If supposedly homophonous words were acoustically distinct despite sharing phonemic form, theories of mental storage may have to account for the consistent differences with separate storage for each homophone. Previous studies of the homophonous functions or word classes of the English word like showed such subphonemic differences between functions, though some studies also found effects of utterance context alongside these. Schleef & Turton (2018) argued that all these function effects reduce to context effects, since function is not independent of context – for example, quotative like typically occurs before a pause and thus is typically subject to lengthening because of its position, not due to a lexicalised acoustic distinction between functions. Testing this argument with new data from a different regional variety to those used by Schleef & Turton, we only find differences that can be explained by context, in line with their argument. This casts prior findings of acoustic distinctions between like functions in new light, and introduces the need for further research (especially including the frequency of different functions).

This article explores the extent to which listeners vary in their ability to notice, identify and discriminate variable linguistic features. With a view to improving speaker evaluation studies (SES), three types of experiments were conducted (noticing tasks, identification tasks and discrimination tasks) with regard to variable features using word- or sentence-based stimuli and focusing on three variables and their variants – (ING): [ɪŋ], [ɪn]; (T)-deletion: [t], deleted-[t]; (K)-lenition: [k], [x]. Our results suggest that the accurate noticing, identifying and discriminating of variants is somewhat higher in words than in sentences. Correctness rates differ drastically between variants of a variable. For (ING), the non-standard variant [ɪn] is more frequently identified and noticed correctly. Yet, for the variables (T)-deletion and (K)-lenition, the standard variants are identified and noticed more successfully. Results of the current study suggest that a more rigorous elicitation of identification and noticing abilities might be useful for a more complete understanding of the nature of social evaluation.

This paper explores the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI (GenAI), in supporting the teaching, learning, and assessment of second language (L2) listening and speaking. It examines how AI technologies, such as spoken dialogue systems and intelligent personal assistants, can refine existing practices, offer innovative solutions, and address challenges related to spoken language competencies, as well as drawbacks they present. It highlights the role of GenAI, explores its capabilities and limitations, and offers insights into the evolving role of GenAI in language education. This paper discusses actionable insights for educators and researchers, outlining practical considerations and future research directions for optimizing GenAI integration in the learning and assessment of listening and speaking.

Recent studies showed contradictory results with regard to the implementation of proactive language control during bilingual sentence production. To add novel evidence to this debate, the current study investigated the blocked language order effect, a measure of proactive language control that has previously only been examined in single-word production. More specifically, bilingual participants completed a network description task, using their L1 in Blocks 1 and 3 and their L2 in Block 2. Results showed increased language intrusions in Block 3 compared to Block 1. This pattern indicates that proactive language control can be implemented during bilingual sentence production.

William Labov carried out literacy research throughout his career from the 1960s to 2010s. This developed in tandem with his linguistic documentation of African American Vernacular English. Both began in 1965, when Labov received funding for a three-year fieldwork project on Black youths’ language and schooling in Harlem, New York. Literacy was an important political issue in the 1960s, with substantial funding to raise basic education levels, as part of socioeconomic development agendas. In the US, this coincided with civil rights movements, shifting race relations, and a period of social unrest. In this article, Labov’s first phase of literacy research is traced through this historical moment, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Also charted is the development of one deficit theory Labov contested during this period—cultural deprivation theory. Three parts are described: foundational conferences in 1964, research and reports from 1965–1968, and centers of contestation from 1969–1972. (Sociolinguistics, ethnography, literacy, reading, cultural deprivation theory)*

In the 1880s, Sievers proposed that in Old English words such as *feorhes, the loss of the post-consonantal *h caused compensatory lengthening of the vowel: fēores. Since there are no unambiguous traces of this sound change in later English, widespread analogical restitution of the short vowels was assumed (e.g. from feorh). The evidence for this lengthening is largely metrical. I argue that while Sievers is correct that words like <feores> often need to scan with a heavy initial syllable, this need not be explained by a general lengthening in the language at large. Indeed, the distribution of where heavy scansions are required in verse is typical for metrical archaisms: late prehistoric metrical values of words preserved for poetic convenience. Just as wundor ‘marvel’ can continue to be scanned as monosyllabic *wundr, or contracted hēan can scan as disyllabic *hēahan, so can light-syllabled feores continue to scan as heavy *feorhes. The same sets of poems that prefer non-epenthesized or non-contracted forms also prefer the heavy scansions of feores-type words. If heavy scansions of feores-words are seen as a matter of poetic convention, then the hypothesis of compensatory lengthening in the language generally is left without evidence and should be rejected.