The present study examines prosodic characteristics of Taiwan (TW) English in relation to native (L1) English and TW speakers’ mother tongue, Mandarin. The aim is to investigate 1) how TW second-language (L2) English is different from L1 English by integrated prosodic features 2) if any transfer effect from L2s’ mother tongue contributes to L2 accent and 3) What is the similarity/difference bet...

“Artificial societies” are constructed to examine L2-based creole development. ‘Virtual’ slaves and slave-owners interact based on socio-historical conditions. Linguistic transmissions and developments are tracked. This study takes no position on whether a theory of ‘imperfect L2 acquisition of the superstrate language’ can be viewed as final truth with respect to creole genesis. However, a Com...

Second language (L2) reading serves dual roles in L2 learning – both as a literacy skill for comprehension and as a source of L2 input (Eskey, 2005; Grabe, 1991). However, L2 reading researchers have traditionally focused on either one of the two dimensions at a time, with the other largely unattended, as is reflected in the discrepancies between literacy-oriented research and language-oriented...

Speaker accent influences the accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. Knowledge of accent-based acoustic variations can therefore be used in the development of more robust systems. This paper investigates the differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) English in South Africa and is specifically aimed at L2 English speakers with a native African mother tongu...

The present study examined early vocabulary development in fifty-nine French monolingual and fifty French-English bilingual infants (1;4-1;6). Vocabulary comprehension was assessed using both parental report (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory; CDI) and the Computerized Comprehension Task (CCT). When assessing receptive vocabulary development using parental report, the bilingua...

Pyrrolyl squaraines, both dyes and polymers, were first reported in 1965 and since then a fascinating body of work has been produced investigating the chemistry of these interesting molecules. A major aspect of these molecules that makes them so appealing to those researchers who have contributed to this field over the last 50 years is their chemical versatility. In this review, subjects, such ...

We report that programmed death ligand 2 (PD-L2), a known ligand of PD-1, also binds to repulsive guidance molecule b (RGMb), which was originally identified in the nervous system as a co-receptor for bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs). PD-L2 and BMP-2/4 bind to distinct sites on RGMb. Normal resting lung interstitial macrophages and alveolar epithelial cells express high levels of RGMb mRNA, w...