Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2017

Words are often pronounced with fewer segments in casual conversations than in formal speech. Previous research has shown that foreign language learners and beginning second language learners experience problems processing reduced speech. We examined whether this also holds for advanced second language learners. We designed a dictation task in Dutch consisting of sentences spliced from casual conversations and an unreduced counterpart of this task, with the same sentences carefully articulated by the same speaker. Advanced second language learners of Dutch produced substantially more transcription errors for the reduced than for the unreduced sentences. These errors made the sentences incomprehensible or led to non-intended meanings. The learners often did not rely on the semantic and syntactic information in the sentence or on the subsegmental cues to overcome the reductions. Hence, advanced second language learners also appear to suffer from the reduced pronunciation variants of words that are abundant in everyday conversations.

Despite the fact that gestures are seen as part of language, they are usually not included in studies of ultimate attainment and native-likeness in a second language. The aim of the present study is twofold: to give a description of the variation in gesture frequency, type and placement among different proficiency groups of Dutch learners of English, and to investigate the role that gestures play for determining nativeness of such learners. We compared gestures made by native and Dutch speakers of British English (BrE) and examined whether, and to what extent, native speakers of English use such gestures to judge nativeness. No clear differences were found between types, amounts and placements of gestures between the groups. Nor did the nativeness ratings of the three informant groups differ significantly. These results indicate that in contexts with two typologically and culturally similar languages gestures do not contribute to the perception of nativeness.

Previous studies investigating possible differences between monolingual and bilingual infants’ vocabulary development have produced mixed results. The current study examines the size of the total receptive and expressive vocabulary, total conceptual vocabulary, and specific Dutch vocabulary of two hundred 8- to 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants born and living in the Netherlands. Families completed a Dutch version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories. Results illustrate that bilingual infants keep up with monolinguals even in Dutch receptive and expressive vocabulary sizes, showing no trace of delay in the development of the socially dominant language. The overall findings constitute an extension of work on vocabulary acquisition and challenge existing theories that suggest a developmental delay among bilingual learners. The equal pace of development between the monolingual and bilingual groups provides new insights into the influence and perhaps advantages of early bilingual language acquisition.

The words we use in everyday language reveal our thoughts, feelings, personality, and motivations. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is a software program to analyse text by counting words in 66 psychologically meaningful categories that are catalogued in a dictionary of words. This article presents the Dutch translation of the dictionary that is part of the LIWC 2007 version. It describes and explains the LIWC instrument and it compares the Dutch and English dictionaries on a corpus of parallel texts. The Dutch and English dictionaries were shown to give similar results in both languages, except for a small number of word categories. Correlations between word counts in the two languages were high to very high, while effect sizes of the differences between word counts were low to medium. The LIWC 2007 categories can now be used to analyse Dutch language texts.

Of the numerous factors affecting language development, a particular role has been assigned to Metalinguistic Awareness (MLA) as a major constituent of the cognitive development of experienced language learners, while being itself a key to accelerated language learning (e.g., Jessner, 2008 ). The present study explores the relationship between multilingual usage and MLA in French-speaking Quebeckers (n = 66) with different language backgrounds who start to learn German after English in a formal setting. ‘Multilingual experience’ was operationalized by the frequency and the diversity of foreign language use across 10 different contexts of use. A reflexive dimension of MLA was assessed by means of the THAM-3 ( Pinto & El Euch, 2015 ), and complemented by think-aloud protocols produced during a multilingual translation task, which reflected an applied dimension of MLA. Multiple regression analyses suggest that both frequency and diversity of non-native language use in specifically literacy-based activities predicted the applied dimension of MLA.

Prior research showed a relationship between reading skills and pitch perception, however the exact nature remained unclear. By means of reading tests and a pitch perception test, we examined the relation between reading abilities and local and global pitch perception for 92 native Dutch children (mean age = 9.47) and 61 non-native Dutch children (mean age = 9.61). Additionally, for the latter group we examined the role of working memory. In line with prior research with poor readers in a language with a rather transparent orthography by Ziegler, Pech-Georgel, George and Foxton (2012) , a relationship is found between reading skills and the ability to detect local changes in pitch, rather than global changes in the melody. Additionally, at least for beginning readers of Dutch as a second language, there is a strong effect of working memory on the relation between reading skills and pitch perception.

Compiling syllable type inventories from children’s spontaneous speech is all but straightforward: so far studies vary considerably in their methodologies and consequently the selection of the speech samples differs. This paper shows that different methodologies for selecting a speech sample lead to substantial differences in syllable inventories. Two main sources for this variation are explored: differences in size and content of the speech samples. Both factors influence the results significantly and this questions the comparability of previous study results. An empirical procedure to investigate syllable type development is proposed to overcome such methodological problems, and this procedure is implemented to provide an initial empirically sound assessment of the acquisition of syllable types in Dutch speaking toddlers.