Interaction between grammatical categories and cognition in bilinguals: The role of proficiency, cultural immersion, and language of instruction

Previous studies have demonstrated that there is a tight link between grammatical concepts and cognitive preferences in monolingual speakers (Lucy 1992, Lucy & Gaskins 2003, Imai & Gentner 1997, Imai & Mazuka 2003). Recent research has also shown that bilinguals with languages that differ in their concepts may shift their cognitive preferences as a function of their proficiency (Athanasopoulos, 2006) or cultural immersion (Cook, Bassetti, Kasai, Sasaki, & Takahashi, 2006). The current short paper assesses the relative impact of each of these variables, and furthermore asks whether bilinguals alternate between two distinct cognitive representations of language-specific concepts depending on the language used in the experiment. Results from an object classification task showed that Japanese–English bilinguals shifted their behaviour towards the second language (L2) pattern primarily as a function of their L2 proficiency, while cultural immersion and language of instruction played a minimal role. These findings suggest that acquisition of novel grammatical categories leads to cognitive restructuring in the bilingual mind and have implications for the relationship between language and cognitive processing.

Learning to think in a second language: effects of proficiency and length of exposure in English learners of German

The aim of the current study is to investigate motion event cognition in second language learners in a higher education learning context. Based on recent findings showing that speakers of grammatical aspect languages like English attend less to the endpoint (goal) of events than speakers of non-aspect languages like Swedish in a nonverbal categorization task involving working memory (Athanasopoulos & Bylund, 2013; Bylund & Athanasopoulos, this issue), the current study asks whether native speakers of an aspect language start paying more attention to event endpoints when learning a non-aspect language. Native English and German (a non-aspect language) speakers, and English learners of L2 German, who were pursuing studies in German language and literature at an English university, were asked to match a target scene with intermediate degree of endpoint orientation with two alternate scenes with low and high degree of endpoint orientation, respectively. Results showed that, when compared to the native English speakers, the learners of German were more prone to base their similarity judgements on endpoint saliency, rather than ongoingness, primarily as a function of increasing L2 proficiency and year of university study. Further analyses revealed a non-linear relationship between length of L2 exposure and categorization patterns, subserved by a progressive strengthening of the relationship between L2 proficiency and categorization as length of exposure increased. These findings present evidence that cognitive restructuring may occur through increasing experience with an L2, but also suggest that this relationship may be complex, and unfold over a long period of time.

Language in genetic syndromes and cognitive modularity

In recent years, research into the impact of genetic abnormalities on cognitive development, including language, has become recognized for its potential to make valuable contributions to our understanding of the brain–behaviour relationships underlying language acquisition as well as to understanding the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The publication of Fodor’s ( 1983 ) book The Modularity of Mind has had a profound impact on the study of language and the cognitive architecture of the human mind. Its central claim is that many of the processes involved in comprehension are undertaken by special brain systems termed ‘modules’. This domain specificity of language or modularity has become a fundamental feature that differentiates competing theories and accounts of language acquisition (Fodor 1983 , 1985 ; Levy 1994 ; Karmiloff-Smith 1998 ). However, although the fact that the adult brain is modularized is hardly disputed, there are different views of how brain regions become specialized for specific functions. A question of some interest to theorists is whether the human brain is modularized from the outset (nativist view) or whether these distinct brain regions develop as a result of biological maturation and environmental input (neuroconstructivist view). One source of insight into these issues has been the study of developmental disorders, and in particular genetic syndromes, such as Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). Because of their uneven profiles characterized by dissociations of different cognitive skills, these syndromes can help us address theoretically significant questions. Investigations into the linguistic and cognitive profiles of individuals with these genetic abnormalities have been used as evidence to advance theoretical views about innate modularity and the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The present chapter will be organized as follows. To begin, two different theoretical proposals in the modularity debate will be presented. Then studies of linguistic abilities in WS and in DS will be reviewed. Here, the emphasis will be mainly on WS due to the fact that theoretical debates have focused primarily on WS, there is a larger body of literature on WS, and DS subjects have typically been used for the purposes of comparison. Finally, the modularity debate will be revisited in light of the literature review of both WS and DS. Conclusions will be drawn regarding the contribution of these two genetic syndromes to the issue of cognitive modularity, and in particular innate modularity.

Multiple schools, languages, experiences and affiliations: ideological becomings and positionings

This article focuses on the identity accounts of a group of Chinese children who attend a heritage language school. Bakhtin’s concepts of ideological becoming, and authoritative and internally persuasive discourse, frame our exploration. Taking a dialogic view of language and learning raises questions about schools as socializing spaces and ideological environments. The children in this inquiry articulate their own ideological patterns of alignment. Those patterns, and the children's code switching, seem mostly determined by their socialization, language affiliations, friendship patterns, family situations, and legal access to particular schools. Five patterns of ideological becoming are presented. The children’s articulated preferences indicate that they assert their own ideological stances towards prevailing authoritative discourses, give voice to their own sense of agency and internally persuasive discourses, and respond to the ideological resources that mediate their linguistic repertoires.

Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity.In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of languages, and the country is officially bilingual. In this paper, we will look at attempts to maintain and grow the number of speakers of the language and at the relevance of this development for speakers of minority languages in other settings.

Immigration, security and the public debate on US language policy : a critical discourse analysis of language attitudes in the United States of America

The narrative of the United States is of a "nation of immigrants" in which the language shift patterns of earlier ethnolinguistic groups have tended towards linguistic assimilation through English. In recent years, however, changes in the demographic landscape and language maintenance by non-English speaking immigrants, particularly Hispanics, have been perceived as threats and have led to calls for an official English language policy.This thesis aims to contribute to the study of language policy making from a societal security perspective as expressed in attitudes regarding language and identity originating in the daily interaction between language groups. The focus is on the role of language and American identity in relation to immigration. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach combining language policy studies, security theory, and critical discourse analysis. The material consists of articles collected from four newspapers, namely USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle between April 2006 and December 2007.Two discourse types are evident from the analysis namely Loyalty and Efficiency. The former is mainly marked by concerns of national identity and contains speech acts of security related to language shift, choice and English for unity. Immigrants are represented as dehumanised, and harmful. Immigration is given as sovereignty-related, racial, and as war. The discourse type of Efficiency is mainly instrumental and contains speech acts of security related to cost, provision of services, health and safety, and social mobility. Immigrants are further represented as a labour resource. These discourse types reflect how the construction of the linguistic 'we' is expected to be maintained. Loyalty is triggered by arguments that the collective identity is threatened and is itself used in reproducing the collective 'we' through hegemonic expressions of monolingualism in the public space and semi-public space. The denigration of immigrants is used as a tool for enhancing societal security through solidarity and as a possible justification for the denial of minority rights. Also, although language acquisition patterns still follow the historical trend of language shift, factors indicating cultural separateness such as the appearance of speech communities or the use of minority languages in the public space and semi-public space have led to manifestations of intolerance. Examples of discrimination and prejudice towards minority groups indicate that the perception of worth of a shared language differs from the actual worth of dominant language acquisition for integration purposes. The study further indicates that the efficient working of the free market by using minority languages to sell services or buy labour is perceived as conflicting with nation-building notions since it may create separately functioning sub-communities with a new cultural capital recognised as legitimate competence. The discourse types mainly represent securitising moves constructing existential threats. The perception of threat and ideas of national belonging are primarily based on a zero-sum notion favouring monolingualism. Further, the identity of the immigrant individual is seen as dynamic and adaptable to assimilationist measures whereas the identity of the state and its members are perceived as static. Also, the study shows that debates concerning language status are linked to extra-linguistic matters. To conclude, policy makers in the US need to consider the relationship between four factors, namely societal security based on collective identity, individual/human security, human rights, and a changing linguistic demography, for proposed language intervention measures to be successful.

Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

As neuroscience gains social traction and entices media attention, the notion that education has much to benefit from brain research becomes increasingly popular. However, it has been argued that the fundamental bridge toward education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. We discuss four specific cases in which neuroscience synergizes with other disciplines to serve education, ranging from very general physiological aspects of human learning such as nutrition, exercise and sleep, to brain architectures that shape the way we acquire language and reading, and neuroscience tools that increasingly allow the early detection of cognitive deficits, especially in preverbal infants. Neuroscience methods, tools and theoretical frameworks have broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice. Although the bridge’s cement is still fresh, we argue why it is prime time to march over it.

English collocations extracted from a corpus of university learners and its contribution to a language teaching pedagogy

Taking into consideration the relevance of foreign language teaching and the learning of collocations (ALTENBERG; EEG-OLOFSSON, 1990; FONTENELLE, 1994; MEUNIER; GRANGER, 2008), this paper aims at showing results of an investigation on whether the teaching of collocations should be implicit or explicit to the Brazilian university students. Furthermore, the research has the purpose of presenting some collocational aspects from a corpus of the written language learners made up of intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced university students' argumentative essays at a public university in Brazil. With the help of WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2007), it was possible to raise students' most frequent collocational choices and patterns, the most/least used type of collocations, the influence of the mother tongue on their choices, among other aspects. With the purpose of motivating and involving students in classroom research, it was also introduced The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), created by Mark Davies. By doing so, students could compare their collocational choices with the patterns found in the online corpus, extract more collocational patterns and, consequently, be aware of the potential of corpora for the foreign learning process, specifically for raising language awareness, with focus on prefabricated chunks.

Equine and human mutual welfare: a whole subject? Critical aspects and possible strategies in equine-assisted activities and therapies

General aim of the study is equine welfare, particularly concerning different husbandry methodic and inter-specific relational factors. Specific aim is the evaluation of possible mutual (to humans and to equines) benefits and the analysis of critical factors/strength points, of human-horse relationship within Therapeutic Riding context (TR). The peculiarities of human-horse relationship (compared to the bond with “Pet”) are analyzed, concerning their socio-anthropological, psychological, psycho-dynamic distinctive characteristics. 8 European representative therapeutic riding centers (TRC) were therefore selected (on the basis of their different animals’ husbandry criteria, and of the different rehabilitative methodologies adopted). TRC were investigated through 2 different questionnaires, specifically settled to access objective/subjective animal welfare parameters; the quality of human-horse relationship; technicians’ emotional experienced. 3 Centers were further selected, and behavioral (145 hours of behavioral recording) and physiological parameters (heart rate and heart rate variability) were evaluated, aimed to access equine welfare and horses’ adaptive responses/coping (towards general environment and towards TR job). Moreover a specific “handling-task” was ideated and experimented, aimed to measure the quality of TR technicians-horses relationship. We did therefore evaluate both the individual horses’ responses and the possible differences among Centers. Data collected highlight the lack of univocal standardized methodic, concerning the general animals’ management and the specific methodologies (aimed to improve animal welfare and to empower TR efficacy). Some positive and some critical aspects were detected concerning TR personnel-horse relationship. Another experimental approach did evaluate the efficacy (concerning the mutual benefits’ empowerment) of an “ethologically-fitted” TR intervention, aimed to educate children to and through the relationship with horses. Our data evidenced that the improvement of human horse relationship, through structured educational programs for TR personnel might have important consequences both to human and equine welfare.

Salinity Effect on Horticultural Crops: Morphological, Physiological, and Biomolecular Elements of Salinity Stress Response

Among abiotic stresses, high salinity stress is the most severe environmental stress. High salinity exerts its negative impact mainly by disrupting the ionic and osmotic equilibrium of the cell. In saline soils, high levels of sodium ions lead to plant growth inhibition and even death. Salt tolerance in plants is a multifarious phenomenon involving a variety of changes at molecular, organelle, cellular, tissue as well as whole plant level. In addition, salt tolerant plants show a range of adaptations not only in morphological or structural features but also in metabolic and physiological processes that enable them to survive under extreme saline environments. The main objectives of my dissertation were understanding the main physiological and biomolecular features of plant responses to salinity in different genotypes of horticultural crops that are belonging to different families Solanaceae (tomato) and Cucurbitaceae (melon) and Brassicaceae (cabbage and radish). Several aspects of crop responses to salinity have been addressed with the final aim of combining elements of functional stress response in plants by using several ways for the assessment of plant stress perception that ranging from destructive measurements (eg. leaf area, relative growth rate, leaf area index, and total plant fresh and dry weight), to physiological determinations (eg. stomatal conductance, leaf gas exchanges, water use efficiency, and leaf water relation), to the determination of metabolite accumulation in plant tissue (eg. Proline and protein) as well as evaluation the role of enzymatic antioxidant capacity assay in scavenging reactive oxygen species that have been generated under salinized condition, and finally assessing the gene induction and up-down regulation upon salinization (eg. SOS pathway).

The Design of XML-Based Model and Experiment Description Languages for Network Simulation

The Simulation Automation Framework for Experiments (SAFE) is a project created to raise the level of abstraction in network simulation tools and thereby address issues that undermine credibility. SAFE incorporates best practices in network simulationto automate the experimental process and to guide users in the development of sound scientific studies using the popular ns-3 network simulator. My contributions to the SAFE project: the design of two XML-based languages called NEDL (ns-3 Experiment Description Language) and NSTL (ns-3 Script Templating Language), which facilitate the description of experiments and network simulationmodels, respectively. The languages provide a foundation for the construction of better interfaces between the user and the ns-3 simulator. They also provide input to a mechanism which automates the execution of network simulation experiments. Additionally,this thesis demonstrates that one can develop tools to generate ns-3 scripts in Python or C++ automatically from NSTL model descriptions.

Dynamic Languages and Applications. Report on the Workshop Dyla 07 at ECOOP 2007

Following last two years’ workshop on dynamic languages at the ECOOP conference, the Dyla 2007 workshop was a successful and popular event. As its name implies, the workshop’s focus was on dynamic languages and their applications. Topics and discussions at the workshop included macro expansion mechanisms, extension of the method lookup algorithm, language interpretation, reflexivity and languages for mobile ad hoc networks. The main goal of this workshop was to bring together different dynamic language communities and favouring cross communities interaction. Dyla 2007 was organised as a full day meeting, partly devoted to presentation of submitted position papers and partly devoted to tool demonstration. All accepted papers can be downloaded from the workshop’s web site. In this report, we provide an overview of the presentations and a summary of discussions.

Language in Political Economy and Market Economy: A Case Study of India

The political philosophy underpinning the Indian Constitution is socialist economy in a multilingual political landscape. The Constitution grants some fundamental rights to all citizens regarding language and to linguistic and other minorities regarding education. It also obligates states to use many languages in school education. Restructuring the economy with free market as its pivot and the growing dominance of English in the information driven global economy give rise to policy changes in language use in education, which undermine the Constitutional provisions relating to language, though these changes reflect the manufactured consent of the citizens. This is made possible by the way the Constitution is interpreted by courts with regard to the fundamental rights of equality and non-discrimination when they apply to language. The unique property of language that it can be acquired, unlike other primordial attributes such as ethnicity or caste, comes into play in this interpretation. The result is that the law of the market takes over the law of the land.

Language ideologies: the formation and legitimisation of New Zealand English

New Zealand English first emerged at the beginning of the 19th century as a result of the dialect contact of British (51%), Scottish (27.3%) and Irish (22%) migrants (Hay and Gordon 2008:6). This variety has subsequently developed into an autonomous and legitimised national variety and enjoys a distinct socio-political status, recognition and codification. In fact, a number of dictionaries of New Zealand English have been published1 and the variety is routinely used as the official medium on TV, radio and other media. This however, has not always been the case, as for long only British standard norms were deemed suitable for media broadcasting. While there is some work already on lay commentary about New Zealand English (see for example Gordon 1983, 1994; Hundt 1998), there is much more to be done especially concerning more recent periods of the history of this variety and the ideologies underlying its development and legitimisation. Consequently, the current project aims at investigating the metalinguistic discourses during the period of transition from a British norm to a New Zealand norm in the media context, this will be done by focusing on debates about language in light of the advent of radio and television. The main purpose of this investigation is thus to examine the (language) ideologies that have shaped and underlain these discourses (e.g. discussions about the appropriateness of New Zealand English vis à vis external, British models of language) and their related practices in these media (e.g. broadcasting norms). The sociolinguistic and pragmatic effects of these ideologies will also be taken into account. Furthermore, a comparison will be carried out, at a later stage in the project, between New Zealand English and a more problematic and less legitimised variety: Estuary English. Despite plenty of evidence of media and other public discourses on Estuary English, in fact, there has been very little metalinguistic analysis of this evidence, nor examinations of the underlying ideologies in these discourses. The comparison will seek to discover whether similar themes emerge in the ideologies played out in publish discourses about these varieties, themes which serve to legitimise one variety, whilst denying such legitimacy to the other.

Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Koineisation

New Zealand English first emerged at the beginning of the 19th century as a result of the dialect contact of British (51%), Scottish (27.3%) and Irish (22%) migrants (Hay and Gordon 2008:6). This variety has subsequently developed into an autonomous and legitimised national variety and enjoys a distinct socio-political status, recognition and codification. In fact, a number of dictionaries of New Zealand English have been published1 and the variety is routinely used as the official medium on TV, radio and other media. This however, has not always been the case, as for long only British standard norms were deemed suitable for media broadcasting. While there is some work already on lay commentary about New Zealand English (see for example Gordon 1983, 1994; Hundt 1998), there is much more to be done especially concerning more recent periods of the history of this variety and the ideologies underlying its development and legitimisation. Consequently, the current project aims at investigating the metalinguistic discourses during the period of transition from a British norm to a New Zealand norm in the media context, this will be done by focusing on debates about language in light of the advent of radio and television. The main purpose of this investigation is thus to examine the (language) ideologies that have shaped and underlain these discourses (e.g. discussions about the appropriateness of New Zealand English vis à vis external, British models of language) and their related practices in these media (e.g. broadcasting norms). The sociolinguistic and pragmatic effects of these ideologies will also be taken into account. Furthermore, a comparison will be carried out, at a later stage in the project, between New Zealand English and a more problematic and less legitimised variety: Estuary English. Despite plenty of evidence of media and other public discourses on Estuary English, in fact, there has been very little metalinguistic analysis of this evidence, nor examinations of the underlying ideologies in these discourses. The comparison will seek to discover whether similar themes emerge in the ideologies played out in publish discourses about these varieties, themes which serve to legitimise one variety, whilst denying such legitimacy to the other.