The current study investigates the expression of progressive and habitual aspect in second language Spanish, integrating theoretical insights from usage-based and concept-oriented approaches to second language acquisition, along with quantitative sociolinguistic methods. To address the full breadth of forms involved, the study examines variation…

To become a native speaker, beyond obligatory rules, children need to learn systematic variation in the language, as it is present at all levels of language structure and is an integral part of linguistic knowledge. To give an example in English, speakers sometimes pronounce words ending in -ing with -in' (e.g., working vs. workin') depending on…

Everyday language consists of many idiomatic and figurative expressions. For non-native English speakers to achieve native fluency, control of idiomatics--native speech that includes the use of both idiomatic and figurative language--is paramount. In this study, I aimed to explore the use of comics and comic strips in the learning and…

Theoretical interest in the relation between speech production and perception has led to research on whether individual speaker-listeners' production patterns are linked to the information they attend to in perception. However, for prosodic structure, the production-perception relation has received little attention. This dissertation investigates…

Understanding how native speakers acquire the phonological patterns in their language is a key task for the field of phonology. Numerous studies have suggested that phonological learning is a biased process: certain phonological patterns are easily accessed and learned by the speakers, while others show acquisition difficulties. These differences…

Arabic emphasis refers to the production of consonants resulting from a primary constriction in the dental or alveolar region and a secondary constriction in the back of the vocal tract, recognized as 'Emphatic.' These have contrastive consonants produced in the dental or alveolar region, recognized as 'Plain.' The existing research on emphasis in…

This dissertation investigates the lexical f[subscript 0] control in Mandarin within the framework of Articulatory Phonology (AP) in two experiments: an imitation study (Experiment 1) and an Electromagnetic Articulography production study (Experiment 2). Empirical results are accounted for by making reference to a gestural model of f[subscript o]…

The current project investigates developmental aspects of acquiring locative verb constructions in English as a second language. Locative verbs, such as "to pour," "to spill," "to spray," and "to sprinkle," constitute a prototypical case of an overgeneralization problem in language learning: Whereas some of…

Constructionist research on L2 learning has focused on the degrees to which skewed frequency (Goldberg, Casenhiser & White, 2007; Casenhiser & Goldberg, 2005; Goldberg, Casenhiser, & Sethuraman 2004) in a person's linguistic environment can facilitate "entrenchment," "schematization," and "contingency…

The purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate the comprehension of elided phrases in Korean and English, focusing on the patterns exemplified below. (1) Korean a. VP-ellipsis: Sungki-ka phalan kabang-ul sa-ss-e-yo. Sunhuy-to-yey-yo Sungki-NOM blue bag-ACC buy-PST-DECL-POL Sunhuy-also-be-POL "Sungki bought a blue bag. Sunhuy did…

North Kyungsang Korean (NKK) is a pitch accent language in which each word has one of a restricted set of possible tonal patterns, and where the tonal pattern of a given lexical word is not fully predictable. This dissertation reports on a corpus study of accent patterns in existing words and the results of a study in which NKK speakers were asked…

Some syllables are louder, longer and stronger than other syllables at the lexical level. These prominent prosodic characteristics of certain syllables are captured by suprasegmental features including fundamental frequency, duration and intensity. A language like English uses fundamental frequency, duration and intensity to distinguish stressed…

This dissertation is a description of Xinaliq, a Northeast (Nakh-Daghestanian) Caucasian language spoken primarily in the village also called Xinaliq, which lies at an elevation of 7,000 feet in the Kuba district of Azerbaijan, near the border with Daghestan. Currently there are approximately 1,500 residents in the village. Most of them are…

This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of the L2 acquisition of Spanish psych-verbs (e.g. "gustar" "to like") across four different proficiency levels. In particular, psych-verbs constitute a testing ground for the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; Tsimpli, Sorace, Heycok &…

This study examines the acquisition of target-like patterns of variation by 22 American learners of French during study abroad (SA) in France and correlates such acquisition with the creation of dense, multiplex, exchange-based social networks (Milroy 1980) with native speakers (NSs) during the SA period. In this longitudinal study, naturalistic…