Magdalena Wrembel
Marta Marecka
Phonological profile of Polish-English bilingual children; The predictors of foreign accentedness ratings in L1
The contribution will present the phonological profile of Polish-English bilingual children investigated as part of the project ”Phonological and morpho-syntactic features of language and discourse of Polish children developing bilingually in the context of emigration to the UK” (NPRH 1.2, 2014-16, UW, UJ and UAM).
This presentation will focus, in particular, on the study of perceived foreign accentedness in the Polish speech of preschoolers raised bilingually in the UK. While foreign accent (FA) ratings have been used widely in SLA studies conducted on adult language learners (e.g. Piske et al. 2001, Gallardo del Puerto et al. 2007), they have rarely been explored in bilingual children. The aim of this study is to investigate, whether the speech of Polish-English bilinguals is perceived as different from that of their monolingual peers (matched for age and socioeconomic status) based on FA, intelligibility and acceptability ratings. Further, we explore the socioeconomic and linguistic predictors of the perceived foreign accent.
To this end, speech samples of 33 bilingual Polish-English children (aged 4;9 to 6;11) and 10 monolingual Polish children (controls) were extracted from two tasks: sentence repetition and picture story retelling. Moreover, detailed background information on the bilingual children's language development and amount of input/output was collected. The samples were embedded in an online questionnaire and subjected to ratings performed by adult 50 Polish native raters (in-service and pre-service early education teachers), who evaluated the degree of foreign accent, intelligibility and acceptability on a 7-point Likert scale.
The results demonstrated statistically significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual children on all three rated parameters. Strong correlations were found between both tasks on all measures. Further, interesting patterns of correlations appeared between FA scores and background data, pointing to the quantity of English input and output as predictors of the perceived FA. This holistic production assessment was also correlated with the results of the previous study (Marecka et al., 2015) on auditory assessment of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the same sample of bilingual children, to identify specific phonetic features contributing to foreign accentedness.
References
Marecka, M., Wrembel, M., Zabrzuski, D., Otwinowska-Kasztelanic, A. 2015. “Phonological Development in the Home Language among Early Polish-English Bilinguals.” In: The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (eds.) Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow: The University of Glasgow, online.
Gallardo del Puerto, F. Gómez Lacabex E., García Lecumberri M. L. 2007. “The assessment of foreign accent by native and non-native judges”. PTLC Proceedings, London, CD-ROM.
Piske, T., MacKay I.R.A., Flege J. E. 2001. “Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2. A review”. Journal of Phonetics 29: 191-215.
Matylda Włodarczyk (Adam Mickiewicz University)
Elżbieta Adamczyk (Adam Mickiewicz University and University of Wuppertal)
Joanna Kopaczyk (Adam Mickiewicz University and University of Edinburgh)
Towards the Electronic Repository of Greater Poland Oaths 1386-1444 (ROThA)
This paper presents a project in progress, the Electronic Repository of Greater Poland Oaths (ROThA) covering the period 1386-1444 (National Science Centre grant, 2015-2018). The main focus of the prospective corpus is to characterise the coexistence of Latin and Polish as a social and cultural phenomenon in late mediaeval Greater Poland (Adamska 2013) and its representation in the court oaths, with specific focus on code-switching in the legal domain. The starting point for text selection is the philological edition of the material which covers 6350 oaths from six different locations (Kowalewicz & Kuraszkiewicz 1959-1981).
The presentation focuses on how to capture and categorize the instances of CS against the background of the potential research questions, and issues of representativeness and balance (Kopaczyk, Włodarczyk and Adamczyk forthcoming). In particular, diachronic changes in CS types and functions are expected, as the dynamics of Latin and the vernacular in the judicial system disappears gradually and gives way to Latin only records in the 1440s. As a first step in designing the CS mark up, we propose a structural map of the phenomenon (Kopaczyk 2013 and forthcoming). This is intended to serve as a consistent framework for a multi-layered view of CS in written historical texts which has so far been mostly analysed on individual levels of linguistic organisation (see Pahta 2012 for a recent overview of CS in historical texts).
References
ADAMSKA, ANNA. 2013. “Latin and three vernaculars in East Central Europe from the point of view of the history of social communication.” in Mary Garrison, Arpad P. Órban and Marco Mostert (eds.), Spoken and Written Language. Relations between Latin and the Vernacular Languages in the Earlier Middle Ages, 325-364. Turnhout: Brepols.
KOPACZYK, JOANNA. 2013. “Code-switching in the records of a Scottish brotherhood in early modern Poland-Lithuania.” Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 49(3). 281-319.
KOPACZYK, JOANNA. Forthcoming. “Administrative multilingualism on the page in early modern Poland: In search of a framework for written code-switching.” in Laura Wright, Päivi Pahta and Janne Skaffari (eds.) Multilingual Practices in Language History: New Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton.
KOPACZYK, JOANNA, MATYLDA WŁODARCZYK AND ELŻBIETA ADAMCZYK. Forthcoming. “Medieval multilingualism in Poland: Creating a corpus of Greater Poland court Oaths (ROThA)”.
KOWALEWICZ, HENRYK and WŁADYSŁAW KURASZKIEWICZ (eds.). 1959–1981, Wielkopolskie roty sądowe XIV–XV wieku [The Greater Poland court oaths of the 14th-15th century], Vol. 1: Roty poznańskie [The Poznań oaths], Vol. 2: Roty pyzdrskie [The Pyzdry oaths], Vol 3: Roty kościańskie [The Kościan oaths], Vol. 4: Roty kaliskie [The Kalisz oaths], Vol. 5, A: Roty gnieźnieńskie [The Gniezno oaths], B: Roty konińskie [The Konin oaths]. Warszawa–Poznań– Wrocław–Kraków–Gdańsk: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
PAHTA, PÄIVI. 2012. “Code-switching in English of the Middle Ages.” in Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth C. Traugott (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, 528-537. New York: Oxford University Press.
