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This article calls for more constructive alignment in the DDL (Data-Driven Learning) pratices currently carried out in instructed settings. After a short description of constructive alignment, this study addresses some of the reasons behind the lack of alignment that, in turn, often leads to a lack of uptake and sustainable practices in DDL. Concrete examples of how courses including DDL activities could be better aligned are presented. Solutions to increase sustainability are also proposed; they include the need for terminological simplification and a revision of some language assessment practices. This article also stresses the importance of both actively listening to teachers’ and learners’needs and concretely supporting teachers’ efforts to embrace DDL.

This paper explores the longitudinal development of the phrasicon (i.e. phraseological lexicon) of French-speaking learners of Dutch in two different educational settings: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and traditional foreign language learning contexts (non-CLIL). We followed 195 pupils and analyzed a corpus of 390 written texts gathered at two data collection points: at the beginning of their fifth year of secondary school education (Grade 11) and at the end of their sixth year (Grade 12). We examined both frequency and accuracy of the phrasicon. Whilst SLA research often supports the fact that learners at a higher proficiency level have a larger phrasicon and that CLIL learners' overall language competence is higher than their non-CLIL peers, our results show no significant increase in the frequency of use of phraseological units in CLIL; a significant decrease for two categories (referential phrasemes and lexical collocations) is even noticed. non-CLIL learners display no significant change in the use of various types of phrasemes. Regarding accuracy, both CLIL and non-CLIL learners' phrasicon become more accurate (fewer errors) over time in more than 50% of the categories. Here again, no statistically significant improvement was noted among the groups between the two data collection points.

Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al. (2019. "Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096) claim that learner corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo - Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research.

This article investigates the development of wh -in-situ questions in French by examining a three-year kindergarten dataset of spontaneous productions with 16 children between 2;5 and 5;11. The distribution of the wh -phrases is statistically examined in relation to age, verb form (Fixed be form c'est 'it is' vs. Free be forms vs. Free lexical verbs), and grammatical category of the wh -word (Pronoun vs. Adverb). Results show that wh -in-situ remains prevalent throughout the period despite a steady increase in wh -ex-situ. Verb form (Fixed vs. All free forms) is a discriminating variable for the wh -position in all three years, and it interacts with the category of the wh -word. The Fixed be form c'est favours in-situ wh -pronouns (c'est qui Taz ?), whereas the Free forms favour wh -ex-situ questions, and massively co-occur with wh -adverbs (combien ça coûte ?). The emergence of the ex-situ qu'est-ce que 'what is it that', as opposed to the in-situ quoi 'what', is identified as a factor accounting for the gradual increase in wh -ex-situ. Finally, most outliers (wh -in-situ with Free forms) are shown to belong to the same paradigm as c'est in-situ questions: non-presuppositional questions, which are visible from the frequent use of là 'there', like c'est , a deictic item. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential of combining learner corpus research with experimental studies in order to fine-tune the understanding of learner language development. It illustrates the complementarity of the two methodological approaches with data from an ongoing study of the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by French learners. The first research question relates to the development of accuracy of tense and aspect usage in written production over time; longitudinal learner corpus data is used to answer this question. Its results are then incorporated into an experimental study that addresses the second research question, which seeks to uncover reasons why some tense and aspect features remain difficult to master even for advanced L2 learners. The first part of the article reviews the status of longitudinal research in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and describes the Longitudinal Database of Learner English (Longdale) used for the study. The second half of the article presents the results of the learner corpus analysis. These reveal that over a period of 3 years, learners' tense and aspect errors decrease. However, the English progressive continues to present considerable learning difficulties. Two follow-up experiments investigated which elaborations of the progressive epistemic schema L2 learners continue to find difficult. They showed that advanced learners master the most salient elaboration of the present progressive (i.e., ongoingness, including extended ongoingness). By contrast, their understanding of less core uses (i.e., planned events) is much less precise. The article concludes with suggestions for the teaching of tense and aspect to advanced EFL learners. (Contains 11 tables, 2 figures, and 10 notes)

Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al. (2019. "Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:) claim that learner corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo - Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the longitudinal development of the phrasicon (i.e. phraseological lexicon) of French-speaking learners of Dutch in two different educational settings: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and traditional foreign language learning contexts (non-CLIL). We followed 195 pupils and analyzed a corpus of 390 written texts gathered at two data collection points: at the beginning of their fifth year of secondary school education (Grade 11) and at the end of their sixth year (Grade 12). We examined both frequency and accuracy of the phrasicon. Whilst SLA research often supports the fact that learners at a higher proficiency level have a larger phrasicon and that CLIL learners' overall language competence is higher than their non-CLIL peers, our results show no significant increase in the frequency of use of phraseological units in CLIL; a significant decrease for two categories (referential phrasemes and lexical collocations) is even noticed. non-CLIL learners display no significant change in the use of various types of phrasemes. Regarding accuracy, both CLIL and non-CLIL learners' phrasicon become more accurate (fewer errors) over time in more than 50% of the categories. Here again, no statistically significant improvement was noted among the groups between the two data collection points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental dyslexia is associated with impaired speech-in-noise perception. The goal of the present research was to further characterize this deficit in dyslexic adults. In order to specify the mechanisms and processing strategies used by adults with dyslexia during speech-in-noise perception, we explored the influence of background type, presenting single target-words against backgrounds made of cocktail party sounds, modulated speech-derived noise or stationary noise. We also evaluated the effect of three listening configurations differing in terms of the amount of spatial processing required. In a monaural condition, signal and noise were presented to the same ear while in a dichotic situation, target and concurrent sound were presented to two different ears, finally in a spatialised configuration, target and competing signals were presented as if they originated from slightly differing positions in the auditory scene. Our results confirm the presence of a speech-in-noise perception deficit in dyslexic adults, in particular when the competing signal is also speech, and when both signals are presented to the same ear, an observation potentially relating to phonological accounts of dyslexia. However, adult dyslexics demonstrated better levels of spatial release of masking than normal reading controls when the background was speech, suggesting that they are well able to rely on denoising strategies based on spatial auditory scene analysis strategies. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

In three experiments we explored the mental representation of morphologically complex words in French. Subjects were asked to perform a gender decision task on morphologically complex words that were of the same gender as their base or not. We found that gender decisions were made more slowly for morphologically complex words made from a base with an opposite gender compared to words for which the gender of the base matches that of the derived noun. Similar results were obtained for words that are pseudo-morphologically complex while no effect was observed for non-morphological embedded words. Our results suggest that during gender identification of derived and pseudo-derived words, morpheme and pseudo-morpheme lexical representations are activated, as well as their gender information. Also our results suggest that the noun ending predictability effect observed in previous experiments could in fact reflect decomposition into morphemes.

In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as "sportation," formed by the noun "sport" "sport" and the suffix "-ation." In Experiment 2, primes were semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the combination of a root and a suffix, such as "rapidifier" "to quickify." In Experiment 3, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords that were designed to be synonymous with existing derived words, for example "cuisineur," which, if it existed, would mean the same as "cuisinier" "a cook." Finally, in Experiment 4, we used as primes non-morphological pseudowords like "rapiduit," "-uit" being an existing ending of French but not a suffix. The results of the four experiments show that priming only occurs with those morphologically complex pseudowords which are interpretable (including those which are synonymous with a pre-existing derived form), providing evidence that semantic factors are taken into account when the prime is overtly presented. Our results further support the view that morphological effects come into play at at least two processing stages, a morphological decomposition based on formal properties and a semantic integration based on semantic compatibility between morphemes.

The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the "determiner" condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner "un" or "une" marked for gender. In the "picture" condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3 years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9 years of age. Moreover, from 4 years of age onward, sensitivity to endings affected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This effect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition.

Dissociations in the recognition of specific classes of words have been documented in brain-injured populations. These include deficits in the recognition and production of morphologically complex words as well as impairments specific to particular syntactic classes such as verbs. However, functional imaging evidence for distinctions among the neural systems underlying these dissociations has been inconclusive. We explored the neural systems involved in processing different word classes in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, contrasting four groups of words co-varying morphological complexity (simple, monomorphemic words vs complex derived or inflected words) and syntactic class (verbs vs nouns/adjectives). Subtraction of word from letter string processing showed activation in left frontal and temporal lobe regions consistent with prior studies of visual word processing. No differences were observed for morphologically complex and simple words, despite adequate power to detect stimulus specific effects. A region of posterior left middle temporal gyrus showed significantly increased activation for verbs. Post hoc analyses showed that this elevated activation could also be related to semantic properties of the stimulus items (verbs have stronger action associations than nouns, and action association is correlated with activation). Results suggest that semantic as well as syntactic factors should be considered when assessing the neural systems involved in single word comprehension.

The logopenic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (lvPPA), a syndromic disorder centered on language impairment, often presents variable underlying neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer Disease (AD). Actual language assessment tests and lumbar puncture, focused on AD diagnosis, cannot precisely distinguish the symptoms, or predict their progression at onset time. We analyzed acoustic markers, aiming to discriminate lvPPA and AD as well as the influence of AD biomarkers on acoustic profiles at the beginning of the disease. We recruited people with AD (n = 8) and with lvPPA (n = 8), with cerebrospinal fluid biomarker profiles determined by lumbar puncture. The participants performed a sentence repetition task that allows assessing potential lvPPA phonological loop deficits. We found that temporal and prosodic markers significantly differentiate the lvPPA and AD group at an early stage of the disease. Biomarker and acoustic profile comparisons discriminated the two lvPPA subgroups according to their biomarkers. For lvPPA with AD biomarkers, acoustic profile equivalent to an atypical AD form with a specific alteration of the phonological loop is shown. However, lvPPA without AD biomarkers has an acoustic profile approximating the one for DLFT. Therefore, these results allow us to classify lvPPA differentially from AD based on acoustic markers from a sentence repetition task. Furthermore, our results suggest that acoustic analysis would constitute a clinically efficient alternative to refused lumbar punctures. It offers the possibility to facilitate early, specific, and accessible neurodegenerative diagnosis and may ease early care with speech therapy, preventing the progression of symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigates the ability to understand degraded speech signals and explores the correlation between this capacity and the functional characteristics of the peripheral auditory system. Method: The authors evaluated the capability of 50 normal-hearing native French speakers to restore time-reversed speech. The task required them to transcribe two-syllable items containing temporal reversions of variable sizes, ranging from no reversion to complete reversion, increasing by half-syllable steps. In parallel, the functionality of each participant's auditory efferent system was evaluated using contralateral suppression of click-evoked otoacoustic emissions. Results: Perceptual accuracy for time-reversed speech diminished when the size of the applied temporal distortion increased. A lexical benefit was evident, and an important interindividual variability in performance was observed. Functional exploration of the auditory system revealed that speech restoration performances correlated with the suppression strength of the participant's auditory efferent system. Conclusions: These results suggest a clear relation between the functional asymmetry of the auditory efferent pathway (the right-side activity is greater than the left-side activity in right-handed participants) and the comprehension of acoustically distorted speech in normal-hearing participants. Further experiments are needed to better specify how the functionality of the medial olivocochlear bundle can cause phonological activation to be more efficient. KEY WORDS: degraded speech comprehension, lateralization of audition, medial olivocochlear bundle, otoacoustic emissions, In the present study, we explored the capacity of normal-hearing listeners to understand distorted speech. Because this ability involves both auditory analysis of speech sounds and linguistic processes, we studied [...]

The article presents the discussion on Nordic Journal of English Studies providing a forum for promoting and evaluating the use of corpora and other digital tools in the classroom. Topics include providing a strong theoretical rationale for the importance of patterning in language acquisition; and introducing DDL to a group of secondary school student teachers of English at a Swedish university.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.11.005 Byline: Fanny Meunier (a), Catherine-Marie Longtin (b) Keywords: Morphology; Visual word processing; Cross-modal priming; Pseudowords Abstract: In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as [degrees]sportation, formed by the noun sport 'sport' and the suffix -ation. In Experiment 2, primes were semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the combination of a root and a suffix, such as [degrees]rapidifier 'to quickify'. In Experiment 3, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords that were designed to be synonymous with existing derived words, for example [degrees]cuisineur, which, if it existed, would mean the same as cuisinier 'a cook'. Finally, in Experiment 4, we used as primes non-morphological pseudowords like [degrees]rapiduit, -uit being an existing ending of French but not a suffix. The results of the four experiments show that priming only occurs with those morphologically complex pseudowords which are interpretable (including those which are synonymous with a pre-existing derived form), providing evidence that semantic factors are taken into account when the prime is overtly presented. Our results further support the view that morphological effects come into play at at least two processing stages, a morphological decomposition based on formal properties and a semantic integration based on semantic compatibility between morphemes. Author Affiliation: (a) Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Louis Lumiere, France (b) School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Canada Article History: Received 5 April 2006; Revised 6 September 2006 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and by a research grant 'Action concertee jeunes chercheurs' from the Ministere de la recherche et de l'enseignement (France) accorded to the first author. Second author was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds Quebecois pour la recherche sur la societe et la culture. This project also benefited support from a Major Collaborative Research Initiative Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (# 412-2001-1009). The second author is now a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit of the Medical Research Council, Cambridge, United Kingdom. We thank D. Fabre for her help in recording the auditory primes. We are also grateful to M. Davis, K. Forster, H. Giraudo, G. Powell, K. Rastle, and J. Segui for their help and comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Byline: Alix Seigneuric (a), Daniel Zagar (b), Fanny Meunier (c), Elsa Spinelli (d) Keywords: Language acquisition; Grammatical gender; French gender; Gender-ending regularities; Gender cues Abstract: The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the determiner condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner un or une marked for gender. In the picture condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9years of age. Moreover, from 4years of age onward, sensitivity to endings affected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This effect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition. Author Affiliation: (a) CESG, UMR CNRS 5170, Universite de Bourgogne, Dijon, France (b) SocioPsychologie et Management du Sport (SPMS), Universite de Bourgogne, Dijon, France (c) Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, UMR CNRS 5596, Lyon, France (d) Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, UMR CNRS 5105, Universite Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble, France Article History: Received 5 October 2005; Revised 15 December 2006

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.02.008 Byline: Catherine-Marie Longtin (a), Fanny Meunier (b) Abstract: In this study, we looked at priming effects produced by a short presentation (47ms) of morphologically complex pseudowords in French. In Experiment 1, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the grammatical combination of a root and a suffix, such as rapidifier 'to quickify.' In Experiment 2, we used non-morphological pseudowords such as rapiduit, where -uit is an existing ending in French, but is not a suffix. In Experiment 3, primes were pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as sportation, formed by the noun sport 'sport' and the suffix -ation (-ation only attaches to verbs). Results of Experiment 1 show that morphologically complex pseudowords significantly facilitated the recognition of their roots. This priming effect was equivalent to the facilitation obtained when existing derived words were used as primes. In Experiment 2, no priming effect was obtained with non-morphological pseudowords, demonstrating that the mere occurrence of the target at the beginning of the pseudoword prime is not sufficient to produce any priming and that an orthographic account of the results is not viable. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that the semantic interpretability of the morphologically complex pseudowords does not affect priming, as facilitation effect is obtained with morphologically complex non-interpretable pseudowords. The results reveal an early morphological decomposition triggered by the morphological structure of the prime, but insensitive to its lexicality or interpretability. Author Affiliation: (a) Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Rene Descartes, France (b) Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Louis Lumiere, France Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by a doctoral fellowship to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It was also supported by a research grant 'Action concertee jeunes chercheurs' from the Ministere de la recherche et de l'enseignement (France) accorded to the second author. The first author is now a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). We are grateful to J. Segui and P. Halle for their comments and suggestions at various stages of this research. We thank C. Burani, M. Lange, M. Taft, A. Idrissi, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. N. Azevedo, M. Corley, and J. Peters were also of great help in revising the manuscript.

Speech perception involves segmenting a continuous stream of speech into its word components. This can be challenging in the case of homophonous utterances only differing in non-contrastive subphonemic features. Yet, the speech perception system seems able to discriminate subphonemic deviation in homophonous utterances, since it has been shown to elicit a mismatch response (MMN). Here, we focused on the oscillatory correlates, namely phase resetting and power, of non-contrastive subphonemic deviation processing in language. An oddball task that considered natural intraspeaker variability was used. Subphonemic deviance elicited intertrial phase coherence (ITC) differences in the theta band at Fz during the time window of the MMN. No differences in power were found. This suggests that the processing of subphonemic deviation in speech signals, reflected by the MMN, might rely on mechanisms of phase resetting. ITC might facilitate the synchronous firing of functional networks involved in the processing of subphonemic deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present preregistered study, we evaluated the possibility of a shared cognitive mechanism during verbal and non-verbal tasks and therefore the implication of domain-general cognitive control during language comprehension. We hypothesized that a behavioral cost will be observed during a dual-task including both verbal and non-verbal difficult processing. Specifically, to test this claim, we designed a dual-task paradigm involving: an auditory language comprehension task (sentence comprehension) and a non-verbal Flanker task (including congruent and incongruent trials). We manipulated sentence ambiguity and evaluated if the ambiguity effect modified behavioral performances in the non-verbal Flanker task. Under the assumption that ambiguous sentences induce a more difficult process than unambiguous sentences, we expected non-verbal flanker task performances to be impaired only when a simultaneous difficult language processing is performed. This would be specifically reflected by a performance cost during incongruent Flanker items only during ambiguous sentence presentation. Conversely, we observed a facilitatory effect for the incongruent Flanker items during ambiguous sentence suggesting better non-verbal inhibitory performances when an ambiguous sentence was simultaneously processed. Exploratory data analysis suggests that this effect is not only related to a more difficult language processing but also to the previous (n-1) Flanker item. Indeed, results showed that incongruent n-1 Flanker items led to a facilitation of the incongruent synchronized Flanker items only when ambiguous sentences were conjointly presented. This result, even if it needs to be corroborated in future studies, suggests that the recruitment of executive control mechanisms facilitates subsequent executive control implication during difficult language processing. The present study suggests a common executive control mechanism during difficult verbal and non-verbal tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-native language. We compared Dutch, Finnish, and French non-native listeners of English, whose cueing and use of prosodic prominence is gradually further removed from English, and compared their results on a phoneme monitoring task in different levels of noise and a quiet condition to those of native listeners. Overall phoneme detection performance was high for the native and the non-native listeners, but deteriorated to the same extent in the presence of background noise. Crucially, relative similarity between the prosodic cues to sentence accent of one's native language compared to that of a non-native language does not determine the ability to perceive and use sentence accent for speech perception in that non-native language. Moreover, proficiency in the non-native language is not a straightforward predictor of sentence accent perception performance, although high proficiency in a non-native language can seemingly overcome certain differences at the prosodic level between the native and non-native language. Instead, performance is determined by the extent to which listeners rely on local cues (English and Dutch) versus cues that are more distributed (Finnish and French), as more distributed cues survive the presence of background noise better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we present a corpus-based comparison of the use of intensifying constructions in written L1 Dutch (Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands) and written L1 French (Frantext). We subsequently discuss intensification in Dutch as a second language (L2 Dutch) by French-speaking learners (Leerdercorpus Nederlands). The analysis adopts a constructional perspective (Goldberg 2006, Tomasello 2003) and aims to contrast French and Dutch preferences for morphological and syntactic intensifying constructions. Extending on the "Germanic Sandwich Hypothesis" (Van Haeringen 1956, Lamiroy 2011), we expect to find: i) more morphological intensifying constructions in Dutch, such as 'elative' compounds (e.g. knalrood 'completely red'; Hoeksema 2012) and ii) more syntactic constructions in French, such as adverbial modification (e.g. tout rouge 'completely red') and adjective reduplication (e.g. rouge rouge 'completely red'). The present study thus serves a twofold purpose: investigating whether the synthetic vs. analytic character of Germanic vs Romance languages holds in the domain of intensification, and on a more applied level, it contributes to identifying possible difficulties for French-speaking learners of Dutch in this field. Our corpus study partly confirms the expected difference in the use of morphological intensifying constructions between L1 Dutch and L1 French, with significantly more morphological intensifying constructions in L1 Dutch than in L1 French. Adverbial modification remains the default intensifying construction in both languages however. Whilst L2 Dutch productions displayed an overuse of intensifying adverbs (partly due to the overuse of 'all-round' intensifiers such as heel 'very'), the learners did however also use elative compounds, a typical Germanic intensifying construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present study investigated the link between speech-in-speech perception capacities and four executive function components: response suppression, inhibitory control, switching and working memory. We constructed a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm using a written target word and a spoken prime word, implemented in one of two concurrent auditory sentences (cocktail party situation). The prime and target were semantically related or unrelated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visual target words and simultaneously listen to only one of two pronounced sentences. The attention of the participant was manipulated: The prime was in the pronounced sentence listened to by the participant or in the ignored one. In addition, we evaluate the executive function abilities of participants (switching cost, inhibitory-control cost and response-suppression cost) and their working memory span. Correlation analyses were performed between the executive and priming measurements. Our results showed a significant interaction effect between attention and semantic priming. We observed a significant priming effect in the attended but not in the ignored condition. Only priming effects obtained in the ignored condition were significantly correlated with some of the executive measurements. However, no correlation between priming effects and working memory capacity was found. Overall, these results confirm, first, the role of attention for semantic priming effect and, second, the implication of executive functions in speech-in-noise understanding capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]