Tones are the most challenging aspect of learning Chinese as a second language, and L2 learners' perceptual categories differ in important and fascinating ways from those of native speakers. This book explores the relationship between tone perception and production among native speakers and non-native learners as illustrated in the experiments the author conducted with native speakers, true learners and heritage learners, all of whom were tested on their ability to produce tones naturally and to perceive 81 synthesized tones in various contexts. The experiments show that each group processes tones differently with regard to both register (tonal level) and contour (tonal shape). The results also reveal how three types of cues - acoustic, psychological and contextual - influence non-native speakers' tone perception and production.

This book offers an overview of some recent advances in the Computational Bioacoustics methods and technology. In the focus of discussion is the pursuit of scalability, which would facilitate real-world applications of different scope and purpose, such as wildlife monitoring, biodiversity assessment, pest population control, and monitoring the spread of disease transmitting mosquitoes. The various tasks of Computational Bioacoustics are described and a wide range of audio parameterization and recognition tasks related to the automated recognition of species and sound events is discussed. Many of the Computational Bioacoustics methods were originally developed for the needs of speech, audio, or image processing, and afterwards were adapted to the requirements of automated acoustic recognition of species, or were elaborated further to address the challenges of real-world operation in 24/7 mode. The interested reader is encouraged to follow the numerous references and links to web resources for further information and insights. This book is addressed to Software Engineers, IT experts, Computer Science researchers, Bioacousticians, and other practitioners concerned with the creation of new tools and services, aimed at enhancing the technological support to Computational Bioacoustics applications. STTM, Speech Technology and Text Mining in Medicine and Health Care This series demonstrates how the latest advances in speech technology and text mining positively affect patient healthcare and, in a much broader sense, public health at large. New developments in text mining methods have allowed health care providers to monitor a large population of patients at any time and from any location. Employing advanced summarization techniques, patient data can be readily extracted from extensive clinical documents in electronic health records and immediately made available to the physician. These same summarization techniques can also aid the healthcare provider in extracting from the large corpora of medical literature the relevant information for treating the patient. The series topics include the design and acceptance of speech-enabled robots that assist in the operating room, studies of signal processing and acoustic modeling for speech and communication disorders, advanced statistical speech enhancement methods for creating synthetic voice, and technologies for addressing speech and language impairments. Titles in the Series consist of both authored books and edited contributions. All authored books and contributed works are peer-reviewed. The Series is for speech scientists and speech engineers, machine learning experts, biomedical engineers, medical speech pathologists, linguists, and healthcare professionals

First published in 1983, this book represents a substantial body of detailed research on children's language and communication, and more generally on the nature of interactive spoken discourse. It looks at areas of competence often examined in young children's speech have that have not been described for adults - leading to insights not only in the character of adult conversation but also the process of acquiring this competence. The authors set forward strategies for conversing at different stage of life, while also relating these strategies to, and formulating hypotheses concerning, the dynamics of language variation and change.

The 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt seemed to hold the promise of Democratic domination for years to come. However, leading up to the 1936 election, persistent economic problems, a controversial domestic agenda, and the perception of a weak foreign policy were chipping away at public support. The president faced unrelenting criticism from both the Left and the Right, and it seemed unlikely that he would cruise to the same clear victory he enjoyed in 1932. But 1936 was yet another landslide win for FDR, which makes it easy to forget just how contested the campaign was. In Voting Deliberatively, Mary Stuckey examines little-discussed components of FDR's 1936 campaign that aided his victory. She reveals four elements of this reelection campaign that have not received adequate attention: the creation of public opinion, the attention paid to local organizations, the focus on specific kinds of interests, and the public rhetoric that tied it all together. Previous studies of the 1936 presidential election discuss elements such as FDR's vulnerability before the campaign and the weakness of Republican candidate Alf Landon. But these histories pay little attention to the quantity and quality of information Roosevelt acquired, the importance of organizations such as the Good Neighbor League and the Committee of One, the mobilization of the vote, and the ways in which these organizational strategies fused with Roosevelt's rhetorical strategies. Stuckey shows how these facets combined in one of the largest victories in Electoral College history and provided a template for future victory.

A follow-on from Actors' Audition Speeches" this title includes speeches from plays written and produced in the 1990s, with extracts from West End productions ("Art" and "Cressida"), and films ("Pulp Fiction"). Comments from directors, casting directors, actors and teachers are included."

The book presents the issue of impoliteness in media discourse found in television debates, films and computer-mediated communication. The phenomenon is viewed from different theoretical perspectives, namely prosody studies, corpus linguistics, media studies and audiovisual translation, neo-Gricean approaches, reception-oriented investigations and context-bound interpretations. Authors from ten different countries - Sweden, USA, Norway, New Zealand, Mexico, Georgia, France, Poland, India, and UAE - analyse data from nine languages - English, Swedish, Georgian, Polish, Arabic, Persian, French, Croatian and Montenegrin.

The central focus of the book is the identification of the ways people engage in communicative encounters to (re)constitute personal and social identities. Its aim is to identify some principal themes that have emerged from the ample research on identity in a variety of contexts. A common thread of the articles is the role of language in the construction and performance of identities. It embraces an exploration of the sociocultural environments in which human communication takes place, the interplay between these environments, and the construction and display of identities through our communicative performances. Research located in a range of literary, sociological, psychological and linguistic perspectives is used to illustrate the potential of communication in establishing a sense of identity.

This volume has its origins in an international conference on emotions organized by the Polish Association for the Study of English and held at the University of Wroclaw in April 2015. In the course of the conference, it became clear that emotions are productively explored with relation to motion for the reason that emotion(s) and motion(s) constitute profoundly intertwined dimensions of physical and cultural embodiment reflected in language. The relationship between motion(s) and emotion(s) became the underlying theme of this volume, which comprises nineteen contributions presenting exploratory and applicative accounts of (e)motion(s) situated in topical research areas of linguistic theory, second language acquisition, and translation studies.

This book examines the pronunciation goals of teachers, course leaders, and learners on a ten-week UK pre-sessional access course, particularly with regard to suprasegmental instruction and target of instruction on how these goals are reflected in pronunciation assessment, and how teacher goals are informed by their attitudes and beliefs. A mixed methods approach, including direct observation and semi-structured interviews, is employed to address the area of enquiry. Results show a lack of clarity of course goals. Although there is a firm emphasis on suprasegmental instruction, in semi-structured interviews, teachers report a lack of clear course goals and guidance. Assessment and practice do not always adhere to a goal of intelligibility, and support for teachers, in terms of the materials and how they might be exploited seems limited. The book concludes with tentative recommendations on how suprasegmental instruction might be facilitated on EAP and other courses

This book contains a selection of articles on new developments in translation and interpreting studies. It offers a wealth of new and innovative approaches to the didactics of translation and interpreting that may well change the way in which translators and interpreters are trained. They include such issues of current debate as assessment methods and criteria, assessment of competences, graduate employability, placements, skills labs, the perceived skills gap between training and profession, the teaching of terminology, and curriculum design. The authors are experts in their fields from renowned universities in Europe, Africa and North-America. The book will be an indispensable help for trainers and researchers, but may also be of interest to translators and interpreters.

This collection of papers addresses new trends in Cognitive Linguistics. Three parts of the book focus on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Integration Network Analysis. Both the theoretical contributions and the empirical case studies stress the importance of contextual factors in the meaning making processes. They employ qualitative methods to analyze the use of metaphor in political discourse and in the conceptualization of emotions. The data sets include multimodal data, sign languages and co-speech gestures. The fourth part of the book contains two corpus-based studies. The fifth part concentrates on the grammatical categories of passive voice and aspect. One contribution discusses the problem of categorization in phonology.

The author examines the cultural identity development of Oromo-Americans in Minnesota, an ethnic group originally located within the national borders of Ethiopia. Earlier studies on language and cultural identity have shown that the degree of ethnic orientation of minorities commonly decreases from generation to generation. Yet oppression and a visible minority status were identified as factors delaying the process of de-ethnicization. Given that Oromos fled persecution in Ethiopia and are confronted with the ramifications of a visible minority status in the U.S., it can be expected that they have retained strong ties to their ethnic culture. This study, however, came to a more complex and theory-building result.

The testing and assessment of second language learners is an essential part of the language learning process. Glenn Fulcher's Testing Second Language Speaking is a state-of-the-art volume that considers the assessment of speaking from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The book offers the first systematic, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the testing of second language speaking. Written in a clear and accessible manner, it covers: Explanations of the process of test design Costing test design projects How to put the test into practice Evaluation of speaking tests Task types for testing speaking Testing learners with disabilities It also contains a wealth of examples, including task types that are commonly used in speaking tests, approaches to researching speaking tests and specific methodologies that teachers, students and test developers may use in their own projects. Successfully integrating practice and theory, this book demystifies the process of testing speaking and provides a thorough treatment of the key ethical and technical issues in speaking evaluation.

This book analyses one of the many levels of complexity not readily apparent to the reader of Zola's fiction: the question of the author's family secrets. The novels addressed here present a variety of sub-textual issues highlighting Zola's sexual insecurity and anxiety. Their analysis reveals a mystery related to female sexuality that pervades the narratives of Therese Raquin and La Fortune des Rougon, and that is silently transmitted in Madeleine Ferat, La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret, La Bete humaine, La Curee, Nana, Le Docteur Pascal and Verite. The novels are explored from the standpoint of psychoanalytical criticism, a tool particularly appropriate for examining Zola's language and illuminating the recurrent theme of "the Return of the repressed". Four psychoanalytical theories are adopted: Nicolas Abraham's and Maria Toroks' theories of psychic development (presenting the concept of the phantom) and Sigmund Freud's and Jacques Lacan's theories of infantile sexuality.

This book is a contribution to the study of the linguistic concept of gender. It focuses on the problem of assigning gender to animal nouns. This problem is topical in view of the fact that in present-day English, gender is a marginal grammatical category and therefore recedes into the background in descriptions of today's English. Grammatical gender is a rare topic of research, scientific discussions or papers. The detailed analysis of gender assignment to animal names is based on two subcorpora: the English edition of National Geographic and the English edition of the Journal of Zoology. The book closes with a contrastive analysis of gender markers.

This volume presents a collection of the latest scholarly research on language, migration and identity. In a globalised world where migratory patterns are in constant flux, the traditional notion of the 'immigrant' has shifted to include more fluid perspectives of the migrant as a transnational and the language learner as a complex individual possessing a range of dynamic social and contextual identities. This book presents a variety of studies of transnational speakers and communities. It includes research conducted within both established and emerging methodological traditions and frameworks and explores a wide range of contexts and geographical locations, from the multilingual language classroom to the migrant experience, and from Ireland to Eritrea. This book was published with the generous support of the National University of Ireland Publications Scheme.

Inheritance, which has its origins in the field of artificial intelligence, is a framework focusing on shared properties. When applied to inflectional morphology, it enables useful generalizations within and across paradigms. The inheritance tree format serves as an alternative to traditional paradigms and provides a visual representation of the structure of the language's morphology. This mapping also enables cross-linguistic morphological comparison. In this book, the nominal inflectional morphology of Old High German, Latin, Early New High German, and Koine Greek are analyzed using inheritance trees. Morphological data is drawn from parallel texts in each language; the trees may be used as a translation aid to readers of the source texts as an accompaniment to or substitute for traditional paradigms. The trees shed light on the structural similarities and differences among the four languages.

The enthymeme in education is essential because it reflects what humans do when they think. It informs not only how we make inferences about the world to discover new knowledge, but also how we express those discoveries to influence the minds of others. Thus, the enthymeme provides an effective pedagogical approach to the analysis and synthesis of ideas in the classroom. In this volume, such an approach is applied to composition instruction, second-language learning, advertising, specialized medical texts, and detective fiction to help prepare students for the challenges of modern life. (Michael D. Hood)

Although Wolfgang Schneider's Grammatik des biblischen Hebraisch: Ein Lehrbuch serves primarily as an introductory textbook to biblical Hebrew, it makes an invaluable contribution to the text-linguistic study of Hebrew Bible. Schneider's understanding of narrative syntax and discourse linguistics continues to influence such grammarians as Niccacci and Talstra, through whom his work is validated. His discussion of clauses and text syntax remains pertinent to Hebrew students and professors alike. With this English translation, Schneider's work may now make a worldwide contribution to biblical studies by clarifying for the student the contribution of text grammar to the reading of the biblical text.

?De acuerdo? 20 Simulaciones para la clase de espanol es el manual perfecto para estudiantes de espanol de nivel intermedio y avanzado que quieren desarrollar su destreza oral. El libro presenta 20 simulaciones que proporcionan un marco eficaz y motivador para el desarrollo de la destreza oral y la produccion del habla espontanea. Los estudiantes asumen un papel que les permite expresar opiniones, discutir y debatir dentro de un contexto significativo, preparandolos para situaciones de la vida real. Caracteristicas destacadas: amplia variedad de temas, tales como los negocios, la educacion, la salud y las redes sociales actividades de preparacion que ayudan al estudiante a participar plenamente en los debates secciones para el profesor y el estudiante, con explicaciones sobre como usar y participar en simulaciones Las versiones en color de las imagenes del libro pueden descargarse en https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138831087. ?De acuerdo? 20 Simulaciones para la clase de espanol es ideal para los niveles B1-C1 del MCER o los niveles intermedio-bajo a avanzado segun las guias de capacidad linguistica de ACTFL. ?De acuerdo? 20 Simulaciones para la clase de espanol is the ideal course for intermediate to advanced students of Spanish seeking to develop their speaking skills. The book presents 20 simulations which provide an effective and motivating framework for developing speaking skills and producing spontaneous speech. Students take on a role allowing them to express opinions, argue and debate within a meaningful context that prepares them for real-life situations. Key features: wide variety of topics, such as business, education, health and social media Preparatory activities to help students engage fully in the debates teacher and student sections with explanations on how to use and participate in simulations Full colour versions of the images in the book are available to download from https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138831087. ?De acuerdo? 20 Simulaciones para la clase de espanol is ideal for levels B1-C1 of the CEFR or Intermediate-Low to Advanced according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

This book focuses on values and valuation in the State of the Union addresses delivered by the former U.S. President George W. Bush. What values are invoked in the speeches? How are these values constructed? How can they be classified? How are particular construals of values conducive to the actions the speaker wants to legitimize? Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies, the book examines pragmalinguistic tools applied in political legitimization, such as proximization, metaphor or assertion. The analysis reveals three ideological values used in the context of foreign policy making: security, terrorism and freedom.

This book offers a thorough lexical description of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) variety, English for Architecture, by means of a selfmade corpus. As other knowledge communities, Architecture practitioners have a distinctive discourse and a linguistic identity of their own. Both are conveyed through specific linguistic realizations, and are of considerable interest in the field of ESP. The corpus used was designed for the purpose of describing and analyzing the main lexical features of Architecture Discourse from three different perspectives: word-formation, loanword neology and semantic neology, which are the three main foundations of lexis. In order to analyze all materials a database of almost three thousand entries was produced, including a description and classification of every word from the corpus considered relevant for the analysis. Thanks to this methodology the lexical character of Architecture language is ultimately revealed in connection with the linguistic identity of its practitioners.

Pragmatic competence plays a key role in intercultural communication, particularly for students studying in a target community. This book investigates the effect of study abroad on second language learners' productive and receptive pragmatic competences, as well as their cognitive processes during speech act production. It employs a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to explore learners' pragmatic development over one year. The inclusion of a control group is a methodological strength of the longitudinal study, many such studies often not including a control group. In addition, the study longitudinally examines learners' cognitive processes during study abroad with innovative and insightful analyses. The book makes an important contribution to second language pragmatics with regard to developmental changes in both speech act production and perception during such processes.