Individual speakers' speech patterns differ from one another, despite presumably similar language input. What are the sources of this individual variability? In this dissertation, I explore sources of individual differences in pronunciation of coronal obstruents (/s/, /t[superscript h]/, /c[superscript h]/, /c/) at the ends of nouns in Korean.…

Dialects vary in their allophonic patterns, which can affect listeners' phonological and lexical representations. I explore how different exposure to dialect-specific allophonic patterns for two vowels in American English, /ae ai/, affects listeners' lexical processing behaviors across three perception tasks: perceptual similarity, priming, and…

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…

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 draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

This dissertation investigates language-specific acoustic and aerodynamic phenomena in language contact situations. Whereas most work on second language and bilingual phonology has focused on individual consonants and vowels, this project examines patterns of coarticulation in the two languages of Spanish-English and French-English bilingual…

To avoid potential miscommunication resulting from structural ambiguity, speakers and listeners often rely on differences in prosodic realization. For instance, the sentence "Jennifer blackmailed the boss of the clerk [who was dishonest"][subscript RC'] is realized with different prosody depending on the attachment of the relative clause…

Some contrasts in the second language (L2) impose difficulty in processing for learners, especially when these contrasts are not used phonemically in a learner's first language (L1). This thesis is to examine how American English speakers learning Japanese discriminate and store information regarding the L2 contrasts as a part of their lexicon…

Compound surnames in Japanese show complex phonological patterns, which pose challenges to current theories of phonology. This dissertation proposes an account of the segmental and prosodic issues in Japanese surnames and discusses their theoretical implications. Like regular compound words, compound surnames may undergo a sound alternation known…

This dissertation examines the question of how phonological alternations are learnt. In constraint-based models of phonological learning, it is hypothesized that prior learning of phonotactics from the lexicon facilitates the learning of alternations. While this is an influential assumption, the empirical evidence for it is equivocal. In this…

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…

The phonetics and phonology of the Kyungsang dialect of Korean is distinct from those of the standard Seoul dialect with regard to segments and lexical pitch. However, whether the distinctive phonetics and phonology of Kyungsang Korean are maintained by younger speakers is questionable due to the increased exposure to Seoul Korean and the…

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 study examines a major linguistic event underway in New York City. Of its 10 million inhabitants, nearly a third are speakers of Spanish. This community is socially and linguistically diverse: Some speakers are recent arrivals from Latin America while others are lifelong New Yorkers. Some have origins in the Caribbean, the historic source of…

It has been argued for many years that a new standard of Mandarin is developing within Taiwan, distinct from the official form based on the Beijing pronunciation, as well as the nonstandard vernacular, Taiwan-guoyu. The parameters by which this new standard, Taiwanese Mandarin, may be recognized, however, and the extent to which it exists in…