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This study investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother-tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monophthong contrasts in standard South African English. Three groups of subjects participated as listeners in an experiment on English vowel perception. These include (1) 21 Southern Sotho speakers and 21 Zulu speakers, (2) 41 Arabic speakers, and (3) 20 Afrikaans speakers. The Arabic and Afrikaans speakers were used in the experiment for comparative purposes. Overall the results indicate a general lack of command of the vowel contrasts of Standard South African English by the speakers of Bantu languages. 1 The same holds but to a lesser extent for the other two groups of listeners. Further analysis reveals that the Southern Sotho-and Zulu-speaking listeners process the long vowel/short vowel contrast differently from contrasts based on vowel quality differences. In the concluding section, the results are interpreted against the backdrop of current theories of second language acquisition. The evidence supports transfer-based explanations for phonological acquisition, since the vowels that the first language and target language of the speakers share are perceived more accurately than those that the languages do not share. In addition, the results are discussed in relation to the question whether BSAE is an interlanguage, or a fully-fledged new English. On the face of current evidence, it seems that the mesolectal form of BSAE could be viewed as an interlanguage rather than as a new English, but one that has as yet to develop into a more stable alternative to the standard variety of South African English.

Musicians, seeking stress relief and vocal/instrumental enhancement, often turn to the Tomatis Method of sensori-neural integration training, based on the interdependence and interaction between hearing and listening, psychological attitude and speech and language. The paucity of impact studies on musicians, despite its acclaimed efficacy, has prompted the current multidisciplinary pilot study, involving a two group, pre-post experimental design. Listening aptitude, psychological well-being and vocal (voice) quality were assessed in availability samples of culturally diverse young, adult musicians (n=28), recruited from two tertiary institutions and assigned to a control group (n=10) and an experimental group, consisting of sub-experimental group one (n=10) and sub-experimental group two (n=8). Reasonable preprogramme group equivalence was established between the two sub-experimental groups and the control group. A Tomatis programme of 87.5 half hour listening sessions and concomitant counseling was completed by the total experimental group (n=18). Results indicated practically significant enhancement of: (i) listening aptitude on the Listening Test and (ii) psychological well-being, in terms of reduced negative and increased positive mood state (vigor) on the POMS in both sub-experimental groups, together with enhanced behavioural and emotional coping in sub-experimental group 1 on the CTI. (iii) Vocal enhancement, perceived both by singer-participants in both sub-experimental groups and a professional voice teacher, culminated in (iv) distinctly enhanced musical proficiency in 28% of all programme participants. Despite indications of multimodal enhancement, further research, necessitated by current methodological limitations, remains a prerequisite for achievement of definitive results.

This article investigates the relationship between the global and local durational properties of an utterance. We show that languages that are similar in terms of their global durational properties are also similar in terms of their local durational properties. However, languages that differ globally also differ locally. We illustrate this with three varieties of South African English. We show that South African English L1 and Afrikaans English both pattern with stress-timed languages and both apply phrase-final lengthening. Tswana English, however, patterns with syllable-timed languages, and does not apply phrase-final lengthening.