This article describes morphophonemic elements in Mazahua, a language of the Otomian family of Central Mexico. The study makes use of the theoretical and notational framework of generative phonology. (CLK)

This study investigated the effect on word recognition of supplementing a beginning reading program with instruction in distinctive features of alphabet letters. Subjects, 11 first grade students in the experimental sample and 10 first grade students in the control sample in Short Hills, New Jersey, were administered a test of word recognition (20…

A study of the phonetic combination of a constrictive consonant (specifically, [f], [v], and [r]) and a vowel in French using x-ray and oscillograph technology focused on the speed and process of articulation between the consonant and the vowel. The study considered aperture size, nasality, labiality, and accent. Articulation of a total of 407…

Ethnographic semantics is that discipline which seeks to understand human cognition through an analysis of the cognitive content of linguistic expressions: that is, the systematic study of the meanings of words and the role of these meanings in cognitive systems. There are many misconceptions about the nature of ethnosemantics, however, and by…

Patterns which partly resemble the proposed "fronting,""voicing," and "stopping" tendencies exist to a statistically significant degree in David Olmsted's large sample of child speech. Instead of the "voicing" pattern that has been suggested, however, voiced stops seem to be favored word-initially, but voiced fricatives are favored word-finally.…

Fricatives and affricates in different word positions and initial fricative clusters were elicited from three linguistically deviant children (ages five years, two months to seven years) and one normal child (age two years, nine months) by means of pictures depicting familiar objects. Data from two of the older children and the normal child are…

This document discusses, briefly, the importance of preschool language learning and how such learning can be facilitated. In the main, the document sets out three lists for teachers concerning language instruction to preschoolers. List one presents the "age of articulatory efficiency of 23 consonant sounds." Five ages, from 3 to 7 …

An experiment using an analysis of the distinctive features of lower case letters of the English alphabet to predict high- and low-confusible alternates for each letter was reported. Ten disadvantaged 5-year-old Negro children served as their own controls, circling in booklets the letters seen after a 1-second presentation by memory drum. The…

This paper addresses itself to the question of whether the high degree of abstractness in Chomsky's and Halle's analysis of English vowels is justified. Secondarily, two related topics are discussed: (1) limitations on the tongue-height features [+low] and [+high] and (2) the role of rule features in phonological rules. Numerous examples of a more…

A signature tree is a binary decision tree used to classify unknown patterns. An attempt was made to develop a computer program for manipulating signature trees as a general research tool for exploring machine learning and pattern recognition. The program was applied to the problem of speech recognition to test its effectiveness for a specific…

Analyzes the physiological, acoustic, and auditory reasons for errors in the pronunciation of French nasal vowels by students, and suggests techniques for overcoming the difficulties identified. (AM)

Refutes Chomsky and Halle's (1968) analyses of Early Middle and Middle English, and presents an alternative analysis based on phonetic facts rather than underlying assumptions. (AM)

Attempts to determine whether broadened linguistic experience facilitates cross-language phonetic sensitivity to a novel speech contrast. Multilingual adults and monolingual English speaking adults were compared on their ability to make phonetic distinctions not found in their respective native languages. Broad, nonspecific linguistic experience…

Tonal "flip-flop" (reversal of pitch value in which a direct exchange of value between two items is necessarily involved) can be found in a significant number of modern Chinese dialects, where an opposite pitch pattern is observed for the traditional Yin/Yang dichotomy of tones. (Author/CB)

Thirty-five deaf children with hearing parents were tested for cheremic perception. Deaf children using sign language, like hearing children using spoken language, have more difficulty discriminating between lexical items that form minimal pairs in their language than between items that differ more. (SL)