The purpose of this dissertation is to examine (i) linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence vowel raising of /o/ in constituent-final "-ko" and "-to" in Seoul Korean and (ii) listeners' perceptions of this vowel raising and social meanings of the raised variant. The analyses are based on production data collected…

The current project longitudinally investigated the extent to which first-year Japanese university students developed their second language (L2) oral ability in relation to increased input in foreign language classrooms. Their spontaneous speech was elicited at the beginning, middle and end of one academic year, and then judged by linguistically…

This research investigates the effect of individual voice training on pre-service Turkish language teachers' speaking skills. The main claim in this research is that teachers' most significant teaching instrument is their voice and it needs to be trained. The research was based on the convergent parallel mixed method. The quantitative part was…

A growing number of researchers have been exploring the cognitions of second language teachers (L2) in a wide scope. The purpose of this study is to investigate English language teachers' L2 pronunciation cognitions and their classroom practices. The sample consists of 164 English teachers and academics in English language and language education.…

The present study examines the use of English lexical insertions to create humor by Jordanian university students. The data of the study are collected from spontaneous tape-recorded conversations from 62 participants of both males and females, representing different age groups (from 18-23 years old) and belonging to different specializations…

Problem Statement: Despite analyses of how vocal training methods can correct or improve Turkish-language accent defects, for most voice educators, the most important methods continue to be breathe management control and correct vocalization exercises. We therefore sought to demonstrate the relationship of song lyrics to breathe control, accent…

The aim of the present study was to examine the relation between decoding and segmental and suprasegmental phonology, and their contribution to reading comprehension, in the upper primary grades. Following a longitudinal design, the performance of 99 Dutch primary school students on phonological awareness (segmental phonology) and text-reading…

We tested whether congenital amusics, who exhibit pitch perception deficits, nevertheless adjust the pitch of their voice in response to a sudden pitch shift applied to vocal feedback. Nine amusics and matched controls imitated their own previously-recorded speech or singing, while the online feedback they received was shifted mid-utterance by 25…

This dissertation is a study of the tonal and accentual system of Oklahoma Cherokee, which has six possible pitch patterns occurring on a syllable: low, high, low-high, high-low, lowfall and superhigh. This study attempts to provide a comprehensive description and analyses of these patterns: their distribution, their source, the principles which…

This paper represents a multimodal analysis of the paraverbal (prosodic and gesture) features of expressive female political speech in Latin America and Spain. The language corpus consisted of public speeches delivered by Spanish-speaking female politicians Eva Peron, Christina de Kirchner and Manuela Carmena. The article includes an overview of…

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

The current project examined whether and to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as the first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, can be predictive of the end state of postpubertal L2 oral proficiency attainment. Data were collected from 88 experienced Japanese learners of English and two groups of 20 baseline…

Infants must develop both flexibility and constraint in their interpretation of acceptable word forms. The current experiments examined the development of infants' lexical interpretation of non-native variations in pitch contour. Fourteen-, 17-, and 19-month-olds (Experiments 1 and 2, N = 72) heard labels for two novel objects; labels…

Word order is a core mechanism for conveying syntactic structure, yet interrogatives usually disrupt canonical word orders. For example, in English, polar interrogatives typically invert the subject and auxiliary verb and insert an utterance-initial "do" if no auxiliary is present. These word order patterns result from differences in the…

The current study investigated whether point-accompanying characteristics, like vocalizations and hand shape, differentiate infants' underlying motives of prelinguistic pointing. We elicited imperative (requestive) and declarative (expressive and informative) pointing acts in experimentally controlled situations, and analyzed accompanying…