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 analyzes a few significant differences between Spanish and English in relation to phonological patterns. First, a short introduction is given about these two languages, and it is briefly explained in what linguistic aspects they are similar or different. Then, each of these linguistic features is analyzed in detail, clearly establishing…

Arabic emphasis refers to the production of consonants resulting from a primary constriction in the dental or alveolar region and a secondary constriction in the back of the vocal tract, recognized as 'Emphatic.' These have contrastive consonants produced in the dental or alveolar region, recognized as 'Plain.' The existing research on emphasis in…

This dissertation investigates language-specific acoustic and aerodynamic phenomena in language contact situations. Whereas most work on second language and bilingual phonology has focused on individual consonants and vowels, this project examines patterns of coarticulation in the two languages of Spanish-English and French-English bilingual…

In learning language, children must discover how to interpret the linguistic significance of phonetic variation. On some accounts, receptive phonology is grounded in perceptual learning of phonetic categories from phonetic distributions drawn over the infant's sample of speech. On other accounts, receptive phonology is instead based on phonetic…

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language. Strong cross-linguistic tendencies in syllable size and shape are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure, a type which is also privileged in abstract models of the syllable. Syllable patterns such as those found in Itelmen "qsa?txt??"…

This dissertation examines the question of how phonological alternations are learnt. In constraint-based models of phonological learning, it is hypothesized that prior learning of phonotactics from the lexicon facilitates the learning of alternations. While this is an influential assumption, the empirical evidence for it is equivocal. In this…

To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition…

This study examined the effect of native language background on listeners' perception of native and non-native vowels spoken by native (Hong Kong Cantonese) and non-native (Mandarin and Australian English) speakers. They completed discrimination and an identification task with and without visual cues in clear and noisy conditions. Results…

Addresses the relationship between phonology and morphology, using the vowel alternations of Standard German Umlaut and Ablaut as relevant examples. The article analyzes Umlaut as a completely unified process of vowel fronting, whereas it argues that Ablaut is synchronically a totally unpredictable vowel change found in the paradigms of strong…

Acoustic analysis of two vowels thought to be merged in Utah English suggest that there are small but consistent differences between them. A matched guise experiment provides evidence that when the vowels are merged hypercorrection is involved. (33 references) (LB)

This work contains five papers in the area of experimental linguistics. Papers include: (1) "Units of Speech Perception," a study which deals with problems of the temporal organization of speech; (2) a study, "Manner of Articulation, Parallel Processing, and the Perception of Duration," which examines the durational patterns characterizing the…

DESIGNED AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION FOR PROFESSIONALS PREPARING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, PLANNING COURSES, OR DEVELOPING CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROGRAMS, A SERIES OF STUDIES HAS BEEN PREPARED THAT CONTRASTS, IN TWO VOLUMES FOR EACH OF THE FIVE MOST COMMONLY TAUGHT FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN THE UNITED STATES, THE SOUND AND GRAMMATICAL…

DESIGNED AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION FOR PROFESSIONALS PREPARING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, PLANNING COURSES, OR DEVELOPING CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROGRAMS, A SERIES OF STUDIES HAS BEEN PREPARED THAT CONTRASTS, IN TWO VOLUMES FOR EACH OF THE FIVE MOST COMMONLY TAUGHT FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN THE UNITED STATES, THE SOUND AND GRAMMATICAL…