Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 83, Issue 1, 2010

In this research, we investigated the influence of co-text (the text of which an utterance is part of) on the processing of ironic evaluations. In an experiment, we adapted and manipulated fragments from film, book and music reviews. Participants randomly read versions with either two ironie evaluations, two literal evaluations, or an ironie evaluation preceded by a literal evaluation. Findings show that literal evaluations (such as "we don't want to hear the local brass band play at a rock festival") were read faster than ironie evaluations (such as "we all love to hear the local brass band play at a rock festival"). However, ironie evaluations were read faster if they were marked by a preceding ironie evaluation. Fragments of negative reviews were interpreted as less negative if they contained irony. Irony thus muted criticism. In addition, appreciation of the reviews was higher if fragments contained two ironie evaluations.

Early bilingual education is increasing in popularity. lts most important added value is thought to be pronunciation (e.g. Ioup, 2008; Birdsong, 2006). This study investigates the influence of two Dutch primary school educational settings on L2 English pronunciation, investigating aspiration (a feature of the English but not the Dutch sound system) and prevoicing (a feature of only the Dutch sound system). In general,the L2 English pronunciation of the EarlyBird (experimental), the youngest learners who started learning English in the first grade, is more native-like than that of older learners in an EarlyBird Light setting, who started in the fifth grade (control). However, as expected from earlier research (Simon, 2009), in both groups the amount of prevoicing still increases over time. Possibly, the rather late development of prevoicing in LI Dutch affects the L2 English pronunciation. The influence of the LI on L2 English pronunciation is stronger for children in the control group, leading to the conclusion that the EarlyBird educational setting is promising.Birdsong, D. (2006). Age and second language acquisition: An overview. In M. Gullberg & P. Indefrey (Eds.), The congnitive neuroscience of second language acquisition (pp. 9-49). London: Blackwell. Ioup, G. (2008). Exploring the role of age in the acquisition of a second language phonology. In J.G. Hansen Edwards & M.L. Zampini (Eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (pp. 41-62). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Simon, E. (2009). Child L2 development: A longitudinal study. The international journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10, 582-602

Almost 50% of the adults in Timor-Leste are illiterate. With Portuguese and Tetum as official languages, fifteen regional languages recognized, and English and Bahasa Indonesia accepted as working languages, adult literacy education takes place in a multilingual context. Most adult learners are multilingual and learn to read and write in a second language. The NWO-WOTRO funded research project 'Becoming a Nation of Readers' investigates adult literacy in Timor-Leste. One study focuses on acquisition and use of literacy in the two official languages. This paper presents first results: a description of currendy provided literacy programmes (different in method, content and length), a profile of teachers (relatively young, low educated, multilingual), participants (two-thirds women, two-thirds without school experience) and learning circumstances (poor). Analysis of aspects of participants' reading and writing ability shows that school experience, age and being able to speak Tetum are important factors, as is teachers' work experience in the adult literacy sector.

Though knowledge of academic vocabulary is fundamental to understanding textbooks and teachers' instruction, this is often underdeveloped in multilingual students. 'Het Posterproject' is a method for teaching receptive knowledge of academic language in primary and secondary education. The method is in some respects imperfect. Firstly, the way in which to explain a new word it is to a great extend left to the teacher, making possible large differences in quality. Secondly, there are limited opportunities for students to actively process the new words. These features are strongly developed in Kinsella's approach to word teaching. This approach was implemented in 'Het Posterproject' teaching materials. This study investigates the learning gain from the extension, also looking at several possibly confounding variables. A further more reliable study will be necessary to confirm the inconclusive but promising results.

As a result of the increased interest in metaphor research in the last three decades and the need for a formal, systematic method to identify metaphors in discourse, the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) was developed (Pragglejaz Group, 2007). This procedure aims to identify metaphors in an objective way by using a dictionary as a work of reference instead of the intuition of analysts. The procedure was originally developed on the basis of (British) English.The present study investigates to what extent it is possible to directly use this procedure for the identification of linguistic metaphors in French. An almost 40,000 word corpus was analyzed with the help of the MIP and this study discusses both dictionary related and language specific issues that arose during the annotation process. It is shown that the MIP can quite easily be applied to French, but that for some issues adaptations to the procedure are needed.

Consonant inventories are commonly used phonological measures for analysing spontaneous speech data of young children with a normal or disordered language development. However, a standard procedure is lacking. In this study, different consonant inventories are derived following the guidelines of various existing procedures. Consonant inventories have usually been drawn from speech samples varying substantially in size. The size of the consonant inventories, however, is strongly related to the amount of speech data analyzed. Therefore, speech samples of equal sizes across children and across observation sessions should be used, a requirement often neglected in language acquisition studies.

Words' are often regarded as the basic units of language. Previous studies into metalinguistic and metalexical development have shown, however, that people are only able to segment words from written language if words are salient linguistic units in writing in their mother-tongue. And even then the question can be asked whether it is indeed someone's mother-tongue which affects the ability to segment language into words, or whether literacy and experience with a specific writing system are more influential.In two experiments, we investigated this influence from literacy and knowledge of a specific writing system on children's word-awareness in Dutch. What is more, we also tested bilingual children's character(zi)-awareness in Chinese. By comparing the results from these experiments, we could conclude that there seems to be some 'graphic relativity', which makes that people segment languages according to the lines given in lay-outs of written texts that they can read and write.

Metaphor has become an important area of investigation where fundamental and applied research on language and its use meet. This article presents metaphor as a rapidly developing area of study for applied linguists who are adding an interventionist dimension to the more fundamental research on metaphor pursued in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. First a brief history of the study of metaphor since the 1980s will be offered, in order to relate the cognitive-linguistic view of metaphor to general interest in metaphor in linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Then a few comments will be made about a number of important aspects of metaphor in applied linguistics, including metaphor identification and the distinction between deliberate versus non-deliberate metaphor. Finally an impression will be offered of the applied-linguistic study of metaphor in a few distinct domains of discourse, including politics and health. These topics are intended to demonstrate that metaphor forms an interesting opportunity for applied linguists to engage with complex aspects of meaning and use in a variety of ways in order to develop effective applied research.