Sign Language Prosodic Cues in First and Second Language Acquisition
نویسنده
چکیده
In this paper the prosodic structure of American Sign Language (ASL) narratives will be analyzed in three groups: two groups of native (L1) signers and one group of highly proficient, second language (L2) signers. The results of this study show that the performance in the native hearing, bilingual group is due to both to their ASL language experience, and, under certain conditions, to their experience as hearing gesturers using co-speech gesture. The goals of the present study are: (1) to better understand the prosodic cues used by L1 and L2 users of ASL, (2) to contextualize these findings with respect to cross-linguistic tendencies, register, and task, and (3) to begin to understand the role that gestural experience has on L2 prosody of ASL. The results suggest that a lifetime of experience gesturing while speaking may have some effect on the prosodic cues used by hearing signers, similar to the effects of an L1 on an L2.
منابع مشابه
Production of English Lexical Stress by Persian EFL Learners
This study examines the phonetic properties of lexical stress in English produced by Persian speakers learning English as a foreign language. The four most reliable phonetic correlates of English lexical stress, namely fundamental frequency, duration, intensity, and vowel quality were measured across Persian speakers’ production of the stressed and unstressed syllables of five English disyllabi...
متن کاملProsodic elements to improve pronunciation in English language learners: A short report
The usefulness of teaching pronunciation in language instruction remains controversial. Though past research suggests that teachers can make little or no difference in improving their students’ pronunciation, current findings suggest that second language pronunciation can improve to be near native-like with the implementation of certain criteria such as the utilization of...
متن کاملA Dynamical System Approach to Research in Second Language Acquisition
Epistemologically speaking, second language acquisition research (SLAR) might be reconsidered from a complex dynamical system view with interconnected aspects in the ecosystem of language acquisition. The present paper attempts to introduce the tenets of complex system theory and its application in SLAR. It has been suggested that the present dominant traditions in language acquisition research...
متن کاملLanguage development and acquisition in children
Language acquisition is a natural developmental process and is unique to Homo sapiens in which a child acquiring his or her mother tongue as a first language. The simplest theory of language development is that children learn language by imitating adult language. A second possibility is that children acquire language through conditioning. Noam Chomsky put forward innateness hypothesis. Piaget ...
متن کامل