This study of L-2 Russian interlanguage production examined the salience of phonetic, lexical and syntactical features for L-1 listener intelligibility, based on L-2 recitation of written scripts (Part I) and also unrehearsed speech (Part II). Part III of the study investigated strategies used by native-speaking teachers of Russian as a Second…

The objectives of this study are (a) to determine if native speakers of Canadian French at different English proficiencies can use primary stress for recognizing English words and (b) to specify how the second language (L2) learners' (surface-level) knowledge of L2 stress placement influences their use of primary stress in L2 word recognition. Two…

This study investigated the intelligibility of Chinese graduate students to their Indian, Chinese, Korean, and American peers. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine the teaching priorities for English for Academic Purposes in the US, where listeners have a wide variety of native languages. Research on Second Language Acquisition…

Problem: The studies of the English-language accent preferences of prospective and practicing businesspersons from around the world have not been integrated. Research Questions: What are the English-language accent preferences of prospective and practicing businesspersons from around the world, and how are those preferences influenced by the…

Foreign language lyric diction is a compulsory subject in all undergraduate vocal performance degrees in universities. However, the effectiveness of its teaching depends on the capacity of students to absorb the material, for which many are largely unprepared, due to their lack of previous language study. Further, native speakers of North American…

Language attitude studies have tended to assume that informants who listen to and evaluate speech stimuli are able to identify with consistent accuracy the varieties of English in question. However, misidentification could reduce the validity of any results obtained, particularly when it involves the evaluations of non-native English-speaking…

Questionable white dialects are discussed from the viewpoints of various authorities, and the dialects of the Southern states are used as examples of the complexity associated with attempting to designate a set of usages as being questionable. Suggestions of ways in which English teachers may cope with the problem of dialects and jargons are…

Uses data from both sides of the U.S.-Canada border to test a model regarding the way language changes diffuse over space. Two cases are examined: the non-diffusion of phonetic features from Detroit to Windsor and the gradual infiltration into Canadian English of American foreign (a) pronunciations. (Author/VWL)

Bullock and Gerfen show that two of the last speakers of French in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, systematically replace the French front mid round vowel (in words like "deux, neuf") with the rhoticized schwa of American English, their dominant language. As the authors argue, it is unlikely that this sound change would have arisen in the…

Argues that the standard of correct pronunciation is what educated native speakers actually say, not what they think they say and not what dictionaries prescribe that they are supposed to say; therefore educated Southern pronunciation is correct and should be labeled so. (SR)

The linguistic atlas projects have provided much information on the regional distribution of pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax and have given important evidence for a greater understanding of problems involved in semantic change, particularly in pointing out transition areas where dialects become fused. In a study supplementary to that…

The text of dialogues published by the British Broadcasting Service and reprinted by the U.S. Information Agency were studied to determine various aspects of the two versions of the English language, particularly differences in the uses of the present perfect tense. (three references) (LB)

The current study examined the effects of Korean elementary school teachers' accents on their students' listening comprehension. It also examined students' attitudes toward teachers with American-accented English (a native speaker model) and Korean-accented English (a nonnative speaker model). A matched-guised technique was used. A Korean American…

Raised, nasalized variants of /ae/ in such words as hat and back in the speech of many Illinoisans are found to correlate with the size of the community in which the speaker was raised. Generally, the higher the variants, the more urban the speaker was raised. (Author/RM)

The power and status of America in the world today are undeniable. This paper presents some empirical data about the attitudes and perceptions Danish learners of EFL have about British and American English. Ninety-six EFL learners participated in a verbal-guise experiment that involved rating different accents of English: American, Australian,…