Originating in the 1960's with the work of William Labov, the field of sociolinguistics has given way to a rich literature that continues to uncover the many ways in which social factors influence how we produce, perceive, and process speech. Sociolinguistic research has burgeoned alongside increasing globalization and migration, which has, in the…

This study examined the production of L3 French words by Spanish--English bilinguals who had no prior knowledge of the L3. Using a shadowing task, 39 Spanish L1/English L2 and 18 Spanish monolingual speakers produced 26 tokens of word-initial voiceless plosive consonants in French, Spanish and English (15 Spanish and French tokens for the…

The study examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and voice onset time (VOT) in the production of Spanish stop consonants by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who have learned English as their second language (L2). Six Chinese nationals studying Spanish in the United States at beginning levels and an advanced-level control were recorded…

Listener background variables have been recognized as potential contributors to language evaluation bias. This continuum of trait-irrelevant factors creates implications from the L2 classroom to integration in the target language community. This study examined how L2 Spanish learners' listener background factors including ethnicity, heritage…

Many Hispanics living in the United States have limited Spanish language abilities particularly in relation to literacy skills. This study investigated 25 Hispanic heritage language learners' (HLLs) perceptions of their Spanish language writing abilities. During interview sessions, participants described the aspects of writing that were the…

There has been much debate in assessment research about the inclusion of Global English accents in high-stakes listening tests. This study explored test-takers' attitudes toward the inclusion of different English accents in the Duolingo English Test (DET) 2021 test version and their associations with listening test scores. One hundred sixty…

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in…

This article investigates the language practices of a bilingual mariachi instructor teaching mariachi music to Latinx English dominant students. This ethnographic study draws on the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin 1981) to explore the spatiotemporal aspects of learning, particularly in terms of the teachers' selective use of language correction…

Within the field of linguistics, whether considering language contact situations (Weinreich, 1979) or foreign language education (Lado, 1957), the topic of language transfer, especially as it relates to pronunciation, has always been an item of particular interest. While research on such transfer has mostly focused on various phenomena of the L1…

Nawat, the highly endangered indigenous language of El Salvador, is undergoing a revitalization process. This dissertation, conceived within this context, focuses on the second-language (L2) acquisition of features of Nawat pronunciation by learners who have Salvadoran Spanish as their first language (L1). Specifically, I assess the acquisition of…

Purpose: Older native speakers of English have difficulty in understanding Spanish-accented English compared to younger native English speakers. However, it is unclear if this age effect would be observed among native speakers of Spanish. The current study investigates the effects of age and native language experience with Spanish on the ability…

This dissertation investigated the speech productions of the implosive -r consonant by U.S.-born Puerto Rican and Dominican Heritage Language Spanish speakers in New York. The following main research questions were addressed: 1) Do heritage language Caribbean Spanish speakers evidence the same variation with the /?/ consonant in the implosive…

Recent longitudinal approaches to second language (L2) pronunciation development have prioritized developmental trajectories, highlighting individual variation in phonetic learning over time. Aligning with this research paradigm, the present study examined voice onset time (VOT) production in Spanish/b/and/p/ over two semesters of elementary…

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…

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…