O presente estudo buscou investigar os efeitos do VOT Positivo (com ou sem informação contextual) na inteligibilidade de sentenças curtas em Inglês, produzidas por brasileiros, por parte de falantes nativos de Inglês Americano (6) e aprendizes proficientes de Inglês (12). Esses 18 participantes transcreveram sentenças com e sem informação contextual, produzidas com plosivas-alvo sonoras, surdas sem aspiração e surdas com aspiração. Cada participante transcreveu 112 sentenças através do software E-Prime 2.0 (SCHNEIDER, ESCHMAN & ZUCCOLOTTO, 2012) com um tempo-limite para respostas de 20 segundos. Os dados obtidos através da tarefa foram analisados objetivamente, dividindo as transcrições em categorias binárias “correta” (alto grau de inteligibilidade/inteligibilidade plena) e “incorreta” (baixo grau de inteligibilidade/inteligibilidade praticamente inexistente). Em geral, os níveis de acuidade não variaram consideravelmente entre os 18 participantes, embora possamos dizer que falantes nativos de Inglês Americano tiveram desempenho relativamente melhor. A análise das transcrições sugere que, enquanto é possível que fatores externos às variáveis controladas por este estudo tenham tido papel fundamental no desempenho dos participantes, a informação contextual talvez tenha remediado a falta do VOT Positivo como uma pista para atingir inteligibilidade. / The present study aimed to investigate the effects of Positive VOT (with or without contextual information) on the intelligibility of short English sentences produced by Brazilians to native speakers of American English (6) and proficient Brazilian learners (12). These 18 participants transcribed sentences produced with voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stop segments, with and without contextual information. Each participant transcribed 112 sentences through software E-Prime 2.0 (SCHNEIDER, ESCHMAN & ZUCCOLOTTO, 2012) with a response-time limit of 20 seconds. The data obtained from the task was analyzed objectively, assigning transcriptions to binary accurate (high intelligibility) or inaccurate (low-to-no intelligibility) categories. Overall, accuracy levels did not vary considerably amongst the 18 participants, although it can be said that native speakers of American English performed slightly better. The analysis of the transcriptions suggests that, while factors external to the variables controlled by this study might have played fundamental roles in the overall performance of the task, contextual information may possibly have remedied the absence of Positive VOT as a cue for achieving sentence intelligibility.

Collective nouns are a category of nouns that refer to a group of people or things. This group of nouns has the special characteristic that when in singular form, they can be followed by either a singular or a plural verb. This feature of collective nouns has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and traditional grammarians, who in the last few decades have tried to explain this phenomenon by investigating different perspectives on it, thereby taking into consideration morphological, syntactic and semantic, as well as variational and discourse-specific differences (Biber et al, 1999; Levin, 2001; Depraetere, 2003). One of the main assumptions that has been suggested in the literature is that collective nouns have specific concord preferences, allowing for either a singular or a plural verb or both. Another assumption that has also been invoked is that when collective nouns are part of a complex noun phrase, as for instance in the phrase the rest of (the) society, in which the collective is part of the of-phrase, the plural tends to be used. Based on these two assumptions, the aim of this thesis is to further investigate, firstly whether a singular or a plural verb is used after expressions where a collective noun is being modified by a quantifying noun expression (e.g. the rest of, part of), secondly whether the concord preferences the collective nouns have an influence on the verbal concord and finally if there is any difference between the two main varieties of English, namely British and American English. Since this is a topic of actual language use, the methods used in corpus linguistic research are also employed in the thesis. More specifically, by looking at the instances of quantifying noun expressions modifying collective nouns as well as the frequency with which such constructions occur in two different corpora, the enTenTen13 and the GloWbE (Corpus of Global Web-Based English), the thesis seeks to answer the aforementioned questions. From the analysis of the data it was concluded that in some cases the concord preferences of the collective nouns influenced the verb form following the complex noun phrases, whereas in others these preferences did not determine the selection of the verb form. Syntactic, semantic as well as contextual factors seem to also influence the selection of the verb form. Furthermore, variational differences occurred, since in British English the plural was more often used with collective nouns that prefer the plural concord over the singular one or that are more variable in their concord patterns, whereas in American English the singular was the preferred choice in all cases.

Swedish school pupils are taught English from a very young age. Many speak English at a very high level thanks to this and also thanks to readily available television programmes in English, mostly from America but also from Britain. Some, including Marko Modiano argue that the English spoken in Sweden could be a new variety. There is some evidence in support of this in the form of previous studies showing to what degree American and British English is mixed by Swedes. The present study aims at exploring if there are any recurring patterns in the way Swedish upper secondary school students mix American and British English as well as possible underlying reasons. This was done by recording 32 informants at an upper secondary school in Stockholm while reading a list of words and sentences designed to elicit phonetic markers that separate American English from British English. The data from the recordings is complemented by a short questionnaire. Here the informants are asked about their preference for English varieties and what they believe the preference of English varieties is for their teacher, the school, their textbooks as well as what they watch on television and if they have ever been or would like to go to an English speaking country. Concerning whether or not the informants mix American and British English or not, the results clearly show that most believe they do, although most of them seem to favour American English on the whole. There seems to be an overall tendency to use rhotic /r/ and there were some differences between male and female informants. Looking at the results of the present study compared to previous studies there is a connection in that formal text types like word lists elicit more British English than less formal text types do. Concerning what they watch on television, nearly all informants watch American television shows and this could be, in part, responsible for the tendency to favour the American variety. Regarding other influences, there was some uncertainty, especially when they were asked what they believed was preferred in the textbooks and by their teachers. Though it seems most believe that British English is preferred over American English except for the school in general where most believe that both varieties are preferred equally.

Traditionally, some occupational titles have been explicitly marked for the gender of the group dominating the occupation. For example, in male-dominated occupations, titles often end with -man. However, since the second-wave feminist movement, several of the previously gender-biased titles have been supplemented by new, gender-neutral titles. Previous research has shown a discrepancy between researchers regarding the implications of these new titles. Some argue that the gender-neutral titles are only used for female referents, whereas others claim that gender-neutral titles, especially for male- dominated occupations, tend to still presuppose maleness. In the present paper, a corpus-based study is conducted on a few selected occupational titles. The aim is to investigate whether the gender-neutral alternatives have increased in usage over time, and whether the gender-biased ones have decreased. In addition, the study aims at examining whether the gender-neutral forms tend to be used primarily for women or men. The present study is corpus-based, examining the particular terms in the TIME Magazine Corpus. The results of the study show that there has been an increase of the gender-neutral forms since their introduction to English, and that they are primarily used when there is no explicit gender referencing. Proposed explanations for these results are that it may depend on the type of work involved in the selected occupations, as well as them being male-dominated. Furthermore, the results indicate that the gender- neutral terms are opted for when gender is either unknown or irrelevant for the context.

This comparative study aims to discover and demonstrate the potential division in preferences for, and use of, AmE and BrE vocabulary by examining the possible influence of variety shift, motivation, gender, and language contact among 181 EFL students in one upper secondary school and one university in Sweden. Accordingly, the material, a questionnaire, was distributed to probe the preferences and potential inclination factors through solicitation of background information and personal attitudes towards English. Additionally, through a selection process within the questionnaire, to determine the division in actual variety use, the respondents chose between 30 variety-dependent synonyms randomly divided into two separate columns. The results demonstrate a self-reported preference for AmE among upper secondary students, which seems to derive from its high frequency of use, and a preference for BrE among students in tertiary education, due to the more appealing sound of pronunciation and the status which it is believed to signal. Additionally, intrinsic motivation is shown to be more frequent among students who prefer BrE. The differences in variety use are, despite some minor connection to variety shift, essentially identical regardless of variety preference, motivation, EFL level and student gender, with AmE being used most frequently. However, none of the respondents used exclusively one variety without alternating between the two in at least one instance, but the extent of inclination seemed to depend on the variety with which one had had the longest contact.

The aim of this study is to examine how the word manly was used during the 19thcentury. Using the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) it looks atcollocates, the spread across registers and semantic meaning, in order to gain a betterunderstanding of the word and its usage. Due to this term’s connotations with gender,the findings will finally be discussed in relation to Gender Performativity andMasculinity Theory.

This essay is an investigation of varieties of English used, learned, and taught, in a Swedish school. The age of the students is 15-16 and they attend grade 9. The hypothesis of this essay is that American English is the variety most students prefer and use, and that British English is the variety mainly preferred by teachers and the school system. This do not collaborate with the ‘learner-centered learning’ pedagogical view (Modiano 2009:172). The data is mainly collected in three areas. 1: a teacher survey, to determine the teachers ́ views and opinions of the varieties of English. 2: a student survey, to examine whether the students prefer one variety to the other, and if they are even aware of what variety they are speaking, and 3: the data gathered from transcribing this year’s English National Test to determine what types of English that are represented in the test. The result of this essay confirms the hypothesis that AmE is the variety both preferred and used by younger students in Sweden today, and that these students do find that they are allowed to use any variety they wish while learning in school. BrE is still the variety preferred by teachers and the school system, however AmE is catching up. Furthermore, the students do have a high level of participation in their own acquisition of English.

The differences in attitudes toward African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) were investigated among elementary students (N=34) and middle school students (N=40) using the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI). Participants listened to audio recordings of speakers of AAE and MAE and then completed the SEI. Both elementary and middle school students perceived MAE positively (p =.005), as hypothesized. However, for both hypotheses related to AAE, the researcher hypothesized that both groups would perceive the language negatively; however, in both cases, the researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis. Comparing how each group perceived the two languages, it was found that both groups perceived MAE more positively than they did AAE. With regard to perceptions of AAE, middle school students did not perceive AAE more favorably than elementary students did, as had been hypothesized. On individual scales of the Speech Evaluation Instrument, both elementary and middle school students perceived speakers of MAE more positively than they did speakers of AAE. Students felt that speakers of MAE were better readers, smarter, and more likely to be rich than speakers of AAE. Although, middle school students were more likely to feel that speakers of MAE were more intelligent and more likely to be leaders than speakers of AAE; elementary students did not feel the same way. For middle school students there was a statistically significant difference in how they perceived speakers of the two languages. Middle school students perceived speakers of MAE to be more helpful, more friendly, nicer, and kinder than speakers of AAE. The study concluded that both elementary and middle school students perceived MAE more positively than they did AAE. There appeared to be a shift in perceptions the longer students are in school. The study also revealed that perceiving MAE more positively than AAE did not indicate the participants perceived AAE negatively.

This study focuses on how the cross-language perception of German vowels by native speakers of North American English differs based on various levels of classroom instruction and experience in a German-speaking country. Of special interest is whether more advanced students and those with target country experience have a different cross-language perception of German vowels from naive or less-experienced listeners. It further examines how English-speaking learners perceive German sounds that are not found in English, namely the front-rounded vowels. Study participants were students at Brigham Young University, divided into four groups: those 1) without knowledge of German; 2) in their 3rd semester of German without stay abroad; 3) in their 5th semester of German or above without stay abroad; and 4) in their 5th semester or above with at least 12 months in a German-speaking country. The subjects performed two tasks. While listening to German words, they first selected the English word with the vowel that most closely matched the German vowel heard from a list of English words on the computer screen; and secondly, they rated how much alike the German vowel sounded like the English vowel they chose. The results indicate that level of instruction does indeed affect how subjects perceive German vowels. Moreover, perception of the vowels was to some degree affected by the consonant environment. Finally, it was found that all groups rated the similarity of vowels in a similar manner regardless of experience.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>This essay is based on an investigation carried out with the help of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Taking the system of transitivity as its theoretical base and using spoken and written discourse as its primary source, this study aspired to find out what kinds of actions Americans perceive <em>Fate</em> to perform, for example physical, mental or verbal,<em> </em>in order to control what happens to people. It also aimed to reveal what actions people are said to perform in their attempts to control <em>Fate</em>. Do Americans deem <em>Fate</em> capable of, for instance, “deciding”, “talking” or “conspiring” and do they say that people, for example, “challenge”, “defy” or “defeat” <em>Fate</em>? Furthermore, a comparison was made in terms of the actions performed by <em>Fate</em> and people between the different domains of discourse represented in the corpus: spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper and academic.</p><p>Among other things, this investigation shows that in American discourse both <em>Fate</em> and people are perceived to resort to physical strategies rather than mental or verbal ones in their endeavor to control one another.</p><p> </p>