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…

Language is inherently variable, and learner language is particularly variable. The variationist paradigm considers learner language a heterogeneously variable yet inherently rule-governed system. Specifically, learners' alternation between native-like and nonnative-like variants of a variable or invariable target native speaker (NS) form…

This dissertation presents the results of a tripartite exploration of English use by Latinxs in post-Katrina New Orleans, defined here as an ethnolinguistic repertoire that I call New Orleans Latinx English (NOLAE). The project considers how contemporary English use differs from that found in a pre-Katrina sample, how social network geometry…

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]…

This dissertation aims to extend our knowledge of prosody--in particular, what kinds of information may be conveyed through prosody, which prosodic dimensions may be used to convey them, and how individual speakers differ from one another in how they use prosody. Four production studies were conducted to examine how various factors interact with…

Previous research on finiteness has been dominated by the studies in tensed languages, e.g. English. Consequently, finiteness has been identified with tense. The traditional definition influences the morphological, semantic, and syntactic characterization of finiteness which has also been equated with tense and its realization. The present study…

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 project examines spoken language comprehension in Broca's aphasia, a non-fluent language disorder acquired subsequent to stroke. Broca's aphasics demonstrate impaired comprehension for complex sentence constructions. To account for this deficit, one current processing theory claims that Broca's patients retain intrinsic linguistic knowledge,…

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of "ways of speaking" in the Nanti speech community of Montetoni, in southeastern Peruvian Amazonia, between 1999 and 2009. In the context of this study, a way of speaking is a socially meaningful, conventionalized sound pattern, manifest at the level of the utterance, that expresses the…

In Spanish, each uttered phrase, depending on its use, has one of a variety of intonation patterns. For example, a phrase such as "Maria viene manana" "Mary is coming tomorrow" can be used as a declarative or as an absolute interrogative (a yes/no question) depending on the intonation pattern that a speaker produces. …