A dialect of Rato-Romansh spoken in a Swiss town is examined in the context of lexical phonology. The structure of this dialect's lexicon consists of two levels defined by stress assignment, not cyclically in this case but at the end of each level. Other considerations that have been advanced as bases for level division within the lexicon, such as…

Although intonation has been said to be one of the first meaningful units of language that a child acquires, it is difficult to say just what this really means. How does the child learn to distinguish the various grammatical meanings that an intonation can have? It was hypothesized that the child first acquires question and request forms on the…

Intonation refers to the rise and fall of the pitch contour within a given tone group as distinguished from paralinguistic vocal features which refer to aspects like placement of contour in the pitch range of an individual, pitch span, loudness/softness, and features of voice quality. Intonation and paralinguistic vocal features perform at least…

It is the contention here that the "prelinguistic" period is an important phase of the language acquisition process. Accordingly the research reported represents an attempt to begin mapping out the types of linguistically relevant information to which a young child attends. Specifically it is hypothesized that young children are…

This paper is a report of two studies of the relationship between intonation and syntax. An analysis of intonation was used to decide whether the pivot-like two-morpheme constructions of a one- and one-half-year-old girl were single lexical items or two separate lexical items. Further, the intonation contours connected with her linguistically…

The influence of two aspects of language structure, syntax and associativity, on the free recall of verbal messages was investigated. (Syntax refers to the rules for ordering words within sentences; associativity refers to the network of meaningful relationships which exist among words in a language.) Twenty-four children from each of grades…

This article discusses the use of gestures in foreign language instruction, particularly in the teaching of intonation, stress, and consonant and vowel sounds. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Despite a survey carried out on the teaching of Spanish language in British and Irish universities that showed one-third of the respondents considered the teaching of Spanish intonation unimportant, examples are presented to show that it is necessary in Spanish language instruction. (HP)

Reviews significant endeavors in the teaching of intonation, and outlines a specific technique of the instruction of suprasegmentals. (CLK)

After teaching the basic suprasegmental patterns, an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher can profitably continue with those other patterns which are useful in distinguishing meanings and whose absence on the printed page will sometimes result in double meaning. (Author/JM)

This paper presents patterns of accentual alignment in two varieties of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country: Lekeitio Spanish (LS), with speakers whose other native language is Lekeitio Basque (LB); and Vitoria Spanish (VS), with monolingual speakers of Spanish from the city of Vitoria. These patterns are compared to those of Madrid Spanish (MS),…

Some Japanese examples of several common phonological phenomena (whispered vowels, nuclear friction, and consonant-vowel articulation) are examined. The segmental and transformational characterizations of these and related phenomena are reassessed and it is shown that by paying more careful attention to phonetic detail and abandoning conventional…

This study investigated some characteristics of intonation patterns in the English spoken by black adolescents in Seattle, Washington. It was hypothesized that if intonation is central to communicating attitude, and if Black English intonation differs systematically from that of Standard English, communication between blacks and whites may be…

American English speakers, divided into musically untrained and trained groups, show no ear advantage for pitch contrasts which are recognized by speakers of Thai, when presented in a linguistic context. The only effect of musical training is an enhancement of left ear accuracy for pitch contrast recognition. (Author/SW)