This study considers the pronunciation of Japanese learners of English. Its first intent is to offer a brief overview of Japanese phonological and prosodic features to highlight anticipated L1 transfer issues in spoken English output. It then explores the segmental and suprasegmental aspects of a short recorded performance by two intermediate Japanese learners of English against a sample of Rec...

The paper studies the production and perception of Estonian quantity oppositions by native Estonians (L1 subjects) and non-native speakers with Russian-language background (L2 subjects). Estonian quantity system involves three contrastive prosodic patterns referred to as short (Q1), long (Q2) and overlong (Q3) quantity degrees. These phonological contrasts are manifested by a complex interactio...

A persistent question in the SLA (second language acquisition) research concerns the status of the involvement of the native language (i.e. L1 transfer). Inquiry into the question has been made on the basis of a variety of linguistic frameworks, such as contrastive analysis (Lado, 1957), L2 (second language) generative parametric approach (Flynn, 1987; White, 1989; Schwartz, 1996), and the more...

Cross-linguistic comparison is a good starting point for computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT). A comparison between the segment inventories of a learner’s mother tongue (L1) and the target language (L2) can be made on the basis of the IPA categories. Since these are claimed to reflect universal phonemic distinctions, mastering the contrasts in the target language in perception and pr...

This article explores the contrastive function of demonstratives in two languages, Tiriyó (Cariban, northern Brazil) and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands). The contrastive function has to a large extent been neglected in the theoretical literature on demonstrative functions, although preliminary investigations suggest that there are significant di¤erences in demonstrative use in cont...

contrastive rhetorical analysis as a way of understanding different ways through which writers from various cultural backgrounds shape their discourse was officially initiated by the works of kaplan (1966). this study tries to use the methodology to investigate the news reports in two american and iranian widely published newspapers. using the analytical methodologies of contrastive rhetoric an...

language must be studied as a social behavior and the aim of language instruction must be to facilitate learners’ acquisition of communicative competence; the ability to speak both accurately and appropriately. rules of speaking must be included into second language classroom teaching. we should teach linguistic rules along with social rules. in this study a number of social functions in persia...

We explore alternative sets in contrastive constructions and argue that different information structural units can come with different alternative sets, more specifically, the alternatives coming with (contrastive) topics can differ from the ones coming with (contrastive) foci. This is surprising for some accounts of contrastive topics (e.g. Büring 2003) and calls for an analysis of alternative...

In repeating an utterance for the benefit of a listener, talkers can use contrastive stress to mark those parts of an utterance that were misrecognized. In this study, we found that talkers use a consistent set of markers to indicate contrastive stress: Listeners unaware of the nature of the misrecognition can readily identify a contrastively stressed word. Based on an analysis of these markers...