This study investigated the effect of the first language (L1) on the visual word recognition of inflected nouns in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Case inflection is common in Russian and in Finnish but nonexistent in Chinese. Several models have been posited to describe L2 morphological processing. The unified…

The present experiments investigated the flexibility of statistical word segmentation. There is ample evidence that infants can use statistical cues (e.g., syllable transitional probabilities) to segment fluent speech. However, it is unclear how effectively infants track these patterns in unfamiliar phonological systems. We examined whether…

The theoretical framework of this study is based on the prevalent debate of whether prosodic processing is influenced by higher level linguistic-specific circuits or reflects lower level encoding of physical properties. Using the dichotic listening technique, the study investigates the hemispheric processing of Japanese pitch accent by native…

The influence of phonological similarity on bilingual language processing was examined within and across languages in three experiments. Phonological similarity was manipulated within a language by varying neighborhood density, and across languages by varying extent of cross-linguistic overlap between native and non-native languages. In Experiment…

With a goal of investigating psycholinguistic bases of spoken word processing in a second language (L2), this study examined L2 learners' sensitivity to phonological information in spoken L2 words as a function of their L2 experience and attentional demands of a learning task. Fifty-two Chinese learners of English who differed in amount of L2…

Recognition and interference of a nontarget language (Russian) during production in a target language (English) were tested in Russian-English bilinguals using eye movements and picture naming. In Experiment 1, Russian words drew more eye movements and delayed English naming to a greater extent than control nonwords and English translation…

The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the auditory event-related potential was used to determine the effect of native language, Russian, on the processing of speech-sound duration in a second language, Finnish, that uses duration as a cue for phonological distinction. The native-language effect was compared with Finnish vowels that either can…

In 2 picture-naming and 2 grammaticality judgment experiments, the authors explored how the phonological form of a word, especially its termination, affects gender processing by monolinguals and unbalanced bilinguals speaking German. The results of the 2 experiments with native German speakers yielded no significant differences: The reaction times…

One of a series of semiannual reports, this paper presents articles exploring the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical research applications. Titles of the papers and their authors are as follows: (1) "Lexical Organization and Welsh Consonant Mutations" (S. Boyce, C. P.…

A case study of a Russian-Hebrew bilingual woman with transcortical sensory aphasia showed that overall, aphasic symptoms were similar in the two languages, with Hebrew somewhat more impaired. The woman revealed a difference in her ability to perceive phonemes in the context of Hebrew words that depended on whether they were presented in a Russian…

A contrastive analysis (CA) does not require commitment to directionality. Even asymmetrical interlingual correspondence can be handled by adirectional statements. If well executed, a CA is capable of handling three pairs of L2 learning phenomena: (1) going from language A to language B and vice versa; (2) productive and receptive command; and (3)…

Numerous findings suggest that non-native speech perception undergoes dramatic changes before the infant' s first birthday. Yet the nature and cause of these changes remain uncertain. We evaluated the predictions of several theoretical accounts of developmental change in infants' perception of non-native consonant contrasts. Experiment 1 assessed…

Behavioral studies have shown that while young infants can discriminate many different phonetic contrasts, a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of discrimination is found during the second semester of life, beginning earlier for vowels than for consonants. This age-related decline in sensitivity to perceive non-native…

A study investigated the roles of phonological encoding and visual processes in word recognition in American learners of Arabic as a foreign language. Subjects were 36 individuals with proficiency ranging from beginning to native. Two experiments in word recognition were conducted, one at word and one at sentence level. At each level, the word…

A collection of essays on pronunciation instruction theory and practice includes: "Teaching Pronunciation as Communication" (Marianne Celce-Murcia); "Learner Variables and Prepronunciation Considerations in Teaching Pronunciation" (Rita Wong); "Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension" (Judy B. Gilbert); "Pronunciation Tutorials for Nonnative…