Reports on attempts to reconstruct the Proto-Chinese sound system, based on linguistic data from modern Chinese dialects rather than ancient rhyme dictionaries and tables, resulting in a sound system with 29 onsets and 74 rhymes and some new rules for sound changes. (18 references) (Author/CB)

Explores the nature of trait verbal aggressiveness. Identifies types of verbally aggressive messages used by college students, beliefs about hurt, and reasons for use that distinguish high from low verbal aggressives. Finds that high verbal aggressive students are prone to using self-concept attacking messages. (SR)

This paper describes the rationale for collection, digitisation, and quantitative characterization of a large multispeaker database of spoken Australian English. The speakers, all of whom were born in Australia of Australian parents, were recorded on 10 occasions over a period of months with each speaker recording a variety of speaking styles on…

Analyzes three recent models of phonological representation (underspecification theory, autosegmental spreading of features, and feature hierarchy), focusing on such diachronic and synchronic issues of Spanish phonology as the rule of voicing of voiceless obstruents, vowel raising cum desyllabification, homorganic nasal/lateral assimilation, and…

The tracing of the origin of the name of a Tidewater, Virginia, group of watermen who spoke a distinctive dialect illustrates the power of language in marking the group's social parameters and distinguishing that group from other area watermen. (34 references) (CB)

Explores the paradoxes and vagaries of the English language. Looks at a number of English words and phrases that turn out to mean the opposite of or something very different from what people think they mean. (MG)

Examines the status and methods of bilingual education for deaf children, involving the teaching of a signed language, and compares such education to bilingual education involving two spoken languages. (Author/CB)

Investigated the behavior of Dutch rising nuclear contours as a function of changes in pitch range by asking listeners to rate such contours on perceived attributes believed to be expressed through variations in pitch range. (Author/VWL)

The analysis of spoken language requires a principled way of dividing transcribed data into units in order to assess features such as accuracy and complexity. This article discusses a reliable and comprehensibly defined unit to assist with the analysis of a variety of recordings of native and nonnative speakers of English. (Author/VWL)

Presents an analysis of German modal particles based on corpora representing Spoken German. The concept of spoken language is discussed with regard to the corpora analyzed and narrowed down in relation to the use of modal particles. In addition, a collection of telephone conversations was scanned into a computer readable file and analyzed using…

Examined the combined effects of probabilistic phonotactics and lexical competition by generating words and nonwords that varied orthogonally on phonotactics and similarity neighborhood density. Results from a speeded same-different task revealed simultaneous facilitative effects of phonotactics and inhibitory effects of lexical competition for…

Two phoneme monitoring experiments are reported that examine the amount of lexical activation produced by words containing initial, medial, or final mispronunciations. One showed that minimal mismatches in the initial phoneme produced lexical activation relative to a baseline control nonword, but only when the phoneme was situated at word offset…

Examines possible solutions to the problem of form variation in the perception of speech. Asks whether sentential context can influence the identification of potentially assimilated forms of words. (Author/VWL)

Proposes an alternative view to emergent literacy whereby it is a separate construct from oral language and metalinguistic skills. Also proposes that emergent literacy is composed of two distinct components: children's conceptual knowledge and children's early procedural knowledge of writing and reading. (Contains 60 references and 5 tables.) (GCP)

Recent research suggests that phonotactic probability (the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence) and neighborhood density (the number of words phonologically similar to a given word) influence spoken language processing and acquisition across the lifespan in both normal and clinical populations. The majority of research in this area has…