JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN LINGUISTICS

Variable Schwa Deletion in French of Orléans: The Role of Age as a Sociolinguistic Factor: A CORPUS STUDY

Sonia Belhoum — 2022-10-25

The present paper is a micro diachronic and a socio-comparative study which examines the behaviour of a well-known pronunciation variant in French, the so-called schwa. The aim of it is to understand the nature of this variation (elision and maintenance) in monosyllabic words; clitics (#c(ə)#c) in French of Orléans, considering age as a sociolinguistic factor leading to this simplification process. Also, the evolution of the variational behaviour of this vowel in the same context across a diachronic interval of forty years (from 1968 till 2014) will be studied.

To achieve the research objectives, a corpus-based research procedure was implemented, using ESLO Corpus “Enquête Sociolinguistique à Orléans”. It is divided into two sub-corpora ESLO 1 (collected between 1969 and 1974) and ESLO 2 (collected starting from 2014). Based on the findings, it comes clear that the young generation drops more frequently schwa in their spontaneous speech. Their rate of elision was higher in both corpora compared to the one of the old speakers (34,6%, for the old generation compared to 41,7% for the young one). Yet, it is found that the increase of schwa deletion through the diachronic period of forty years is not highly significant. However, it was found that schwa deletion is conditioned by other linguistic and sociolinguistic variables which have not been addressed in this research paper. Consequently, the discussion is left for future research.

Border Trade: An Effective Way for Border Rural Revitalization in the New Era

He Yuankai — 2022-08-03

Rural revitalization in border areas is an important part of rural revitalization in China. Border trade plays a positive role in implementing national policies to benefit the people, attracting border people back to border areas, consolidating border security, promoting ethnic integration and sharing the fruits of development. The potenti al of border trade can be fully stimulated by policy optimization, upgrading of mutual association s, industrial chain development and industryindustry-city construction , to comprehensively promote the rural revitalization of border areas in the new

A Theoretically Psychological Analysis of Semantic Representation of Bilinguals’ Mental Lexicon

Qi Zhang — 2022-07-28

Due to the limitations of the existing research methods per se, studies probing into the semantic representation of bilinguals’ mental lexicon from the dimension of metrology yield no convincing results. This paper explores the semantic representation of bilinguals’ mental lexicon by analyzing the relationship between language and thoughts, the production of language from a theoretically psychological perspective. Such a conclusion can be drawn that 1) there is but one semantic system shared by natural languages and 2) the semantic information of mental lexicon is not attached to one specific vocabulary but stored separately in the cognitive system. The study of the semantic representation of bilinguals’ mental lexicon is conducive to the investigation into the universality and particularity of language itself and to the exploration of the nature of language, thought and human behavior.

Randomized Control Trial Study of K-3 Students Demonstrates Greater Scantron Reading Assessment Performance for Imagine Language & Literacy Users

Andrew Berrett — 2022-07-01

Supplemental education technology tools such as those that provide computer-assisted instruction may provide important academic value to elementary age students in developing literacy and language skills. A randomized control trial of students within five schools was conducted in a northwestern school district in the United States of America to evaluate the academic impact of the Imagine Language & Literacy program on student literacy outcomes. In one school, K–3 students who used the program were found to have achieved test scores that were significantly greater than students who did not use the program during the 2013–2014 school year. The results of this study provide evidence of the effectiveness of supplemental literacy tools such as Imagine Language & Literacy in improving student outcomes in literacy development.