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…

Children are adept at learning their language's speech-sound categories, but just how these categories function in their developing lexicon has not been mapped out in detail. Here, we addressed whether, in a language-guided looking procedure, 2-year-olds would respond to a mispronunciation of the voicing of the initial consonant of a newly learned…

The study analysed spectral and tongue shape dynamics of voiceless alveolar and postalveolar fricatives produced by ten children learning Scottish English. Synchronised ultrasound tongue imaging data and acoustic data were used to characterise children's productions of the phonemic contrast. Six children had consistently accurate productions of…

This study examines the effects of asymmetrical mappings of L2 sounds to L1 sounds on real-time processing of L2 phonology. L1-Korean participants completed a self-paced listening (SPL) task paired with a picture verification (PV) task, in which an English sentence was presented word by word along with a picture that matched or mismatched the…

Due to the variety of their local dialects and accents, Arab learners occasionally face some problems when pronouncing English letters and phonemes. These pronunciation errors are caused by the influence of native language interference. Each language in any part of the world has its linguistic characteristics and rules that control their…

Purpose: Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) mispronounce more speech sounds than is typical for their age and a growing body of research suggests that a deficit in speech perception abilities contributes to development of the disorder. However, little work has been done to characterize the neurophysiological processes indexing speech…

Purpose: Phonetic accommodation in speech errors has traditionally been used to identify the processing level at which an error has occurred. Recent studies have challenged the view that noncanonical productions may solely be due to phonetic, not phonological, processing irregularities, as previously assumed. The authors of the present study…

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…

The following work tries to analyze the possible fossilization errors of the students when acquiring a second foreign language. For this purpose, two languages have been chosen: maternal (Spanish) and foreign (English). In the present work we have examined the effects of the Spanish language and the English language when learning another language…

Purpose: The authors compared preschool children with co-occurring speech sound disorder (SSD) and language impairment (LI) to children with SSD only in their numbers and types of speech sound errors. Method: In this post hoc quasi-experimental study, independent samples t tests were used to compare the groups in the standard score from different…

This paper addresses the process of transcribing and annotating spontaneous non-native speech with the aim of compiling a training corpus for the development of Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) applications, enhanced with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. To better adapt ASR technology to CAPT tools, the recognition…

Background: Swahili is widely spoken in East Africa, but to date there are no culturally and linguistically appropriate materials available for speech-language therapists working in the region. The challenges are further exacerbated by the limited research available on the typical acquisition of Swahili phonology. Aim: To describe the speech…

The dominant error types were investigated as a function of phonological processing (PP) deficit severity in four groups of impaired readers. For this aim, an error analysis paradigm distinguishing between four error types was used. The findings revealed that the different types of impaired readers were characterized by differing predominant error…

Foreign language acquisition must inevitably start with phonetics, an aspect of language whose importance is matched only by its neglect. Different research has shown how the systematic teaching of pronunciation is beneficial not only because it aids the comprehension of messages and their expression, but also because it diminishes the anxiety…

We examine the mechanisms that support interaction between lexical, phonological and phonetic processes during language production. Studies of the phonetics of speech errors have provided evidence that partially activated lexical and phonological representations influence phonetic processing. We examine how these interactive effects are modulated…