This study investigated two major types of metadiscourse markers as used in typical sales contracts, written by English natives and Iranian non-natives. In so doing, 60 sales contracts were selected, 30 written by native English and 30 by Iranian non-natives. Based on Hyland and Tse’s taxonomy, the contracts were codified and classified in terms of the frequency and percentage of the interactiv...

this study investigated two major types of metadiscourse markers as used in typical sales contracts, written by english natives and iranian non-natives. in so doing, 60 sales contracts were selected, 30 written by native english and 30 by iranian non-natives. based on hyland and tse’s taxonomy, the contracts were codified and classified in terms of the frequency and percentage of the interactiv...

This paper presents a model-based statistical duration analysis on the comparison between English natives and Thai-native English learners. The analyses were carried out to characterize non-native’s duration control on (1) control differences between natives and learners and on (2) the relationship between the duration characteristics and learners’ background reflecting English experiences. The...

In speech, words are often reduced rather than fully pronounced (e.g., (/ˈsʌmri/ for /ˈsʌməri/, summary). Non-native listeners may have problems in processing these reduced forms, because they have encountered them less often. This paper addresses the question whether this also holds for highly proficient non-natives and for words with similar forms and meanings in the non-natives' mother tongu...

There  has  been  considerable  debate  over  what  the  sources  of  morphological  variation  in  second  language acquisition  are.  From  among  various  hypotheses  put  forth  on  the  topic,  the  feature  reassembly  hypothesis (Lardiere, 2005) assumes that it is the reconfiguration of features in the L2 which causes variation between the performance of natives and non-natives. Acknowle...

The degree to which native and non-native readers interpret English sentences incrementally was investigated by examining plausibility effects on reanalysis processes. Experiment 1 required participants to read sentences word by word and to make on-line plausibility judgements. The results showed that natives and non-natives immediately computed the plausibility of the preferred structural anal...

Immigrants, English Ability and the Digital Divide This study examines the extent and causes of inequalities in information technology (IT) ownership and use between natives and immigrants in the U.S., focusing on the role of English ability. The results indicate that, during the period 1997-2003, immigrants were significantly less likely to have access to or use a computer and the Internet. Mo...

This paper compares realizations of the English function word of in read and spontaneous speech produced by Czech and Norwegian speakers with native productions. Acoustic analysis involved word and segment durations, voicing, formant and band energy measurements. Non-natives appeared to produce longer durations than natives but read productions were longer than spontaneous tokens for natives an...

the present study sought to investigate the acquisition of referential, quasi and expletive subject pronouns, three different types of obligatory subjects in english, by adult persian speaking l2 learners of english at different stages of l2 acquisition. a grammaticality judgment test and a translation test were designed and developed to elicit the participants' knowledge of obligatory subjects...