In phonetics research, language alternation--including code switching (speaker-initiated) and cued switching (researcher-prompted)--can be used as a tool to investigate various aspects of speech production and perception in bilingual or multilingual speakers (Bullock & Toribio, 2009a). Studies on the production of voice onset time (VOT) during…

The interaction between input frequency and constructional interference receives little attention in second language (L2) research. Two studies were conducted to test the effect of this interaction. Study 1 examined effects of both Zipfian frequency (ZF) and balanced frequency (BF) on L2 learning of English subject-extracted relative clauses…

Three profoundly deaf individuals undertook a low-frequency backward lexical translation task (French/English), where morphological structure was manipulated and orthographic distance between test items was measured. Conditions included monomorphemic items (simplex), polymorphemic items (complex), items whose French morphological structure…

In this article we focus on "false cognates", lexical items that have overlapping orthographic/phonological properties but little or no semantic overlap. False-cognate pairs were created from French (second language or L2) and English (first language or L1) items by manipulating the levels of morphological correspondence between them.…

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation…

The present study was designed to investigate the ways in which notions of semantics and phonology are acquired by adult naive learners of American Sign Language (ASL) when they are first exposed to a set of simple signs. First, a set of ASL signs was tested for nontransparency and a set of signs was selected for subsequent use. Next, a set of…

We examined how linguistic context influences the nature of bilingual lexical activation. We hypothesized that in single-word context, form-related words would receive the strongest activation while, in sentence context, semantically related words would receive the strongest activation. Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification…

Most studies on the Stroop effect (unintentional automatic word processing) have been restricted to English speakers using vocal responses. Little is known about this effect with deaf signers. The study compared Stroop task responses among four different samples: deaf participants from a Japanese-language environment and from an English-language…