This book introduces the main concepts of pragmatics as they relate to the young English language learner classroom and research with young second language learners (YLLs). It considers the speech acts which are particularly relevant to YLLs and presents research findings on learners' development of speech act perception and production. It…

This book is the first comprehensive investigation of interlanguage pragmatic issues in a primary school context that is based on both primary school teachers' statements on their own teaching realities, views and preferences, and a thorough investigation of materials used by teachers and recommended by teacher educators in the state the primary…

This study examined whether stuttering speakers (N=10) differed from fluent speakers in relations between the neural control systems for speech and life support. It concluded that in some stuttering speakers the relations between respiratory controllers are atypical, but that high participation by the high frequency oscillation-producing circuitry…

The use of cues to voicing perception of initial stop consonants in multiple spoken syllables was studied for moderately/severely hearing impaired (N=43) and normal-hearing listeners (N=12). Results confirmed that voice onset time was a strong voicing cue for both hearing impaired and normal hearing listeners. (Author/DB)

Conversational speech of five children who stutter was recorded and then portions manipulated to modify interval duration and vowel duration. Results indicated that both interval and vowel durations moderately affected listeners' perception of stuttering. Generally, repetitions with short vowel and interval durations were judged as more…

The study assessed the perceptual effects of a range of second and third formant transition rates that occur naturally in the production of /w/ and /r/ sounds by children and adults. No general support for this property as a salient perceptual cue was found in this study. (Author/DB)

Manipulation of speed of delivery and linguistic context followed by factor analysis of 11 measures of lingual activity involved in the production of the syllable /ka/ indicated three factors explained 75 percent of the variance: displacement/velocity, duration, and midsyllable duration and distance. (Author/DB)

Investigated in three studies were responses of 18- and 24-month-old children to a series of commands. Results suggest that a potent incentive for obeying commands lies in the pleasure very young children take in fitting their actions to the words of others. This pleasure sustains subsequent reenactment of the actions without commands. (Author/RH)

The review examined recent research concerning cerebral specialization, especially dichotic listening studies, in Down syndrome individuals. A model of cerebral specialization is proposed that stresses the biological dissociation between speech perception and speech production or other complex movements. (Author/DB)

This study compared the ratings of 19 adolescents when listening to recordings of the speech of eight children with cerebral palsy and eight normal-speaking children. For all 22 adjective pairs, the normal speakers were rated significantly more positively. (Author/DB)

This study examined acoustic durations in 12 children (ages 3 to 9) who stuttered and received treatment based either on speech motor training (SMT) or extended length of utterance (ELU). Although the ELU treatment reduced stuttering more than the SMT, the SMT was more effective in increasing vowel duration and decreasing stop gap duration.…

This study examined consonant cluster production, especially general trends and individual differences, in 16 typically developing 2-year-olds over six months. Data demonstrated that the toddlers could produce an increasing range of consonant clusters in word-initial and word-final position, although few could produce them correctly. Specific…

Acoustic measures and stress judgments were made of spondaic words with alternating syllabic stress produced by three profoundly hearing-impaired adolescents and a hearing control. The data suggested that there are important between-speaker differences in the overall hierarchy of cues adopted to convey lexical stress. (Author/DB)

Results indicated that in both adults and infants combined cues facilitate discrimination of the phonemic contrast regardless of whether the cues cooperate or conflict. The three experiments did not support a phonetic interpretation of conflicting/cooperating cues for the perception of final stop consonant voicing. (Author/DB)

This study compared duration characteristics of single repetitions of single-syllable words in the speech of 15 preschool children near the onset of stuttering to those of 18 nonstuttering children. There appeared to be a tendency for repetitions of very early stutterers to be faster than repetitions of nonstuttering children. (Author/DB)