We tested the prosodic hypothesis that the temporal alignment of a speaker's beat gestures in a sentence influences syntactic parsing by driving the listener's attention. Participants chose between two possible interpretations of relative-clause (RC) ambiguous sentences, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. We manipulated the…

In an event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the role of age of acquisition (AoA) on the use of second language rhythmic properties during syntactic ambiguity resolution. Syntactically ambiguous sentences embedded in rhythmically regular and irregular contexts were presented to Turkish early and late second language (L2) learners of…

A sentence-reading procedure was used to study the influence of syntactic structure on the timing of syllables in speech production. The study was designed to test whether syllable lengthening might be sensitive to the distinction between surface and underlying structure. (Author/RM)

Research is reported in which subjects were required to perceive sentences in noise. A series of sentences having the same syntax and rhythm was presented. On a final sentence either rhythm alone or rhythm plus syntax were changed. The results stress the importance of rhythm in speech perception. (Author/RM)

Certain apparently deviant, inverted forms of the French imperative (e.g. "pas touche!" for "ne touche pas!") are analyzed. A number of phonosyntactic explanations that focus on phonological order, rhythm, and intonation are examined. The strength of the imperative intention is also considered. (MSE)

Examines the effects of other linguistic structures on the process of phonological downstep (where pitch declines during the course of utterances) in Japanese. It is concluded that the downstep process involves not only a phonological aspect but two other aspects, metrical and rhythmic. (23 references) (JL)

This paper reports on a case study of a Cantonese-speaking child age 2 and considers the implication of tone acquisition for tone studies in general, and Cantonese tonology in particular. (NCR)

The possible usefulness of computer poetry is concerned with what the programmer can learn about language, about poetry, and about poets. The problems in designing computer programs to construct poetry include considerations in generating well-formed sentences which have the added restrictions that poetry requires: meter, rhyme, logic, diction,…

The collection of essays on phonetics and phonology, entirely in French, includes: "Le calcul de la frequence intrinseque. Necessite du rapport a une ligne de reference" (calculation of intrinsic frequency; necessity of a line of reference) (Conrad Ouellon); "Caracteristiques microprosodiques de duree et d'intensite en lecture et en…

This paper examines certain of the cues to surface constituency that are salient to children in the comprehension of syntactic structure. Accessibility is studied through a set of experiments requiring seven-year-old children to repeat certain syntactic constituents. These children can correctly identify subjects and also predicate phrases with…

A study was conducted to determine the extent to which listening comprehension is impaired when students are confronted with the colloquial use of French, as opposed to its formal use. It was found that amoung 128 prospective French teachers who participated in the study, there existed a low comprehension level of colloquial French, a discrepancy…

These 14 articles on aspects of linguistics include the following: "Economy and Optionality: Interpretations of Subjects in Italian" (David Adger); "Collaborative Repair in EFL Classroom Talk" (Zara Iles); "A Timing Model for Fast French" (Eric Keller, Brigitte Zellner); "Another Travesty of Representation:…