The plural suffix "-en" ("noot"+"en", "nuts") is pronounced differently by speakers coming from different regions of the Netherlands. In this study, we compared the pronunciation of the plural suffix "-en" in phrases ("noot"+"en kraken", "to crack nuts") with linking…

The theory of syntactic bootstrapping proposes that children can use syntax to infer the meanings of words. This paper presents experimental evidence that children are also able to use word inflections to infer word reference. Twenty-four- and 30-month-olds were tested in a preferential looking experiment. Children were shown a pair of novel…

Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. The rhythmic similarity hypothesis holds that where two languages have similar rhythm, listeners of each language should segment their own and the other language similarly. Such similarity in listening was…

The present study addresses the question of how within-word prosodic constituent boundaries constrain V-to-V coarticulation in Japanese. The smallest prosodic unit that might affect V-to-V coarticulation is the bimoraic foot. The effect of the foot boundary is observed in the present study: the bimoraic foot constrains the extent of V-to-V…

Russian patients with different types of aphasia experienced different problems in their performance on two types of linguistic operations. The efferent motor group exhibited more grammatico-structural disturbances, while the afferent motor and sensory aphasics exhibited grammatico-semantic disturbances. (Author/RL)

Establishes a significant correlation between the extent of Creole language interference and performance on a British reading comprehension test. Suggests that Creole affects the efficiency of understanding British English. (Author/RL)

Reports on six experiments examining the relationships between language processing in the Roman v the Cyrillic alphabets, both of which are used to read Serbo-Croatian. Notes some of the problems involved in operating with two separately used symbol systems. (Author/RL)

Indicates that native and nonnative speakers alike can make use of intonation if they explicitly listen for it, although prosodic features are generally ignored when other cues (semantic and pragmatic) are available. (Author/RL)

Attempts to show that audio-visual feedback is more effective in intonation learning than auditory feedback. While practice time did not seem to be a major factor, results showed audio-visual feedback to be more effective than auditory feedback. In addition, feedback modality was shown to influence learning behavior. (SL)

Spontaneous and imitated-sentence responses of six children were examined for their sound patterns in the acquisition of /x/, /f/, and /s/. The data tend to support the position that children may produce forms exemplifying geographical-dialectical constraints, general developmental processes, and variability in development across children.…

Three lexical decision experiments show that Serbo-Croatian letter-strings are ascribed two phonological readings simultaneously. This phonologic bivalence may impede lexical decision making if the letter-string has a lexical entry in one of the alphabets (Roman and Cyrillic). (RL)

Three experiments investigated listeners' ability to detect disfluency in spontaneous speech. All three employed gated word recognition with judgments of disfluency for spontaneous utterances containing disfluencies and for three kinds of fluent control utterances from the same six speakers. (Author/JL)

Reports on two experiments comparing the adequacy of naturalistic procedures in emotion-display research with standard procedures. The first experiment explored samples of naturally-occurring emotional speech with free-choice emotion labels, and later with labels from a standard set. The second compared valency ratings of words presented…

This paper explores two related factors which influence variation in duration, prosodic structure and redundancy in spontaneous speech. We argue that the constraint of producing robust communication while efficiently expending articulatory effort leads to an inverse relationship between language redundancy and duration. The inverse relationship…

Describes some of the difficulties involved in conducting language evaluation tests in Edinburgh, Scotland. Reports some results of a pilot study. (RL)