While much research has examined second language (L2) phonetic acquisition, less research has examined first language (L1) attrition in terms of the voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops. The current study examined L2 acquisition and L1 attrition in the VOT of word-initial voiceless stops among late English-Arabic and Arabic-English bilinguals…

This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

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…

This study examined accuracy on syllable-final (coda) consonants in newly-learned English-like nonwords to determine whether school-aged bilingual children may be more vulnerable to making errors on English-only codas than their monolingual, English-speaking peers, even at a stage in development when phonological accuracy in productions of…

Drawing on structural sensitivity theory, the current study investigated monolingual and bilingual children's ability to learn how phonemes combine to form acceptable syllables in a new language. A total of 186 monolingual and bilingual kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders in Taiwan participated in the study. Bilingual children,…

Learners frequently experience phonologically inconsistent input, such as exposure to multiple accents. Yet, little is known about the consequences of phonological inconsistency for language learning. The current study examines vocabulary acquisition with different degrees of phonological inconsistency, ranging from no inconsistency (e.g., both…

Adele Miccio recognized the paucity of information on the phonological development of children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and emphasized the need to apply advances in bilingual phonological research toward an appropriate phonological measure for bilingual children. In the spirit of her pioneering work, the present study…

Purpose: There is a paucity of information detailing the phonological skills of Spanish-English bilingual children and comparing that information to information concerning the phonological skills of predominantly English-speaking (PE) and predominantly Spanish-speaking (PS) children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship…

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses…

Examines onset, atrophy, and possible interaction of a set of patterns in the speech of a child acquiring French and English. Examines how data bear on the question of whether the bilingual child has two distinct production phonologies from the earliest stage. Tests recent claims consonant harmony patterns. (Author/VWL)

Details the influence of English on British Sign Language (BSL) at the syntactic, morphological, lexical, idiomatic, and phonological levels. Shows how BSL uses loan translations, fingerspellings, and the use of mouth patterns derived from English language spoken words to include elements from English. (Author/VWL)

This document consists of the four issues (Spring 1988, Fall 1988, Fall 1989, Fall 1990) of Volume 1 of the serial publication "Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education" (TPFLE). TPFLE is the official journal of the Foreign Language Education Program of the University of Texas at Austin. These four issues contain 6, 8, 5, and 7 papers each,…

The effects of age of acquisition and native language prosody on the acquisition of English stress patterns were investigated with early and late Korean-English bilinguals (n = 20). Distributional patterns of stress placement based on syllabic structure, distributional patterns of stress placement based on lexical class, and stress patterns of…

An overview of contemporary Hispanic dialectology, focusing on phonological phenomena, syntax, classification schemes, and bilingual communities, demonstrates that dialectology has long ceased to be the collection of innumerable surface deviations. It is suggested that dialectology is a theoretical discipline searching for universal principles to…