This study analyses the production of voiceless and voiced plosives (/p, t, k, b, d, g/) in both read and spontaneous speech produced by L1 Polish, L2 English, L3 Norwegian multilingual learners and native control speakers. The goal is to examine whether L2/L3 learners maintain distinct phonological categories in all their languages or exhibit cross-linguistic influence, as well as to identify which voicing series and places of articulation are most susceptible to the interference. Moreover, the study seeks to integrate acoustic data with extralinguistic factors, such as proficiency, exposure, frequency of use and age of acquisition, to provide a deeper understanding of the dynamic coexistence of three phonological systems both in controlled and more authentic environments. The study reveals significant L1 and L3 influence on L2 stop production, especially in the voiced series of stops, and more target-like L1 and L3 production.
Technical intern trainees (TITs) preparing to depart for Japan study Japanese within a compressed four- to six-month pre-departure period, during which they must acquire language skills for workplace communication, daily life, and social adaptation. This cross-sectional study examined Japanese-learning challenges and technology use among Vietnam’s Japan-bound TITs, with working adults studying Japanese in Vietnam included as an unmatched descriptive benchmark rather than as a matched control group. Data were collected through an online self-administered questionnaire using snowball sampling. The study relied on self-reported data from 91 Vietnamese Japanese-language learners, including TITs (n = 44) enrolled in preparatory courses at training centers in Hanoi and working adults (n = 47) from diverse professional backgrounds. Overall, 57.1% of respondents reported high technology use, defined as using online tools for Japanese learning daily or multiple times daily. Smartphones were the dominant learning device, while YouTube, Mazii, ChatGPT, and social media were the most frequently used platforms. Technology was used mainly for vocabulary, listening, grammar, and Kanji learning. Major challenges included difficulty with Kanji, complex grammar structures, similar grammar patterns, unclear learning pathways, lack of correction or feedback, and distraction during self-study. Several learning-behavior variables showed associations with high technology use in unadjusted analyses, but these associations did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. Exploratory regression suggested a possible relationship between perceived effectiveness and high technology use, although the estimate was imprecise. The findings suggest that technology-supported Japanese learning for TITs may benefit from moving beyond scattered use of digital tools toward mobile-friendly, structured, feedback-rich learning pathways aligned with practical workplace and daily-life communication needs in Japan.
According to recent estimates, France is home to approximately 700,000 individuals of Turkish origin, encompassing first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants. Scholars have extensively investigated the language practices, maintenance, and shift, as well as the cultural practices and identity construction, of Turkish migrant families in France, employing both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches. However, the majority of these studies have examined family members in isolation, focusing separately on young children, adolescents, or parents. The present study aims to investigate language use, choice, and maintenance, as well as identity construction, across three generations of Turkish immigrants in France. Data were collected from two Turkish families, one in the Rouen region and the other in the Paris region: the first family consists of a father, his daughter, and his granddaughter, while the second family includes a mother, her daughter, and her granddaughter. To do this, we used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews tailored to each of the three generations. The data were subsequently analyzed through content analysis. The paper addresses the following interconnected research questions: (i) What intergenerational differences exist within the same family regarding language use and choice, as well as linguistic competence in L1 (Turkish) and L2 (French)? (ii) How do bilinguals’ language choices and usage relate to the construction of family members’ identities? (iii) Is there evidence of language attrition among third-generation immigrants? (iv) Is there evidence of an ongoing language shift toward L2 within Turkish families? The findings indicate robust maintenance of Turkish, even among the third generation. While the first generation predominantly uses Turkish, both the second and third generations identify themselves as bilingual and exhibit positive attitudes toward both languages.
The Greek dialects of Lesvos and Adrianople (present-day Edirne) during the time of the Ottoman Empire have much in common. Both are northern dialects and show considerable influence from Turkish; moreover, both were documented in the early 20th century, before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, by Kretschmer, in 1905, for Lesvos and by Ronzevalle, in 1911, for Adrianople. A comparative look at the two dialects reveals deep penetration of Turkish into their respective lexicons, with consequences for their phonology, and for Adrianople, into aspects of its grammar too. I focus here on a phonological matter, namely the conditions under which voiced stops (D) occur. Kretschmer’s song recordings from Lesvos show D only after full nasals (N), i.e., in ND clusters, while later documentation, Newton 1972, shows no nasality, with only D as the realization, even in words with ND earlier. Adrianople Greek shows intervocalic D but also ND clusters, only in Turkish loans and always matching the consonantism of the Turkish source; such is the case too in ND/D variation in rebetika songs from Istanbul. This suggests that the issue really involves a kind of dialect mixing, and it is argued that this holds even for Lesvos, and even for sociolinguistically coded variation. Thus, bringing Adrianople Greek into consideration clarifies the nature of voiced stop realizations in Lesvos phonology.
This article analyses how three leading female figures of the European far right—Marine Le Pen (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Alice Weidel (Germany)—construct populist discourse on X (formerly Twitter) during recent high-stakes election campaigns. The analysis is based on a corpus of 1053 posts published in the month preceding the 2022 French presidential elections, the 2022 Italian general elections, and the 2025 German federal elections. Methodologically, it combines content analysis (operationalised through a codebook developed in Atlas.ti v23), Critical Discourse Analysis, and comparative analysis to identify dominant issues, campaign strategies, and underlying discursive structures. Adopting a corpus-pragmatic perspective, the study undertakes a pragmatic examination of implicit meaning—presupposition, implication, and implicature—to show how meaning is conveyed in authentic, digitally mediated political data. The findings reveal a shared populist communicative matrix centred on polarisation, simplification, and emotional mobilisation, alongside important national variations. Le Pen and Meloni primarily construct an “internal traitor” among political elites, linking economic and social grievances to elite failure. In contrast, Weidel recentres migration and security, portraying migrants as a direct threat and mainstream parties as responsible for citizens’ insecurity. The article highlights the need for further research on gender and leadership in the contemporary European far right.
We propose a new account of the change from -Vsis, -Vzis to -Vi̯s in Modern Lesbian, as well as of related changes in other Northern Greek dialects, arguing that they are special cases of the loss of unstressed high vowels. Our analysis depends on the new understanding of the nature of sound change that nonlinear phonology and Optimality Theory jointly make available.
Language vitality scales are commonly used in language documentation, yet assumptions behind labels such as “threatened” and “endangered” are often taken for granted. This study adopts a computational-based approach to disciplinary discourse analysis, examining how linguists deploy “threatened” and “endangered,” terms that appear on vitality scales, across scholarly discourse. We compared vocabulary and thematic content in “threatened” and “endangered” texts using TF-IDF, topic modeling, and similarity metrics, with other linguistic terms providing contextual benchmarks. Keyword analysis shows that “threatened” and “endangered” index related but distinct orientations within linguistic research. Writing on “endangered” languages more frequently centers on documentation, archiving, and institutional research practices, while writing on “threatened” languages places greater emphasis on language vitality and ongoing sociolinguistic change. The magnitude of their difference is contextualized by contrasting “threatened” and “endangered” with other conceptual pairs within linguistics and beyond. The findings suggest that “threatened” and “endangered”, which are consecutive labels on the Language Endangerment Index, are more closely related than distinct theoretical constructs but less related than near-overlapping linguistic terms. Overall, the results demonstrate that these terms, as deployed in disciplinary practice, capture systematic distinctions in how linguistic situations are understood. Methodologically, this paper shows how computational analysis can be used as a reflexive research tool that enables us to better understand disciplinary discourse.
This paper focuses on historical and new linguistic minorities in educational contexts in Italy. It argues that, despite increasing multilingualism, the Italian educational system remains shaped by a persistent monolingual ideology. Drawing on data from two research projects, La classe plurilingue (2018–2020) and MinEdu—Supporting Minority Languages in Educational Contexts (2023–2026), it examines how different forms of multilingualism, both of which can be framed within a heritage language profile, are managed across educational settings. The analysis highlights a fundamental asymmetry: while historical minority languages are institutionally recognized but internally contested (particularly with respect to standardization), languages associated with migration are largely marginalized. The paper argues that both phenomena can be understood within a broader ideological framework described as “monolingualism within multilingualism”, and calls for a rethinking of language education policies in Italy.
Can listeners whose native language lacks contrastive lexical stress identify stress in an unfamiliar language? We addressed this question with native Mandarin Chinese listeners, whose L1 marks lexical contrasts with tone, and European Portuguese (EP), whose stress system relies mainly on vowel-quality and durational cues. Twenty listeners with no knowledge of Portuguese heard 30 trisyllabic EP words and indicated, for each word, which syllable sounded most prominent. Overall accuracy was modestly but reliably above chance (46.9%; chance = 33.3%), but it was carried almost entirely by words with initial (antepenultimate) stress, and responses showed a strong overall preference for the initial syllable. Once this positional bias was modeled explicitly, relative duration was the only reliable acoustic predictor of listeners’ responses, with an additional contribution of syllable weight, whereas F0 and intensity showed no independent effects; the durational effect was robust to controlling for intrinsic vowel duration. These findings indicate partial, but clearly non-native-like, sensitivity to EP prominence: listeners recruited duration, a prominence cue productive in Mandarin and the main lexical cue remaining in EP for listeners who cannot exploit vowel-quality contrasts, while apparently disregarding F0, which their L1 binds to lexical tone. The results bear on the debate about prominence in Mandarin and show, methodologically, that positional response biases must be modeled before cue weighting can be interpreted.
This paper investigates variation on the level of lexis in Austrian German across registers with an apparent-time approach, drawing on data from a large-scale online survey of lexical variation conducted across Austria between 2021 and 2023, comprising 45 lexical concepts elicited from over 1900 respondents. We utilize Shannon entropy as a proxy to model lexical diversity across different registers in young and old speakers and investigate the influence of area, age group, phenomenon and register. We use ANOVA, multi-dimensional scaling and generalized additive modelling and find that the lexical concept under investigation exerts by far the strongest influence on lexical diversity, followed by a small but significant regional effect—one that, however, disappears when modelled at the level of individual localities rather than aggregated regions. While area influences lexical diversity, we do not find evidence of clearly distinguished lexical isoglosses in our data but rather broad east–west distinctions. While we find more diversity in older speakers in their nonstandard, we observe more pronounced east–west distinctions in younger speakers. We interpret this as a levelling of standard and nonstandard forms in younger speakers but along broader regional lines. This is corroborated by the reduced diversity in younger speakers in nonstandard varieties but slightly higher diversity in standard registers, pointing towards a levelling process.
This study examines the use of function words in adult individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) compared to typically developing (TD) speakers, focusing on spontaneous speech in Catalan and Spanish. The aim is to assess both quantitative and qualitative aspects of function word production and to explore whether WS is associated with distinct grammatical processing patterns. The corpus consisted of 20 five-minute transcripts, equally divided by language (Catalan/Spanish) and group (WS/TD). Analyses included counts of function word categories, error types, and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm). Statistical procedures (t-tests, ANOVA, Mann–Whitney tests, and MANOVA with bootstrapping) were applied depending on distributional assumptions. Results showed significant differences between WS and TD groups in several categories, including prepositions, conjunctions, definite articles, numerals, adverbs, and relative pronouns, with large effect sizes in some cases. MLUm was also significantly lower in the WS group. In contrast, no significant effects of language or interaction between language and group were found. These findings indicate that WS has a robust impact on grammatical usage, particularly affecting function words, independently of language. On the whole, the results support the view that WS is associated with atypical linguistic profiles and contribute cross-linguistic evidence from Romance languages, highlighting the need for further research on language processing in this population.
LENA StartTM is a community-based parent education program designed to promote early language development in children from birth to 3 years of age. In this study, the contributions of three intervention components—home recordings, individualized feedback, and parent education—were examined over 10 weeks across three groups: LENA StartTM program (n = 347), Recordings + Feedback (n = 66), and Recordings Only (n = 51). Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine change over time, group differences, and group differences in trajectories while accounting for baseline values and child characteristics. There were improvements in child language, as measured by the parent-reported LENA® Developmental Snapshot, across measurement periods for all groups, whereas parent-reported confidence and knowledge survey scores increased only for families participating in the LENA StartTM program. Families receiving feedback (LENA StartTM and Recordings + Feedback) reported greater increases in reading time than families completing recordings alone. After accounting for baseline values, no overall group differences or differences in trajectories were observed in the number of adult words, conversational turns, or child vocalizations as measured by LENA® recordings. These findings suggest that different components of LENA-based interventions may influence distinct outcomes and underscore the importance of evaluating parent language interventions using multiple measures, extending beyond quantitative indicators of parent–child talk.
Adults, when talking to infants, adjust their communication across several dimensions, including acoustic, linguistic, and gestural characteristics. However, our knowledge of how these dimensions covary in this register adjustment remains limited. Our objective was to analyze the linguistic elements, gestures and acoustic features (speech rate, vowel space, prosody) of storytelling directed to 6-month-old infants in a multidimensional way. The storytelling of 92 mothers to their own children was investigated and compared to their communication with other adults. We analyzed the acoustic features, gestures, and the linguistic construction of their storytelling. Our results have shown that pointing and showing gestures were more common in infant-directed storytelling, just as interactive expressions unrelated to the story were. The correlation tests across dimensions revealed that infant-directed communication is multidimensional. The cross-dimensional analyses demonstrated that infant-directed communication, compared to adult-directed communication, exhibited more systematic multidimensional coordination. Mothers who used more gestures and interactive elements in their infant-directed communication also tended to modify the acoustic characteristics of their speech to a greater extent relative to their adult-directed speech.
In this paper, L1 phonemic systems are discussed in the context of their impact on the pronunciation and perception of English diphthongs in PE, drawing on World Englishes and phonetic analysis. The study focuses on speakers whose native languages are Punjabi, Seraiki, Pashto, and Urdu, and examines how changes in local vowel inventories and glide processes influence diphthong production. The controlled production and perception tasks were done on eight English diphthongs by 40 adult speakers (10 speakers per L1 group). The formant trajectories (F1, F2), duration, and intensity were recorded by acoustic analyses, which are used to measure the variation that occurs as the articulatory glide occurs between vowel targets. Perception was measured using diphthong identification tasks to assess listeners’ sensitivity to dynamic spectral movement. The results indicate systematic L1-conditioned restructuring. Deviations were the most pronounced in diphthongs with significant vowel gliding, especially centering diphthongs, characterized by a decrease in spectral movement, a constriction in vowel space, and a general tendency toward monophthongization. Closing diphthongs were generally more stable in production; however, they still exhibited systematic L1-conditioned variation, particularly in glide magnitude, spectral direction, and temporal realization. These patterns of production were highly consistent with the results of perceptual production: the diphthongs with lesser acoustic movement were also found to be less accurately recognized, and diphthongs in their L1s and speakers of phonemically richer vowel systems had partial glide contrasts. The findings demonstrate that the variation in diphthongs in PE is systematic, reflecting predictable relationships between the L1 phonemic system, perceptual assimilation, and sociolinguistic experience. The findings highlight the pedagogical value of L1-sensitive pronunciation instruction and contribute to the phonetic description of Pakistani English as a systematic contact variety.
In this article, we deal with the word-formation process of compounding in the Modern Greek dialect of the Aegean island of Lesbos, the so-called “Modern Lesbian”, in comparison to relevant information regarding compounding in Standard Modern Greek. In this dialect, compounding is widespread and constitutes a fertile process of the vocabulary expansion, as in the Greek language in general. Numerous compounds are built, belonging to the three major grammatical categories, that is, nouns (e.g., μυρμηγκόγλινα /mirmigóɣlina/ ‘ant’s fat’), adjectives (e.g., καγιρουμάτς /kaʝirumáts/ ‘cross-eyed’) and verbs (e.g., νιρουκάγιουμι /nirukáʝumi/ ‘be thirsty’), while adverbs are mainly secondary formations, with most of them created on the basis of compound adjectives and the adverbial suffix -a (e.g., πισώκουλα /pisókula/ ‘backwards’ < πισώκουλoυς /pisókulus/ ‘somebody with atypical buttocks’ + -α). On the basis of a morpheme-based theoretical framework, where compounds are considered to be built in morphology, we propose to examine: (a) the Modern Lesbian compound structures, consisting of stems and words, the most frequent of which display the patterns [Stem Stem] and [Stem Word], (b) the existence, type and position of a morphological head in the constructions, (c) the relations of compound internal constituents, and (d) the use of borrowed lexemes from Turkish and Italo-Romance in compound structures. As far as language contact is concerned, we provide examples which show the predominantly matter-borrowing instances and discuss two rare cases of pattern-borrowing from Turkish and Italo-Romance, respectively.
This article examines the relationship between semantic and syntactic evolution in the development of three Spanish verbal constructions: verbal periphrases, pseudo-coordinative constructions (e.g., va y dice), and auxiliary chains. While theories of grammaticalization and diachronic construction grammar generally predict a parallel decrease in semantic compositionality and syntactic analyzability, the behavior of these constructions suggests a more complex scenario. We argue that semantic compositionality and syntactic analyzability do not always evolve in tandem. Instead, the constructionalization of grammatical patterns may preserve aspects of internal syntax even when constituents undergo functional recategorization. Drawing on previous analyses and a corpus-based examination of Spanish complex predicates, we show that verbal periphrases, pseudo-coordinative constructions, and auxiliary chains maintain analyzable internal structure despite diachronic reduction of compositional meaning. We propose that (complete) loss of analyzability tends to occur only at advanced stages of grammatical change. The study contributes to current debates on the nature of grammaticalization/constructionalization, internal syntax, and the cognitive status of auxiliary constructions, offering a broader perspective on mechanisms of language change.
This paper aims to offer a state-of-the-art overview of the ways in which research on Modern Greek has informed—and been informed by—theorizing in the field of pragmatics. In charting this (rather uncharted) territory, our aim is to demonstrate that Modern Greek pragmatics does not only reflect the evolution of pragmatic enquiry from a narrow conceptualization to a much broader one that encompasses interactional, social and cultural specifications, but has also contributed new insights into pragmatic theory that surpass the purview of Modern Greek linguistics. While acknowledging that delimiting the remit of pragmatics is far from evident or even unanimously agreed, our overview envisages to provide the reader with a roadmap of past and ongoing research with a view to highlighting how general pragmatic principles interact with the language- and culture-specific parameters that are available to speakers of Modern Greek.
This paper examines cross-linguistic evidence towards a universal processing path to the acquisition of argument mapping of verb thematic roles (e.g., agent, patient) onto grammatical functions (e.g., subject, object), in second or additional language (L2) learning. The acquisition of argument mapping in East Asian languages as L2 remains largely under-researched, particularly in terms of development. The data in each language in this study, that is Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese, were collected in separate longitudinal studies using tasks targeted to eliciting verbs requiring a variety of argument structures. These are analysed based on the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis. Results indicate that L2 learners initially map the highest available role in the thematic hierarchy (e.g., agent, experiencer) onto a minimally specified SUBJ/TOP (that is, the language-specific ‘default mapping’ of the L2). Furthermore, the development of argument mapping in learners of all three languages turns out to follow the sequence predicted by LMH, i.e., default mapping > default mapping + additional argument > non-default mapping. The study also identified language-specific phenomena within ‘the non-default mapping’ stage, such as causatives appearing comparatively earlier in Mandarin Chinese L2 and Vietnamese L2, and passives appearing earlier in Japanese L2. This study’s theoretical contribution to the field is that the acquisition of argument mapping plausibly follows a universal processing route and, at the same time, is characterised by language-specific features. It also represents an original investigation in the specific area of L2 acquisition of argument mapping cross-linguistically, and it discloses an often ignored, but theoretically important, difference with the acquisition of argument structure.
This paper investigates two derivational suffixes of the Lesbian dialect -ˈaδa and -iˈa, focusing on their shared characteristics, historical development, and semantic range. Both suffixes display dual etymological origins, form feminine nouns, and exhibit notable polysemy. The study focuses on assessing the degree and patterns of polysemy associated with these suffixes in the Modern Lesbian dialect, with particular emphasis on their comparison to Standard Modern Greek and on cases of morphological competition. It is argued that both suffixes are closely linked to a subjectively delimited reality, as shaped by direct perception and observation in everyday life, and at the same time they function within a complex morphological ecosystem, where they display areas of both competition and functional differentiation. The suffix -ˈaδa typically refers to a property or state directly observable by the speaker, and thus to an entity defined by a dominantly noticeable characteristic. In contrast, the suffix -iˈa is considerably more polysemous than ˈaδa, conveying individualization, and forming nouns that reflect the speaker’s viewpoint while denoting entities perceived as bounded.
Background/Objectives: Narrative skills play an important role in children’s overall development from a very young age, and they are linked to social behavior, as well as several emotional and cognitive outcomes. Young autistic children often experience difficulties in their narrative skills and these difficulties may impact their social interactions. The present study reviews recent findings to detect factors influencing narrative development in autistic and non-autistic preschool children, and to identify trends or gaps in the existing literature. Following screening and eligibility assessment, 39 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines were followed. Results: Non-autistic children show a clear, age-related progression in narrative skill development, moving from simple to complex structures at the level of microstructure and advanced inferential abilities at the level of macrostructure, which are strongly linked to core language and cognitive development. Conversely, autistic children primarily face challenges in narrative macrostructure and coherence, demonstrating deficits in integrating information and making inferences, which is consistent with weak central coherence in autism. Conclusions: The evidence suggests that narrative development in autism reflects qualitative differences rather than mere delay, particularly in the organization and integration of macrostructural story elements. These findings underscore the importance of interventions that move beyond surface-level linguistic skills to explicitly target global coherence, causal structuring, and inferential reasoning. Future research should further clarify developmental trajectories and the mechanisms linking narrative competence with broader social and cognitive outcomes.
