In the present investigation we aim to determine to which degree various linguistic factors contribute to the intelligibility of Swedish words among Danes. We correlated the results of an experiment on word intelligibility with eleven linguistic factors and carried out logistic regression analyses. In the experiment, the intelligibility of 384 frequent Swedish words was tested among Danish list...

The  current  study  investigated  the  expression  of  disagreement  by  Iranian  advanced  English learners.  The  data  for  the  study  comprised  the  recorded  discussions  of  26  male  and  female interlocutors  in  three  different  settings:  1)  language  institute,  2)  home  environment,  and  3) university  setting.  Analysis  of  the  arguments  pointed  to  the  influence  of  c...

Listeners identify talkers more accurately in their na­ tive language than an unknown, foreign language in a phenomenon called the language-familiarity effect. However, the psychological basis for this effect re­ mains unknown. Some have suggested that the linguistic processes involved in speech perception and comprehension facilitate native­language talker identification. Others have argued th...

This paper illustrates an agent-based simulation model focused on the acquisition of linguistic skills. Populations of simulated agents controlled by dynamical neural networks are trained by artificial evolution to perfom two tasks: the behaviour-production task which consists in accessing and executing linguistic instructions; and the behaviourrecognition task which consists in linguistically ...

Research on early word learning reveals that verbs present a unique challenge. While English-acquiring 24-month-olds can learn novel verbs and extend them to new scenes, they perform better in rich linguistic contexts (when novel verbs appear with lexicalized noun phrases naming the event participants) than in sparser linguistic contexts (Arunachalam & Waxman 2011). However, in languages like K...

Master`s degree was integrated into the system of Russian Higher Education several decades ago, however, teaching foreign languages at this level still needs further analysis including the postgraduate law students training. The article investigates the principal components of foreign language teaching in Master of laws Graduate Programs (considering the case of the English language) on the bas...

What is the relation been spatial language and cognition? Across speech communities, linguistic preferences for particular spatial frames of reference (FoR) predict nonlinguistic spatial reasoning strategies. This has been taken to imply a powerful influence of language on reasoning, but extra-linguistic factors may also matter. We present evidence from a bilingual community in Juchitán, Mexico...

To assess the link between accent and intelligibility, previous research has heavily relied on human responses, demonstrating that human assessment is influenced by such subjective factors as linguistic proficiency (Pihko, 1997), familiarity (Smith, 1992), age (Burda, 2000), reactions to speakers’ kinetic cues (Bara, 1992; Rubin, 1992), and dialectal differences (Smith & Bisazza, 1982). In part...