegmental features of the
native speakers, used as donors, to the Japanese learners,
considered as the receivers. During the training phase,
Japanese learners mimic their utterances previously modified
to match the prosody of the reference native speaker, and then
recorded the new performance. Seventeen native Italian
listeners rated pre- and post-training productions for pragmatic
function and accentedness. The results indicate that selfimitation
promoted an improvement in learners' performances
in terms of communicative effectiveness. Conversely, average
rate of accentedness does not change significantly before and
after trainin
L'acquisizione della morfologia verbale nell'italiano di sordi profondi italiani e stranieri
Get PDFThis paper investigates the acquisition of Italian verbal morphology by deaf immigrants, putting to the test a proposal by Fabbretti, Volterra, Pontecorvo (1988), which assumes that deaf people access bound morphology by rote, without segmenting words into suffixes and roots. Nonetheless, a specific inability of deaf participants to manage the indexical value of verbal suffixes biased the results of an inflectional
morphology test, proving that the greatest challenge for these participants is to manage reference by means of small segments of acoustic signifiers, such as suffixes. These findings suggest that it would be appropriate to re-evaluate the relevance of deaf people’s errors with bound morphology, considered in the literature only as as minor difficulty
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