Affective prosody recognition is an important area of research in autism spectrum conditions where difficulties in social cognition have been frequently observed. To probe into the mixed results reported in the literature, we conducted a systematic review with meta-analysis and examined potential factors that could explain the inconsistent…

Linguistic tones play an important role in expressing lexical and grammatical meaning in tone languages. A small change in the pitch of a word can result in an entirely different meaning. A logical question for those who document tone languages is whether or not singers preserve linguistic tone when singing and if so, to what degree? I begin by…

The increasing attention on Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) pronunciation instruction gives us an opportunity to look into the current directions of teaching CFL and the specific instructional pronunciation strategies employed by CFL teachers. This paper offers a review of empirical evidence on the use and impact of instructional pronunciation…

A comparison of the application of two current theories of stress to a particular stress pattern found in the Salish language Sooke is presented. Hammond's (1986) grid-like tree structure representation of stress is compared with Halle and Vergnaud's (1986) tree-like grid structure. Examples in the Australian language Maranungku show that, in…

The many studies comparing good and poor readers have yielded few conclusive findings as a result of a number of problems. The first set of problems has to do with the choice of tests or tasks. There are many differences in the cognitive demands of reading and listening tasks children encounter in school. In listening, prosodic cues facilitate…

A discussion of points raised by Dell Hymes in his article "On Communicative Competence" leads to a proposal for a clearer and more comprehensive theory of communicative competence based on two models, a matrix of discourse analysis and a model of communication interaction. Pedagogical implications of the theory are considered, including the…