The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the perception of unstressed vowel reduction (UVR)--also known as vowel devoicing--in Central Mexican Spanish. UVR is a variable, gradient process in which vowels undergo a constellation of phonetic weakening processes including shortening, devoicing, and apparent deletion (Gordon 1998). While it is…

Research on the early lexical-semantic system has described how toddlers organize word representations based on semantic and phonological features. This study is a longitudinal investigation of the development of this organization during infancy. Middle-high socioeconomic status Mexican toddlers (n = 28, 15 female) were presented with a…

This study examined Spanish spelling errors among 166 native Spanish-speaking students from Kindergarten to Grade 3 based on a spelling-to-diction task. Fifteen types of spelling errors were analyzed in a latent class analysis. Results suggested three phases of spellers: Phase 1 students had a high chance of committing almost all types of errors.…

Millions engage in learning a Second Language (L2) using their mobile devices with a wide range of success. Concomitantly, there exists a growing interest in research on the effects of mobile-assisted language learning and predictors of learner outcomes (e.g., Loewen et al., 2020; Sudina & Plonsky, 2023). However, few of these apps and studies…

San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language (CSL) is a group of six family-based signed language varieties in rural Mexico. This study analyzes the variation of iconic patterns of CSL signs with respect to three semantic categories, tools, food, and animals, using an Embodied Cognitive Phonology framework. Signs are organized around iconic prototypes,…

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates must have a working knowledge of English linguistics in order to support their students' language development. This article reports on TESOL teacher candidates' reflective practice to highlight how interaction with non-native speakers can develop awareness of linguistic…

Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Otomanguean, Mexico) is one of the rare tone languages with five contrastive level tones and its underlying tone system is even more complicated than its surface five-level tone system. The complexity of its underlying tone system has developed through the historical tone shifts from Proto-Triqui. The surface tone system of…

Native Spanish speakers from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, who are also English language learners, are a growing population of students in the K-12 classrooms throughout the United States. This particular group of students is oftentimes placed in Spanish-as-a-foreign-language classes that fail to meet their linguistic development…

Investigating a tone language involves careful transcription of tone on words and phrases. This is challenging when the phonological categories--the tones or melodies--have not been identified. Effects such as coarticulation, sandhi, and phrase-level prosody appear as obstacles to early elicitation and classification of tone. This article presents…

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

This dissertation examines floating tones and tone gesture deactivation in Sierra Juarez Zapotec (SJZ), and provides an Optimality Theoretic account of tonal spreading and placement using insights from Articulatory Phonology. While the data portion of the dissertation is drawn from SJZ, the approach has broader implications for theories of tonal…

The present article examines the effect of variable input on the acquisition of plural morphology in two varieties of Spanish: Chilean Spanish, where the plural marker is sometimes omitted due to a phonological process of syllable final /s/ lenition, and Mexican Spanish (of Mexico City), with no such lenition process. The goal of the study is to…

This dissertation describes the segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec, an Oto-Manguean language of southern Mexico virtually undescribed in the literature with the exception of Pike (1956). The preliminary work done by Pike and subsequent analyses by Goldsmith (1990) and Pizer (1994) are reviewed giving evidence that the system is complex and…

This dissertation is a grammatical description of several features of the morphology and phonology of the Mocho' language. Mocho' (Motozintleco) is a moribund Mayan language spoken in the Chiapas region of Mexico near the border of Guatemala. This dissertation, based on data collected during several field trips and supplemented with unpublished…

This preliminary study investigates the acquisition of second language phonology with respect to two variables: immersion in a target language community, and explicit instruction in the form of a phonetics/pronunciation class. Specifically, the research examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of specific properties of the Spanish phonology…