Dr. Shahid Anjum
Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB), Brunei Darussalam

Dr Anjum is currently serving as a Deputy Director of Brunei’s Crown Prince Creative, Innovative Products and Technological Advancement (CIPTA) Award’s Seminar Committee, a Deputy Director of ‘Digital and Creativity Research Thrust’ at School of Computing and Informatics, a Senior A. Professor at School of Business and a member and coordinator at ‘Center for Innovative Engineering’ of Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB). Dr. Anjum has appeared on National or local TVs in different countries. Dr. Anjum is a Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer from Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), a Certified Investment Manager from Moody’s Canadian Securities Institute and Certified in Banking Financial Risks and Regulations from Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Dr. Anjum has earned his Ph. D. from Nagoya University, Japan for research topic of Early Warning System for Financial Risk using Data Mining Approach. He has studied in the “Master of Computer Science program” at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, School of Engineering, University of Detroit in Michigan, USA. He also holds M. Phil. Economics degree.

Dr. Anjum has accumulated experience at various educational and financial institutions in Canada, Japan, USA, Pakistan and Philippines. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at College of Business & Information Technology, Lawrence Tech., Michigan for over 6 years, worked at Royal Bank of Canada and at Asian Development Bank Manila, besides, serving as member of various Board of Directors of Innovative Corporations.

Dr. Anjum has served as a Program Chair for the International Conference on Database and Data Mining) held in Chicago, USA in 2015, a moderator to keynote speeches and expert forums, has served as Session Chairs to over ten conferences and as a technical committee member to over 20 conferences. Dr Anjum’s research has received various Best Paper Awards in Tokyo and ASEAN countries. Dr. Anjum is a senior member of various Computer and Information Technology, Finance, Management and Development Economics related associations and societies. Dr. Anjum is a widely published author and his publications have appeared in reputable journals including in IEEE. Series and Springer as well as chapters in book series. Dr. Anjum is currently editing three books for Taylor and Francis Group and IGI Global on fintech & digital start-ups, Digital Banking & Digital Finance as well “Cracking the Code: Cyber Security Technology Enhancement of Digital Ecosystem”.

Dr. Anjum has conducted and has led various consultancy projects as well as training workshops and mentorship for Entrepreneurs’ bootcamp. for at Darussalam Enterprise (DARe). As Principal Researcher, Dr. Anjum has been a part of team for a project submitted to Brunei Research Council to implement technology transfer from Malaysia and Switzerland to Brunei regarding setting up of Islamic Fintech Lab, gold and silver-based mobile wallet applications, embedded with secured blockchain and Ethereum technology.
 

Asst. Prof. Sha Liu
Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan

Sha Liu is an Assistant Professor at Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Fukuoka University and a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Southeast University. Her research focuses on bilingualism and speech production, with particular interests in bilingual-monolingual speech production comparisons, child speech development, and statistical analysis of speech data. She also serves as an editor for the Canadian Journal of English Language Teaching.

The Phonological Differentiation in 2L1 English-Japanese Bilinguals

Abstract: Inconsistencies still exist in studies concerning whether and how phonological systems interact in 2L1 bilinguals (Johnson 1989, Paradis 2004, Blumenfeld and Marian 2007). This study compares 2L1 English-Japanese bilinguals (EJ group) with American English monolinguals (monolingual group) and native Japanese speakers who speak English as a second language (ESL group) from the perspective of VOT production in English. Both English and Japanese have three voiceless stops, /p, t, k/, and three voiced stops, /b, d, g/ (Lisker and Abramson 1964, Shimizu 1996). Since VOT durations of Japanese stops are generally shorter than those of English stops, we predict that the EJ group has intermediate results in terms of VOT durations between the monolingual and ESL groups.
However, the experimental and statistical analysis reveals the following points: (i) the EJ group generally has the longest VOT durations among the three groups; but (2) the EJ group has intermediate results in terms of the polarity of VOT among the three groups.
More specifically, the EJ group employs an extreme approach to positive VOTs in text reading, possibly to exaggerate the differences between English and Japanese. This may be because they must distinguish among all six stops in Japanese and English. A similar tendency can also be observed in the word list reading task, although it is less prominent than in the text reading task. However, this tendency is not witnessed in terms of voicing-lead VOT: the EJ group tends to have intermediate results in terms of the voicing-lead VOT both in word list and text reading. This appears to be because the 2L1 bilinguals only need to distinguish among the three voiced stops in this respect.