In second language acquisition, learners often replace foreign and unfamiliar sounds in the second language with the ones available in their first language. These replacements are obviously not random; however, what determines how learners replace foreign sounds? The present study is interested to find out the rules governing these replacements, particularly by analyzing common replacements in five target languages and by comparing the articulatory features between the original foreign sounds and the replacing sounds; and see if the occurrence frequency of the phonemes available in the first language would affect the results of these replacements.

Cheung (1998) identified that Right Dislocation in Cantonese and that in European languages like Italian and English are vastly different. Despite the differences he pointed out, he did not proceed to conclude that what he regarded as the most common type of RD in Cantonese, namely Gap Right Dislocation, is an independent phenomenon. It should be separated with what we commonly refer to as RD, and be analyzed on its own right.

On the other hand, while Cheung regarded Pronominal Right Dislocation to be an equivalent of RD in European languages, I will show that although the two kinds of RD belong to the same phenomenon, Cantonese RD actually has its own specific behaviors, and is not an exact copy of RD in European languages. I will especially compare RD in Italian with that in Cantonese, because of their being pro-drop languages and because Italian RD is more extensively studied.

Excerpt Being one of the most spoken languages in the world, Italian is regarded by many as the most beautiful language 1. Nowadays, there is a vast population of 60 million people speaking Italian all over the world2. It is the official language of Italy and San Marino, one of the official languages in Switzerland […]

Introduction In the realm of linguistic study, it is commonly accepted that individual sounds do not represent any particular meanings. It is, for instance, meaningless to ask what [p] or [a] mean. The sound for the word of a particular meaning is arbitrary; therefore there is generally no connection between sound and meaning. This, however, […]