Phonological networks are representations of word forms and their phonological relationships with other words in a given language lexicon. A principle underlying the growth (or evolution) of those networks is preferential attachment, or the ‘rich-gets-richer’ mechanisms, according to which words with many phonological neighbors (or links) are the main beneficiaries of future growth opportunities. Due to their limited number of words, language lexica constitute node-constrained networks where growth cannot keep increasing in a linear way; hence, preferential attachment is likely mitigated by certain factors. The present study investigated aging effects (i.e., a word’s finite time span of being active in terms of growth) in an evolving phonological network of English as a second language. It was found that phonological neighborhoods are constructed by one large initial lexical spurt, followed by sublinear growth spurts that eventually lead to very limited growth in later lexical spurts during network evolution, all the while obeying the law of preferential attachment. An analysis of the strength of phonological relationships between phonological word forms revealed a tendency to attach more distant phonological neighbors in the lower proficiency levels, while phonologically more similar neighbors enter phonological neighborhoods at more advanced levels of English as a second language. Overall, the findings suggest an aging effect in growth that favors younger words. In addition, beginning learners seem to prefer the acquisition of phonological neighbors that are easier to discriminate. Implications for the second language lexicon include leveraged learning mechanisms, learning bouts focussed on a smaller range of phonological segments, and involve questions concerning lexical processing in aging networks.
Corpus contains recordings of communication between air traffic controllers and pilots. The speech is manually transcribed and labeled with the information about the speaker (pilot/controller, not the full identity of the person). The corpus is currently small (20 hours) but we plan to search for additional data next year. The audio data format is: 8kHz, 16bit PCM, mono. and Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, project No. TA01030476.
Corpus AKCES 2 consists of trancripts of recordings of classes at Czech elementary and secondary schools (AKCES/CLAC - Czech Language Acquisition Corpora). It is the same data as the corpus "Schola 2010" (see the link for search), but all the proper names have been removed in order to protect the privacy of participants. and MŠMT (MSM0021620825), UK (PRVOUK P 10)
Corpus AKCES 2 ver. 2 consists of full, unabridged trancripts of recordings of classes at Czech elementary and secondary schools (AKCES/CLAC - Czech Language Acquisition Corpora). It is the same data as the corpus "Schola 2010" (see the link for search), but all the proper names have been removed in order to protect the privacy of participants. and UK, PRVOUK P10
Corpus AKCES 3 includes texts written in czech by non-native speakers (AKCES/CLAC - Czech Language Acquisition Corpora) and ESF (OPVK CZ.1.07/2.2.00/07.0259), MŠMT (MSM0021620825), UK (P10)
Corpus AKCES 4 includes texts written in czech by youth growing up in locations at risk of social exclusion (AKCES/CLAC - Czech Language Acquisition Corpora) and ESF (OPVK CZ.1.07/2.2.00/07.0259), MŠMT (MSM0021620825), UK (P10)
Essays written by non-native learners of Czech, a part of AKCES/CLAC – Czech Language Acquisition Corpora. CzeSL-SGT stands for Czech as a Second Language with Spelling, Grammar and Tags. Extends the “foreign” (ciz) part of AKCES 3 (CzeSL-plain) by texts collected in 2013. Original forms and automatic corrections are tagged, lemmatized and assigned erros labels. Most texts have metadata attributes (30 items) about the author and the text.