Sarcasm, or sarcastic irony, involves expressing a message that is often opposite of the literal meaning of what is being said, in a way that may sound bitter, or caustic (Gibbs, 1986). In the past, sarcasm has been viewed as a method of introducing the possibility of alternative interpretations of a discourse, by creating ambiguity as to the…

Some syllables are louder, longer and stronger than other syllables at the lexical level. These prominent prosodic characteristics of certain syllables are captured by suprasegmental features including fundamental frequency, duration and intensity. A language like English uses fundamental frequency, duration and intensity to distinguish stressed…

This study investigated English speakers' perception of Mandarin sounds, aiming to answer three major questions. First, does the perceived similarity between Mandarin and English sounds affect learners' acquisition of Mandarin sounds? Second, do the groups with different amounts of Mandarin experience differ in their perception of…

Gumuz is a Nilo-Saharan dialect cluster spoken in the river valleys of northwestern Ethiopia and the southeastern part of the Republic of the Sudan. There are approximately 200,000 speakers, the majority of which reside in Ethiopia. This study is a phonological and grammatical analysis of two main dialects/languages: Northern Gumuz and Southern…

The study investigates the importance of EFL (English as a foreign language) students' awareness of English extended pitch sequences realised within complex utterances and text sub-topics. Considering these higher levels of intonation functioning alongside with the tone group turned out to be crucial for adequate intonation production by Russian…

There has been very little research in Spanish on the potential role of prosodic skills in reading and spelling acquisition, which is the subject of the present study. A total of 85 children in 5th year of Primary Education (mean age 10 years and 9 months) performed tests assessing memory, stress awareness, phonological awareness, reading and…

Recent literature has sought to understand the presence of epenthetic vowels after the productions of postvocalic word-final consonants by second language (L2) learners whose first languages (L1s) restrict the presence of obstruents in coda position. Previous models include those in which epenthesis is seen as a strategy to mitigate the effects of…

The aim of this experimental research is to investigate the effect of using Text-to-Speech Software (TTS), one of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) resources in teaching reading, in particular, different aspects of reading fluency. In this study we investigated teaching and learning of word stress, word intonation, pitch contour, and…

This article illustrates the pedagogical value of incorporating parallel corpora in foreign language education. It explores the development of a Chinese/English parallel corpus designed specifically for pedagogical application. The corpus tool was created to aid language learners in reading comprehension and writing development by making foreign…

While a growing body of research has established the benefits of pronunciation training on second language (L2) production, these benefits have yet to be incorporated into the general skills language classroom in a systematic manner. Furthermore, although relatively new speech analysis software has been shown to be useful in providing visual…

The purpose of this study is to find out whether children learning English by music can improve their ability in segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation or not. In this regard, three hypotheses were proposed. A total of 30 female elementary students with the age between 9 to 12 years old were chosen. They were learning English in a private…

Many students of English language find pronunciation difficult to master. This work in progress paper discusses an incremental and iterative approach towards developing requirements for software applications to assist learners with the perception and production of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes and prosody. It was found that prompts…

This study details the development of six second language learners in an English listening course that focused on developing their bottom-up listening skills. The research employed longitudinal multi-case studies to chart the development of these lower proficiency-level Taiwanese university learners, and their progress in the course was analysed…

The present phenomenological, qualitative research study involved in-depth interviews of all 16 female, sophomore students involved in respective distance relationships at a private, selective, comprehensive, Midwest university. Among other results found in the study, the present article focuses on communication dynamics involved with the…

Using a non-speech-specific measure of prosody, rise time perception, Goswami and her colleagues have found that individuals with dyslexia perform significantly worse than nonimpaired readers. Studies have also found that children and adults with specific language impairment were impaired on these tasks. Despite the high comorbidity of these…