Speech is extremely variable along many different dimensions. One source of variability listeners often encounter is accented speech, in which phonological units can systematically differ from the listener's native categories. This dissertation presents five experiments testing how listeners adapt to accent-based phonological variability,…

Two acoustic studies of voice onset time (VOT) in sibilant-stop (ST) consonant clusters, produced by first language (L1) speakers of Polish, are presented. In the first, a baseline study of L1 Polish comparing ST clusters with initial singleton stops, a small degree of VOT shortening after /s/ was found for /p/, but not /t/. The second study…

Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it's been interpreted, which is…

The purpose of this meta-synthesis is to formulate a hypothesis concerning the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition for typically developed Arabic readers. I propose that the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition varies as a function of grade level, stimuli frequency, and text affiliation. Stimuli…

Purpose: The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Method: Sixty-two…

Over the past decades, various teaching methods adopted from time to time have placed pronunciation teaching in the forefront or in the backend. This has resulted in second language facilitators to completely disregard or relentlessly correct pronunciation depending on their intuition due to the lack of research on pronunciation teaching or proper…

The study of homophones--words with different meanings that sound the same--has great potential to inform models of language production. Of particular relevance is a phenomenon termed "frequency" inheritance, where a low-frequency word (e.g., "deer") is produced more fluently than would be expected based on its frequency…

This dissertation explores the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by speakers of non-tonal languages within the framework of Optimality Theory. The effects of three L1s are analyzed: American English, a stress-accent language; Tokyo Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language; and Seoul Korean, a non-stress and non-pitch accent…

Developmental dyslexia is believed to involve a phonological deficit of which the exact properties have not been clearly established. This article presents the findings of a longitudinal case study that suggest that, at least for some people with dyslexia, the fundamental problem involves a disturbance of temporal-spatial ordering abilities. A…

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioural consequences as listening to…

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of early verb inflection in child Slovenian from morphosyntactic and morphophonological perspectives. It centers on the phenomenon of root nonfinites, particularly the patterns of omission and substitution errors in verb inflection marking. It argues that every acquisition model needs to account…

In this article, I present a longitudinal study of a child's (male, aged 3;0-3;4) acquisition of intervocalic consonants characterized within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). At Stage I, the child presents with unusual error patterns, weakening and labial substitution, and shows evidence of phonologically opaque surface forms. These…

Certain phonological error patterns have been judged to be "unusual" or "idiosyncratic", posing a number of theoretical and clinical problems. This paper reconsiders an especially challenging case of an unusual error pattern documented by Leonard and Brown (1984). T (age 3;8) replaced all word-final consonants (except for labial stops) with [s]…

Linguistic theory has made important contributions to the clinical assessment and treatment of children with functional phonological disorders. In this article, Optimality Theory (OT) is introduced as a new linguistic model of grammar. Basic assumptions of the model are described and extended to clinical assessment and treatment. The aim is (1) to…

Papers in this volume include the following: "The Structural Sources of Verb Meaning" (Lila R. Gleitman); "Acquisition of Noun Incorporation in Inuktitut" (Shanley Allen, Martha Crago); "Why Do Children Omit Subjects?" (Paul Bloom); "Acquiring Language in a Creole Setting: Theoretical and Methodological…