The study investigates the relationship between lexical encoding and production in order to establish whether learners are able to produce a difficult contrast in words that they merged in their mental lexicon. Forty American English learners of Russian were tested on their production and lexical encoding of familiar and highly-frequent words with…

Although regularity refers to the compatibility between pronunciation of character and sound of phonetic component, it has been suggested as being part of consistency, which is defined by neighborhood characteristics. Two experiments demonstrate how regularity effect is amplified or reduced by neighborhood characteristics and reveals the…

Compound surnames in Japanese show complex phonological patterns, which pose challenges to current theories of phonology. This dissertation proposes an account of the segmental and prosodic issues in Japanese surnames and discusses their theoretical implications. Like regular compound words, compound surnames may undergo a sound alternation known…

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…

In bilinguals and second language learners, the native (L1) and nonnative (L2) languages coexist and interact. The L1 influences L2 production via forward transfer, as is seen with foreign accents. However, language transfer is bidirectional: even brief experience with an L2 can affect L1 production, via backward transfer. Here, we review the…

This study investigated whether children born in a second language (L2) environment pronounce their L2 with foreign accents and, if so, when foreign accents first emerge. This study also examined the latest age of onset (AO) of extensive L2 experience at which native L2 pronunciation is possible and explored several factors that affect the degree…

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors affecting the language, speech intelligibility, speech production, and lexical tone development of children with hearing loss who use spoken languages other than English. Relevant studies of children with hearing loss published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed with reference to…

This dissertation is about what prosody contributes to dialogue interpretation. The view of prosody developed in this account is based on detailed quantitative investigations of the prosodic forms and interpretations of cue word and declarative responses, specifically with respect to the distribution and interpretation of terminal pitch rises.…

When Roger Brown selected Adam, Eve and Sarah to be the first three participants in the modern study of child language, one of the criteria was the intelligibility of their speech (Brown, 1973). According to the prevailing view at the time, accuracy of pronunciation was a peripheral phenomenon that had nothing to do with the development of…

Research has consistently shown there is a negative correlation between age of onset (AO) of acquisition and ultimate attainment (UA) of either pronunciation or grammar in a second language (L2). A few studies have indeed reported nativelike behavior in some postpuberty learners with respect to either phonetics/phonology or morphosyntax, a result…

Ever since the publication of Hawkins's (1984) "Awareness of Language," researchers have been investigating the language awareness of second language (L2) learners. Few studies, however, have targeted the relationship between classroom learners' language awareness and L2 production, with fewer still focusing on language awareness and L2…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

Yugoslav elementary school students of English as a second language were the subjects of a longitudinal study to determine factors influencing the acquisition of correct English pronunciation. The students were tested for their ability to articulate 32 sounds within ten specific English words. The test was administered each year from the second…

This study acoustically analyzed the production of single and geminate stops in Japanese by English-speaking children (N = 19) at three different grade levels in a Japanese immersion program. Results show that both their singletons and geminates were significantly longer than those of Japanese monolinguals and the bilinguals' immersion teachers,…