Comparison of how English and Spanish speakers express contrastive emphasis revealed that, while English speakers used pitch and intensity, Spanish speakers used changes in syntax and lexicon as well as pitch and intensity in showing contrasts. (CB)

Cross-cultural investigation of the influence of target-language in infant babbling analyzed 1047 vowels produced by 10-month-olds (N=20) from French, English, Cantonese, and Arabic language backgrounds. Results revealed differences among infants across language backgrounds, with the differences paralleling those found in adult speech in the…

A study investigated the speaking styles of black college students to determine whether selected stylistic features of speeches of students at a predominantly black university were different from those of black college students at a predominantly white university. Audiotapes were made of 25 students at the predominantly black university and 21…

Presents: (1) the basic facts of vowel-zero alternations and palatalization in Polish; (2) a nonlinear account of the vowel-zero alternations; (3) a reanalysis of palatalization facts in terms of morpholexical rules; and (4) speculations relating to learnability considerations and the nature of linguistic theory construction. (CB)

Compared the ability of Czech- and English-speaking four, five, and six year olds to discern, isolate, and spell consonants in nonsense words with complex onsets. Results suggest that the frequency and variety of complex consonant onsets and transparency of spelling in Czech facilitate children's phonemic awareness. (ME)

We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the "McGurk effect"). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for consonants. We used click sounds that…

Microresearch of the type performed by W. Loban and K. Hunt was used to describe two functions of macroresearch methodology--reporting and classifying--of the type conducted by J. Britton. This was done by contrasting the use of nine linguistic features of writing produced by four groups of students in each of the functions. The features were…

A guide for using language contrasts to understand and teach pronunciation differences in English and Spanish proposes that all languages are learned in basically the same order, phonetics (listening and speaking) and graphemics (reading and writing). Language can be broken down so that understandable elements (phonology, morphology, syntax, and…

A study of vowel substitution in Finnish learners of English as a second language looked at the quantitative characteristics of qualitatively similar vowels under different tempo conditions. Specifically, it compared the effects of rate of speech and vowel duration on the eleven stressed monophthongal English vowels and their Finnish counterparts.…

This volume presents a study of the clause as a verb-centered construction surrounded by certain nuclear constituents which serve to subcategorize it. Five India-Nepal languages are examined: Kotia Oriya, Kupia, and Maithili (Indo-Aryan family); and Dhanghar-Kurux and Kolani (Dravidian family). Dhangar-Kurux and Maithili are spoken in Nepal, the…

Tests the universality hypothesis of language acquisition by asking young monolingual English and Japanese children to verify true affirmatives, false affirmatives, false negatives, and true negatives. The hypothesis was not supported in the case of Japanese-speaking children. A theory of cross-linguistic language acquisition is proposed.…

Purpose: Recent research suggests that nonword repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks can be used to discriminate between children with SLI and their typically developing age-matched (TDAM) and younger (TDY) peers. Method: Fourteen Cantonese-speaking children with SLI and 30 of their TDAM and TDY peers were compared on NWR and SR…

This paper discusses the relationship of Polish to the other languages considered to be within the Slavic group. The comparison is mainly phonological and considers the Proto-Slavic features still preserved in Polish as well as the distinctive features of Polish which have developed from Proto-Slavic. The development of vowels and consonants is…

It is widely known that L2 audiences continue to experience comprehension difficulties when listening to content lectures in English, regardless of proficiency level. For this reason, NS lecturers should be aware of potential obstacles to comprehension and the need to make appropriate adjustments. In order to understand how such adjustments may be…

This paper focuses on British English. Such rules as might be devised for specification of segment length would have to take into account, among other factors, the lenis/fortis nature of the segments at syllable margins, degree of stress, the relation between a given syllable and others in the same rhythm group, the same relations within the word,…