This exploratory study investigated the perceptions of Thai university students towards World Englishes (WEs). One hundred and ninety-eight students from three universities in Bangkok were administered a questionnaire inquiring about definitions of WEs, the Kachruvian concentric circles, the concepts of standard and ownership of English, Thai…

The present study investigates the collocational profiles of (1) three series of graded textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) commonly used in Taiwan, (2) the written productions of EFL learners, and (3) the written productions of native speakers (NS) of English. These texts were examined against a purpose-built collocation list. Based…

This study investigated the acquisition of an Egyptian phonological variant by student participants in a study abroad program at The American University in Cairo. Participants completed pre- and post-study abroad Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews (SOPIs). The SOPI data showed a move toward an Egyptian realization of the phonological variable…

Texts in Aboriginal English (AE) and creole varieties have been created by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers for a range of purposes. In this paper, we focus on materials created in and for five educational contexts, and investigate the orthographic or spelling systems developed in each setting. Choices about orthography are guided by…

An experiment investigated the effect of tonal language background on discrimination of pitch contour in short spoken and musical items. It was hypothesized that extensive exposure to a tonal language attunes perception of pitch contour. Accuracy and reaction times of adult participants from tonal (Thai) and non-tonal (Australian English) language…

This dissertation examines the linguistic practices of Tokelau people resettled on Hawai'i's island of O'ahu as they engage in the work of maintaining their heritage language. The focus of the research is on the community of practice that has developed around the language and culture school Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika ("The Future of…

The development of the Berlin urban vernacular during the late Early Modern and Industrial Period has been described in the literature in two primary ways: The first describes it as the result of the wholesale adoption of an autochthonous Upper Saxon dialect by a small and mobile urban elite in Berlin, who in turn imparted this newly-acquired…

This dissertation focuses on the French word "propre" roughly meaning "characteristic-of" and corresponding to English "own" found in "her own thesis." This adjective makes extremely varied and complex contributions to the meaning and properties of sentences it occurs in. The present work addresses the…

Itoman, one of the varieties spoken in the southern part of Okinawa Island, exhibits several tone patterns. Although the tone patterns of Itoman were examined in previous studies (Nakasone ms., Hattori 1959, Oshiro 1963, and Hirayama et al. 1966), they ended at the descriptive level, and no phonological accounts for the surface tone patterns were…

This investigation contributes to the understanding of language attitudes toward consonantal deletion by examining its perception using a matched-guise experiment (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2004; Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fillenbaum 1960) with fifteen listeners. Two experiments were designed for testing language attitudes, one toward…

The current study examines English-speaking learners of Spanish and their pragmatic development of request forms during a six-week immersion program in Madrid, Spain. Elicited production and intuition data were analyzed, focusing on personal deictic orientation, directness evidenced by clause type, and the use of "por favor"…

The present contribution focuses on Benigni's auteur film "La vita è bella" (Italy, 1997) as a tool for the development of language competence in L2 English, Spanish and German, as well as of translation skills from Italian into these languages. The project, developed at the CLASS Language Centre at the University for Foreigners of…

The study investigated the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by second language (L2) learners and by heritage speakers of the colloquial varieties of Arabic. The study focused on three questions: (1) whether heritage speakers who enroll in college-level elementary MSA classes have an advantage over their L2 counterparts, (2) whether any…

Today, English is truly regarded as an international language. It is the most widely-learned and spoken second or foreign language in many countries. In recent years, the number of second and foreign language speakers has far exceeded the number of first language speakers of English. This dramatic change, many have argued, should be taken into…

Speakers usually produce words in connected speech. In such contexts, the form in which many words are uttered is influenced by the phonological properties of neighboring words. The current article examines the representations and processes underlying the production of phonologically constrained word form variations. For this purpose, we consider…