Leah Gilner

Aichi University · Department of Law

The investigation reported in this paper adopts a corpus-based approach to the description of phonological systems by means of functional load (FL) analyses. Specifically, FL rankings are provided for the vowel systems of Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian English (IndE), Philippine English (PhilE), and Singapore (SingE) based on usage data obtained f...

In the 1980s, Brown (1988) and Catford (1987) both published functional load rankings of English vowel and consonant contrasts based on British Received Pronunciation. While still used today, these rankings have not been updated, revised, or expanded using contemporary analytical tools and in light of current theoretical perspectives. This manuscri...

Full data for the manuscript "Vowel and consonant contrasts". This file contains complete FL rankings for vowel and consonant contrasts for 10 varieties of English: British Received Pronunciation, Canadian English, East African English, General American English, Hong Kong English, Indian English, Irish English, Jamaican English, Philippine English,...

In the functional load (FL) literature, a merger involves the systematic replacement throughout the entire lexicon of one phoneme for another of the same class (i.e., a vowel for a vowel or a consonant for a consonant). In this manner, all instances of the replaced phoneme are effectively removed from the language and, consequently, its inventory i...

Full data for the manuscript "Mergers and their consequences".

This manuscript describes a usage-based approach to the visual representation of phonemic inventories. For decades, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) consonant and vowel charts have served as referential representation when it comes to the structural description and study of sound systems of the world’s languages. As a fundamental tool in t...

This manuscript presents results of functional load (FL) analyses of the vowel systems of 10 varieties of English. Specifically, FL rankings are provided for the vowel systems of Canadian English (CanE), East African English (EAfE), Hong Kong English (HKE), Irish English (IE), Indian English (IndE), Philippine English (PhilE), Singapore (SgE), Brit...

The zip file contains 10 XML files, each corresponding to the dominant vocabulary extracted from spoken corpora of as many English varieties, namely, Canada, East Africa, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, the Philippines, Singapore, the UK, and the USA.

This manuscript documents the process of extraction of the dominant vocabularies (DOVOs) of 10 spoken corpora from as many varieties of English. Eight of these corpora belong to the International Corpus of English (ICE) project and are composed of language use in Canada, East Africa, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Singapor...

This paper reports on several studies whose common theme is the elicitation of the lexical preferences of speakers of English in localized and globalized settings. Findings from analyses of various corpora show that there exists a relatively small set of preferred words that speakers of English rely on regardless of where the interaction takes plac...

This paper provides a practical deconstruction of the act of public speaking into some of its most salient linguistic and behavioral aspects. Seven specific features are addressed, namely, pause, stress, pace, enunciation, stance, engagement, and authority. The paper also provides a number of concrete pedagogical implementations of these features....

This paper presents findings from two studies into the lexical distributions of English varieties. Combined, the investigations analyzed and compared the use of highly frequent words across corpora representing more than 20 varieties. Results indicate that the majority of speech and writing in English regardless of context is constructed out of rel...

This paper describes an investigation into the role of high frequency words in English language use by speakers around the world. The investigation is the culmination of several years of research which has documented the lexical coverage that high frequency vocabulary provides of different dialects and genres as well discourse samples of differing...

This paper aims to be an introduction to the General Service List (GSL) that brings together descriptive data with material otherwise dispersed throughout the literature. The discussion first provides an historical overview of the work that scholars, researchers, and educators used as foundations for the manufacturing of the GSL. Following, a colle...

The objective of this investigation was to obtain lists of the most frequent words found across seven varieties of English as represented by corpora from the International Corpus of English (ICE; International Corpus of English, 2010). To this end, we developed a number of computer programs that have allowed us: First, to obtain a complete frequenc...

Not all aspects of a language have equal importance for speakers or for learners. From the point of view of language description, functional load is a construct that attempts to establish quantifiable hierarchies of relevance among elements of a linguistic class. This paper makes use of analyses conducted on the 10-million-word spoken subcorpus of...

The selection and assessment of ELT materials involve multiple criteria. The use of frequency word lists to profile the vocabulary makeup of a text is one such criterion. It provides a quantifiable characterization and classification of lexical material in terms of corpus-based frequency measures. The process of vocabulary profiling is not without...

This paper discusses the role of extensive reading in English language education. Extensive reading (ER) approaches have generated much interest over the past few decades as demonstrated by the annotated bibliography compiled by the Extensive Reading Foundation. The paper has two primary objectives: 1) to acquaint the reader with ER approaches by p...

This paper is a report of results of two ongoing investigations that seek to contribute to the collection of measures employed to assess the adequacy of potential word lists for language instruction. In particular, these studies approach the topic from the point of view of the lexical and semantic relationships that the constituent words of word li...

This paper reports on a study designed to transcribe and analyze the 2284 General Service List (GSL) words. We discuss the extent to which this list of words is representative of certain aspects of the phonetics of the English language. In particular, we ask whether GSL words contain instances of all vowel and consonant segments present in the lang...

This paper provides a phonetic description of the General Service List. Segmental, syllabic, and phonotactic characteristics are discussed and abun- dant examples are included. The data presented suggests that, in addition to lexical coverage, the General Service List also exhibits comprehensive phonetic coverage of the English language and, theref...

Typescript. Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Carolina, 1996. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-92).