Studies on the acquisition of Spanish as a first language do not agree on the patterns and factors relevant for coda development. In order to shed light on the questions involved, a longitudinal study of coda development in Northern European Spanish was carried out to explore the relationship between accuracy, markedness and frequency. The study…

This dissertation examines the interface between music and language in "Huju", which is a Shanghai dialect based regional opera. Chapter I is a short introduction. Chapter II presents a thorough review of the studies on linguistic tone and music tune, and provides descriptive background information about "Huju" and Shanghai…

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading skills of the fourth graders who were poor readers in different text genres (story and informative text). Fifty-six fourth-grade students who were poor readers participated in this study. Reading rates, reading errors and reading prosody characteristics of the students were examined in the…

This study examined the relationship between targeted pronunciation instruction in French as a second language (L2) and listener-based ratings of accent, comprehensibility, and fluency. The ratings by 20 French listeners evaluating the speech of 30 adult L2 French learners enrolled in a 15-week listening and speaking course targeting segments,…

Research has indicated differences in prosodic expression for infants-at-risk-of-autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and it has been proposed that caregiver speech to these infants may also be moderated prosodically. In typical development, the pitch range of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) narrows and utterance intensity decreases with infant…

Suprasegmental features are essential in conveying meaning; however, they are one of the neglected topics in teaching Turkish as a foreign/second language. This paper aims to examine read speech by Arabic students learning Turkish as a second language and describe their read speech in terms of stress and pause. Within this framework, 34 Syrian…

A noun can be potentially ambiguous as to whether it is a head on its own, or is a modifier of a Noun + Noun compound waiting for its head. This study investigates whether young children can exploit the prosodic information on a modifier constituent preceding the head to facilitate resolution of such ambiguity in Japanese. Evidence from English…

The current study examined in depth the effects of suprasegmental-based instruction on the global (comprehensibility) and suprasegmental (word stress, rhythm, and intonation) development of Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Students in the experimental group (n = 10) received a total of three hours of instruction over six…

Dyslexic difficulties in lexical stress were compared to difficulties in segmental phonology. Twenty-nine adolescents with dyslexia and 29 typically developing adolescents, matched on age and nonverbal ability, were assessed on reading, spelling, phonological and stress awareness, rapid naming, and short-term memory. Group differences in stress…

Recent research has shown that beat gestures (hand gestures that co-occur with speech in spontaneous discourse) are temporally integrated with prosodic prominence and that they help word memorization and discourse comprehension. However, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of beat gestures in second language (L2) pronunciation…

Recent neurological breakthroughs in our understanding of the Critical Period Hypothesis and prosody may suggest strategies on how phonics instruction could improve L2 language learning and in particular phoneme/grapheme decoding. We therefore conducted a randomised controlled-trial on the application of prosody and phonics techniques, to improve…

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with…

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to investigate the impact of a repeated reading fluency intervention focused on prosody, counterbalanced with an intervention focused on reading strategies. Both of these interventions were designed to promote feelings of achievement through participation in activities intended to…

This dissertation explores language as a resource for the formation and expression of ethnic identity among the members of an Asian American college sorority. As a community of practice organized around ethnicity, the sorority provides an excellent site to examine the mutually constitutive relationship of language and ethnic identity. Two features…

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the effects of repeated reading on readers identified as below grade in sixth and seventh grade. The study was set in a rural middle school located in the foothills of North Carolina. Students selected for the study were identified utilizing Lexile levels to identify them as below grade level for…