This study investigated the relationship among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of second language learners of Spanish of varying proficiency in instructed contexts. It conceptually replicated studies by Munro and Derwing (1995a) and Derwing and Munro (1997), who found partial independence among the three speech…

Minority languages in diglossic situations with a majority language face the danger of eventual loss of vitality. The first sign of this is when child language acquisition begins to erode. This dissertation investigates the intergenerational transmission of the Isan language, spoken in the Northeastern region of Thailand. While the Isan community…

An examination of the extent to which the polylectal grammar, a unified grammar constructed by a listener that subsumes the dialect differences that he has to cope with in a multidialectal situation, is an appropriate means of modelling listeners' receptive command of dialects other than their native one presents evidence that cross-dialectal…

The claim that dialects of a language do not always share the same underlying forms is known as the independency principle. (DD)

The Pacific area is generally acknowledged to manifest great linguistic diversity. Such diversity is generally assumed to be dysfunctional, an obstacle to efficient functioning of society. Such diversity must, however, have its functions at least in the circumstances in which it arose. It is also generally assumed that such diversity is the result…