Two languages, historically related, both have lexical stress, with word stress distinctions signalled in each by the same suprasegmental cues. In each language, words can overlap segmentally but differ in placement of primary versus secondary stress (OCtopus, ocTOber). However, secondary stress occurs more often in the words of one language, Dutch, than in the other, English, and largely because of this, Dutch listeners find it helpful to use suprasegmental stress cues when recognising spoken words. English listeners, in contrast, do not; indeed, Dutch listeners can outdo English listeners in correctly identifying the source words of English word fragments (oc-). Here we show that Dutch-native listeners who reside in an English-speaking environment and have become dominant in English, though still maintaining their use of these stress cues in their L1, ignore the same cues in their L2 English, performing as poorly in the fragment identification task as the L1 English do.

As a rule, listening is easier in first (L1) than second languages (L2); difficult L2 listening can challenge even highly proficient users. We here examine one particular listening function, adaptation to novel talkers, in such a high-proficiency population: Dutch emigrants to Australia, predominantly using English outside the family, but all also retaining L1 proficiency. Using lexically-guided perceptual learning (Norris, McQueen & Cutler, 2003), we investigated these listeners’ adaptation to an ambiguous speech sound, in parallel experiments in both their L1 and their L2. A control study established that perceptual learning outcomes were unaffected by the procedural measures required for this double comparison. The emigrants showed equivalent proficiency in tests in both languages, robust perceptual adaptation in their L2, English, but no adaptation in L1. We propose that adaptation to novel talkers is a language-specific skill requiring regular novel practice; a limited set of known (family) interlocutors cannot meet this requirement.

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.