Intelligibility

Once natural dangers tied up human energies; now man-made problems – lifestyle diseases, pollution, racism, terrorism, etc. – take the lead and dictate agendas. Entrenchment in fundamental beliefs increases; economism rules, yet aggravates a conflictual development whose root is neither accidental nor 'the human condition', but in a widespread way of thinking, justified by the vast majority of contemporary theorizing: to approach problems dominatively, based on primal assumptions (not openness on principle to the entirety of the subject matter). This way of thinking is self-limited on principle: it can't reach the intrinsic nature of phenomena, it is not generally sound. Action on this basis produces conflicts that can't be resolved by reiterating the method, which is thus not fully sustainable. The mainstream can avoid plurality only by incurring losses, and it is led to believe totally secure thinking is impossible – calling for more formalism, engendering on the theoretical level a self-fulfilling prophecy, and on the practical level an immense inefficiency. Nevertheless secure thinking is viable on the level of pure content. An adequate foundation can be found in completely self-aware querying. Systematizing this path makes perspectivity and universality compatible and opens up categories that are universally applicable within their query perspective. The proposed methodology allows strict thinking from totality towards its aspects – for instance in theorizing seamlessly all human agency, including mental activity. The proposed framework is not just one more theory, but encompasses theory and practice, and fosters personal integrity – the root of all authentic conflict solving.

The phenomenon of globalisation has further strengthened the relationship between cultural identity and language learning. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of language in the formation of cultural identity and the role of culture in language teaching as an expression of identity that avoids hegemonic practices. Teaching languages inevitably necessitates teaching culture. Integrating culture into L2 teaching can help learners develop cultural awareness and cultural identity. In the first case, learners will become aware of the we versus they dichotomy created by false generalizations and stereotypes, and will be encouraged to develop tolerance and empathy towards different cultures. By comparing L1 and L2 similarities and differences learners will better understand, in terms of identity, their own place within the spectrum of cultures. Some scholars have heavily criticised ELT professionals and materials for their hegemonic tendencies. This paper, however, argues that teaching languages and culture naturally involves some sort of exclusionary practices which should not necessarily be viewed as hegemonic. The selection of a specific linguistic or cultural model, be it British or American English or other varieties, should not be viewed as an imposition of hegemony, but rather as a necessary means to achieve some kind of intelligibility. 92 Forming Identity and Avoiding Hegemony in the Era of Globalisation

During the 19th century, French cities underwent great transformations in response to insalubrity. Many new streets were created and changed the overall intelligibility of the street network with the creation of boulevards where the defensive town wall used to stand, as well as large avenues to provide better accessibility to the centre of towns. This study aims to assess the impact of these transformations on the urban tissue by measuring the intelligibility of the urban form before and after the transformations. It compares the Napoleonic cadastral maps of Agen, Amiens, Avignon, Dijon, Clermont and Tourcoing with the current cadastre. Intelligibility is measured by the ease of navigation towards the centre of an urban environment and the ease of traversing it as one traces a path between two given points on the map. The choice of paths is examined, highlighting the role of the new streets. This research brings together the cognitive mechanisms that underpin the exploration and decision-making process when navigating urban maps with their syntactic and morphological properties. It examines the motor aspect of decisionmaking during the navigation process. Motor reactions are recorded using technology developed for the quantification of neuromotor impairments. This interdisciplinary approach provides a means to measure and better understand the intelligibility of urban environments.

This paper investigates international responses to Singapore English (SgE), in terms of both intelligibility and attitudes toward the speaker, and compares it to responses to American English (AmE). It surveys 200 respondents from over 20 countries as they listen to a set of 15 sound recordings, including read SgE, spontaneous SgE, and read AmE. The results suggest that the intelligibility of SgE and AmE does differ between informants from different regions. However, the intelligibility of the test stimuli does not correlate simply to positive and negative attitudes. While SgE elicits generally positive attitudes, what is interesting is that the judgments of respondents from South-East Asia and East Asia are often more negative than those of English speakers of Inner Circle varieties. This seems to suggest not only an impenetrable mindset of these traditionally "nonnative" English speakers, who seem to be still clamoring to speak an idealized "standard", but also an inferiority complex over their own varieties of English. speaking the supposed "non-native" varieties of English are using English to communicate with each other, as opposed to with someone from America or Australia.

This book is about scientific understanding. It is widely acknowledged that a central aim of science is to achieve understanding of the world around us, and that possessing such understanding is highly important in our present-day society. But what does it mean to achieve this understanding? What precisely is scientific understanding? These are philosophical questions that have not yet received satisfactory answers. While there has been an ongoing debate about the nature of scientific explanation since Carl Hempel advanced his covering law model in 1948, the related notion of understanding has been largely neglected because most philosophers regarded understanding as merely a subjective byproduct of objective explanations. By contrast, this book puts scientific understanding center stage. It is primarily a philosophical study, but also contains detailed historical case studies of scientific practice. In contrast to most existing studies in this area, it takes into account scientists’ views and analyzes their role in scientific debate and development. The aim of the book is to develop and defend a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. The theory does justice to the insights of such famous physicists as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, while bringing much-needed conceptual rigor to their intuitions. The scope of the proposed account of understanding is the natural sciences: while the detailed case studies derive from physics, examples from other sciences are presented to illustrate its wider validity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: The desire to understand
2. Understanding and the aims of science
3. Explanatory understanding: A plurality of models
4. A contextual theory of scientific understanding
5. Intelligibility and metaphysics: Understanding gravitation
6. Models and mechanisms: Physical understanding in the nineteenth
7. Visualizability and intelligibility: Insight into the quantum world
8. Conclusion: The many faces of understanding

Although it is recognized that ESL students often need assistance to become more comprehensible speakers, their teachers usually have limited time to devote to pronunciation instruction. Research should help teachers set priorities for pronunciation teaching to address these students' needs as efficiently as possible. Here we test the usefulness of the theoretical notion of functional load (FL) as a means of determining which consonant distinctions have the greatest impact on listeners' perceptions of accentedness and comprehensibility. Although this principle has been proposed by several pronunciation experts, its predictions have not been empirically tested. Thirteen native English listeners judged 23 Cantonese-accented sentences that exhibited various combinations of high and low FL errors. The high FL errors had relatively large effects on both perceptual scales, while the low FL errors had only a minimal impact on comprehensibility. The only cumulative effects of errors seen in the data occurred with high FL errors in the judgments of accentedness. These results not only shed light on the distinction between accentedness and comprehensibility, but also suggest that the functional load principle can be effectively employed in guiding some aspects of pronunciation instruction.

Thomas Nagel in ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ suggests that we don’t yet have much idea of how mental entities could be identical with physical ones (though he wisely stops short of accusing physicalists of not meaning ANYTHING WHATSOEVER by their identity-claims).  Colin McGinn goes further by suggesting that we may forever remain in this state of ignorance and incomprehension because of the inherent limitations of the human intellect.  I argue that the mere possibility that McGinn is right shows that it is over-hasty to conclude from philosophy’s failure to solve its problems that there must be something wrong with the problems themselves.  I also try to relate Nagel’s and McGinn’s view to David Stove’s response to philosophy’s apparent failure to make much progress.  He seems pessimistic about whether we will ever fully understand what is wrong with some philosophical claims.

This research aimed to study the intelligibility of Philippine English to Korean students. Specifically, it aimed to answer the following questions: (a) How intelligible is Philippine English to Korean students? (b) What is Korean students’ perception of Philippine English? And  (c) How does Koreans students’ proficiency in English affect intelligibility? The researchers used both objective (fill-in-the-blanks) type and subjective (survey) type of test in measuring intelligibility. Twenty South Korean students from the Far Eastern University (FEU) in Manila, Philippines were the participants of this study. The first 10 participants are Korean non-native speakers majoring in English language while the remaining 10 participants are non-native speakers not majoring in English language. The researchers recorded a two-minute speech by a Filipino speaker. The twenty listeners were divided randomly into four batches. While the recording was playing, the listeners transcribed by answering the fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire. After one minute, they were given the survey questionnaire containing questions about the listeners’ perception of the recorded speech. Same process was done to all batches. Results show that Korean students who major in English find Philippine English 61% intelligible while the same is found to be 40% intelligible by Korean non-English majors. On average, Philippine English is 51% intelligible to Korean students. Sixty percent of the participants did not find the speaker easy to understand even though their average intelligibility rate is considerably high. Unsurprisingly, 80% also answered that they understand NS’ accent specifically, American accent better than the Filipino speaker’s and 85% of the participants wanted to sound like an American or British when speaking English. The results also suggest that proficiency and practice affect intelligibility more than the length of stay in the country.

The language varieties classified under the official ISO heading Jiarong [ISO 639-3: jya], a.k.a. rGyalrong, spoken in parts of the mountainous north-western Sìchuān province of China, have been generally accepted as a single, distinct, synchronic language belonging to the rGyalrongic subgroup within Tibeto-Burman. The research provided in this thesis casts doubt on the hypothesis that rGyalrong is a single synchronic language and reveals some of the previously undocumented variation within rGyalrongic. The research in this study provides evidence that intelligibility of a representative lect from the east-central rGyalrongic region is low among speakers of many lects in the southern rGyalrongic region. In addition, ethnic identity at the lowest embedded layer is not cohesive throughout the rGyalrongic regions. Language attitudes, contact, ethnohistory, perceptual dialectology, core lexical comparisons, and structural comparisons are also examined. As a result rGyalrong emerges as five distinct languages—Situ, South-central, Japhug, Tshobdun, Zbu—with Situ and Japhug having the most robust evidence. This study integrates the field research of the author—including the first rigorous intelligibility testing among rGyalrongic language varieties—as well as previous research by external sources.

The value attached to pronunciation has kept changing continually in the methodological history of language instruction. Depending on the nature of methodological considerations that dominated research and teaching agenda, it either received too much attention or was marginalized. This study sets out to provide a comprehensive overview of pronunciation instruction from the 1950s to the present day, with a particular reference to popular bipolar debates that characterized this methodologically fluctuating period. Moreover, it attempts to examine the general outlook on pronunciation and summarize major issues concerning what components of pronunciation to include in the syllabus and how to teach it. The study also discusses the role of computers and technology in pronunciation instruction by incorporating data from empirical studies. Although some of the debates have been inconclusive up until today, the intellectual effort put in the process seems to have proved fruitful in providing some guidelines for dealing with the challenging task of improving learners' pronunciation.

Keywords: Computer-assisted  pronunciation  teaching  (CAPT),  segmental/suprasegmental phonology, accuracy, intelligibility, nativeness, teacher education

This study examines the accentedness, comprehensibility, and intel-ligibility of speakers of English from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States (US) by listeners from Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and the US on two speech tasks (read vs. conversation). It also examines the effect of shared background on scores for all listeners as well as the effect of international experience for the Hong Kong and the US listeners. The study found that although accentedness and comprehensibility were positively correlated, neither variable was significantly correlated with intelligibility. The study found that shared background increased ratings of accentedness and com-prehensibility but not intelligibility scores, and that international experience also had an effect during the conversational task, in that listeners with international experience received significantly higher intelligibility scores than those without any such international experience.

Gass and Varonis'(1984)article, The effect of familiarity on the comprehensibility of nonnative speech has been widely cited in the literature of applied linguistics since its publication. Their conclusions continue to be echoed by researchers, especially by those investigating both nonnative speech processing and how different types of familiarity function contribute to speech processing. Among their findings were that accent familiarity contributes to comprehensibility. This paper presents a strong theoretical stance that their conclusions that familiarity with nonnative speech in general and accent-familiarity contribute to the comprehensibility of nonnative speech was not reliably measured and that their findings revealed more about intelligibility than comprehensibility due to their choice of methodology that relied solely on transcription task data. Included also is a discussion of the problem of how terms like intelligibility, comprehensibility and interpretability have been applied, sometimes interchangeably, by researchers that likely led to Gass and Varonis' attributing their findings to comprehensibility. The findings of Gass and Varonis(1984)are important and valuable to all researchers interested in how different types of familiarity impact speech processing, and this paper does not aim to discredit it; however, their findings and conclusions warrant review and may more appropriately describe how familiarity affects intelligibility than comprehensibility.

In this paper, the authors examine Nigerian English in the light of its unique characteristics emanating from the mode of acquisition of the language by Nigerians, and the socio-cultural environment in which English is now used. Using Uriel Weinreich"s theory of language contact to explicate the phenomenon of language variation, they observe that the English language in Nigeria has been cultivated and re-domesticated as well as indigenized to accommodate the culture and tradition of the people and as such, has acquired local colour and distinguished itself from the native speaker variety with features reflected at the semantic level. The paper identifies meaning narrowing, semantic extension, semantic reduplication, semantic shift, coinage of new words with new meanings, the Nigerianisation of idioms and proverbs, ambiguity resulting from omission of articles among other semantic issues as marking off the Nigerian English and posing a challenge to the notions of international intelligibility and acceptability.

This paper explores the use of culinary terms among the educated Nigerian speakers of English and how this relates to intelligibility. Contextual Relativity (CR) is adopted as the theoretical framework as it bridges the gap between the study of the meanings of words and their linguistic and cultural environment. Ninety questionnaires were analysed. Data were complemented with selected Nigerian-based literary texts. The data were subjected to simple statistical and linguistic analyses. Findings reveal that most Nigerian speakers of English do not differentiate between the use of some of the culinary terms on the basis of their semantic properties. This is attributed to socio-cultural differences, poor knowledge of the existence of such differences and the lack of sufficient vocabulary to account for such cooking processes. The study concludes that there is the need to check the extent of innovativeness and to define the yardstick for the acceptable and intelligible usage. Unfortunately, Nigerian literary writers have not been able to enlighten Nigerians on the use of some unfamiliar culinary terms.

As a flexible and effective communication system for Non-Native Speakers of English (NNS), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is a frequently mentioned concept in the current literature on ELT. This study investigates if the problems encountered in the teaching of English pronunciation to Non-Native English Speakers (NNS) can be alleviated in Bangladesh through the ELF approach. In particular, it develops a simple and easy to teach/learn pronunciation teaching model specifically designed for Native Bengali Speakers (NBS). Furthermore, this study offers a prototype syllabus for English as a Lingua Franca for Bengalis (ELFB) based on the Bengali Lingua Franca Core Model (BLFC) adapted from LFC model of Jenkins.

One important decision that English language teachers should make is to decide on a pronunciation model. This decision should be based not only on mere preference, but also on technical information. This paper seeks to review the Lingua Franca Core (LFC), a pronunciation model proposed by Jennifer Jenkins (1998, 2000) in an attempt to facilitate communication for L2 speakers. This paper also presents a set of reactions that her proposal has prompted in scholars in the area of teaching English language pronunciation. Such reactions are the manifestation of rejection of the LFC which is based on a number of arguments. First, there is no agreement as to the number of interactions that occur in English in L1 and L2 contexts. Thus, the predominant use of L2 speakers of English is questioned. Secondly, the advantage of the intelligibility of non-native speakers over native speakers in interaction with other non-native speakers is also subjected to scrutiny. Finally, a special focus on implications for the L1-Spanish-speaking learner of English is proposed, as well as for English language teachers who teach pronunciation. For instance, a series of issues which could facilitate the learner’s workload is discussed. One the other hand, the implementation of the LFC implies that the amount of work to be done by the teacher would be drastically increased. This necessarily entails a disadvantage in terms of both time and teaching materials to be allocated by the English Language Teaching (ELT) professional.

Pronunciation, despite being an obviously important component of speech and anticipated communication, seems to enjoy little or no room in the policy and practice in Bangladesh. This study, therefore, aimed at exploring the issues of teaching oral proficiency specifically pronunciation at the HSC level in Bangladesh. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether students at college level encounter problems in English pronunciation. The present study also aims to unearth reasons working behind the negligence toward pronunciation. To do so, students were interviewed with the Reading Survey focusing on problematic utterance in terms of sound and orthography for Bangladeshi learners as suggested by some previous studies. The findings show that pronunciation teaching is inadequate in policy and practice. Finally possible remedial measure for integrating pronunciation with other skills with the help of a Balanced Approach to teaching pronunciation and same inquiries in other setting were recommended.

Heidegger pour qu'il soit possible d'ignorer le dernier ouvrage de Jean-Luc Marion, aussi superbement écrit qu'il est ambitieux 1 . Certes, de très exhaustives encyclopédies 2 conçues par nos collègues américains, pour lesquels le terme de phénoménologie sert un peu d'équivalent à celui de philosophie continentale (c'est-à-dire « nonanalytique »!), recenseront des légions de phénoménologues depuis Husserl et Heidegger, mais aucun n'aura eu d'impact vraiment déterminant sur la conception même de la discipline. Ces listes comprendront de redoutables penseurs comme Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Lévinas et Paul Ricoeur, où l'on reconnaîtra les plus illustres représentants de la tradition de la phénoménologie française (les autres traditions dites phénoménologiques étant beaucoup moins riches). Or, ces penseurs ont-ils fait avancer ou modifié l'intelligence de la phénoménologie comme telle? On ne saurait en tout cas le dire avec assurance, tant on a le sentiment que leur pensée aurait pu se développer sous une autre rubrique que celle de la 1 Jean-Luc MARION, Etant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation [dorénavant : ED], Paris, PUF, collection « Épiméthée », 1997. 2 Cf. plus récemment L. EMBREE et al., Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1997. Il y en a beacoup d'autres, sans compter les innombrables readers (deux exemples récents : Continental Philosophy. An Anthology, edited by William MCNEILL and Karen S. FELDMAN, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998, qui commence par Kant; The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press , 1998). Sur l'identification, propre aux Américains, de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie continentale, cf. mes indications dans L'Horizon herméneutique de la pensée contemporaine, Paris, Vrin, 1993, 81 ss. L'étude justement classique sur l'ensemble du courant phénoménologique phénoménologie. Ce n'est pas le titre de phénoménologie qui importe ici, bien entendu, car les étiquettes ont fait plus de tort que de bien à la philosophie, mais son sens et son projet essentiel. On s'entendra, en effet, pour reconnaître qu'une « description des phénomènes » ou un « retour aux choses elle-mêmes » ne fait pas un programme philosophique (de telles maximes sont reichlich selbstverständlich, « largement évidentes », ironisait déjà Heidegger dans Sein und Zeit, 28), car ces caractérisations valent pour toute philosophie, voire pour toute science, sinon pour tout discours. À cet égard, l'éclatement récent de la phénoménologie témoigne peut-être moins de sa vitalité, comme le croit Dominique Janicaud 3 , que de son embarras.

What is silence? Is it a loss, an omission? Is it a stopping of the mouth, of the voice? An empty place where no meaning has come forward…or perhaps at times quite the opposite, an absence-as-presence  Deleuze, 1990; Derrida, 1976)? Might silence evoke much more about what we assume is our monological, unitary reality, indexing possibilities yet unseen? This paper outlines the ways in which silence is typically understood according to scholarly orthodoxy: as omission in human communication or a silencing of minoritized individuals or communities by those in power. It then moves to critique the preeminence of whitestream (Grande, 2003) Western-centric academic authority, which self-perpetuates via the exclusion of outsider ways of doing, being and knowing such as those brought forward by silence, constituting a loss of meaning and knowledge from the social imaginary. This paper suggests that the pursuit of an articulate unknowing (Zembylas, 2005) regarding silence as a creative, disruptive force beyond the control of rationality is a means of engaging with radical possibilities for a different, juster world. It proposes a socio-diologic politics of the real that welcomes silence as an unsettling of our current thinking about what is and will be possible, as well as who does and does not matter. It concludes by illustrating the ingenious force of silence in examples of subversive art that expose the hegemonizing, rational(ized) version of reality sold by academics and powerholders, bringing forward into the imagination what prospects for change, justice, and social transformation yet await.

Philosophers know a great deal about how reasoning can go wrong but very little about what can go wrong with the conclusions that philosophers try to establish by their reasonings.  It is Stove’s great merit that he tackles the latter problem directly, though a certain dogmatism in his approach and a contemptuous attitude towards the ‘great’ philosophers have almost certainly led to a neglect of his work.

This paper inquires into the appropriateness of the label ‘neo-positivist’ that he applies to his own position and considers his view that there are probably, but not certainly, innumerable ways in which a philosophical claim can be wrong, mistaken, untrue, absurd even.  An attempt is made to relate our lack of knowledge here to the Chomsky/McGinn thesis that there may be kinds of problem with which the human intellect is just not equipped to deal.

The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration by Inge Zwitserlood: Hockett's Easter egg analogy Throughout the history of the study of speech, researchers have been trying to model the relation between phonetics and phonology. One famous description of both domains is the Easter egg analogy by Hockett (1955). Hockett's analogy of speech production involves a row of Easter eggs on a conveyer belt being smashed between the two rollers of a wringer. By this, Hockett implies that the units of speech are distinct and serially ordered (perhaps also invariant) before they are all smeared together in the process of speech articulation: "The flow of eggs before the wringer represents the impulses from the phoneme source; the mess that emerges from the wringer represents the output from the speech transmitter" (Hockett 1955, p.210). It is important to note that Hockett does not imply that it is impossible to recover the original eggs. Hockett remarks that the hearer examining the passing mess can "decide, on the basis of the broken and unbroken yolks, the variously spread-out albumen, and the variously coloured bits of shell, the nature of the flow of eggs which previously arrived at the wringer". In relation to the present study on fast speech, one can imagine that the faster the conveyer belt moves, the bigger the mess becomes. Hence, it becomes all the more difficult for the listener to recover the original eggs.

Ülkemiz, uluslararası platformda okuma becerilerini, okuryazarlığı ve alan becerilerini ölçmeyi hedefleyen PISA, PIRLS (2001) ve TIMSS sınavlarında ortalamanın altında kalmaktadır. Bu durum okuma becerisine sahip olmayan bireyler yetiştirilmesi ile doğru orantılıdır. Okuma okunabilirlik, anlaşılabilirlik ve okunaklık kavramlarını içinde bulunduran bir süreçtir. Okumanın önemli bir ayağı olan okunabilirlikle ilgili çalışmaların geçmişinin çok eskiye dayanmadığı bilinmekle birlikte, eksikliği tartışılmaz bir gerçektir. Türkçenin yapısına uygun hâle getirilmeye çalışılan okunabilirlik formülleri ile çalışmalar yapılsa da istenilen sonuca tam olarak ulaşıldığını söylemek güçtür. Bu çalışma, 2. sınıf Türkçe ders kitabındaki metinlerin okunabilirlik düzeylerini belirlemek amacıyla yapılmıştır. Araştırmada 2014-2015 eğitim-öğretim yılında okutulan Doku Yayınları’na ait 2. Sınıf Türkçe ders kitabındaki öyküleyici ve bilgilendirici metinlerin okunabilirlik düzeyleri ölçülmüş, şiirler kapsam dışında bırakılmıştır. Metinlerin analizinde Ateşman’ın (1997) Türkçeye uyarladığı okunabilirlik formülü kullanılmıştır. Araştırma sonucuna göre, öyküleyici metinlerin okunabilirlik puanlarının bilgilendirici metinlerin okunabilirlik puanlarına göre daha yüksek olduğu tespit edilmiştir.

Our country remains below the average in PISA, PIRLS (2001) and TIMSS examinations targeting to measure reading skills, literacy and field skills at international platform. This case is directly proportional with training of individuals who have not reading skill. Reading is a process containing readability, intelligibility and legibility concepts. While it is known that history of studies related with legibility which is an important pillar of reading does not date too back, its shortness is an unquestionable fact. Although studies have been conducted with readability formulas which are tried to make suitable for structure of Turkish, it is difficult to say that desired result is fully achieved. This study was conducted for the purpose of establishing readability levels of texts in 2nd class Turkish textbook. In the study, readability levels of narrative and informative texts in 2nd class Turkish textbook belonging to Doku Publications which is taught in 2014-2015 education-training year were measured, poems were excluded. In the analysis of texts, readability formula of Ateşman (1997) adapted into Turkish was used. According to the result of the research, it was determined that readability scores of narrative texts are higher than readability scores of informative texts.

A theoretical overview and supporting data are presented about the control of the segmental component of speech production. Findings of "motor-equivalent" trading relations between the contributions of two constrictions to the same acoustic transfer function provide preliminary support for the idea that segmental control is based on acoustic or auditory-perceptual goals. The goals are determined partly by non-linear, quanta1 relations (called "saturation effects") between motor commands and articulatory movements and between articulation and sound. Since processing times would be too long to allow the use of auditory feedback for closed-loop error correction in achieving acoustic goals, the control mechanism must use a robust "internal model" of the relation between articulation and the sound output that is learned during speech acquisition. Studies of the speech of cochlear implant and bilateral acoustic neuroma patients provide evidence supporting two roles for auditory feedback in adults: maintenance of the internal model, and monitoring the acoustic environment to help assure intelligibility by guiding relatively rapid adjustments in "postural" parameters underlying average sound level, speaking rate and the amount of prosodically-based inflection of FO and SPL. 0 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

Expressive text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis should contribute to the pleasantness, intelligibility, and speed of speech-based human-machine interactions which use TTS. We describe a TTS engine which can be directed, via text markup, to use a variety of expressive styles, here, questioning, contrastive emphasis, and conveying good and bad news. Differences in these styles lead us to investigate two approaches for expressive TTS, a "corpus-driven" and a "prosodic-phonology" approach. Each speaker records 11 h (excluding silences) of "neutral" sentences. In the corpus-driven approach, the speaker also records 1-h corpora in each expressive style; these segments are tagged by style for use during search, and decision trees for determining 0 contours and timing are trained separately for each of the neutral and expressive corpora. In the prosodic-phonology approach, rules translating certain expressive markup elements to tones and break indices (ToBI) are manually determined, and the ToBI elements are used in single 0 and duration trees for all expressions. Tests show that listeners identify synthesis in particular styles ranging from 70% correctly for "conveying bad news" to 85% for "yes-no questions." Further improvements are demonstrated through the use of speaker-pooled 0 and duration models.

Review of a thorough review of the literature on international intelligibility within the WEs framework, in a paper given by Dr. Dayag at the JAFAE national conference. Dayag concludes that more work needs to be done on 2-way intelligibility than had previously been done by WEs scholars, perhaps presaging the emergence and importance of the ELF field.

Research on second language (L2) phonetic learning indicates that, even in adults, segmental acquisition remains possible through L2 experience. However, the findings of previous cross-sectional studies of vowel and consonant learning have proved difficult to interpret. In this longitudinal investigation of 44 recent arrivals in Canada, productions of 10 English vowels in CVC context were elicited at 2-month intervals and evaluated by trained and untrained listeners. Improved intelligibility was observed, even in the absence of focused instruction on vowels. The results support the proposal that L2 phonetic learning is initially rapid but tends to plateau within a few months. However, this finding is complicated by different learning trajectories across vowels, differential L1 influences, and possible effects of word frequency.

A 1000 consonant-vowel-consonant structure logatoms corpus (CVC-structure), grouped in 10 phonetically equally balanced lists of 100 words each, was developed to satisfy the need of subjective assessment of speech intelligibility in American Spanish speaking environments. This corpus was tested and correlated with the Speech Transmission Index (STI) measurements to compare its articulation intelligibility score with other lists' scores.

This article offers an account of moods as distinctive kinds of personal level affective-evaluative states, which are both intentional and rationally intelligible in specific ways. The account contrasts with those who claim moods are non-intentional, and so also arational. Section 1 provides a conception of intentionality and distinguishes moods, as occurrent experiential states, from other states in the affective domain. Section 2 argues moods target the subject’s total environment presented in a specific evaluative light through felt valenced attitudes (the Mood-Intentionality thesis). Section 3 argues some moods are experienced as rationally intelligible responses, and so epistemically appropriate, to the way ‘the world’ presents itself (the Mood-Intelligibility thesis). Finally, section 4 discusses the epistemology of moods.

It is widely alleged that metaphysical possibility is “absolute” possibility (Kripke [1980], Lewis [1986], Rosen [2006, 16], Stalnaker [2005, 203], Williamson [2016, 460]).  Indeed, this is arguably its metaphysical significance.  Kripke calls metaphysical necessity “necessity in the highest degree” ([1980, 99]).  Williamson calls metaphysical possibility the “maximal objective modality” [2016, 459].  Rosen says that “metaphysical possibility is the [most inclusive] sort of real possibility” ([2006, 16]).  And Stalnaker writes, “we can agree with Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and most others who allow themselves to talk about possible worlds at all, that metaphysical necessity is necessity in the widest sense [2003, 203].”  But what exactly does the thesis that metaphysical possibility is absolute amount to?  Is it true?  In this article, I argue that, assuming that the thesis is not merely terminological, and lacking in any metaphysical interest, it is an article of faith.  I conclude with the suggestion that metaphysical possibility may lack the metaphysical significance that is widely attributed to it.

Changing economic realities in Canada are likely to result in increased employment opportunities for immigrant professionals. In Alberta, where these changes have already begun, issues of language in the workplace have surfaced, some relating to oral skills. In this investigation of Canadianborn employees' preferences for 40 L2 accented voices, 16 native English speakers selected a preferred voice from pairs of Mandarin-and Slaviclanguage-accented speech samples varying in comprehensibility. We found that comprehensibility figured importantly in their choices, as did fluency. In fact, listener preferences were influenced by comprehensibility differences of about one point on a nine-point rating scale. An additional 14 native English speakers undertook a preference task in which speech samples were presented according to degree of accent. Although this latter group tended to prefer less accented over more accented speakers, accentedness itself was less important than comprehensibility when the two groups' preferences were compared. These findings are discussed with reference to LINC (Language Instruction to Newcomers in Canada) and other ESL programming and to English in the workplace.

As a flexible and effective communication system for Non-Native Speakers of English (NNS), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is a frequently mentioned concept in the current literature on ELT. This study investigates if the problems encountered in the teaching of English pronunciation to Non-Native English Speakers (NNS) can be alleviated in Bangladesh through the ELF approach. In particular, it develops a simple and easy to teach/learn pronunciation teaching model specifically designed for Native Bengali Speakers (NBS). Furthermore, this study offers a prototype syllabus for English as a Lingua Franca for Bengalis (ELFB) based on the Bengali Lingua Franca Core Model (BLFC) adapted from LFC model of Jenkins.

In this paper I criticize the interpretations of John Locke on natural kinds offered by Matthew Stuart and Pauline Phemister who argue that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding allows for natural kinds based on similar real essences. By contrast, I argue for a conventionalist reading of Locke by reinterpreting his account of the status of real essences within the Essay and arguing that Locke denies that the new science of mechanism can justify the claim that similarities in corpuscular structure imply similarities in sensible qualities. I argue further that Locke rejects as meaningless any talk of kinds that appeals to similarities among real essences. On my reading of Locke, similarities in real essences are not only irrelevant to species, but natural kind theories based on them are unintelligible.

The field of English for specific purposes (ESP), which addresses the communicative needs and practices of particular professional or occupational groups, has developed rapidly in the past forty years to become a major force in English language teaching and research. ESP draws its strength from an eclectic theoretical foundation and a commitment to research-based language education which seeks to reveal the constraints of social contexts on language use and the ways learners can gain control over these. In this chapter, I will briefly point to some of the major ideas and practices that currently influence ESP, focusing on needs analysis, ethnography, critical approaches, contrastive rhetoric, social constructionism, and discourse analysis. I then go on to look briefly at some of the effects ESP has had on language teaching and research, arguing that it has encouraged teachers to highlight communication rather than language, to adopt a research orientation to their work, to employ collaborative pedagogies, to be aware of discourse variation, and to consider the wider political implications of their role. Together these features of ESP practice emphazise a situated view of literacy and underline the applied nature of the field.

Abshuct-Four discrete orthogonal transforms have been evaluated for their suitability for use in transform-based analog speech encryption. Subjective as well as objective tests were conducted to compare the residual intelligibility and the recovered speech quality under channel conditions. The cryptanalytic strengths of the schemes are then compared by applying a novel cryptanalytic attack which exploits the redundancy of speech using a spectral vector codebook. The results indicate that the discrete cosine transform is the best transform to use in transform-based encryption. A modification of the DCT-based scheme is proposed which significantly improves the security of the scrambler.

West Frisian is a minoritized language spoken in the province of Fryslân, in the Netherlands, as well as in some neighboring villages in the province of Groningen. It has actually been said to be converging with Standard Dutch (Nerbonne, 2001; see Nota, Coler, & Hilton, 2015), and it has been found to be largely intelligible for Dutch native speakers (see Vries, 2010). However, it seems that negative attitudes towards the language (see Hilton & Gooskens, 2013; Belmar, 2018) serve as the basis for a perceived difficulty that is often used to prevent the language from being used in the public sphere.
In this research, we tried to test how much Frisian Dutch native speakers can actually understand, as well as the perceived difficulty of each kind of exercise. An online test was designed with two reading exercises, three listening exercises and twenty sentences in West Frisian that the participants were asked to translate into Dutch. The test was shared through social media, and we got answers from both the Netherlands and Belgium. The results seem to indicate that West Frisian is highly intelligible for Dutch native speakers, which we argue should be used to enrich the school curriculum and foster receptive skills in the minoritized language (see Fonseca, 2012), which could in turn boost its use.
"Small languages, big ideas. The smaller Germanic languages from a theoretical, general and comparative perspective" - Zürich, April 2019.

West Frisian is a minoritized language spoken in the province of Fryslân, in the Netherlands, as well as in some neighboring villages in the province of Groningen. It has actually been said to be converging with Standard Dutch (cf. Nerbonne, 2001; Nota, Coler, & Hilton, 2015), and it has been found to be largely intelligible for Dutch native speakers (cf. De Vries, 2010). How-ever, it seems that negative attitudes towards the language (cf. Hilton & Gooskens, 2013; Belmar, 2018) serve as the basis for a perceived difficulty that is often used to prevent the lan-guage from being used in the public sphere.
In this research, we tried to test how much Frisian Dutch native speakers can actually under-stand, as well as the perceived difficulty of each kind of exercise. An online test was designed with two reading exercises, three listening exercises and twenty sentences in West Frisian that the participants were asked to translate into Dutch. The test was shared through social media, and we got answers from both the Netherlands and Belgium. The results seem to indicate that West Frisian is highly intelligible for Dutch native speakers, which we argue should be used to enrich the school curriculum and foster receptive skills in the minoritized language (cf. Fonseca, 2012), which could in turn boost its use.
Big Cities, Small Languages.
Leibniz-Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, November 2018.

This paper argues that spacetime visualisability is not a necessary condition for the intelligibility of theories in physics. Visualisation can be an important tool for rendering a theory intelligible, but it is by no means a sine qua non. The paper examines the historical transition from classical to quantum physics, and analyses the role of visualisability (Anschaulichkeit) and its relation to intelligibility. On the basis of this historical analysis, an alternative conception of the intelligibility of scientific theories is proposed, based on Heisenberg's reinterpretation of the notion of Anschaulichkeit. #

The intelligibility of speech is known to be lower if the speaker is non-native instead of native for the given language. This study is aimed at quantifying the overall degradation due to limitations of non-native speakers of Dutch, spe-ci®cally of Dutch-speaking Americans who have lived in the Netherlands 1±3 years. Experiments were focused on phoneme intelligibility and sentence intelligibility, using additive noise as a means of degrading the intelligibility of speech utterances for test purposes. The overall dierence in sentence intelligibility between native Dutch speakers and American speakers of Dutch, using native Dutch listeners, was found to correspond to a dierence in speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) of approximately 3 dB. The main segmental contribution to the degradation of speech intelligibility by introducing non-native speakers and/or listeners is the confusion of vowels, especially those that do not occur in American English. Vowels that are dicult for second-language speakers to produce are also dicult for secondlanguage listeners to classify; such vowels attract false recognition, reducing the overall recognition rate for all vowels.

Traditional noise-suppression algorithms have been shown to improve speech quality, but not speech intelligibility. Motivated by prior intelligibility studies of speech synthesized using the ideal binary mask, an algorithm is proposed that decomposes the input signal into time-frequency ͑T-F͒ units and makes binary decisions, based on a Bayesian classifier, as to whether each T-F unit is dominated by the target or the masker. Speech corrupted at low signal-to-noise ratio ͑SNR͒ levels ͑−5 and 0 dB͒ using different types of maskers is synthesized by this algorithm and presented to normal-hearing listeners for identification. Results indicated substantial improvements in intelligibility ͑over 60% points in −5 dB babble͒ over that attained by human listeners with unprocessed stimuli. The findings from this study suggest that algorithms that can estimate reliably the SNR in each T-F unit can improve speech intelligibility.

Immanuel Kant famously thought that the presuppositions of Newtonian physics are the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience in general – both “outer” and “inner” experience.  Today we know, of course, that Newtonian physics only applies to a limited domain of physical reality and is radically inadequate in the quantum and relativistic domains.  This gives rise to an interesting question: could the radical changes in physics suggest new conditions for the possibility of experience? In other words, does post-Newtonian physics suggest a post-Kantian view of human experience?

Questions of completeness of grasp or certainty are being viewed with suspicion, while human action, mirrored in complete reality, confronts us with limits. Dealing with these issues (as with all others) is tinted by the selected categorial systems through which the empirical phenomena are being judged. The categorial structure of the currently paradigmatic approaches does indeed not allow certainty, especially not when dealing with completeness; this is why the 'modern' formulations of laws are not essentialist, but appear increasingly in stochastic terms. But they do not allow an access to the core of singularities (individual cases), and within these approaches it can not be decided whether the totality is inaccessible per se. - An approach is proposed that does not have these weaknesses. It operates through strictly universally applicable fundamental concepts, in which perspectivity and completeness of grasp can become compatible, and it provides also a clarification of the foundation of the presently paradigmatic approaches, which they cannot afford themselves (issue of ultimate justification). The result is a structure of precisely balanced categorial concepts with heuristic content, which complements the 'modern' formulations of laws and causation (ie reached on an external-empirical basis).
German original:
Fragen um Ganzheitserfassung oder Gewißheit werden beargwöhnt, während menschliches Tun, gespiegelt an der ganzen Wirklichkeit, uns vor Grenzen stellt. Der Umgang mit diesen Fragen ist (wie mit allen anderen) gefärbt von den gewählten Kategoriensystemen, durch die die empirischen Phänomene beurteilt werden. Die Kategorien der derzeit paradigmatischen Ansätze erlauben in der Tat keine Gewißheit, vor allem nicht im Umgang mit der Ganzheit; deshalb sind die 'modernen' Formulierung von Gesetzmäßigkeiten nicht mehr essenzialistisch, sondern zunehmend stochastisch geworden. Sie erlauben aber keine Einsicht in den Kern der Singularitäten (Einzelfälle) und es kann innerhalb dieser Ansätze nicht endgültig entschieden werden, ob die Ganzheit per se unzugänglich sei. — Wir legen einen Ansatz vor, der diese Schwächen nicht hat. Er verläuft in streng universell anwendbaren Grundbegriffen, in denen Perspektivität und Ganzheitserfassung kompatibel ist, und bietet auch eine Klärung der Basis der nun paradigmatischen Ansätze, die diese selbst nicht leisten können (Letztbegründungs-Problematik). Es resultiert eine Struktur von präzis ausgewogenen Leit-Ordnungen mit heuristischem Gehalt, welche die 'modernen' (d.h. auf äußerlich-empirischer Basis erreichten) Formulierungen von Gesetzmäßigkeiten und Ursächlichkeiten komplementär ergänzen.

The current paper addresses intelligibility, a dimension used to assess second language speech, which has also been proposed as one of the goals in pronunciation instruction. Studies carried out on this construct in Brazil are SCHADECH, 2013), and their main findings are discussed taking into account Jenkins' (2002) Lingua Franca core. Furthermore, methodological issues are discussed, pointing out the different foci of the studies conducted in Brazil, the variables examined by the Brazilian studies at present, and the myriad of variables contemplated by international studies that still need investigation in the Brazilian context. Some of these variables are related to the speaker/listener or are of linguistic nature (e.g., L2 proficiency, accent familiarity, lexical frequency), all of which could help us to understand the intelligibility construct. Finally, the paper brings concluding remarks about the investigation of intelligibility and possible implications for the classroom ...