We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. "The child ate the candies" following after "The child…

Every language has its own rhythm. Unlike many other languages in the world, English depends on the correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed or weakened syllables recurring in the same phrase or sentence. Mastering the rhythm of English makes speaking more effective. Experiments have shown that we tend to hear speech as more rhythmical…

This study investigates infants' discrimination abilities for familiar and unfamiliar regional English accents. Using a variation of the head-turn preference procedure, 5-month-old infants demonstrated that they were able to distinguish between their own South-West English accent and an unfamiliar Welsh English accent. However, this distinction…

Prosody plays a vital role in communication, but is one of the most widely neglected topics in language documentation. This omission is doubly detrimental since intonation is unrecoverable from transcribed texts, the most prevalent data sources for many indigenous languages. One of the underlying reasons for the dearth of prosodic data is…

In this study, personality compliance levels are examined according to tonality and tempo variables, which are acquired in consequence of analysis of music genres and pieces to which fine arts faculty, trainee music teachers mostly listen. A total of 31 students participated in the study. Data acquired from Hacettepe Personality Inventory (HPI)…

Background: Text reading prosody has been associated with reading comprehension. However, text reading prosody is a reading-dependent measure that relies heavily on decoding skills. Investigation of the contribution of speech prosody--which is independent from reading skills--in addition to text reading prosody, to reading comprehension could…

This paper presents the voice emotion recognition part of the FILTWAM framework for real-time emotion recognition in affective e-learning settings. FILTWAM (Framework for Improving Learning Through Webcams And Microphones) intends to offer timely and appropriate online feedback based upon learner's vocal intonations and facial expressions in order…

The study examined the insight of English Teacher towards students of standard XI in acquiring communicative skill in English. The main objective of the paper was to identify the problems of the students in acquiring communicative skill in English. The Normative survey method was adopted in the study. One hundred teachers were considered as a…

This study examined analytical pinyin (a phonological coding system for teaching pronunciation and lexical tones of Chinese characters) skills in 54 Mandarin-speaking fourth graders by using an invented spelling instrument that tapped into syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, lexical tones, and tone sandhi in Chinese. Pinyin invented spelling…

Prosodic patterning is a key structural element of spoken language. However, the potential role of prosodic awareness in the phonological difficulties that characterise children with developmental dyslexia has been little studied. Here we report the first longitudinal study of sensitivity to syllable stress in children with dyslexia, enabling the…

Background: People transitioning from male to female (MTF) gender seek speech-language pathology services when they feel their voice is betraying their genuine self or perhaps is the last obstacle to representing their authentic gender. Speaking fundamental frequency (pitch) and resonance are most often targets in treatment because the combination…

This paper presents a study of factors affecting judgments of native and non-native accent in German. The data suggest that listener status (native or non-native speakers) and degree of experience with German play a role in the aspects of speech which raters cite as salient. Interestingly, the same descriptive terms used by raters were shown to…

The training of tactical decision making increasingly occurs through serious computer games. A challenging aspect of designing such games is the modelling of human emotions. Two studies were performed to investigate the relation between fidelity and human emotion recognition in virtual human characters. Study 1 compared five versions of a virtual…

This dissertation is a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of the variable word order and prosody of copular constructions ("Nicolas es feliz" versus "'Feliz' es Nicolas," "Es Nicolas 'feliz,'" "Es 'feliz' Nicolas," "Nicolas is 'happy'") in the Spanish of first- and second-generation…

The current dissertation represents one of the first systematic studies of the distribution of speech errors within supralexical prosodic units. Four experiments were conducted to gain insight into the specific role of these units in speech planning and production. The first experiment focused on errors in adult English. These were found to be…