The present study investigated whether the neural correlates for auditory feedback control of vocal pitch can be shaped by tone language experience. Event-related potentials (P2/N1) were recorded from adult native speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese who heard their voice auditory feedback shifted in pitch by -50, -100, -200, or -500 cents when they…

This dissertation is a grammatical description of several features of the morphology and phonology of the Mocho' language. Mocho' (Motozintleco) is a moribund Mayan language spoken in the Chiapas region of Mexico near the border of Guatemala. This dissertation, based on data collected during several field trips and supplemented with unpublished…

Dysarthria following surgical resection of childhood posterior fossa tumour (PFT) is most commonly documented in a select group of participants with mutism in the acute recovery phase, thus limiting knowledge of post-operative prognosis for this population of children as a whole. Here we report on the speech characteristics of 13 cases seen…

This study examined the extent and nature of lexical tone deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Twenty Cantonese-speaking Chinese dyslexic children (mean age 8 ; 11) were compared to twenty average readers of the same age (CA control group, mean age 8 ; 11), and another twenty younger average readers of the same word reading level (RL control…

Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and…

International medical graduates (IMGs) comprise 26% of the U.S. physician work force. While IMGs bring all their knowledge and expertise, their pronunciation and intonation patterns often become a barrier in their ability to be understood. This breakdown in communication can affect physician-patient or physician-staff understanding and hence…

With the ever increasing number of studies on formulaic language, we are beginning to learn more about the processing of formulaic language (e.g. Ellis et al. 2008; Siyanova et al. 2011), its use in speech (e.g. Aijmer 1996; Wood 2012) and writing (e.g. Hyland 2008a, 2008b) and its application in natural language processing (e.g. Tschichold 2000).…

This empirical study investigates the beliefs of teachers and students regarding strategies for learning and teaching Chinese tones, which constitute a crucial feature of the spoken language and often cause problems for learners. Two online questionnaires that listed 11 Chinese tone learning strategies and 7 tone teaching strategies were…

This paper tests how well two theories of tone-segment interactions account for the lowering effect of so-called depressor consonants on tone in languages of the Shona and Nguni groups of Southern Bantu. I show that single source theories, which propose that pitch lowering is inextricably linked to consonant voicing, as they are reflexes of the…

In "Language, the Learner and the School", Douglas Barnes recognised that intonation was important to classroom interaction but also acknowledged that his own research team did not choose to analyse it. This article presents instances of classroom talk about poetry and reflects on them using Barnes' concepts of pupil participation, exploratory…

The oldest form of Sanskrit has a class of expressions that are in some respects like asyndetically coordinated syntactic phrases, in other respects like single compound words. I propose to resolve the conflicting evidence by drawing on prosodic phonology, stratal optimality theory, and the lexicalist approach to morphological blocking. I then…

In this study, we examined the nature of infants' representations of newly encountered word forms. Using a word-object association task, we taught 14-month-olds novel three-syllable words differing in segments and stress patterns. At test, we manipulated the stress pattern of the word or the position of the stressed syllable in the word. Our…

This article discusses the assessment of pronunciation instruction under a new approach to pronunciation teaching centered on the role of connected speech in the prosodic system of English. It also offers a detailed discussion of various empirical problems in teaching-oriented L2 pronunciation research and suggests ways of addressing them in…

A 4-stage developmental model, in which auditory sensitivity is fully mediated by speech perception at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels, which are further related to word reading through their associations with phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory and morphological awareness, was tested with…

The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment…