Target Language Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Statistical machine translation (SMT) models require bilingual corpora for training, and these corpora are often multilingual with parallel text in multiple languages simultaneously. We introduce an active learning task of adding a new... more

Statistical machine translation (SMT) models require bilingual corpora for training, and these corpora are often multilingual with parallel text in multiple languages simultaneously. We introduce an active learning task of adding a new language to an existing multilingual set of parallel text and constructing high quality MT systems, from each language in the collection into this new target language. We show that adding a new language using active learning to the EuroParl corpus provides a significant improvement compared to a random sentence selection baseline. We also provide new highly effective sentence selection methods that improve AL for phrase-based SMT in the multilingual and single language pair setting. * Thanks to James Peltier for systems support for our experiments.

As part of the JANUS speech-to-speech translation project 5 , we have developed a t r anslation system that successfully parses full utterances and is e ective in parsing spontaneous speech, which is often syntactically ill-formed. The... more

As part of the JANUS speech-to-speech translation project 5 , we have developed a t r anslation system that successfully parses full utterances and is e ective in parsing spontaneous speech, which is often syntactically ill-formed. The system is concept-based, meaning that it has no explicit notion of a sentence but rather views each input utterance a s a p otential sequence o f c oncepts. Generation is performed b y t r anslating each of these concepts in whole phrases into the target language, consulting lookup tables only for low-level concepts such as numbers. Currently, we are working on an appointment scheduling task, parsing English, German, Spanish, and Korean input and producing output in those same languages and also Japanese.

The making of a bilingual dictionary is a complicated process because it includes data acquisition and data analysis of more than one language, i.e. the source language and the target language. It is further complicated when it involves... more

The making of a bilingual dictionary is a complicated process because it includes data acquisition and data analysis of more than one language, i.e. the source language and the target language. It is further complicated when it involves the translation of a monolingual dictionary into a bilingual one. This research will analyse selected address forms in the fourth edition of

Different languages map semantic elements of spatial relations onto different lexical and syntactic units. These crosslinguistic differences raise important questions for language devel-0010-0277/$ -see front matter Ó (S. Allen).

In grammars and textbooks used to teach German as a foreign language, the chapters devoted to the "Funktionsverbgefüge" (light verb constructions) are based on data that are mainly obtained by introspection. German dictionaries also often... more

In grammars and textbooks used to teach German as a foreign language, the chapters devoted to the "Funktionsverbgefüge" (light verb constructions) are based on data that are mainly obtained by introspection. German dictionaries also often seem not to be based on empirical data. Through the example of kommen (to come), the present paper aims at showing a few new and decisive elements that empirical, strictly corpus-driven research, by means of the new digital corpora, makes it possible to highlight. The purpose is to achieve a description that is more precise and more faithful to the target language in foreign languages teaching.

Is reading for translation equal to reading in monolingual contexts? Horizontal/parallel theories of translation propose that normal reading and reading for translation differ because the translator engages in partial reformulation while... more

Is reading for translation equal to reading in monolingual contexts? Horizontal/parallel theories of translation propose that normal reading and reading for translation differ because the translator engages in partial reformulation while reading for translating the source text. In contrast, vertical/serial theories assume that the translators first extract the meaning of the message, and only then they proceed to reformulate it. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical and syntactic properties of the target language (TL) while translators read for repetition or for translation. On-line sentence comprehension was affected by the lexical frequency of words in the TL (Experiment 1) and the syntactic congruency between the source language (SL) and TL sentences (Experiment 2). However, the influence of lexical and syntactic TL properties was restricted to the reading for translation task. According to our results, the horizontal view of translation includes code-to-code links between the SL and TL involving at least the lexical and syntactic level of processing.

In this article, we assess the value of VRoma for Latin language learning. In particular, we discuss three exercises that we developed which combine Latin language and Roman culture in order to help students reinforce their Latin skills... more

In this article, we assess the value of VRoma for Latin language learning. In particular, we discuss three exercises that we developed which combine Latin language and Roman culture in order to help students reinforce their Latin skills and gain a more in-depth understanding of ancient Roman society. Daily journals and evaluations of the assignments provided an assessment of student motivation and gave us information concerning students' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of working in the VRoma MOO. Transcripts and e-mail responses, both composed in Latin, allowed us to assess both the quality of students' interaction in the target language and their understanding of cultural and linguistic structures. Our studies have shown that by combining visual arts and cultural data with the capacity for real time communication in Latin, VRoma provides a unique opportunity for students to be immersed in language and culture simultaneously. Such an opportunity is not only useful for developing students' language skills but also for giving them a more sophisticated understanding of the ways that language and culture are integrated.

The primary objective of this study was to investigate empirically whether using an interpreter to conduct neuropsychological testing of monolingual Spanish speakers affects test scores. Participants included 40 neurologically normal... more

The primary objective of this study was to investigate empirically whether using an interpreter to conduct neuropsychological testing of monolingual Spanish speakers affects test scores. Participants included 40 neurologically normal Spanish-speakers with limited English proficiency, ages 18-65 years (M= 39.7, SD =13.9), who completed the Vocabulary, Similarities, Block

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 schools for secondary education offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL... more

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 schools for secondary education offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL teachers, however, are non-native speakers of the target language, and do not have a professional background in language pedagogy. How, then, can these teachers effectively

Over the past couple of decades, research has established that infants are sensitive to the predominant stress pattern of their native language. However, the degree to which the stress pattern shapes infants' language development has yet... more

Over the past couple of decades, research has established that infants are sensitive to the predominant stress pattern of their native language. However, the degree to which the stress pattern shapes infants' language development has yet to be fully determined. Whether stress is merely a cue to help organize the patterns of speech or whether it is an important part of the representation of speech sound sequences has still to be explored. Building on research in the areas of infant speech perception and segmentation, we asked how several months of exposure to the target language shapes infants' speech processing biases with respect to lexical stress. We hypothesize that infants represent stressed and unstressed syllables differently, and employed analyses of child-directed speech to show how this change to the representational landscape results in better distribution-based word segmentation as well as an advantage for stress-initial syllable sequences. A series of experiments then tested 9- and 7-month-old infants on their ability to use lexical stress without any other cues present to parse sequences from an artificial language. We found that infants adopted a stress-initial syllable strategy and that they appear to encode stress information as part of their proto-lexical representations. Together, the results of these studies suggest that stress information in the ambient language not only shapes how statistics are calculated over the speech input, but that it is also encoded in the representations of parsed speech sequences.

Tandem language learning strategies have long been recognised for their pedagogical value. E-mail tandem exchanges have allowed learners to engage in active communicative contact with native speakers of their target language, but research... more

Tandem language learning strategies have long been recognised for their pedagogical value. E-mail tandem exchanges have allowed learners to engage in active communicative contact with native speakers of their target language, but research around these exchanges has suered due to diculties with data collection. This paper describes a web-based tandem language learning environment the authors have developed which eliminates these diculties. In particular, the paper discusses the pedagogical advantages of the speci®cally designed web-based environment over traditional e-mail tandem exchanges. 7

Today Machine Translation (MT) systems are commercially available for a variety of language pairs and in price range, which makes them accessible to the nonprofessionals. Yet there is no standard evaluation for any type of translation... more

Today Machine Translation (MT) systems are commercially available for a variety of language pairs and in price range, which makes them accessible to the nonprofessionals. Yet there is no standard evaluation for any type of translation systems whether automatic or manual especially for the commercial systems that involve Arabic language in the Arabic region. This paper presents a brief survey of evaluation of MT system methods and its importance. It also presents some approaches for developing a comprehensive evaluation system without any developer cooperation. Although we proposed some dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself. dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself 2 The situation in the Arabic region As the globalization of the Arabic world becomes common, more than 180 million speakers around the world, problems caused by lack of communication can seriously affect its situation especially as a receiver of knowledge more than a producer. Thereby its need to MT is essential and there should 1 Some approach for a machine

A series of progressive demasking and lexical decision experiments investigated how the recognition of target words exclusively belonging to one language is affected by the existence of orthographic neighbors from the same or the other... more

A series of progressive demasking and lexical decision experiments investigated how the recognition of target words exclusively belonging to one language is affected by the existence of orthographic neighbors from the same or the other language of bilingual participants. Increasing the number of orthographic neighbors in Dutch systematically slowed response times to English target words in Dutch/English bilinguals, while an increase in target language neighbors consistently produced inhibitory effects for Dutch and facilitatory effects for English target words. Monolingual English speakers also showed facilitation due to English neighbors, but no effect of Dutch neighbors. The experiments provide evidence for parallel activation of words in an integrated Dutch/English lexicon. An implemented version of such a model making these assumptions, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model, is shown to account for the overall pattern of results.

This article describes a video project in which learners of the Russian language at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) were involved in making their own digital video in the target language. The activity is viewed from the constructivist... more

This article describes a video project in which learners of the Russian language at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) were involved in making their own digital video in the target language. The activity is viewed from the constructivist perspective of education, in which an active construction of knowledge by the learners, the social nature of learning, the authenticity of the learning situation, and the ability of the students to determine their own learning goals are prioritised. This paper gives a brief overview of two student-produced videos and reports the learners' perceptions of the benefits of the project. It concludes that involving language learners in a video-making activity offers a feasible way to integrate technology into language curriculum and to infuse constructivist pedagogical strategies into foreign language teaching. Although this study was done in the context of Russian language teaching and learning, the activity described can be implemented with learners of...

The success of Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) often depends upon how efficient the adaptation scheme is. Adaptation primarily aims at modifying retrieved examples to meet the required demands of a given translation task. The... more

The success of Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) often depends upon how efficient the adaptation scheme is. Adaptation primarily aims at modifying retrieved examples to meet the required demands of a given translation task. The present work looks at adaptation for ...

LA PATRIA PERDIDA O IMAGINADA: TRANSLATING TEODORO TORRES IN “EL MEXICO DE AFUERA” by ETHRIAM CASH BRAMMER December 2011 Advisor: Dr. Renata Wasserman Major: English Degree: Doctor of Philosophy One resent result of the Recovery of the... more

LA PATRIA PERDIDA O IMAGINADA: TRANSLATING TEODORO TORRES IN “EL MEXICO DE AFUERA” by ETHRIAM CASH BRAMMER December 2011 Advisor: Dr. Renata Wasserman Major: English Degree: Doctor of Philosophy One resent result of the Recovery of the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project has been the “rediscovery” of the novel La patria perdida (1935), written by acclaimed Mexican journalist Teodoro Torres while in exile in the United States. This novel is a kind of Mexican-American Horacio Algiers tale, detailing the success story of Luis Alfaro, who is eventually able to create a utopian Mexican-American hacienda, called Buenavista, outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Due to a number of important thematic inversions, La patria perdida stands in stark contrast to other early works of Mexican-American immigrant fiction, including novels like Daniel Venegas’s The Adventures of Don Chipote: Or, When Parrots Breast-Feed (1928) and Conrado Espinoza’s Under the Texas Sun (1926), which likewise document...

The present study investigated the cognitive nature of second language (L2) lexical processing in sentence context. We examined bilinguals' L2 word recognition performance for language-ambiguous words [cognates (e.g., piano) and... more

The present study investigated the cognitive nature of second language (L2) lexical processing in sentence context. We examined bilinguals' L2 word recognition performance for language-ambiguous words [cognates (e.g., piano) and homographs (e.g., pan)] in two sentence context experiments with highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals living in a bilingual community (Experiment 1) and with intermediate proficiency Spanish-English bilinguals living in a monolingual community (Experiment 2). To determine the influence of sentence constraint on cross-language activation, the critical words and their matched controls were inserted in low-and high-constraint sentences. In low-constraint sentences significant cognate facilitation was observed, suggesting that both languages were active and influencing processing. In high-constraint sentences, the effects of cognate facilitation were eliminated. This interaction between cognate status and sentence constraint demonstrates that sentence context can restrict non-selectivity when there is sufficient semantic information to suppress the non-target language. The fact that this interaction was observed for both bilingual groups suggests that even less proficient bilinguals, who do not communicate daily in the L2, can use context to constrain crosslanguage lexical competition. Implications for current models of bilingual lexical access are discussed.

This article reports the findings of a 2003 study involving 526 Hong Kong tertiary students, aiming to explore their motivation towards the learning of English, Putonghua and a chosen third language (French, German or Japanese). Based on... more

This article reports the findings of a 2003 study involving 526 Hong Kong tertiary students, aiming to explore their motivation towards the learning of English, Putonghua and a chosen third language (French, German or Japanese). Based on Dö rnyei's and work [Dö rnyei, Z., Csizér, K., 2002. Some dynamics of language attitudes and motivation: results of a nationwide survey. Applied Linguistics 23 (4), 421-462] on varying motivation towards different foreign languages among Hungarian school children, this study used an amended version of their questionnaire to examine possible varying motivation among Hong Kong respondents. Follow-up focus group interviews were also conducted; however, this paper focuses on the quantitative phase of the study.

This paper provides an overview of the KBMT-89 project at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Machine Translation, as well therefore of the special number of this journal, which reports on the project. The knowledge-based approach to... more

This paper provides an overview of the KBMT-89 project at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Machine Translation, as well therefore of the special number of this journal, which reports on the project. The knowledge-based approach to machine translation is presented and defended in a historical context. Various components of the system, key parts of which are described in subsequent papers of the issue, are introduced and paired with their computational motivations.

The discussion on the role of corrective feedback is part of a larger discussion on the role of ‘focusing on form’ in foreign language teaching (Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition, Cambridge University Press,... more

The discussion on the role of corrective feedback is part of a larger discussion on the role of ‘focusing on form’ in foreign language teaching (Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998). Studies conducted in communicative and content-based foreign language teaching (FLT) settings have shown that some focus on form seems to be required for learners to ‘notice the gap’ (in: R. Day (Ed.), Talking to Learn, Newbury House, Rowley, MA, pp. 237–326) between their erroneous utterances and the target language.This article discusses the role of different types of oral corrective feedback in analytic FLT. Stern (in: B. Harley, P. Allen, J. Cummins, M. Swain (Eds.), The Development of Second Language Proficiency, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 93–109; Issues and options in language teaching, Oxford University Press, Oxford) refers to FLT as analytic when the focus of instruction is on the form of the foreign language as opposed to more content-based approaches where the focus is on meaning and content. Typical for analytic FLT are discrete point presentation along with feedback on formal error. This type of FLT is still common practice in Belgian secondary schools.The study explores the role of different kinds of corrective feedback in an analytic setting (German as a foreign language in Flanders, Belgium). The frequency and distribution of several corrective feedback types together with the frequency and distribution of different types of learner uptake following each feedback type (see Stud. Second Language Acquisit. 19 (1997) 37) are discussed. The question then is which strategy is to be preferred in terms of noticing the feedback.

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 secondary schools offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL teachers, however,... more

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 secondary schools offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL teachers, however, are non-native speakers of the target ...

Machine translation (MT) research in the United States has enjoyed a bit of a revival in the last several years. Building on research in semantic analysis from both natural language processing and computational linguistics, many recent MT... more

Machine translation (MT) research in the United States has enjoyed a bit of a revival in the last several years. Building on research in semantic analysis from both natural language processing and computational linguistics, many recent MT efforts have taken a "knowledge-based" approach, in which an attempt is made to analyze text meaning, and use this analysis to improve on the translation.

It is difficult to describe cross-linguistic influence; however, it has been a contentious phenomenon for a long time. Whenever the speaker of a language becomes bilingual, the first language will subtly affect the new one, even if it is... more

It is difficult to describe cross-linguistic influence; however, it has been a contentious phenomenon for a long time. Whenever the speaker of a language becomes bilingual, the first language will subtly affect the new one, even if it is not used much. This is how first language influence begins since the majority of Arab English as a foreign language (EFL) learners suffer from this problem. This current research aims to study the negative influence of the native language (Arabic) on utilising the English passive voice. In this article, we aim to discover the levels of Arab EFL learners' knowledge of the passive voice, as well as to examine the percentage of interlingual and intralingual errors. This study applies a quantitative method. Forty-six participants, who are Arab EFL learners studying at the Universiti Malaysia Pahang, engaged in the task of answering a grammar test. To conclude, the results show that Arab students have a high rate of L1 transfer on the English passive voice, and their levels of knowledge of passive voice are identified. The researchers recommend mixed methods for further research in order to provide a wider understanding about this issue.

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 secondary schools offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL teachers, however,... more

In Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is becoming a popular and widespread practice of immersion education. In the Netherlands, for example, over 90 secondary schools offer a CLIL strand. Most CLIL teachers, however, are non-native speakers of the target ...

This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of three years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more... more

This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of three years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more efficient working memory abilities than monolinguals, potentially via the opportunity a bilingual environment provides to train cognitive control by combating interference and intrusions from the non-target language. Forty-four bilingual and monolingual children, matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status, completed assessments of working memory (simple span and complex span tasks), fluid intelligence, and language (vocabulary and syntax). The data showed that the monolinguals performed significantly better on the language measures across the years whereas no language group effect emerged on the working memory and fluid intelligence tasks after verbal abilities were considered. The study suggests that the need to manage several language systems in the bilingual mind affects children’s language skills whilst having little impact on the development of working memory abilities.

Schumann’s (1986) Acculturation Model recognizes accent as a means of language learners’ identification with either their mother tongue (MT) culture or the target language (TL) culture which will consequently affect the learners’ language... more

Schumann’s (1986) Acculturation Model recognizes accent as a means of language learners’ identification with either their mother tongue (MT) culture or the target language (TL) culture which will consequently affect the learners’ language learning effort. Taking up a critical stance, the present study, thus, aimed to examine the role that learners’ attitudes and beliefs play in their adoption of MT (i.e., Persian) culture or TL (i.e., English) culture while speaking in the TL in an instructed foreign language context. The triangulated data were elicited from a number of 213 Iranian male elementary EFL learners, aged 12 to 19 years using a questionnaire consisting of both close-ended and open-ended questions, focus-group interviews and class observations. The questionnaire and the interview questions required the participants to voice their opinions freely regarding the accent they assumed and preferred when using the target language and the reasons for their preferences and the class observations focused on the participants’ reactions to MT-accented as well as TL speech of their peers. The findings revealed that 81.3% of the participants displayed strong preferences for the TL accent (i.e., English) while only 18.7% of the participants privileged speaking English with their MT accent. The rationale for the TL accent preference was found to be composed of nine categories of reasons with ‘intelligibility’, ‘beauty and effectiveness of TL accent’, and ‘resemblance to native speakers and avoidance of mockery’ cited as the most primary reasons. On the other hand, the major reason for assuming a MT accent was to reveal one’s identity through the MT accent. The study therefore highlighted the strong inclination among EFL learners to acculturate into the TL culture through assuming its accent.

This paper that entitled “Domestication of Translating a Story of Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle aims to analyze the use of terms in the source language which the term is not contained in the target... more

This paper that entitled “Domestication of Translating a Story of Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle aims to analyze the use of terms in the source language which the term is not contained in the target language. The data used the classic novel entitled “A Scandal of Bohemia” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in two different version of English and Indonesia. Each writer has their own characteristics in translating a literary work that is related to the procedure translation, one of them is cultural by Newmark. The method used is library research with the systematic study of the data. The results of the analysis of this paper, it can be concluded that the terms that exist in the Source Language (SL) does not necessarily exist in the Target Language. Therefore it is necessary to adjust the culture of the term to the Target Language (TL).

Speech processing for under-resourced languages is an active field of research, which has experienced significant progress during the past decade. We propose, in this paper, a survey that focuses on automatic speech recognition (ASR) for... more

Speech processing for under-resourced languages is an active field of research, which has experienced significant progress during the past decade. We propose, in this paper, a survey that focuses on automatic speech recognition (ASR) for these languages. The definition of under-resourced languages and the challenges associated to them are first defined. The main part of the paper is a literature review of the recent (last 8 years) contributions made in ASR for under-resourced languages. Examples of past projects and future trends when dealing with under-resourced languages are also presented. We believe that this paper will be a good starting point for anyone interested to initiate research in (or operational development of) ASR for one or several underresourced languages. It should be clear, however, that many of the issues and approaches presented here, apply to speech technology in general (text-to-speech synthesis for instance).

This article addresses the challenges that non‐native English‐speaking teacher trainees face as they begin teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in Western, English‐speaking countries. Despite a great deal of training, non‐native... more

This article addresses the challenges that non‐native English‐speaking teacher trainees face as they begin teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in Western, English‐speaking countries. Despite a great deal of training, non‐native speaker teachers may be viewed as inadequate language teachers because they often lack native speaker competence in the target language and culture. However, non‐native speaker teachers possess distinct advantages over native speakers including a deeper understanding of learners’ first languages and an ability to explain second language features in ways that students can understand. This article explores the linguistic and pedagogical skills that are required for teaching ESL to immigrant students in primary and secondary schools. It concludes that while it is important for non‐native teachers to continuously strive to attain high levels of written and oral proficiencies in English, they must also become familiar with the discourse and cultures of the schools and communities in which they work. In addition, non‐native teacher candidates need to be trained to become ethnographers of their own and others’ interactions and draw on the knowledge about the different ways of learning and using language to grow as teachers and professionals. This article provides specific suggestions for teacher education programs to better prepare non‐native teachers to meet these challenges.

Sentence alignment consists in estimating which sentence or sentences in the source language correspond with which sentence or sentences in a target language. We present in this paper a new approach to aligning sentences from a parallel... more

Sentence alignment consists in estimating which sentence or sentences in the source language correspond with which sentence or sentences in a target language. We present in this paper a new approach to aligning sentences from a parallel corpus based on a cross-language information retrieval system. This approach consists in building a database of sentences of the target text and considering each sentence of the source text as a "query" to that database. The cross-language information retrieval system is a weighted Boolean search engine based on a deep linguistic analysis of the query and the documents to be indexed. This system is composed of a multilingual linguistic analyzer, a statistical analyzer, a reformulator, a comparator and a search engine. The multilingual linguistic analyzer includes a morphological analyzer, a part-of-speech tagger and a syntactic analyzer. The linguistic analyzer processes both documents to be indexed and queries to produce a set of normalize...

In a series of picture-word interference experiments, Catalan-Spanish bilinguals named pictures in Catalan with distractor words printed either in Catalan (same-language pairs) or in Spanish (differentlanguage pairs). Naming was... more

In a series of picture-word interference experiments, Catalan-Spanish bilinguals named pictures in Catalan with distractor words printed either in Catalan (same-language pairs) or in Spanish (differentlanguage pairs). Naming was facilitated when the distractor was the name of the picture in both same-[e.g., taula-taula (table in Catalan)] and different-language pairs [e.g., taula-mesa (table in Spanish)]. We also found that the facilitation effect was larger for same-language pairs and that semantically related distractors in the same-vs different-language conditions were similarly interfering. These results are interpreted within a lexical model that assumes that only words of the target language are considered for lexical selection and can, therefore, compete for selection. Converging evidence from several experiments indicates that the facilitation asymmetry for same name distractors arises because same-language distractors can activate target phonemes via nonlexical, graphemephoneme conversion processes. Facilitation was obtained with phonologically related distractors for both same-and different-language conditions but not for their translations. The results suggest that nonlexical phonological processes contribute to the phonological facilitation effect.

Na área de ensino-aprendizagem de língua estrangeira, um dos assuntos mais discutidos refere-se à relação entre a idade e o processo de aprendizagem de língua estrangeira. Muitos acreditam que quanto mais cedo uma pessoa iniciar seu... more

Na área de ensino-aprendizagem de língua estrangeira, um dos assuntos mais discutidos refere-se à relação entre a idade e o processo de aprendizagem de língua estrangeira. Muitos acreditam que quanto mais cedo uma pessoa iniciar seu aprendizado, mais sucesso obterá. Por outro lado, há estudos que não corroboram esta idéia, indicando que na questão referente à aquisição e à aprendizagem de LE, há outros fatores e aspectos a serem apreciados. Assim, neste texto exporemos o referencial teórico relacionado a este assunto, apresentaremos o resultado de alguns estudos realizados nesta área, e discutiremos RESUMO: Muitos acreditam que as crianças são melhores aprendizes de uma língua estrangeira e superam os adultos em vários aspectos relacionados a este processo. Tais aspectos variam desde a pronúncia até a total competência lingüística na língua-alvo. O objetivo deste texto é apresentar o que vários teóricos afirmam em relação ao fator idade, tecendo algumas considerações sobre a diferença na aprendizagem entre crianças e adultos. Serão apresentados também alguns estudos empíricos relacionados ao tema. Por fim, discutiremos algumas das crenças que alunos do curso de Letras em uma Universidade Estadual do norte do Paraná e profissionais da área têm sobre o assunto, com base em respostas obtidas através de questionários.

Computer assisted language learning (CALL) systems are used by people to learn a language. CALL systems have provided a number of advantages for language learning such as their ability to provide consistent and flexible corrective... more

Computer assisted language learning (CALL) systems are used by people to learn a language. CALL systems have provided a number of advantages for language learning such as their ability to provide consistent and flexible corrective feedback during the learning process. This feedback is expressed as information about what is ungrammatical or unacceptable in a target language. This paper presents a literature study on the field of corrective feedback and CALL and describes the future plan for my PhD research.

As David Graddol's "World English Project" gains momentum (Graddol, 2006), CLIL is increasingly being taken up by Ministries of Education as an innovative approach to teaching modern languages, as a motivating method for teaching subject... more

As David Graddol's "World English Project" gains momentum (Graddol, 2006), CLIL is increasingly being taken up by Ministries of Education as an innovative approach to teaching modern languages, as a motivating method for teaching subject areas, or simply as a contribution to internationalisation and the ideal of multilingualism. With this exponential growth, the lack of competent, trained CLIL teachers has become more evident. Content teachers are not infrequently monolingual and may not recognize the benefits of becoming bilingual, while language teachers may not feel proficient in the subject-area knowledge required for content teaching. Education ministries insist on CLIL implementation, but do not oversee a workforce sufficiently competent in all three necessary areas: target language ability, subject knowledge, and CLIL methodology. This paper explores the need to design quality training modules at ITT (Initial Teacher Training) colleges, for PGCSE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) courses at universities, and INSET (In-Service Education and Training) courses so that teachers to feel confident in embarking on CLIL courses at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Forms2Net is an ATX Software commercial reengineering tool that automatically converts Oracle Forms applications to the equivalent .NET (C#) ones, with approximately 75% rate of automatic conversion. From the reengineering and... more

Forms2Net is an ATX Software commercial reengineering tool that automatically converts Oracle Forms applications to the equivalent .NET (C#) ones, with approximately 75% rate of automatic conversion. From the reengineering and transformation theoretical viewpoint, Forms2Net falls in the general category of language-platform conversion tools. As theory and practice indicate, for such tools to be effective, there are two major issues that must be handled: (a) the resolution of the semantic gap between the pair of source-target languages and (b) the resolution of the dependencies (e.g., API dependencies) on functionalities provided by default by the source platform or on programming idiosyncrasies of the source platform (in this case Oracle Forms). This paper presents the important practical aspects of Forms2Net and the underlying technology. We discuss the semantic gap between Oracle Forms and .NET forms and the design principles and solution strategies used to bridge this gap.

This paper addresses one of the central problems arising at the transfer stage in machine translation: syntactic mismatches, that is, mismatches between a source-language sentence structure and its equivalent target-language sentence... more

This paper addresses one of the central problems arising at the transfer stage in machine translation: syntactic mismatches, that is, mismatches between a source-language sentence structure and its equivalent target-language sentence structure. The level at which we assume the transfer to be carried out is the Deep-Syntactic Structure (DSyntS) as proposed in the Meaning-Text Theory (MTT). DSyntS is abstract enough to avoid all types of divergences that result either from restricted lexical co-occurrence or from surface-syntactic discrepancies between languages. As for the remaining types of syntactic divergences, all of them occur not only interlinguistically, but also intralinguistically; this means that establishing correspondences between semantically equivalent expressions of the source and target languages that diverge with respect to their syntactic structure is nothing else than paraphrasing. This allows us to adapt the powerful intralinguistic paraphrasing mechanism develope...

ABSTRACT It is possible to translate code written in Emacs Lisp or another Lisp dialect which uses dynamic scoping to a more modern programming language with lexical scoping while largely preserving structure and readability of the code.... more

ABSTRACT It is possible to translate code written in Emacs Lisp or another Lisp dialect which uses dynamic scoping to a more modern programming language with lexical scoping while largely preserving structure and readability of the code. The biggest obstacle to such an idiomatic translation from Emacs Lisp is the translation of dynamic binding into suitable instances of lexical binding: Many binding constructs in real programs in fact exhibit identical behavior under both dynamic and lexical binding. An idiomatic translation needs to detect as many of these binding constructs as possible and convert them into lexical binding constructs in the target language to achieve readability and efficiency of the target code. The basic prerequisite for such an idiomatic translation is thus a dynamic scope analysis which associates variable occurrences with binding constructs. We present such an analysis. It is an application of the Nielson/Nielson framework for flow analysis to a semantics for dynamic binding akin to Moreau's. Its implementation handles a substantial portion of Emacs Lisp, has been applied to realistic Emacs Lisp code, and is highly accurate and reasonably efficient in practice.

Second-language (L2) acquisition is generally thought to be constrained by maturational factors that circumscribe a critical period for nativelike attainment. Consistent with the maturational view are age effects among learners who begin... more

Second-language (L2) acquisition is generally thought to be constrained by maturational factors that circumscribe a critical period for nativelike attainment. Consistent with the maturational view are age effects among learners who begin L2 acquisition prior to, but not after, closure of the putative critical period. Also favoring the maturational account is the scarcity of late L2 learners at asymptote who perform like natives, and weak effects of native language-target language pairings. With Korean and Chinese learners of English, the experimental study of Johnson and Newport (1989) yielded just these types of evidence. Some subsequent studies do not support the critical period account of L2 acquisition constraints, however. Accordingly, we undertook a replication of Johnson and Newport (1989), using the exact methods and materials of the original experiment, and a sample of Spanish natives (n = 61). In keeping with recent research, L2 attainment negatively correlates with age of learning even if learning commences after the presumed end of the critical period. We also find modest evidence of nativelike attainment among late learners. Our data further suggest that the outcome of L2 acquisition may depend on L1-L2 pairings and L2 use.

This paper reports research which first examines the limits in attainment of phonological competence of foreign language learners who have not resided in a target language community, and second, attempts to identify factors which explain... more

This paper reports research which first examines the limits in attainment of phonological competence of foreign language learners who have not resided in a target language community, and second, attempts to identify factors which explain variance in this competence. Samples from 67 participants were rated. The results showed that EFL learners were able to attain a near-native like pronunciation for all but sentences. The factors which explained individual difference in pronunciation attainment were self rated musical ability, attitudes toward learning pronunciation, length of time spent learning the language and strategy use.

This article had as main objective to report a research that aimed at investigate how the target language (TL) and mother tongue (MT). To analyze the data we used the answers to four questionnaires, two for teachers from a language school... more

This article had as main objective to report a research that aimed at investigate how the target language (TL) and mother tongue (MT). To analyze the data we used the answers to four questionnaires, two for teachers from a language school and two for under graduating students. In this field, there is much controversy about the use of MT because some scholars believe that the pupils should be exposed to a real situation of a TL which have to be promoted by the teacher use the TL in the class and on the other hand, there are researchers who defend the importance of use the TL structures. The results show that both teachers and students defended the use of TL in the class because, among other reasons, it contributes in the activities and to save time. Their opinions are in agreement with theories which show an important relation between theory and practice of the MT.

This article introduces the theme of 'discourse stance', the unifying focal point for this special issue, and delineates the three dimensions involved in this notion, as described in the position paper . Discourse stance.Written Language... more

This article introduces the theme of 'discourse stance', the unifying focal point for this special issue, and delineates the three dimensions involved in this notion, as described in the position paper . Discourse stance.Written Language and Literacy 5, 255-290] that forms the source study to the articles in this volume: orientation, attitude, and generality. It then summarizes predictions proposed there for how discourse stance will be realized in relation to the variables of development (four levels of age and schooling), genre (personal-experience narrative versus expository discussion), modality (written versus spoken texts), and target language (Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Spanish, and Swedish). The article concludes by comparing common themes with language-particular findings that emerge from the analyses presented here. These analyses, conducted on directly comparable data-sets for the different languages, reveal certain shared trends across the sample. A range of lexico-syntactic features of linguistic structure and thematic content interact to express discourse stance; these differ markedly as a function of text type; and more mature speaker-writers express a less monolithic stance than younger schoolchildren. On the other hand, devices for agent downgrading or distancing of the speaker-writer from the contents of the text (such as impersonal use of 2nd person pronouns; generic pronouns like English we, French on, or Dutch men; and middle and passive voice compared with active voice) change in both amount and range both as a function of text type and of age and literacy level, and also cross-linguistically, reflecting different rhetorical options favored by speaker-writers of different languages. #