This article presents a dictionary-based study of vowel reduction and preservation in British English in initial pretonic position and intertonic position. The different variables which have been claimed to influence those processes are tested on a data set of over 4,500 words using regression analyses. Our results confirm the significant effects of syllable structure, position of the vowel, word frequency and opaque prefixation. They also provide weak evidence for other factors such as vowel features and the existence of a base in which the vowel bears a stress, although no clear effects of word segmentability could be found. We also report new findings, as we find that foreign words reduce less than non-foreign words; we find that [+back] vowels reduce less than [−back] vowels in initial pretonic position; and we find a difference in behaviour for vowels followed by /sC/ clusters between non-derived words and stress-shifted derivatives.

This article implements a critical method for assessing bias in large historical datasets that we term the “Environmental Scan.” The Environmental Scan sheds new light on newspaper collections by linking newly available “reference metadata” gathered from historical sources to existing full-text and catalogue metadata. The rise of computational methods in history and the social sciences, in tandem with newly “datafied” source materials, creates a challenge for researchers to adapt their existing critical practices to the increasing scale and complexity of computational research. To help address this challenge, the Environmental Scan situates big historical datasets in much greater context, including estimating what materials are missing, thereby revealing the ways digital collections can be “oligoptic” in nature. Using the British Newspaper Archive (BNA) as a case study, we diagnose the biases and imbalances in the digitised Victorian press. We determine which voices are under- or over-represented in relation to the political composition of the collection as well as its content and we trace the origins of these biases in the digitisation process. This article informs future interdisciplinary discussions about data bias and offers a conceptual model adaptable to diverse historical datasets. The Environmental Scan provides a more nuanced and accurate understanding of how newspaper data reflects past societies, making it a valuable tool for researchers.

In this article, we evaluate several large language models (LLMs) on a word-level translation alignment task between Ancient Greek and English. Comparing model performance to a human gold standard, we examine the performance of four different LLMs, two open-weight and two proprietary. We then take the best-performing model and generate examples of word-level alignments for further finetuning of the open-weight models. We observe significant improvement of open-weight models due to finetuning on synthetic data. These findings suggest that open-weight models, though not able to perform a certain task themselves, can be bolstered through finetuning to achieve impressive results. We believe that this work can help inform the development of more such tools in the digital classics and the computational humanities at large.

This study piloted CHIPUTIL, an automated tool in CLAN for analysing sequential lexical overlap in parent–child conversations. In a sample of 44 dyads (child age M = 1;9), child spontaneous lexical overlap was positively associated with parent imitations and expansions, across the conversation and within sequential turns. Children were more than twice as likely to respond with lexical overlap when parents first produced an imitation or expansion. These findings offer insight into how lexical overlap may unfold in early conversations. We discuss implications of automated coding and future directions in exploring the role of lexical overlap in children’s language development.

In the wealth of literature on ethnic variation, ethnicity is often considered independently of other social characteristics. However, prioritizing ethnicity in this way risks overlooking the potential impact of other social factors. In this study, we demonstrate an intersection between ethnicity and social class based on a sociolinguistic corpus of Australian English, representing some of the country’s largest ethnic groups (Australians of Anglo-Celtic, Italian, Greek, and Chinese backgrounds), stratified according to age, gender, and social class. Rather than beginning with the social groupings, we first identify linguistic groupings to then consider how these groupings align with social dimensions. Cluster analyses of speaker random intercepts derived from independent regression analyses of 10 linguistic variables in recordings from 159 speakers reveal primary divisions for age, reflecting change over time, and secondary divisions for ethnicity in conjunction with social class, highlighting the interconnected nature of these social dimensions in linguistic variation.

Encoding only-type exclusive focus in discourse involves complex computation and integration of knowledge from multiple linguistic domains. We present a comprehensive analysis of syntactic, semantic, prosodic, and discourse contextual features of 864 utterances with only and its Mandarin equivalents zhi(you) produced by Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers and matched monolinguals (age 2–6, Study 1), and by Mandarin-speaking parents (Study 2), all sampled from naturalistic interactions. The results revealed largely target-like syntactic positioning and semantic association of only and zhi(you) in both languages in the bilinguals, with cross-linguistic influence between only and zhi. Interestingly, the bilingual children, like their Mandarin monolingual peers, employed longer duration but not raised mean pitch to shift the prosodic stress to the intended focus, although both acoustic features, in addition to positional and contextual cues, were instantiated in the focus utterances in the Mandarin parental input, suggesting prolonged development in focus-prosody mapping in children independent of bilingualism.

This study investigated the hypothesis that 9- to 11-month-old multilingual infants learning Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) harmony languages (such as Akan) alongside other non-vowel harmony languages in Ghana (Africa) can use ATR harmony cues for speech segmentation. Using the central fixation procedure, infants were familiarized with bisyllabic words in two passages, one with ATR cues and one without, and then tested on isolated familiarized and novel bisyllabic words. Results indicate that, as a group, infants segmented words in their native language using ATR harmony cues, showing a familiarity preference. No effect of exposure to ATR harmony language(s) was found. These results provide the first evidence of word segmentation in infants learning between two and five languages, and with infants in Africa. The findings contribute to our understanding of multilingual infants’ language processing, suggesting their sensitivity to phonotactic cues for speech processing.

Older adults commonly experience declines in cognitive control, which significantly impacts their well-being. Although intensive language training, particularly interpreting, holds potential for mitigating these declines, its efficacy remains largely unexplored. Based on previous findings in the literature (especially our theoretical framework on interpreting), we designed a 24-hour programme of Between-Dialect Interpreting Training (BIT). Using a pretest-intervention-posttest design, we evaluated the efficacy of the BIT (over 8 weeks) against a control group on general cognitive ability (MoCA) and core cognitive control functions – working memory (via listening span and digit backward tasks), interference control (via Stroop and Flanker tasks) and cognitive flexibility (via colour-shape task and WCST). Results demonstrated notable between-group differences favouring the BIT, with significant improvements in listening span, Stroop effect and Stroop global RT, colour-shape switch cost and marginal improvements in digit backward score and MoCA. The implications of how language training promotes cognitive health during ageing are discussed.

Words in infant-directed speech (IDS) are often phonetically reduced. This likely renders words harder for infants to learn and recognize. This difficulty might be mitigated by the repetitive nature of IDS, in particular if reduced instances are often preceded by clear instances (i.e., the first-mention effect). To characterize phonetic clarity in American English word repetitions, words were extracted from the IDS of eight mothers and presented to adults (n = 36) who judged their clarity. First mentions of repeated words were found to be clearer than second mentions, though this effect was small. Clarity was rated as greater for less common words and for utterance-final words. Clarity was also greater for words parents thought their child knew. The results help guide intuitions about the phonetic problem infants face when learning their first words.

Previous research has shown that second language (L2) learners can learn new words incidentally through contextual clues. However, little is known about whether derivational affixes can be learned in a similar manner. Addressing this gap, the current study examined whether English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners could acquire knowledge of English derivational noun suffixes through contextualized reading. Forty Chinese EFL learners participated in the study, completing offline pre-tests and post-tests to assess improvements in three aspects of suffix knowledge. Participants’ eye movements during reading were also recorded to investigate the relationships between online processing of derived words and suffix learning. The offline test results showed that the learners made significant progress in three aspects of suffix knowledge. Multilevel logistic regression analyses further indicated that improvements in accuracy were significantly predicted by eye fixation measures, learners’ L2 proficiency, and language-level factors. Findings indicate that incidental learning while reading can effectively supplement intentional learning, particularly for English affixes that occur less frequently.

Individuals differ in a range of processes related to reading comprehension, including working memory capacity, decoding skills, inference making and main idea identification. In this exploratory study, we examined evoked potential N400 amplitude during reading comprehension tasks and focused on identifying the main idea in the text, modulated by working memory capacity. Participants included monolinguals or bilinguals who were either typical readers (n = 33) or had been diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 19). Analyses revealed significant group differences for main idea conditions. Participants with dyslexia showed greater N400 amplitude than typical readers, particularly in the right hemisphere, when the main idea was in the last position in the paragraph. There were no significant differences in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals, which does not support the idea of a cognitive advantage for bilingualism. It was noteworthy that, if they had dyslexia, they were similarly negatively impacted by their reading disability. Findings highlight the processing advantages typical readers have relative to dyslexia.

In this study, we present data from two experiments investigating the effect of prosodic focus marking on German L1 and L2 speakers’ interpretation of pronouns. Experiment 1 tested L2 speakers’ interpretation of personal and demonstrative subject pronouns. Experiment 2 examined L1 and L2 speakers’ interpretation of unaccented and accented personal subject and object pronouns. The results of experiment 1 reveal that L2 speakers are sensitive to the different functions of the two subject pronouns. However, grammatical role and focus marking influenced referential choice to similar degrees for both pronouns, suggesting that L2 speakers’ weighting of these linguistic factors differs from that of L1 speakers. Experiment 2 showed L1 and L2 speakers to prefer the subject referent for both subject and object pronouns. Referent preference reversal is only observed with the accented subject pronoun in L1 speakers. Ultimately, this study emphasizes the varying levels of sensitivity to grammatical role and information structure observed not only for the different pronoun types but also among different speaker groups.