Dogil / Reiterer Language Talent and Brain Activity

1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-3-11-021549-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 374 Seiten, Gewicht: 10 g

Reihe: Trends in Applied Linguistics [TAL]

This comprehensive project has the objective of describing and assessing pronunciation talent with special focus on its psychological and neural correlates. The first part of this undertaking describes the extensive tests necessary to measure phonetic talent in its various dimensions, such as production and perception, the segmental and suprasegmental levels of speech, and different utterance forms such as spontaneous speech, reading and imitation. Subjects are examined in their native language (German), a familiar second language (English) and, to a lesser degree, an unfamiliar language (Hindi). The project also investigates psychological and behavioral influences such as empathy or motivation on pronunciation performance, as well as correlations with general linguistic aptitude. The described measures and correlations allow a reliable classification of proficiency and talent level to be used in the selection of subjects for the neuroimaging studies in the second part of the project. These use functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to observe differences in brain activity between talented and untalented individuals during the performance of phonetic tasks (perception of phonetic differences, imitation, reading).

Zielgruppe

Foreign Language Teachers and Learners, Linguists, Phoneticians,

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dogil, Grzegorz

Reiterer, Susanne Maria

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Phonetik, Phonologie, Prosodie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Psycholinguistik, Neurolinguistik, Kognition
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Frontmatter;1
2;Table of contents;3
3;Short portraits of the authors;5
4;Talent and proficiency in language;9
5;Assessment of phonetic ability;25
6;Cognitive aspects of pronunciation talent;75
7;Personality and pronunciation talent in second language acquisition;105
8;Functional imaging of language competentbrain areas;139
9;Brain and language talent: a synopsis;163
10;Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS): An incidental “speech talent” following acquired brain damage?;201
11;Musicality and phonetic language aptitude;221
12;Sociolinguistic factors in language proficiency: phonetic convergence as a signature of pronunciation talent.;265
13;Segmental factors in language proficiency: Coarticulatory resistance as a signature of pronunciation talent;287
14;Prosodic factors in language proficiency: intonational variation as a signature of pronunciation talent;313
15;Direct brain feedback and language learning from the gifted;345
16;Beyond talent: a short language biography of Prof. Max Mangold;359
17;Backmatter;367

Über Autor(innen)

Grzegorz Dogil, IMS, University of Stuttgart, Germany; Susanne Maria Reiterer, Universität Tübingen, Germany.