Les TICE pour la production écrite et la traduction de l'italien vers le français : le cas de la SSLMIT de Forlì

Les recherches relatives à l'utilisation des TICE se concentrent fréquemment soit sur la dimension cognitive, sur la dimension linguistique ou sur la dimension culturelle. Le plus souvent, les recherches empiriques se proposent d'évaluer les effets directs des TICE sur les performances langagières des apprenants. En outre, les recherches, surtout en psychologie cognitive, sont le plus souvent effectuées en laboratoire. C'est pourquoi le travail présenté dans cette thèse se propose d'inscrire l'utilisation des TICE dans une perspective écologique, et de proposer une approche intégrée pour l'analyse des pratiques effectives aussi bien en didactique des langues qu'en didactique de la traduction. En ce qui concerne les aspects cognitifs, nous recourons à un concept apprécié des praticiens, celui de stratégies d'apprentissage. Les quatre premiers chapitres de la présente thèse sont consacrés à l'élaboration du cadre théorique dans lequel nous inscrivons notre recherche. Nous aborderons en premier lieu les aspects disciplinaires, et notamment l’interdisciplinarité de nos deux champs de référence. Ensuite nous traiterons les stratégies d'apprentissage et les stratégies de traduction. Dans un troisième mouvement, nous nous efforcerons de définir les deux compétences visées par notre recherche : la production écrite et la traduction. Dans un quatrième temps, nous nous intéresserons aux modifications introduites par les TICE dans les pratiques d'enseignement et d'apprentissage de ces deux compétences. Le cinquième chapitre a pour objet la présentation, l'analyse des données recueillies auprès de groupes d'enseignants et d'étudiants de la section de français de la SSLMIT. Il s’agira dans un premier temps, de présenter notre corpus. Ensuite nous procéderons à l’analyse des données. Enfin, nous présenterons, après une synthèse globale, des pistes didactiques et scientifiques à même de prolonger notre travail.

Il child language brokering a Ravenna e provincia: la parola agli studenti e ai professori

The main aim of this study is to provide a description of the phenomenon defined as Child Language Brokering (CLB), a common practice among language minority communities but which has received less attention in the academic literature. As the children of immigrants often learn the host language much more quickly than their parents, they contribute to family life by acting as language and cultural mediators between a family members and different language speakers. Many immigrant families prefer a language broker from within their own family to an external mediator or interpreter, even though there is a well-found resistance to the use of these young interpreters by professionals. In this study I report some findings from surveys of teachers in schools in Ravenna where there has been some use of students as CLBs and of students who have acted or are still acting as mediators for their families in different contexts, not only while at school. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter one aims at providing an overview of recent migration to Italy and of the differences between first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants. The chapter also discusses the available professional interpreting facilities provided by the municipality of Ravenna. Chapter two presents an overview of the literature on child language brokering. Chapter three provides a description of the methodology used in order to analyze the data collected. Chapter four contains a detailed analysis of the questionnaires administered to the students and the interviews submitted to the teachers in four schools in Ravenna. Chapter five focuses on the studies carried out by the researchers of the Thomas Coram Research Unit and University College London and draws a general comparison between their findings from on-line surveys of teachers in schools and my own findings on teachers’ points of view. The results of this study demonstrate that CLB is a common practice among immigrant children living in Ravenna and, although almost all students reported positive appreciation, further work is still needed to assess the impact of this phenomenon.

La competenza comunicativa in giapponese: indagine empirica sulle difficoltà frequenti degli apprendenti italofoni in interazioni orali

Smooth intercultural communication requires very complex tasks, especially when participants are very different in their cultural and linguistic backgrounds: this is the case of native Italian and Japanese speakers. A further difficulty in such a context can be found in the usage of a foreign language not mastered perfectly by speakers, which is the case for Italian intermediate learners of Japanese. The aim of this study is therefore to identify the linguistic difficulties common among Italian learners of Japanese as a foreign language and to further examine the consequences of incorrect pragma-linguistic deliveries in actual conversations. To this end, a series of linguistic aspects selected on the basis of the author's experience have been taken into consideration. Some aspects are expected to be difficult to master because of linguistic differences between Italian and Japanese, while some may be difficult due to their connection to the specific Japanese cultural context. The present study consists of six parts. The Introduction presents the state of the art on the research topic and defines the purpose of this research. Chapter 1 outlines the linguistic aspects of the Japanese language investigated in the study, specifically focusing on the following topics: writing system, phonology, loan words, numbers, ellipsis, levels of speech and honorifics. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the environment of teaching Japanese as a foreign language in the university setting in Italy. In Chapter 3 the first phase of the research is described, i.e. an online survey aimed at identifying the most problematic linguistic aspects. Chapter 4 presents the second phase of this study: a series of oral interactions between Japanese and Italian native speakers, conversing exclusively in Japanese, focusing on the management of misunderstandings with the use of actual linguistic data. The Conclusion outlines the results and possible future developments.

Standard Language in Bosna and Hercegovina - in Language Policy Documents

From the beginning of the standardisation of language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e. from the acceptance of Karadzic's phonetic spelling in the mid-19th century, to the present day when there are three different language standards in force - Bosniac (Muslim), Croatian and Serbian, language in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a subject of political conflict. Documents on language policy from this period show the degree to which domestic and foreign political factors influenced the standard language issue, beginning with the very appellation for the specific norm regulation. The material analysed (proclamations by political, cultural and other organisations as well as corresponding constitutional and statutory provisions on language use) shows the differing treatment of the standard language in Bosnia and Herzegovina in different historical periods. During the period of Turkish rule (until 1878) there was no real political interest in the issue. Under Austro-Hungarian rule (1878-1918) there was an attempt to use the language as a means of forming a united Bosnian nation, but this was later abandoned. During the first Yugoslavia (1918-1941) a uniform solution was imposed on Bosnia and Herzegovina, as throughout the Serbo-Croatian language area, while under the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), the official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina was Croatian. The period from 1945 to 1991 had two phases: the first a standard language unity of Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Montenegrins (until 1965), and the second a gradual but stormy separation of national languages, which has been largely completed since 1991. The introductory study includes a detailed analysis of all the expressions used, with special reference to the present state, and accompanies the collection of documents which represent the main outcome of the research.

Practical, Pluggable Types for a Dynamic Language

Most languages fall into one of two camps: either they adopt a unique, static type system, or they abandon static type-checks for run-time checks. Pluggable types blur this division by (i) making static type systems optional, and (ii) supporting a choice of type systems for reasoning about different kinds of static properties. Dynamic languages can then benefit from static-checking without sacrificing dynamic features or committing to a unique, static type system. But the overhead of adopting pluggable types can be very high, especially if all existing code must be decorated with type annotations before any type-checking can be performed. We propose a practical and pragmatic approach to introduce pluggable type systems to dynamic languages. First of all, only annotated code is type-checked. Second, limited type inference is performed on unannotated code to reduce the number of reported errors. Finally, external annotations can be used to type third-party code. We present Typeplug, a Smalltalk implementation of our framework, and report on experience applying the framework to three different pluggable type systems.

Language Boxes: Bending the Host Language with Modular Language Changes

As domain-specific modeling begins to attract widespread acceptance, pressure is increasing for the development of new domain-specific languages. Unfortunately these DSLs typically conflict with the grammar of the host language, making it difficult to compose hybrid code except at the level of strings; few mechanisms (if any) exist to control the scope of usage of multiple DSLs; and, most seriously, existing host language tools are typically unaware of the DSL extensions, thus hampering the development process. Language boxes address these issues by offering a simple, modular mechanism to encapsulate (i) compositional changes to the host language, (ii) transformations to address various concerns such as compilation and highlighting, and (iii) scoping rules to control visibility of language extensions. We describe the design and implementation of language boxes, and show with the help of several examples how modular extensions can be introduced to a host language and environment.

An overview of positive and negative effects of gender-fair language use

The basic principle of gender-fair language is symmetric linguistic treatment of women and men. Depending on the structure of the respective language, two principle strategies can be deployed to make a language gender-fair. In languages with few gender-differentiating forms, such as English, there is a tendency towards neutralization. Here, gender-unmarked forms such as police officer or chairperson are used to substitute the male-biased policeman or chairman. The second strategy, feminization, implies that feminine forms of human nouns are used more frequently and systematically to make female referents visible.Since the 1970s, gender-fair language has been suggested, if not prescribed, for both scientific and official texts and its positive effects are widely documented. The use of gender-fair language increases the cognitive availability of feminine exemplars. Also in an applied context women responding to job advertisements formulated in gender-fair language feel more motivated to apply for the position. However, "side effects" of gender-fair language have also been observed: For instance, women referred to with a gender-fair title (e.g. chairperson) were evaluated as lower in status than women referred to with a masculine generic (e.g. chairman). Similarily, social initiatives framed with the use of gender-fair language were evaluated less-favourably than initiatives using traditional language. This presentation presents the gender-fair language use in the framework of a social dilemma. In order to protect themselves (or initiatives they stand for) from being ascribed incompetence or a lower status, women may avoid feminine forms and thus contribute to the perpetuation of gender-unfair language, which may be detrimental for women in general. Raising awareness for this social concern, and framing it both in terms of group and individual interest can direct the discussion about gender-fair language into a broader perspective of gender equality.

What do we mean by Female and Male in Neurocognitive Experiments on Language?

For several years now, neuroscientific research has been striving towards fundamental answers to questions about the relevance of sex/gender to language processing in the brain. This research has been effected through the search for sex/gender differences in the neurobiology of language processing. Thus, the main aim has ever been to focus on the differentiation of the sexes/genders, failing to define what sex, what gender, what female or male is in neurolingustic research. In other words, although neuroscientific findings have provided key insights into the brain functioning of women and men, neuropsychology has rarely questioned the complexity of the sex/gender variable beyond biology. What does “female” or “male” mean in human neurocognition; how are operationalisations implemented along the axes of “femaleness” or “maleness”; or what biological evidence is used to register the variables sex and/or gender? In the neurosciences as well as in neurocognitive research, questions such as these have so far not been studied in detail, even if they are highly significant for the scientific process. Instead, the variable of sex/gender has always been thought as solely dichotomous (as either female or male), oppositional and exclusionary of each other. Here, this theoretical contribution sets in. Based on findings in neuroscience and concepts in gender theory, this poster is dedicated to the reflection about what sex/gender is in the neuroscience of language processing. Following this aim, two levels of interest will be addressed. First: How do we define sex/gender at the level of participants? And second: How do we define sex/gender at the level of the experimental task? For the first, a multifactorial registration (work in progress) of the variable sex/gender will be presented, i.e. a tool that records sex/gender in terms of biology and social issues as well as on a spectrum between femaleness and maleness. For the second, the compulsory dichotomy of a gendered task when neurolinguistically approaching our cognitions of sex/gender will be explored.

Retirement as a “language related major life event” and its consequences on the multilingualism of migrants

The present study investigates life stories of established Italian workforce migrants living in the city of Berne, Switzerland, in regard to “language related major life events” (De Bot, 2007). These events are important in terms of changes happening in the linguistic setting during the life span and influence language development. In this sense, during the process of retirement, a new phase of life begins, which, amongst other things, has to be reorganized in relation to social contact and language use. One of my main questions is how the subjects handle the changes happening within and after the process of retirement in respect to the use of different languages and how this “language related major life event” is constructed and described by the migrants. One of these changes happens due to the fact that, after retirement, the social network at the workplace (the primary source of language input) can get (partially) lost and with it, the use of the local language. The fact that migrants living in Berne are confronted with diglossia (Standard German and Swissgerman), that the Canton of Berne is bilingual (German and French) and that the migrants' mother tongue (Italian) is one of the Swiss national languages, makes this question even more interesting. A second question will consider the influence of the fact that most of the subjects in question lived with the idea of return migration, but as shown in a previous study (Alter/Vieillesse/Anziani, NFP 32, 1999), only a third returned back while another third remained in the host country and the final third chose the commuting option. I will first examine these processes, changes and influences by using quantitative questionnaires in order to obtain general information on demographic data, the social situation, and a self-assessment of linguistic skills. Secondly, I will use qualitative interviews to get in-depth information of the subjects’ life stories and language biographies. The results of this project are meant to deliver insight into different aspects that have not been looked at in detail to this point: which factors of the life stories of Italian workforce migrants, who decided to remain in Switzerland after retirement, influence the linguistic changes in general and the ones happening around retirement in particular.

A variationist approach to the examination of insertion and deletion of /h/ in Kosraean English

I report on language variation in the unresearched variety of English emerging on Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia. English is spoken as the inter-island lingua franca throughout Micronesia and has been the official language of FSM since gaining its independence in 1986, though still retaining close ties with the US through and economic “compact” agreement. I present here an analysis of a corpus of over 90 Kosraean English speakers, compiled during a three month fieldwork trip to the island in the Western Pacific. The 45 minute sociolinguistically sensitive recordings are drawn from a corpus of old and young, with varying levels of education and occupations, and off-island experiences. In the paper I analyse two variables. The first variable is the realisation of /h/, often subject to deletion in both L1 and L2 varieties of English. Such occurrences are commonly associated with Cockney English, but also found in Caribbean English and the postcolonial English of Australia. For example:  Male, 31: yeah I build their house their local huts and they pay me /h/ deletion is frequent in Kosraean English, but, perhaps expectedly, occurs slightly less among people with higher contact with American English, through having spent longer periods off island. The second feature under scrutiny is the variable epenthesis of [h] to provide a consonantal onset to vowel-initial syllables.  Male, 31: that guy is really hold now This practice is also found beyond Kosraean English. Previous studies find h-epenthesis arising in L1 varieties including Newfoundland and Tristan de Cunha English, while similar manifestations are identified in Francophone L2 learners of English. My variationist statistical analysis has shown [h] insertion:  to disproportionately occur intervocalically;  to be constrained by both speaker gender and age: older males are much more likely to epenthesis [h] in their speech;  to be more likely in the onset of stressed as opposed to unstressed syllables. In light of the findings of my analysis, I consider the relationship between h-deletion and h-epenthesis, the plausibility of hypercorrection as a motivation for the variation, and the potential influence of the substrate language, alongside sociolinguistic factors such as attitudes towards the US based on mobility. The analysis sheds light on the extent to which different varieties share this characteristic and the comparability of them in terms of linguistic constraints and attributes. Clarke, S. (2010). Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Hackert, S. (2004). Urban Bahamian Creole: System and Variation. Varieties of English Around the World G32. Amsterdam: Benjamins Milroy, J. (1983). On the Sociolinguistic History of H-dropping in English in Current topics in English historical linguistics: Odense UP

Code-switching: a touchstone of models of bilingual language production

The goal of the present thesis was to investigate the production of code-switched utterances in bilinguals’ speech production. This study investigates the availability of grammatical-category information during bilingual language processing. The specific aim is to examine the processes involved in the production of Persian-English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs). A bilingual compound verb is formed when the nominal constituent of a compound verb is replaced by an item from the other language. In the present cases of BCVs the nominal constituents are replaced by a verb from the other language. The main question addressed is how a lexical element corresponding to a verb node can be placed in a slot that corresponds to a noun lemma. This study also investigates how the production of BCVs might be captured within a model of BCVs and how such a model may be integrated within incremental network models of speech production. In the present study, both naturalistic and experimental data were used to investigate the processes involved in the production of BCVs. In the first part of the present study, I collected 2298 minutes of a popular Iranian TV program and found 962 code-switched utterances. In 83 (8%) of the switched cases, insertions occurred within the Persian compound verb structure, hence, resulting in BCVs. As to the second part of my work, a picture-word interference experiment was conducted. This study addressed whether in the case of the production of Persian-English BCVs, English verbs compete with the corresponding Persian compound verbs as a whole, or whether English verbs compete with the nominal constituents of Persian compound verbs only. Persian-English bilinguals named pictures depicting actions in 4 conditions in Persian (L1). In condition 1, participants named pictures of action using the whole Persian compound verb in the context of its English equivalent distractor verb. In condition 2, only the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of the light verb of the target Persian compound verb and in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb. In condition 3, the whole Persian compound verb was produced in the context of a semantically unrelated English distractor verb. In condition 4, only the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of the light verb of the target Persian compound verb and in the context of a semantically unrelated English distractor verb. The main effect of linguistic unit was significant by participants and items. Naming latencies were longer in the nominal linguistic unit compared to the compound verb (CV) linguistic unit. That is, participants were slower to produce the nominal constituent of compound verbs in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb compared to producing the whole compound verbs in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb. The three-way interaction between version of the experiment (CV and nominal versions), linguistic unit (nominal and CV linguistic units), and relation (semantically related and unrelated distractor words) was significant by participants. In both versions, naming latencies were longer in the semantically related nominal linguistic unit compared to the response latencies in the semantically related CV linguistic unit. In both versions, naming latencies were longer in the semantically related nominal linguistic unit compared to response latencies in the semantically unrelated nominal linguistic unit. Both the analysis of the naturalistic data and the results of the experiment revealed that in the case of the production of the nominal constituent of BCVs, a verb from the other language may compete with a noun from the base language, suggesting that grammatical category does not necessarily provide a constraint on lexical access during the production of the nominal constituent of BCVs. There was a minimal context in condition 2 (the nominal linguistic unit) in which the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of its corresponding light verb. The results suggest that generating words within a context may not guarantee that the effect of grammatical class becomes available. A model is proposed in order to characterize the processes involved in the production of BCVs. Implications for models of bilingual language production are discussed.

Profile Effects in Early Bilingual Language and Literacy

Bilingual children's language and literacy is stronger in some domains than others. Reanalysis of data from a broad-scale study of monolingual English and bilingual Spanish-English learners in Miami provided a clear demonstration of "profile effects," where bilingual children perform at varying levels compared to monolinguals across different test types. The profile effects were strong and consistent across conditions of socioeconomic status, language in the home, and school setting (two way or English immersion). The profile effects indicated comparable performance of bilingual and monolingual children in basic reading tasks, but lower vocabulary scores for the bilinguals in both languages. Other test types showed intermediate scores in bilinguals, again with substantial consistency across groups. These profiles are interpreted as primarily due to the "distributed characteristic" of bilingual lexical knowledge, the tendency for bilingual individuals to know some words in one language but not the other and vice versa.

The Relationship between AP English Language Performance and College Outcomes

This study focused on the relationship between students’ Advanced Placement (AP) English language performance and their subsequent college success. Targeted students were divided into three groups according to their AP English Language performance. Subsequent college success was measured by students’ first-year college GPA, retention to the second year, and institutional selectivity. The demographic characteristics of the three AP performance groups with regard to gender, ethnicity, and best language spoken are provided. Results indicated that, after controlling for students’ SAT scores as a measure of prior academic performance, AP English Language performance was positively related to all three measures of college success.

Mutual Information and Perplexity based Clustering of Dialogue Information for Dynamic Adaptation of Language Models

We present two approaches to cluster dialogue-based information obtained by the speech understanding module and the dialogue manager of a spoken dialogue system. The purpose is to estimate a language model related to each cluster, and use them to dynamically modify the model of the speech recognizer at each dialogue turn. In the first approach we build the cluster tree using local decisions based on a Maximum Normalized Mutual Information criterion. In the second one we take global decisions, based on the optimization of the global perplexity of the combination of the cluster-related LMs. Our experiments show a relative reduction of the word error rate of 15.17%, which helps to improve the performance of the understanding and the dialogue manager modules.

Mutual Information and Perplexity based Clustering of Dialogue Information for Dynamic Adaptation of Language Models

We present two approaches to cluster dialogue-based information obtained by the speech understanding module and the dialogue manager of a spoken dialogue system. The purpose is to estimate a language model related to each cluster, and use them to dynamically modify the model of the speech recognizer at each dialogue turn. In the first approach we build the cluster tree using local decisions based on a Maximum Normalized Mutual Information criterion. In the second one we take global decisions, based on the optimization of the global perplexity of the combination of the cluster-related LMs. Our experiments show a relative reduction of the word error rate of 15.17%, which helps to improve the performance of the understanding and the dialogue manager modules.