Phonological Constraints on the Utterance of L2 Clusters by Saudi ESL Learners

The field of L2 phonology did not receive much research compared to the other linguistic domains. To add to the field and expand the current literature, the present paper’s goal was to examine the impact of syllable structure differences between Arabic and English in uttering L2 English consonant clusters. The following research question was aimed to be answered: Do the differences between two languages’ syllable structure cause production difficulties in the consonant cluster to Saudi Arabian learners of English? The subjects of this investigation were L2 English learners from Saudi with intermediate proficiency levels in English. Applying the descriptive correlational type of research model, the results showed that learners’ production is mainly influenced by their native language-specific phonological features. The learners’ production of targeted L2 consonant clusters seemed to mirror their underlying phonological system, and syllables structures were modified to match their native Arabic phonological system as a result of language transfer. These findings should be taken into account by L2 speech educators as such speech difficulty is anticipated.

The Sonority Dispersion Principle in Albanian

An important pattern that is based on the sonority relationship is the Sonority Dispersion Principle (SDP) formulated by Clements (1990). This principle can serve as the basis for classifying syllable types in terms of relative complexity. The notion “dispersion in sonority” clearly defined within a demisyllable. According to this principle, the sonority slop from the onset to the syllable nucleus is maximized and from the nucleus to the coda is minimized. The purpose of this paper is to provide some data on the Albanian language by dividing the sounds within the demisyllable, by analyzing the combinations of sounds in the onset and in the coda. According to SDP, in Albanian the optimal syllable structure with 2 elements is C[stop]V, while among the optimal structures with 3 elements, the types C[stop]VC[glide], C[stop]C[liquid]V, C[stop]C[nasal]V and C[fricative]C[liquid]V predominate. The analyzed data are important and serve to deeply recognize the characteristics of phonological system of Albanian and can also serve for its approach to typological level.

Phonological Constraints on the Utterance of L2 Clusters by Saudi ESL Learners

The field of L2 phonology did not receive much research compared to the other linguistic domains. To add to the field and expand the current literature, the present paper’s goal was to examine the impact of syllable structure differences between Arabic and English in uttering L2 English consonant clusters. The following research question was aimed to be answered: Do the differences between two languages’ syllable structure cause production difficulties in the consonant cluster to Saudi Arabian learners of English? The subjects of this investigation were L2 English learners from Saudi with intermediate proficiency levels in English. Applying the descriptive correlational type of research model, the results showed that learners’ production is mainly influenced by their native language-specific phonological features. The learners’ production of targeted L2 consonant clusters seemed to mirror their underlying phonological system, and syllables structures were modified to match their native Arabic phonological system as a result of language transfer. These findings should be taken into account by L2 speech educators as such speech difficulty is anticipated.

Emerging Phonology Under Language Contact: The Case of Sino-Russian Idiolects

The main aim of this study is to examine what kind of phonological system emerges because of language contact wherein adult speakers of L1 (Chinese) attempt to speak L2 (Russian) without any previous instruction in L2. The main findings of this study are as follows: a) The speakers of L1 largely adopt the phonetic inventory and phonotactics of L2 and b) the only underlying (distinctive) features in the emerging phonological system are those of place of articulation while voicing plays no distinctive role in the emerging phonological system of Chinese speakers. Moreover, the speakers of L1 faithfully replicate the stress system of L2, even though L1 (Chinese) is a tonal language and L2, Russian, is a stress language. The most important finding of this study is that speakers of L1 discern the entity ‘word’ in L2. The emerging phonological system is geared towards assuring the identifiability of words in L2 rather than towards consistency of phonological rules.

Influența limbii materne în predarea pronunției în limba engleză

The present article treats a problem regarding the influence of the mother tongue in teaching English pronunciation. The importance and necessity of using the mother tongue in learning English are relevant. The obtained knowledge, skills and abilities in the mother tongue influence those from the foreign language, as a result thezy are in an interdependence, that observe concrete laws. This interdependence can both contribute to learning English, and hinder it. The formation of correct pronunciation skills depends on the the adjustment of the mother tongue phonological system tot that of the target language.

Feature generalization in Dutch–German bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production

Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the ‘voiced’ dorsal plosive /ɡ/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch–German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6–6;0 years generalized voicing to /ɡ/ in Dutch; and (2) whether there was evidence for featural cross-linguistic influence from Dutch to German in bilingual children, testing monolingual German-speaking children as controls. Bilingual and monolingual children’s production of /ɡ/ provided partial evidence for feature generalization: in Dutch, both bilingual and monolingual children either recombined Dutch voicing and place features to produce /ɡ/, suggesting feature generalization, or resorted to producing familiar /k/, suggesting segment-level adaptation within their Dutch phonological system. In German, bilingual children’s production of /ɡ/ was influenced by Dutch although the Dutch phoneme inventory lacks /ɡ/. This suggests that not only segments but also voicing features can exert cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, phonological features appear to play a crucial role in aspects of bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production.

論《龍龕手鑑》正俗體字聲符替換與唐五代西北方音

<p>遼僧行均所著《龍龕手鑑》，成書於宋太宗至道三年（997），乃專為佛教徒通解文字研讀佛典所編纂的一部字書。當中引用他書的情況相當複雜，除了佛經音義書，還有不少前代字書、韻書，因此不管是在音韻性質或者語料時代的判別上，皆不宜做太單純的思考。本文在孔仲溫、儲泰松等學者的啟發下，一方面考察當中眾多參用資料的成書年代，以確定其語料的時代性，繼而觀察筆者從中整理所得的四百多筆正俗體字聲符替換字組，並分析存在其間的音韻現象。發現當中某些音韻表現與唐五代西北方音的音韻特徵具有一致性，與過去學者們運用反切系聯法，以系聯當中複雜音切所得結果有所不同。在跳脫《切韻》或是通語雅音的音系框架之外，得以看見《龍龕手鑑》不同面向的音韻內涵。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Longkan Shoujian, a dictionary completed by a Liao dynasty monk named Xingjun in 997, is used to aid Buddhists in the study of Buddhist text and scriptures. Because Longkan Shoujian cites from numerous sources including yinyishu (dictionaries of pronunciations and meanings), dictionaries published in previous dynasties, and rhyme dictionaries, one must investigate thoroughly when attempting to decipher the phonological characteristics of Longkan Shoujian and the dynasties in which its corpuses were written. Inspired by scholars such as Chung-wen Kung and Tai-song Chu, this study examined the years in which many of the cited materials were completed to verify the dynasties in which the corpuses of Longkan Shoujian were written. Subsequently, this study explored the phonetic component substitution groups for the 400+ canonical and noncanonical Chinese characters that it had organized and summarized; and analyzed the phonological phenomena within. The study results showed that some of the phonological characteristics were similar to those of Northwestern China in the Five Dynasties period, challenging the results obtained by previous scholars using the fanqie association method (which involves separating a character&rsquo;s pronunciation into two other characters). By not accepting information preached in Qieyun and the phonological system of common languages in China as the gospel truth, this study discovered the different phonological characteristics observed in Longkan Shoujian.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF BANGKA MALAY LANGUAGE, TOBOALI DIALECT, IN SOUTH BANGKA REGENCY

The factors that led to the extinction of a regional language dialect are the absence of inputting the vocabulary into a dictionary, recording the phonological system to academic articles, and the absence of language enthusiasts or linguists who want to maintain the existence of a dialect in a community. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the phonological system in the Toboali dialect as the variant of the Malay language in the South Bangka Regency. The research is triggered by the decreasing use of regional languages in society and it purports to identify and describe the phonological system of the Toboali dialect. To do that, this study uses a qualitative method in which the researchers firstly collected data, then analyzed and classified the data, and finally drew a conclusion. The Swadesh list which consists of 250 vocabularies was utilized during the interview. The researchers obtained the Toboali dialect words by gesturing or pointing to objects and images so the informants were able to pronounce the words and then the phonetic transcription could be written. Thus, the data obtained are accurate because the language obtained was not delivered in Indonesian but is purely pronounced in the Toboali dialect. The results of this study indicate that there are 7 vowels: [?], [e], [o], [i], [?], [?], [a] and 19 consonants are found in the Toboali dialect: [b], [c], [d], [f], [g], [h], [j], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p], [r], [s], [t], [w], [y], [z], and [?].

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION DIVERSITY PRODUCED BY INDONESIAN COVER-SINGERS: A CASE STUDY ON THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL

This study focuses on the pronunciation changes of the Indonesian cover-singers on YouTube. It is qualitative research by using documentation technique. There were three subjects of this study namely RM with song “Memories”, AH with song “Thank You Next”, and HD with song “Comethru”. At the first singer’s pronunciation, there were 26 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, vowel shift, vowel coalescence, consonant neutralization, consonant insertion, and metathesis. At the second singer’s pronunciation, there were 17 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, vowel shift, consonant neutralization, consonant insertion, assimilation, and diphthongization. At the third singer’s pronunciation, there were 12 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, consonant neutralization, vowel shift, vowel coalescence, and consonant insertion. These pronunciation changes occur because of the distinction between the phonological system of English and Bahasa Indonesia , and the Indonesian cover-singers still rely on the word’s spelling rather than phonetic sound. Regardless of these two reasons, there are also several similarities in the phonological system between English and Bahasa Indonesia, but the Indonesian cover-singers still perform the pronunciation changes.

Phoneme Distribution and the Sonority Nature of Consonant Clusters in Afaan Oromo Authors

This paper examines an outline of two main phonological elements in the Oromo language. Firstly, it indicates the permissible sequences and types of the language’s consonant clusters given the member sound’s sonority. Secondly, it enlightens the distribution of Oromo phonemes in different word positions (initial, medial, and final). In this aspect, the study is a descriptive work and attention has been given mainly to recounting the simple distribution rather than theorizing the phonotactic processes. For the study, data was collected from five native speakers of the Western dialect and was phonemically transcribed using an IPA symbol. The speech of these participants has three hours of duration with an average speech length of 36 minutes for each participant. The study also attempts to list out the number of the language’s native and loan phonemes employed in the speech of adult Oromo users comparing the data with the earlier studies. With the study, it was observed that Oromo has Sonorant-Obstruent, Obstruent-Obstruent, Obstruent- Sonorant and Sonorant – Sonorant clusters based on the status of sonorants in its phonological system. Of the two-member clusters in clustering, sonorants are the dominant first member sounds in the language.