The present study investigated six experienced English as a second language (ESL) teachers' metalinguistic knowledge of the English intonation system through analysis of their metalanguage. Participants' metalanguage related to intonation was collected while completing three tasks: (1) a semi-structured interview, (2) a simulated teaching…

This research investigated whether observing beat gesture and hearing contrastive accenting with novel words enhances their learning in early childhood and whether these effects differ by sex in light of sex differences in the pace of language development. Fifty-three 3- to 5-year-old boys and girls learned pairs of novel words with contrasting…

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners' speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two…

Children are adept at learning their language's speech-sound categories, but just how these categories function in their developing lexicon has not been mapped out in detail. Here, we addressed whether, in a language-guided looking procedure, 2-year-olds would respond to a mispronunciation of the voicing of the initial consonant of a newly learned…

Mandarin speakers tend to adapt intervocalic nasals as either an onset of the following syllable (e.g. Bruno [right arrow] "bù.lu.nuò"), as a nasal geminate (e.g. Daniel [right arrow] "dan.ní.er"), or as one of the above forms (e.g. Tiffany [right arrow] "dì.fú.ní" or "dì.fen.ní"). Huang and Lin (2013, 2016)…

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the…

This study investigates the relative impact of verbal expression and tone of voice when native speakers of English form an impression of non-native speech. Four expressions of inquiry uttered in two tones by non-native speakers were judged by native listeners and analyzed using an ordinal Probit model. Plain expressions received lower scores than…

Infants in their first year manifest selective patterns of discrimination between languages and between accents of the same language. Prosodic differences are held to be important in whether languages can be discriminated, together with the infant's familiarity with one or both of the accents heard. However, the nature of the prosodic cues that…

An experiment investigated the effect of tonal language background on discrimination of pitch contour in short spoken and musical items. It was hypothesized that extensive exposure to a tonal language attunes perception of pitch contour. Accuracy and reaction times of adult participants from tonal (Thai) and non-tonal (Australian English) language…

The interrogative intonation of Cubans and Cuban Americans living in Miami is investigated. Two different intonation patterns are used in this variety of Spanish to convey absolute interrogative meaning: one with a falling final contour, as has been observed in Cuban Spanish, and one with a rising final contour, as is used in American English and…

To what extent does language acquisition recruit domain-general processing mechanisms? In this dissertation, evidence concerning this question is garnered from the study of individual differences in infant speech perception and their predictive value with respect to language development in early childhood. In the first experiment, variation in the…

Eight map task dialogs representative of general Australian English were coded for speaker turn and for dialog acts using a version of SWBD-DAMSL, a dialog act annotation scheme. High, low, simple, and complex rising tunes, and any corresponding dialog act codes were then compared. The Australian statement high rise (usually realized as a L…