Listeners selectively tune in to the most relevant cues for contrasting sounds, and this process impacts their perceptual sensitivity to these cues (Nosofsky, 1986; Pisoni, 1991). For bilingual listeners, recent work suggests a shared L1/L2 phonology system with the phonetic properties of each sound established in a language-specific way…

This dissertation examines whether and how psycholinguistic priming, and social knowledge are integrated in the identification of sociolinguistic variants. Using the English variable (ING), the alternation between -ing and -in' (e.g. thinking vs. thinkin') as a testing ground, this dissertation probes whether and how individuals utilize…

Recently, there has been considerable L2 research on interfaces between different modules of grammar (internal), such as syntax-semantics, or between grammar and other cognitive systems (external), such as semantics-pragmatics. Sorace's (2011) Interface Hypothesis proposes that L2 learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate…

Accurate and rapid word recognition requires highly-specified phonological, orthographic, and semantic word-specific representations. It has been established that children acquire these representations through phonological decoding in a process known as orthographic learning. Studies examining orthographic learning and its predictors have thus far…

Ontologies are commonly used to support application tasks such as natural language processing, knowledge management, learning, browsing, and search. Literature recommends considering specific context during ontology design, and highlights that a different context is responsible for problems in ontology reuse. However, there is still no clear…

This study investigates the cross-cultural realization of request patterns. The goal of the study is to compare the realization of requests produced by adult American English speaking learners of Russian (NNS) to that of native speakers of Russian and native speakers of English to identify the similarities and differences between native and…

This dissertation explores how participants express and interpret verbal cues of interaction involvement in dyadic conversations via text-based Instant Messaging (IM). Moreover, it seeks to discover differences in the way American participants and Chinese participants use verbal cues when they are highly, or lowly involved. Based on previous…

In Spanish, it is most commonly claimed that constituents in narrow presentational focus appear rightmost, where they also get main stress (1a), while stress in situ (1b) is infelicitous. (1) [Context: Who bought a car?]. a. Compró un carro mi [mamá][subscript F]. bought a car my mom. b. Mi [mamá ][subscript F] compró un carro. However, some…

This study explored how the learners-as-ethnographers (LAE) approach facilitated intercultural learning among American students learning Chinese as a foreign language. Two research questions addressed the effectiveness of the LAE approach and students' learning experiences in a non-immersion context. I designed six ethnographic tasks for the…

Women in the U.S. and all over the world are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because of both behavioral and contextual factors. HIV/AIDS prevention education on government health websites plays an important role in reducing this health inequality for women. However, contrary to the assumption of Rimal and Real's (2003) Risk Perception Attitude…