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Introduction. The article examines changes taking place in the intonation systems of modern varieties of the English language by analysing the use of the High Rising Terminal (HRT). Received pronunciation (RP), which is recognised as standard pronunciation in the United Kingdom, Australian English accents and Northern Irish English accents (accents of Belfast) have been chosen as the subject for this study. Intonation contours containing the HRT are compared in order to reveal any similar features regarding their realisation and functions. The results of this comparative analysis will show to what extent other varieties of English may be attributed to the changes in the intonation system of the modern RP. The present study is unique in that the material for the comparative analysis of the functions of the HRT includes recordings of spontaneous speech of the speakers of modern English accents. This study is relevant due to the growing interest in the modern changes in the intonation systems of different modern English dialects. The results of the comparative analysis show whether these changes can be considered universal across different English dialects.Methodology and sources. The material for the present study includes audio samples of spontaneous speech represented by dialogues between native speakers of Standard British English, Australian English and Belfast English. The samples containing the HRT have been acoustically analysed. The lexical and communicative context of the samples have been evaluated in order to determine the functions of the phonetic contour.Results and discussion. One of the main findings of this study is a new function of the HRT in RP that has not been found in the classical descriptions of the accent. The acoustic analysis of the realisations of the HRT has also revealed a number of similar features between the modern accents of English analysed in this study.Conclusion. Many changes taking place in modern varieties of English have been caused by globalisation. Even though RP accent is considered to be the standard accent of British English, it is also subject to change.

Nasal coarticulation is when the lowering of the velum for a nasal consonant co-occurs with the production of an adjacent vowel, causing the vowel to become (at least partially) nasalized. In the case of anticipatory nasal coarticulation, enhanced coarticulatory magnitude on the vowel facilitates the identification of an upcoming nasal coda consonant. However, nasalization also affects the acoustic properties of the vowel, including formant frequencies. Thus, while anticipatory nasalization may help facilitate perception of a nasal coda consonant, it may at the same time cause difficulty in the correct identification of preceding vowels. Prior work suggests that the temporal degree of nasal coarticulation is greater in American English (US) than British English (UK), yet the perceptual consequences of these differences have not been explored. The current study investigates perceptual confusions for oral and nasalized vowels in US and UK TTS voices by US and UK listeners. We use TTS voices, in particular, to explore these perceptual consequences during human-computer interaction, which is increasing due to the rise of speech-enabled devices. Listeners heard words with oral and nasal codas produced by US and UK voices, masked with noise, and made lexical identifications from a set of options varying in vowel and coda contrasts. We find the strongest effect of speaker dialect on accurate word selection: overall accuracy is highest for UK Oral Coda words (83%) and lower for US Oral Coda words (67%); the lowest accuracy was for words with Nasal Codas in both dialects (UK Nasal = 61%; US Nasal = 60%). Error patterns differed across dialects: both listener groups made more errors in identifying nasal codas in words produced in UK English than those produced in US English. Yet, the rate of errors in identifying the quality of nasalized vowels was similarly lower than that of oral vowels across both varieties. We discuss the implications of these results for cross-dialectal coarticulatory variation, human-computer interaction, and perceptually driven sound change.

The purpose of the research was to examine the challenges in educational leadership. The methods employed for the study has been an exploratory research design with deductive approach and used a qualitative data as secondary sources. Sampling is carried out with a systematic review of those published and unpublished data and it focused on a literature review of 35 peer- reviewed journals, books, articles and research works as a longitudinal or time series of mainly 5 years' data (2018 to 2022). To meet the objectives of the study a systematic review with that of a generalization of the existing approaches employed and the research findings figured out the leadership styles in education is different from other sectors as there are many stakeholders in the field which strive for quality leadership, however most importantly the transformational styles of leadership plays a predominate role to others as it encourages both the principal and the staff jointly to set the institution goals and endeavor to meet the performance. At a concluding remark, in this 21st century organizations mostly require a good leadership that characterized by situations, behaviors, transformational and servant leadership styles as these encourage the participation of employees or followers which also encourage ethics and work for mutually success. As a future direction, the author recommended that more of in-depth and field work research which makes a survey of institutional staff, students, parents of students, education bureau and quality or standard control office have to be taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In every conflict situation, language is considered as a driving tool for communication regardless of the type of language, which is being used. Language is used to disseminate information from one person to the other, especially in a situation of crisis to update the population on how events are unfolding. That is why looking at the population involved in the conflict it was deemed necessary to use Pidgin English also as a tool of communication in resolving the conflict in Southern Cameroons. The objective of resolving a conflict is to have peace, thereby promoting the absence of war, fear, violence and so on and in the other hand promote peaceful coexistence among a people. Many avenues have been exploited from the consortium to the Major National Dialogue with the absence of the articulation of Pidgin English, which is a language for wider communication. The purpose of this study is to investigate the importance of teaching pidgin English as a communication tool. Data for the study was collected both quantitatively and qualitatively from a population of 125 respondents and 35 informants and Pidgin programs in Ndefcam and Afrique Nouvelle radio stations respectively and using excepts in Pidgin English from the speeches of Prime Minister Dr. Dion Ngute and that of Mancho Bibixy. Using Aristotle (1991) on Rhetoric: A theory of Civic Discourse, the results obtained show that Cameroon Pidgin English is more natural and a unifying language, which grows in the eyes of all Cameroonians and transcends to all geographical, social, economic, psychology and political boundaries to all Cameroonians. It is a language for wider communication and it can be taught and used as a communication tool in a way in resolving the conflict in Southern Cameroons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For educators committed to promoting social equity, the question of how to address dialect hegemony is increasingly important. While linguists have long accepted the concept of dialect equality, educators have struggled with the issue, sparking a history of controversy and debate underscoring larger social issues of diversity and equity. For decades, educators have struggled with the most fundamental questions of when, how, and towards what purpose to address linguistic diversity. Drawing from the literature, debates, and practices in the U.S., this article examines the evolution of educational responses to the interrelated issues of disrespect for stigmatised dialects, expectations for Standard English in academic and professional settings, and students' developing sense of self and authentic voice. Different pedagogies for addressing linguist diversity are reviewed and compared, including code-switching, literary analysis, and code-meshing. These pedagogies build on each other and are moving in the direction of greater alignment, with important considerations for educators who seek to broaden their understanding of linguistic diversity as part of an overarching commitment to equity and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A physiological comparative analysis of coarticulatory vowel nasalization in American and Standard Southern British English. • Greater vowel nasalization and tongue tip lenition in American English. • The velum gesture was stable across both dialects. • A trade-off exists between increased vowel nasalization and tongue tip lenition in both dialects. • The greater nasalization in the vowel is caused by a shift of the VN boundary later in time. • Coda reduction is one of the physiological mechanisms responsible for the onset of diachronic vowel nasalization. The diachronic change by which coarticulatory nasalization increases in VN (vowel-nasal) sequences has been modelled as an earlier alignment of the velum combined with oral gesture weakening of N. The model was tested by comparing American (USE) and Standard Southern British English (BRE) based on the assumption that this diachronic change is more advanced in USE. Real-time MRI data was collected from 16 USE and 27 BRE adult speakers producing monosyllables with coda /Vn, Vnd, Vnz/. For USE, nasalization was greater in V, less in N, and there was greater tongue tip lenition than for BRE. The dialects showed a similar stability of the velum gesture and a trade-off between vowel nasalization and tongue tip lenition. Velum alignment was not earlier in USE. Instead, a closer approximation of the time of the tongue tip peak velocity towards the tongue tip maximum for USE caused a shift in the acoustic boundary within VN towards N, giving the illusion that the velum gesture has an earlier alignment in USE. It is suggested that coda reduction which targets the tongue tip more than the velum is a principal physiological mechanism responsible for the onset of diachronic vowel nasalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an investigation of the extent to which Heine's (2003) mechanisms of grammaticalization—erosion (phonetic reduction), decategorialization (loss of morpho-syntactic properties), desemanticization (semantic bleaching) and extension (context expansion)—are evident in the variation of negative question tags in three varieties of British English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside, and Salford. The study considers the variation in terms of three types of variant—full (e.g., isn't it), reduced (e.g., int it), and coalesced (e.g., innit)—which each represent a stage in the erosion process. Quantitative variationist analysis of informal conversational data shows that erosion of negative tags occurs to different degrees in each of the three communities. The locality with the least tag erosion—Tyneside—displays particularly strong social stratification in the variation that suggests a change in progress led by younger men. However, there is little to no evidence of decategorialization in the negative tags, nor does variation in tag meaning correlate with phonetic form in a consistent manner. The results therefore suggest that erosion and desemanticization/extension do not occur in lockstep as these constructions grammaticalize, while decategorialization occurs at a later stage in the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foot–strut vowel split, which has its origins in 17th century English, is notable for its absence from the speech of Northerners in England, where stood–stud remain homophones – both are pronounced with the same vowel /ʊ/. The present study analyses the speech of 122 speakers from Manchester in the North West of England. Although the vast majority of speakers exhibit no distinction between the foot and strut lexical sets in minimal-pair production and judgement tests, vowel height is correlated with socio-economic status: the higher the social class, the lower the strut vowel. Surprisingly, statistical models indicate that vowel class is a significant predictor of foot–strut in Manchester. This means that, for a speech community without the split, there remains an effect in the expected direction: strut vowels are lower than foot vowels in the vowel space. We suggest that co-articulatory effects of surrounding consonants explain this instrumental difference, as they have significant lowering/heightening effects on the acoustics but are not fully captured by our statistical model. We argue that the perplexing nature of the historical split can be partially accounted for in this data, as the frequency of co-occurring phonetic environments is notably different in foot than in strut, resulting in cumulative effects of co-articulation. We also present evidence of age grading which suggests that middle class speakers may develop a phonetic distinction as they age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various technical terms concerning the internal structure of English words refer to the fact that parts of the original version of a word have been cut off or lost: aphesis, clipping, aphaeresis, elision, and many others. This paper focuses on the role of aphesis and aphaeresis in Late Modern English (LModE) dialects. The paper's main aim is a close-up investigation of the specific conditioning factors. Given that aphesis and aphaeresis have been particularly relevant in English dialects and that they are therefore more than an aspect of style and colloquial speech, the paper will discuss the linguistic, in particular, the phonological/phonotactic and morphological rules involved, thus filling an obvious gap in the state of the art. In contrast to most previous publications, this study is corpus-based, with all data coming from EDD Online 3.0, the new digitised version of Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that all Early Modern English dialects may be fitted into a simple system of classification (types A through D) based upon the relative heights of their long front vowels. Research into this period has always focused more on the trajectories of individual phonemes than on how those phonemes might have fitted together at any given time. It is argued here that changes throughout the vowel space typically occurred in bundles, and that these bundles of changes manifested themselves into discrete sequential stages. The number of vowel systems consistent with the evidence is really very small. Relying mostly on primary sources and summaries of primary sources, I classify for the first time dozens of English and foreign grammarians and turn them into witnesses for the specific stages above. Selected grammarians’ Continental vowel symbols (a wholly neglected resource) are diagrammed into clear phonetic snapshots of each stage. These symbols also illuminate trajectories. For example, while the proto-IPA phonetic alphabets of certain English grammarians show FACE raising from Continental to , French grammarians’ symbols actually specify the steps: from “almost” to to ([æ:, ɛ:, e:]). Dates for these changes are noted with unusual care. All in all, the facts and views advanced here support the traditional timeline established for the major sound changes, although many fresh details are added, including evidence for an unreported phase in the late 1500s in which ME /ai/ was fully distinct as /ɛ:/ in popular London English. Fresh evidence is also produced about the dissolution of the MEAT phoneme, the origins of THOUGHT monophthonging, and the development of START–BATH and NORTH–CLOTH lengthening.

Situated at the extreme south west periphery of the British Isles, Cornwall's territorial isolation bred cultural isolation which has been construed and reconstrued over time, giving Cornwall a distinctive cultural flavour. Initially borne out by facts of geography, Cornwall, or 'Kernow', experiences a dynamic yet enduring peripheral existence (see Payton, 1992). This article explores how Anglo-Cornish dialect words can be used as a means of identity construction, that is, how a Cornish way of speaking is used to construct identities associated with a Cornish way of being. I hypothesise that those who desire greater Cornish autonomy are more likely to use Anglo-Cornish dialect lexis than those who favour further socio-cultural assimilation with England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Anglian English was the first British variety of English to be subject to dialectological scrutiny using sociolinguistic techniques (Trudgill, 1974, and his subsequent work) and since then has been subject to only sporadic investigation (e.g. Britain, 1991, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Kingston, 2000; Straw, 2006; Amos, 2011; Potter, 2012, 2018; Butcher, 2015). Recent research has suggested that, in those few locations that have been investigated, East Anglian English is gradually losing some of its traditional dialect features, in favour of forms from the South East more generally. Kingston (2000), Britain (2014a) and Potter (2018) all found, for example, a rather steep decline in the use of East Anglia's traditional third-person present-tense zero. Furthermore, we are aware of the arrival into East Anglia of linguistic innovations from the South East of England, such as TH fronting (Trudgill, 1988; Britain, 2005; Potter, 2012) and /l/ vocalisation (Johnson & Britain, 2007; Potter, 2014), but we only know about their success in a few parts of the region – Norwich, East Suffolk and the Fens. Since Trudgill's investigations across East Anglia in the 1970s, however (e.g. Trudgill & Foxcroft, 1978), and despite a few multilocality studies (Britain, 1991, 2014a; Potter, 2018) no research has been able to provide a picture of the state of the traditional dialect across the whole region. We have therefore only a patchy understanding of the extent to which traditional dialect obsolescence, dialect levelling and innovation diffusion have impacted the dialect landscape of this region as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialects in the South East of England are very often perceived as one homogenous mass, without much regional variation. Rosewarne introduced the notion of Estuary English and defined it as 'variety of modified regional speech [ . . . ] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation' (Rosewarne, 1984). However, studies such as Przedlacka (2001) and Torgersen & Kerswill (2004) have shown that, at least on the phonetic level, distinct varieties exist. Nevertheless, very few studies have investigated language use in the South East and even fewer in the county of Sussex. It is often claimed that there is no distinct Sussex dialect (Coates, 2010: 29). Even in the earliest works describing the dialect of the area (Wright, 1903) there are suggestions that it cannot be distinguished from Hampshire in the west and Kent in the east. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent to which "traditional" dialect lexis (TDL) attested in the Survey of English Dialects can be found in a contemporary online context virtually located in the North East of England, one of the most dialectally distinct parts of the country. The findings suggest that the rate of survival is perhaps higher than might be imagined, given the conclusions of previous research on lexical attrition in regional varieties of English in the UK. The article also shows the affordances of corpus-based dialect study, illustrating how access to the discursive contexts in which TDL occurs can offer insights into meaning and usage, and give access to the metalinguistic reflections of dialect users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pronunciation of the bath vowel is a salient feature of English varieties of the southwest of England, yet neither the status of the trap–bath split in traditional dialects nor ongoing change today is well understood. After reviewing the existing literature, we investigate the quality and length of low unrounded vowels in Bristol English on the basis of sociolinguistic interviews with twenty-five speakers. The picture suggested by these data is complex: there is evidence for a traditional length-only trap–bath split, for a length and backness split diffusing from the east and for a merger diffusing from the north. Some of these changes involve lexical diffusion, especially with loanwords and other distinctive lexical groups. Overall, the rich and contradictory data speak to the contested sociolinguistic status of these variables and to the need to examine individual patterns of variation closely to gain a full understanding of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using comparative sociolinguistic methods, we probe the underlying mechanisms governing the variation between possessive determiners, my bike, and the definite article, the bike, in possessive contexts in two mainstream English varieties (Canadian and British English, N = 6,217). Results indicate the is stable and pervasive, occurring approximately 30 percent of the time with personal domain possessed nouns. For some nouns, e.g. dog and cat, the occurs over 75 percent of the time. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary records possessive the as chiefly British, while Quirk et al. (1985: 271–272) observe that only low-status men use it; however, we find no difference between the UK and Canada, nor a significant gender or education effect in either dataset. When we model the variation between forms according to conceptions of ownership, we find an underlying system for encoding communal possession that transcends social categories and dialect: the more that possession is communal, the more the is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to find the phonological errors on segmental level involving selected consonant sounds which are produced by Kimakunduchi speaking English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Zanzibar. Specifically, the study sought to provide the evidence of cross-linguistic influence involving phonological transfer on segmental level. The study employed two sampling techniques: stratified and random sampling. The data for this study were collected from three secondary schools located at Makunduchi district in Unguja Island - Makunduchi, Kusini, and Kizimkazi secondary schools - using the oral interview and observation. The data were analyzed with the use of both qualitative and quantitative research approach. The study was guided by the transfer theory which was one of the components of Selinker's (1992: 209) interlanguage theory. The findings revealed that, to a large extent, native Kimakunduchi speakers of EFL tended to transfer the sounds existing in their L1, or even in Kiswahili, into English. The transfer was done because of the nonexistence of the particular sound in the students' native language or because of the discrepancy of spelling and pronunciation in English language. The study concludes that an articulation of vowels is more complex compared to consonants because of their absence in the first language (L1) or because of the confusion of spelling and pronunciation in English as FL. Thus, the study recommended that serious measures should be taken from both education holders to make sure that the learners could be able to pronounce English phonemes/words correctly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to explore library users' desired service quality levels on the twenty-two core LibQUAL+ items. Specifically, we explored similarities and differences in users' desired library service quality levels across user groups (i.e., undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty), across geographic locations (i.e., institutions using the American English version of the protocol, as against institutions using the British English language version); and across time (i.e., the years 2004-6, during which time the protocol was not altered). The sample consisted of 297,158 LibQUAL+ participants from the years 2004, 2005, and 2006, who completed either the American English (nAE = 227,808) or the British English (nBE = 69,350) version of the protocol. Here, the language version was used as a marker for whether the 297,158 respondents were located in North America or Europe. The heterogeneity of user desires across disciplines was also evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and contextualizes placenames on Palmerston Island, a small Pacific island populated by around 50 descendants of a mixed-origin group of settlers in the 1860s. The inhabitants today are monolingual speakers of a dialect that has been described variously as an English dialect or an English-based creole. I show that Palmerston English placenames are rarely complex or detailed descriptive names, and this can be accounted for by the small, isolated and densely-networked nature of the population. The isolation and transience of the community may also contribute to the high number of placenames that index people’s names or other locations.

Purpose: In African American English and Southern White English, we examined whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) overtly mark tense and agreement structures at lower percentages than typically developing (TD) controls, while also examining the effects of dialect, structure, and scoring approach. Method: One hundred six kindergartners completed 4 dialectinformed probes targeting 8 tense and agreement structures. The 3 scoring approaches varied in the treatment of nonmainstream English forms and responses coded as Other (i.e., those not obligating the target structure). The unmodified approach counted as correct only mainstream overt forms out of all responses, the modified approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms and zero forms out of all responses, and the strategic approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms out of all responses except those coded as Other. Results: With the probes combined and separated, the unmodified and strategic scoring approaches showed lower percentages of overt marking by the SLI groups than by the TD groups; this was not always the case for the modified scoring approach. With strategic scoring and dialect-specific cut scores, classification accuracy (SLI vs. TD) was highest for the 8 individual structures considered together, the past tense probe, and the past tense probe irregular items. Dialect and structure effects and dialect differences in classification accuracy also existed. Conclusions: African American English- and Southern White English-speaking kindergartners with SLI overtly mark tense and agreement at lower percentages than same dialect-speaking TD controls. Strategic scoring of dialectinformed probes targeting tense and agreement should be pursued in research and clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the dialects and folklore of the south-western peninsula of England against their wider linguistic and cultural background. Topics discussed include information on the story collected by Alfred Williams in the Vale of White Horse in Berkshire; discussions on the Williams' views on the “Killing the Devil” phrase; and the information on the childhood folklores in the early years of the twentieth century.

The article explores the meaning of the word, "Foal-Melts" used by different author in their works in different sense. It discusses the meaning of word "Foal-Melts" in the dialects of Greek, along with information on some authors views on milt as a peece of fleshe which resembleth the Milt of an Oxe. It mentions the meaning of the word in the Joseph Wright's book, "English Dialect Dictionary."

This paper sheds light on the structure and lexicographic value of the Supplement of Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, published as part of the last volume in 1905. With its nearly 8,000 entries, the Supplement amounts to ca. 11% of the complete dictionary. The present study, based on EDD Online, argues that the Supplement, apart from its quantity, is also a valuable addition to the dictionary proper for reasons of the quality of the entries. The analysis focuses on the questions of why Wright marked some of the entries of the Supplement as 'not sufficiently authorised' and others as more creditable. The final result of the study is that Wright was not only guided in his selection of reliable entries by the interpretation of his sources, but also by his competence and experience as a philologist and native dialect speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a preliminary approach to the colonial element of Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (1896-1905). Drawing on the electronic version of the dictionary that has recently been launched, it examines the entries which refer to the colonial usage of words documented in British dialects, considering the links that Wright made with Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, and New Zealand, as well as the isolated evidence recorded on items used in South Africa and the West Indies. The aim is twofold. Firstly, lexicographical, as this paper explores the role of the colonial material by ascertaining the proportion of words that are cited from the colonies, and analysing the treatment they are given: attention is paid to their lexicographical function, labels, and the evidence provided to support their inclusion. Secondly, I argue that, despite the narrow coverage of Australian, Canadian, Newfoundland and New Zealand Englishes, the data may add to our understanding of the lexical links between British varieties of English and colonial speech of the late 1800s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the time-varying acoustics of laterals and their adjacent vowels in Manchester and Liverpool English. Generalized additive mixed-models (GAMMs) are used for quantifying time-varying formant data, which allows the modelling of non-linearities in acoustic time series while simultaneously modelling speaker and word level variability in the data. These models are compared to single time-point analyses of lateral and vowel targets in order to determine what analysing formant dynamics can tell about dialect variation in speech acoustics. The results show that lateral targets exhibit robust differences between some positional contexts and also between dialects, with smaller differences present in vowel targets. The time-varying analysis shows that dialect differences frequently occur globally across the lateral and adjacent vowels. These results suggest a complex relationship between lateral and vowel targets and their coarticulatory dynamics, which problematizes straightforward claims about the realization of laterals and their adjacent vowels. These findings are further discussed in terms of hypotheses about positional and sociophonetic variation. In doing so, the utility of GAMMs for analysing time-varying multi-segmental acoustic signals is demonstrated, and the significance of the results for accounts of English lateral typology is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the social meaning of post‐nasal [ɡ]‐presence, a dialectal variant characteristic of North Western varieties of British English that is claimed to have local prestige. Using a matched‐guise approach, this study reveals the absence of a community‐wide norm with respect to how [ŋɡ] clusters are evaluated as well as diachronic change in the level of awareness speakers have of this variable. Older subjects are not sensitive to the dialectal status of [ŋɡ] and as a result do not evaluate it differently from [ŋ]; the local form is more accessible to evaluation among younger subjects, for whom the northern indexicality is stronger, but at this incipient stage of social meaning there is no agreement on what the content of this evaluation should be. The results speak to questions regarding the development of shared norms, their role in the speech community, and the granularity of social meaning more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution presents a study of collocations in a subset of the EPTIC corpus, which encompasses comparable discourse samples in English produced under a variety of communicative constraints (oral and written, original and mediated, native and non-native). Results are interpreted against the backdrop of Lanstyák and Heltai's (2012) "constrained language" hypothesis, according to which translations, on a par with other varieties of English produced in language contact settings, share linguistic features that set them apart from monolingual native production. Evidence of such constraints is observed in this study with respect to collocational patterns defined by Mutual Information values. Findings are discussed in the light of the cognitive constraints characterising the different language production tasks under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to offer, within an intra- and interdisciplinary approach, a further analysis of the formal and informal contexts in which the English language was used in India during the British colonisation, highlighting the favourable conditions these contexts created for the formation of pidginised varieties of English, such as Butler Pidgin English or Boxwāllā(h) Pidgin English (Kachru 1994). Substantial elements of a wider picture of social, cultural, political and commercial contact have been taken into account along with the analysis of old written sources. Indeed, both official records of the East Indian Company (e.g. dispatches about political strategies and language policy) and merchants' correspondence have been studied in order to understand how we can say something about oral communication through written sources (Rambø 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates syntactic theory and variationist analysis in an investigation of the variation between English not-negation (I don’t have any money), no-negation (I have no money) and negative concord (I don’t have no money). Using corpora of three varieties of UK English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside and Salford respectively, I test two theoretical accounts of the variation. Account 1 applies Zeijlstra’s (2004) agreement-based theory of negative concord to all three variants, such that n-words (e.g. nobody) which feature in no-negation and negative concord are not inherently negative but agree with a negative operator in a higher NegP. Under Account 2, no-negation is instead derived via negative-marking within the DP followed by movement to the higher NegP for sentential scope (Kayne 1998; Svenonius 2002; Zeijlstra 2011). These accounts, together with observations about the raising properties of functional versus lexical verbs, lead to the formulation of different hypotheses about the distribution of variants in speech according to verb type, verb phrase complexity, and the discourse status of the propositions expressed. Results of distributional analysis and mixed-effects modelling support Account 2 of the variation over Account 1, suggesting structural identity between not-negation and negative concord (in contrast to no-negation). This supports Tubau’s (2016) proposal that English negative indefinites have two distinct structures: one in which negation is marked syntactically in the DP and one in which they agree with a syntactically-higher NegP.

Conveying something to others with the help of exchanging of information by speaking is actually a method of pragmatics. The sense we get from the communication contains verbal and non-verbal essentials which show a discrepancy in line with the perspective to the rapport flanked by speakers as well as to a number of other societal aspects. Its vibrant expansion formulates English a global tongue (language) which fastens nations everywhere in the world. Consequently, English can be looked upon as the general spotlight of every English speaking man and woman that does not carve up either a linguistic or a civilization. In fact, people speak English in different situations & elevations of correspondence or intercommunication. Thus English speaking people ought to know several pragmatic basics as to keep ones away from misapprehensions at the time of communication. However, the maximum usage of English has need of a pragmatic proficiency that would assist all those aspirants who learn or speak this language as L2 (Second language). Thomas explained pragmatic ability like this that "the competence to examine language within a cognizant mode." (Brown, 2007). So the Pragmatic competence passes on towards the capability in order to understand, assemble expressions which are correct as well as suitable to the societal as well as civilizing state of affairs exchanging of information by speaking takes place. Pragmatics competence ought to be a foremost target for those people who are ESL (English as Second language) teachers, which at the same time characterize an exigent task also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color description is one of the fundamental problems of image understanding. One of the popular ways to represent colors is by means of color names. Most existing work on color names focuses on only the eleven basic color terms of the English language. This could be limiting the discriminative power of these representations, and representations based on more color names are expected to perform better. However, there exists no clear strategy to choose additional color names. We collect a dataset of 28 additional color names. To ensure that the resulting color representation has high discriminative power we propose a method to order the additional color names according to their complementary nature with the basic color names. This allows us to compute color name representations with high discriminative power of arbitrary length. In the experiments we show that these new color name descriptors outperform the existing color name descriptor on the task of visual tracking, person re-identification and image classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the use of the word "dare" as a transitive verb in the early modern English language. Topics include changes in the use of the word over time, the appearance of the word in English dialects, and the end of of its usage to mean "to frighten."

On the occasion of Shakespeare's death 400 years ago and given his affinity to the "common people", the question is raised of the survival of his vocabulary in English dialect words as represented by Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (EDD; 1898-1905), which is still the best source on the areal distribution of dialect in the UK and overseas from 1700 to 1904, with some likelihood of validity even today. With the help of software recently launched (EDD Online), this paper counts the Shakespeare words that survived in English dialects, and records their distribution across works, time and place. The results generally testify to their ubiquity in the dialects of the UK and most English-speaking overseas countries, but also reveal reliefs across historical periods and countries. As a by-effect, the paper familiarises readers with some of the fascinating research possibilities provided by the EDD Online interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attunement to native phonological categories and the specification of relevant phonological features in the lexicon occur early in development for monolingual and monodialectal speakers. However, few studies have investigated whether and how early exposure to two dialects of a language might influence the development of phonological categories, especially when a phonemic contrast exists only in one dialect. This study compared perceptual sensitivity to mispronunciations in phonemic vowel length in Australian English adult listeners with and without early exposure to another English dialect that did not have this contrast. The results showed that, while both mono- and bi-dialectal groups were sensitive to mispronunciations in vowel length, the bi-dialectal adults were more likely to accept a mispronunciation in vowel length compared to mono-dialectal adults. The bi-dialectal group accepted mispronunciations in vowel length more than in vowel height and backness. These results suggest that the bi-dialectal Australian English adults may employ a more flexible vowel length category for spoken word processing compared to mono-dialectal adults. The findings reveal a complex influence of early exposure to another dialect on the development of phonological categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are suggestions that King Alfred's legendary literary renaissance may have been a reaction to the efforts of the neighbouring kingdom of Mercia. According to Asser, Alfred assembled a group of literary scholars from this rival Mercian tradition at his court. But it is not clear what early literary activities these scholars could have been involved in to justify their pre-Alfredian reputation. This article tries to outline the historical and literary evidence for early Mercian text production and the importance of this 'other' early literary corpus. What is our current knowledge of Mercian text production and the political and literary relationship of Mercia with Canterbury? What was the relationship of Alfred's educational movement with its Mercian forerunner? Why is modern scholarship better informed about Alfred's movement than any Mercian rival culture? If our current knowledge of this area is insufficient for the writing of a literary history of Mercia, a provisional list of texts and bibliography, published electronically for convenient updating, may prove useful in the meantime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports on a study investigating whether the presence of a foreign accent negatively affects credibility judgments. Previous research suggests that trivia statements recorded by speakers with a foreign accent are judged as less credible than when recorded by native speakers due to increased cognitive demands (Lev-Ari and Keysar in J Exp Soc Psychol 46(6):1093-1096, 2010. doi:). In the present study, 194 French- and 183 Swiss-German-speaking participants were asked to judge the truthfulness of 48 trivia statements recorded by speakers with French, Swiss-German, Italian and English accents by means of an online survey. Before submitting the survey, raters were asked to attribute given labels-including adjectives referring to credibility-to a language group aiming to elicit raters' stereotypes in a direct manner. Although the results of this task indicate that the raters do hold different stereotypes concerning credibility of speech communities, foreign accent does not seem to have an impact on credibility ratings in the Swiss context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the perceptions of error gravity by native and non-native teachers of English in a Chinese context. Drawing on the data collected from a questionnaire, we examined the practices of error evaluation by 22 native English-speaking (NES) teachers and 25 non-native English-speaking (NNES) teachers. Participants were asked to identify student errors based on a random selection of fifty compositions written by Chinese university students, correct the errors of the sentences, and indicate which errors they considered the most serious. General comparison of error evaluation between the two groups of teachers reveals that NES teachers are generally more tolerant of student errors and rely more on intelligibility rather than rule infringement. An in-depth analysis of these findings suggests that these differences are closely connected with the participants' cultural belief, educational background, teaching style, and English proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the use of anglicisms in Norwegian University students' speech. Topics discussed include the influence of the English language at the global level, the World Englishes sociolinguistic field of enquiry which investigates the contexts under which different dialects of English have emerged, and concerns over the spread of anglicisms being a manifestation of linguistic purism.

Apparent time analysis has revealed that the Tyneside FACE vowel is the site of two intersecting trends: levelling towards the supra-northern monophthong as well as the gradual incursion of the southern standard closing diphthong. This article investigates the participation of individual speakers across their life-span in these ongoing changes in the FACE vowel. We report on a small-scale panel sample of six speakers who were recorded in 1971 and again, 42 years later, in 2013. The analysis probes the stability of individual speakers' grammars, relying on longitudinal ethnographic analysis in the community as well as insights gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews about the speakers' socio-demographic trajectory and their presentations of self. The article contributes to the growing body of panel research that aims to determine the scope and the limits of linguistic malleability across speakers' life histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most widespread form for neutral "yes" in the Survey of English Dialects is not yea or yes, but aye. It is used not only in the North and Midlands, but also in areas of the South of England. It is a feature of Scottish English, and is familiar from government in many English-speaking countries. We also find the aye-like ayuh in Northeast America. "Aye" appears suddenly about 1575 and is "exceedingly common" around 1600; it is initially written I and its origin, like yes, is uncertain. Ay is also found in Old Frisian, as well as Sater Frisian today (öäi, a'äi etc.). This study reviews a number of proposed etymologies, examining which can account for the occurrence or development of ay(e) in both languages. Based on a wider study of change in forms of "yes" and "no" in English, the author argues that aye–ay is a parallel development of interjection + particle. The study also suggests functional and phonological overlap with the pronominal echo I in English, but not Frisian, with the vocalic form of the pronoun and diphthongisation in the "Great Vowel Shift", accounting for the popularity and spelling I of "aye" around 1600. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All the major Burns bibliographies give separate entries for Burns editions published in Belfast and Dublin in 1787, but most of the bibliographers have also commented that both Belfast and Dublin copies appear to be from the same typesetting. This note reexamines the evidence on this question, both from bibliographical make-up and from the distinctive imported French paper used in all copies, confirming that there was only one Irish edition in 1787, marketed from the beginning in both the north and south, though all the copies were printed in Belfast by James Magee. It was Magee's shop that printed, not only the sheets, but the variant title-page, for the copies issued with the imprint of William Gilbert of Dublin. A brief conclusion discusses possible reasons for scholarly reluctance to recognise the bibliographical identity of the two issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and contextualizes placenames on Palmerston Island, a small Pacific island populated by around 50 descendants of a mixed-origin group of settlers in the 1860s. The inhabitants today are monolingual speakers of a dialect that has been described variously as an English dialect or an English-based creole. I show that Palmerston English placenames are rarely complex or detailed descriptive names, and this can be accounted for by the small, isolated and densely-networked nature of the population. The isolation and transience of the community may also contribute to the high number of placenames that index people's names or other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several studies it is highlighted that the early acquisition of a language in the home results in phonetic and phonological benefits, and that it is not uncommon for early learners to achieve native-like pronunciation in their heritage language. However, most of these studies have been carried out with bilinguals. The present contribution aims at extending the research focus to trilingual teens, and more specifically to Spanish heritage speakers (HSs), schooled mainly in English, and taking part in a French immersion programme. How do they manage the task of learning a third phonological system? We set out to explore whether and to what extent these sequential trilinguals can produce native-like speech in all of their languages. To this end, we recorded a group of Spanish HSs while completing three picture-naming tasks (in English, Spanish, and French), which led to the production of monosyllabic and disyllabic words with a voiceless stop in stressed onset position. Our results show that they tend to produce monolingual-like stops in their dominant languages, Spanish and English, but seem to fail to do so in French. In our discussion, we resort to language dominance and context of acquisition to shed light on our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]