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Speech prosody in the production of Setswana-English bilingual children aged 6-7 years
Get PDFThe study investigates the acquisition of Setswana speech rhythm and the penultimate syllable
vowel length by early sequential Setswana-English bilingual children aged 6-7 years old
growing up in Botswana, a country with a diglossic setting, where English is the dominant
high-status language in educational and public contexts. For this group of children, taught fulltime in English from the age of three years, the second language (L2) becomes their dominant
language through exposure to English-medium education. The speech rhythm and the
penultimate syllable vowel length patterns of the Setswana-English bilingual children are
compared with those of age-matched Setswana monolingual children educated in public
schools for whom English is a learner language. The aim was to ascertain if the prosodic
patterns of the bilingual children reflect those of monolingual children or if the high-status
English has an effect on these prosodic features in comparison with monolingual children.
In view of the on-going debates over perceptions and production of speech prosody, it is
valuable to consider monolingual and bilingual speech acquisition to determine the extent to
which high exposure to L2 input contributes to foreign accent and divergent speech prosody in
L1. Previous studies have reported inconsistent results regarding the rhythmic pattern of
bilingual children of 5 years of age and older. While other studies demonstrated that this group
of bilingual children keep the rhythmic pattern of their two languages separate (e.g., Bunta &
Ingram, 2007) - i.e., they maintain first/second language-specific syllabic stress or prosody
patterns during parallel or sequential acquisition of the two languages - others have shown an
interaction of the two languages (Kehoe, 2002; Mok, 2011; Whitworth, 2002). The research
presented in this thesis tests these claims. The study primarily uses spontaneous speech from twenty participants based on the telling of
the wordless picture story Frog where are you? (Mayer (1969). Praat (Boersma & Weenink,
2002) was used to generate waveforms and spectrograms where sound files were segmentally
labelled into syllables and vowels. A Praat script was also used to extract the duration of the
vowels. The nPVI-V and the Varco V rhythm metrics were utilised to examine the speech
rhythm of the children. The results showed that the bilingual group’s L1 prosodic pattern
diverged from that of the non-bilingual group. The evidence in this population, of evident
transfer effects from English bilingualism on L1 Setswana speech prosody, challenges the
assumption that speech prosody is established early in life, especially when the language is a
less marked, syllable-timed language like Setswana
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The Setswana speech rhythm of 6-7 years old Setswana-English bilingual children
No full textAims and objectives: This study investigates the acquisition of Setswana speech rhythm, considered to be typically syllable-timed, by early sequential Setswana-English bilingual children aged 6-7 years old growing up in Botswana, a country with a diglossic setting, where English is the dominant high-status language in educational and public contexts. For this group of children, taught full-time in English from the age of three years, the L2 becomes their dominant language through exposure to English-medium education. The aim was to ascertain if the prosodic patterns of Setswana spoken by the bilingual children are similar to those of the monolingual children or if English, considered to be stress-timed, has an effect on these prosodic features.
Data and analysis: The speech rhythm patterns of 10 Setswana-English bilingual children are compared with those of 10 age-matched Setswana monolingual children educated in public schools for whom English is a learner language. The study primarily examines spontaneous speech from the telling of a wordless picture storybook, and utilises rhythm metrics nPVI-V and Varco V to examine the speech rhythm of the children.
Findings: The results showed that the prosodic pattern of Setswana in the bilingual group diverged from that of the non-bilingual group.
Originality: This is the first such study on speech rhythm in bilingual children in Setswana.
Significance: The research provides evidence in this population of effects from English bilingualism on L1 Setswana speech prosody, and challenges the assumption that speech rhythm prosody is established early in life, especially when the language is a less marked, syllable-timed language like Setswana
Speaking Double: A Socio, Phonological and Semantic Analysis of Naming Twins in Botswana
Get PDFThe concept of naming twin children brings interesting dynamics in the Botswana culture, more so becausetwins were generally eliminated in pre-independence Botswana because of spiritual or cultural beliefsassociated with them being ominous. Thus, how twin children are named in terms of the socio-economicsituation at the time effectively creates a treasure trove of information for researchers. This paper dealswith twin names of different genders in the Botswana context. Its focus is threefold. Firstly, it gives an anthropologicalbackground on twin births and their naming in the colonial era. Secondly, it establishes thatthe naming of twins is essentially a new occurrence in the Botswana society. Lastly, the paper also looks attwin names from a phonological perspective and establishes that there is a correlation between Setswanatwin names of opposite genders and phonology. The paper is multi-faceted so it draws from approaches ofsocio-onomastics and the sociology of names which are loosely guided by social anthropological theories.The paper has revealed; i) distinct phonological qualities of female and male twin names; ii) several morphologicalprocesses employed in the creation of the names and; iii) the existence of gender stereotypingin the names
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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The penultimate syllable vowel length among Setswana-English bilingual children
Get PDFThis study examines the relative duration of the penultimate syllable vowel (PSVL) in multisyllabic Setswana words in the speech of 20 Batswana (citizens) primary school children aged 6-7 years growing up in Botswana. Setswana phonology requires the lengthening of the vowel in the penultimate syllable of multisyllabic words. The participants are 10 privately educated English medium early sequential Setswana-English bilingual children, taught full-time in English (L2) from the age of 3 years, for whom English has become dominant, and 10 Setswana monolingual children. The aim is to see whether the L2, which does not have the PSVL as a phonological pattern, has had an effect on the L1 of the bilinguals. The results show that the bilinguals do not lengthen the penultimate syllable vowel; rather, they lengthen the vowel of the final syllable. The results support the notion that extensive exposure to L2 can cause changes to the patterns of L1
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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