1,720,974 research outputs found
First language attrition in late bilingualism: lexical, syntactic and prosodic changes in English-Italian bilinguals
Get PDFAmong the most notable findings in recent bilingualism research is that the
two languages are constantly active, thus giving rise to complex interactions,
in the bilingual mind. One of the natural consequences of these interactions
is the non-pathological attrition of the firstly acquired language, which is here
understood as the manifestation of selective and reversible changes in the
way the first language is processed and produced by speakers of a second
language. In the last forty years, these changes have been investigated mainly
in long-term residents immersed in a second language environment (usually
anglophone countries) rather narrowly, by focusing only on a single domain
in the first language. What happens to other types of late (i.e., post-puberty)
bilingual speakers in different language domains at the same time, alongside
what happens to their second language, is mostly underexamined.
Hence, this thesis aims to fill the aforementioned research gaps by
investigating the attrition of a firstly acquired language (English) in three
different language domains (the lexicon, syntactic interfaces and prosody) of
two types of late bilingual speakers (British classroom-based learners of Italian
at UK universities as well as British long-term residents in Italy), by also
considering what happens in their second language (Italian) within the same
domains. The results of this research show, firstly, that similar types of lexical
retrieval interference are experienced by both classroom learners and long-term residents, with only a slightly higher degree of interference being
experienced by long-term residents. Secondly, syntactic interface structures
are selectively affected by first language attrition only for long-term residents,
even though both bilingual groups resolve syntactic ambiguities in the second
language similar to a control group of first language speakers of Italian
(despite some processing delays). Thirdly, while prosodic changes in the first
language are not reported for either bilingual group – at least in initial
confirmatory analyses – both groups do seem to have acquired the prosodic
patterns of their second language, with long-term residents being virtually
indistinguishable from Italian controls.
Taken together, the findings of this thesis lend support to the idea that
non-pathological attrition of a first language is a natural by-product of
bilingualism, as it is found to affect the processing and production of different
first language domains for both late bilingual groups examined. Crucially,
these research findings reveal that the extent to which attrition is experienced
varies according to the language domain and the specific structure under
investigation. Interestingly, an inverse relationship between the second
language and the first language is found for some bilingual speakers in certain
areas, but not conclusively in others (e.g., for long-term residents in some
aspects of the lexicon and syntax, but whether this is also the case for their
prosody is not yet clear). This work thus points to the need for further research
into first language attrition and second language acquisition, to fully
understand the complex relationship between the two languages in the
bilingual mind
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
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
What's the point of writing essays?
No full textSecond year Linguistics PhD student Mattia gets to grips with the purpose of academic writin
Bridging scholarship and practice in higher education: fostering innovative research and enhancing teaching: by Sam Illingworth, London, Routledge, 2025, 180 pp., £29.99 (Paperback), ISBN 978-1-032-81477-3
No full textOn nativeness and near-nativeness: An analysis of the implications of convergence between L1 attriters and L2 speakers
Get PDFThe present work scrutinises the topic of (near-)nativeness in Applied Linguistics (AL) and Second Language Acquisition Research (SLAR). Specifically, not only is it difficult to find a one-size-fits-all definition for the native speaker from a sociolinguistic perspective (Davies 2003, 2013), but there is also enough evidence to reconsider the monolingual native speaker used as a model for comparison in SLAR, in light of the results of L1 attrition studies: Firstly, research demonstrates that the L1 system of a bilingual speaker is influenced by the advanced knowledge of an L2 (Seliger 1991; Altenberg 1991; Chamorro et al. 2016a, 2016b); secondly, some studies point to convergence between L1 attriters and very proficient L2 learners (Tsimpli et al. 2004; Sorace and Filiaci 2006; Belletti, Bennati and Sorace 2007). The very fact that the L1 system can be rendered unstable by L2 acquisition, and that there seems to be a parallelism between L1 attrition and L2 acquisition, is used as a basis for suggesting that the traditional (monolingual) native speaker does seem to be a myth in both AL and SLAR fields, and that a bilingual native speaker model should be used as an alternative benchmark for future research
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