Márcia Cristina Zimmer

A transferência fonético-fonológica L2 (francês) – L3 (inglês): um estudo de caso

Ao observar o foco dos estudos em aquisicao de lingua estrangeira,nao e raro encontrar trabalhos sobre as relacoes entre a lingua materna(L1) e a lingua estrangeira (L2). Contudo, investigacoes acerca decomo o conhecimento das linguas previamente aprendidas (tanto aL1 como a L2) podem influenciar a aquisicao de uma terceira lingua(L3) sao escassas. Essa lacuna motivou um estudo de caso sobre atransferencia fonetico-fonologica em que se investigou se aassimilacao vocalica na L3 (ingles) ocorreria em direcao ascaracteristicas vocalicas (F1, F2 e duracao) da L1 (portugues) ouda L2 (frances) do participante. Os dados, obtidos atraves de tarefasde leitura oral nas tres linguas, foram analisados acusticamente como programa Praat. Discutidos a partir do conexionismo, os resultadosda analise acustica apontam para a criacao, nas vogais da L3, decategorias foneticas hibridas entre a L1 e a L2.

Desempenho de idosos com presbiacusia em tarefas de controle inibitório

PURPOSE: To evaluate the performance of elderly individuals in a non-verbal task related to executive functions, in order to verify the hypothesis that elderly hearing aid users would obtain higher scores in the proposed task than elderly non-hearing aid users. METHODS: The Simon task, administered individually on a laptop computer using the e-prime software, was used to measure aspects related to executive functions through a control condition and two test conditions. In the control condition, the stimuli - colored squares - were presented in the center of the screen. Test conditions were subdivided into congruent lateral condition - stimuli presented on the same side of the screen as the laptop key to be selected as the correct response - and lateral incongruent condition - in which the stimuli appear on the opposite side of the screen relative to the response key. The difference in reaction time between congruent and incongruent conditions is called Simon effect. The elderly were divided into three groups: a control group of normal hearing individuals; individuals with presbycusis who use hearing aids; and individuals with presbycusis who do not use hearing aids. RESULTS: Statistical analysis showed difference between the control group and the group of non-hearing aid users only with regards to the reaction time (RT) in the control condition. In the other comparisons, no differences were found. CONCLUSION: The hypothesis was not corroborated, which indicates the need to use new exploratory methods for observing the studied phenomena.

A influência da grafia em tarefa de acesso lexical envolvendo a L2 (francês) e a L3 (inglês) de um multilíngue: uma abordagem via sistemas dinâmicos

This article presents a case study investigating, by means of a DST (Dynamic Systems Theory) perspective, the effects of orthography on L2 (French) – L3 (English) processing during a task of lexical access measuring reaction time. Apart from suggesting the prevalence of grapho-phonic-phonological transfer from L2 into L3, the results also provide evidence of grapho-phonic-phonological transfer from L3 into L2. Such results are in consonance with the dynamic approach to cognition, enabling the interaction between previous knowledge from L1 and L2 and the knowledge of a new L3. Key words: multilingualism, L2-L3 phonetic-phonological transfer, orthography effects.

A leitura em língua estrangeira e os efeitos da frequência e da consistência do insumo lexical em L2

This paper looks into the role of lexical input consistency and frequency in L2 reading to highlight two important features of dynamic connectionism in reading: nonlinear combination of probabilistic constraints and division of labour. Such features are complementary and together they account for the interaction observed in investigations grounded on the postulate that the input is a rich combination of different types of information whose emerging biases guide acquisition. For that purpose, evidence is presented from two studies, which deal with: 1) the interaction between the effects of English lexical frequency and consistency in the prevalence of vowel assimilation during a word naming task among Brazilian students of English; 2) the role of phonastemes in building textual comprehension in English (L2).