Phonetic imitation is a ubiquitous process in speech production. Speakers have a strong tendency to imitate their interlocutors both in a native and a non-native language. It is especially important in acquiring non-native speech, because it allows forming new sound categories. In the current study we investigated whether and to what extent Polish…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between the age of acquisition (AoA) and sentence length of sentences of the speech recognition (SR) tests for adults and children in Dutch, American English, and Canadian French. Method: The AoA and sentence length of the sentences of four SR tests for adults and children were…

Commercial advertisements in Arabic-speaking regions tend to alternate between dialectal Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, but it is not yet clear whether language variety has any impact on listener's lexical recall. Insight into this issue should help enterprises design their commercial advertisements in a linguistically intelligent manner. This…

The purpose of the current dissertation is to map the relationships between first language (L1), writing quality, and syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency (CALF) in second language (L2) writing. CALF are characteristics of language production that have been of significant interest in L2 writing research for the past few…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference…

This paper intends to provide an Optimality-theoretic analysis of word-stress learnability among Moroccan learners of English. Language acquisition, from an Optimality Theory perspective, is a process of reordering the constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language-specific ranking of the target grammar. To account for stress…

In our globalised world, the desire for the acquisition of English has led to increased research into the appropriate pedagogical approaches for learning and teaching the language. This manuscript focuses on the use of learners' mother tongue in the learning and teaching of English in an effort to identify ways in which cross-linguistic…

The current study examines English-speaking learners of Spanish and their pragmatic development of request forms during a six-week immersion program in Madrid, Spain. Elicited production and intuition data were analyzed, focusing on personal deictic orientation, directness evidenced by clause type, and the use of "por favor"…

Recent research in language contact has investigated bilingual deviations from monolingual norms where syntax interfaces with the lexical and discourse components of the grammar (e.g. Iverson & Rothman 2008; Lozano 2006; Montrul 2004, 2005; Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Tsimpli et al. 2004). Such studies generally show that the…

Compares the linguistic acceptability of the various forms of "need" in non-assertive contexts (i.e. in interrogatives and negatives) between two speech communities: Australians as native speakers of English, and Hong Kong people as second or foreign language learners of English. (Author/VWL)

Tests experimentally whether stress placement in polysyllabic words differs in Singapore English (SE) and British English (BE), or whether acoustic correlates of stress differ in the two English varieties. Results suggest word-final stress in SE is not result of lexical stress placement, but combination of lengthening of final-syllable words in…

The text is designed for self-study of the grammar and pronunciation of standard oral North American English. It is not intended to replace learners' dialects but to provide alternative ways of speaking for appropriate situations. The book is divided into two main sections. The first outlines pronunciation differences between Standard English (SE)…

A resource kit for the teaching of listening comprehension in French at the intermediate secondary level is represented by a teacher's guide. The module is designed to develop language awareness through the presentation and discussion of basic language concepts and contrastive language study. Language variation and cognates are among the topics…

A resource kit for teaching French in a French-Canadian cultural context is represented by a teacher's guide, a student resource booklet, and a tape transcript. This module is designed for use at the intermediate or advanced level of secondary instruction. Classroom activities are based on a cassette tape that introduces some of the phonological…