This study examines the production of third language (L3) German consonant clusters by 26 L1 Cantonese-L2 English bilinguals, with the aim of uncovering the possible cross-linguistic influences on L3 pronunciation. Learners' production of 17 onset and 21 coda German consonant clusters were auditorily analysed with respect to accuracy and error…

Translation, from a cultural perspective, is the exchange and communication between two distinct cultures, posing a challenge to the translator to possess not only fluency but also a deep understanding of the history and culture of both languages. This study examined the comprehension abilities for translation strategies of native Chinese English…

Verbal morphology has been identified as a particularly vulnerable domain for adult heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish, especially when it involves the selection of subjunctive mood. A minimal amount is known, however, about the potential effects of the variability associated with these forms on the acquisition of related epiphenomena, such as the…

Power distance (PD), a cultural value denoting acceptance of asymmetrical power relationships, influences the force of rhetoric used by a writer to address their reader. However, AI technologies such as ChatGPT lack an explicit awareness of PD, which could affect the quality of AI-generated persuasive texts used for language learning. To…

Expression of motion shows systematic inter-typological variability between language types, particularly with respect to manner and path components of motion: speakers of satellite-framed languages (S-language; e.g. German) frequently conflate manner and path into a single clause, while verb-framed language speakers (V-language; e.g. Spanish)…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

This study compares English- and Korean-speaking university students' colloquial and mathematical discourses on the notion and practice of limit. There exists a lexical discontinuity in Korean with the word limit, since the mathematical word for limit is not commonly used as a colloquial word in Korean, unlike its use in English. This study…

Descriptions of regional pragmatic variation in French are lacking to date the focus has been on a limited range of speech acts, including apologies, requests, compliments and responses to compliments. The present paper, a systematic analysis of invitation refusals across regional varieties of French, is designed to add to the research on…

This study is anchored on Swale's Theory of Genre Analysis and employed Labov and Waletzky's Personal Experience Narrative (PEN) as a narrative framework in analyzing Vietnamese EFL students' patterns of writing. The study reveals that Vietnamese student's rhetorical structure follows a three-step-pattern which is introducing the character,…

This dissertation investigated the speech productions of the implosive -r consonant by U.S.-born Puerto Rican and Dominican Heritage Language Spanish speakers in New York. The following main research questions were addressed: 1) Do heritage language Caribbean Spanish speakers evidence the same variation with the /?/ consonant in the implosive…

Drawing on critical pedagogy, this study challenges the hegemony of Standard English (SE) to promote inclusive approaches which recognise and tolerate the variation of World Englishes to prepare students for intercultural encounters with interlocutors speaking different varieties of English. To enhance students' ethno-sensitivity and receptive…

One of the fundamental ways in which knowledge develops is through contrast. This applies not only to the development of ideas and theories in argumentative texts, but also to the contrasting of new findings with old in experimental reports. Contrast, then, is central to the development of academic knowledge. A common finding in contrastive…

It is now commonly accepted that academic discourses tend to provide venues for participants to interact where the producer needs to display an awareness of the audience, and metadiscourse (MD) is the set of tools enabling the involved parties to establish relationships. MD strategies allow writers to project themselves into their work, signal…

Tests experimentally whether stress placement in polysyllabic words differs in Singapore English (SE) and British English (BE), or whether acoustic correlates of stress differ in the two English varieties. Results suggest word-final stress in SE is not result of lexical stress placement, but combination of lengthening of final-syllable words in…

Presents results of a study of the use of the dative with the genitive prepositions "(an)statt,""trotz,""wahrend" and "wegen" based on two corpora. Notes that a comparison of these two computerized corpora shows that no clear trend exists regarding the increased use of the dative with these prepositions in…