Native language acquisition is one of the initial processes undertaken by the human brain in the infant stage of life. The linguist community has always been interested in finding the method, which is adopted by the human brain to acquire the native language. Word segmentation in one of the most important tasks in acquiring the language.…

In the phonological literature in English, which is a stress-timed language, the existence of at least three levels of stress is usually taken for granted. Words, phrases, utterances or sentences have a prominent element in one of their syllables, which usually correlates with a partner in the same unit, called the secondary stress. It so happens…

The pace of speech i.e. tempo can be varied to our mood of the moment. Fast speech can convey urgency, whereas slower speech can be used for emphasis. In public speaking, orators produce powerful effects by varying the loudness and pace of their speech. The juxtaposition of very loud and very quiet utterances is a device often used by those trying…

Previous research on second language (L2) vocabulary learning has examined the relationship between word properties and learnability (e.g. Ellis and Beaton 1993). Few studies, however, have examined patterns in partial word form learning as a method of assessing learnability and improving our understanding of allocation of processing resources…

We examined the performance of sequential bilingual children with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI), who had Spanish as an L1 and English as their L2, on an auditory non-word repetition task using Spanish phonotactic patterns. We also analyzed the accuracy with which this task distinguished these children (according to children's and…

This study investigated the use of beat gestures (typically the sharp up-and-down movement of the hand) in conjunction with L2 speech production. The L2 participant, although in conversation with another person, synchronized his beats with the parsing of his words into syllables. Based on Gal' perin's formulation for the process of…

This study investigated syllable duration as a measure of speech rhythm in the English spoken by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. A computer dataset of Hong Kong English speech data amounting to 4,404 syllables was used. Measurements of syllable duration were taken, investigated statistically, and then compared with measurements of 1,847 syllables…

Two experiments investigated the relationship between Spanish phonology and Spanish second-language (L2) learners' spelling success. Specifically, they examined: (1) differences in proportions of initial, middle, and final consonants spelled correctly by L2 learners; (2) differences in proportions of initial, middle, and final vowels spelled…