Speech is highly variable and systematic, governed by the internal linguistic system and socio-indexical factors. The systematic relationship of socio-indexical factors and variable phonetic forms, referred to here as "socio-indexical structure," has been the cornerstone of sociophonetic research over the last several decades. Research…

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…

This paper includes two interrelated studies. The first production study investigates the timing patterns of English as spoken by Chinese learners with different dialect backgrounds. The second comprehension study explores native and non-native speakers' assessments of the intelligibility of Chinese-accented English, and examines the effects of…

The idea that vowel nuclei in many northern European languages can be divided into peripheral and non-peripheral categories is discussed. Peripheral vowels are those located at the edge of the vowel envelope, and non-peripheral nuclei are those located on the inside. This assertion has not received as much scrutiny as it should. There are at least…