In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

Speakers of gender-agreement languages use gender-marked elements of the noun phrase in spoken-word recognition: A congruent marking on a determiner or adjective facilitates the recognition of a subsequent noun, while an incongruent marking inhibits its recognition. However, while monolinguals and early language learners evidence this…

Although previous research has established that multiple top-down factors guide the identification of words during speech processing, the ultimate range of information sources that listeners integrate from different levels of linguistic structure is still unknown. In a set of experiments, we investigate whether comprehenders can integrate…

The present investigation examines English speakers' ability to identify and discriminate non-native consonant length contrast. Three groups (L1 English No-Instruction, L1 English Instruction, and L1 Finnish control) performed a speeded forced-choice identification task and a speeded AX discrimination task on Finnish non-words (e.g.…

In an event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the role of age of acquisition (AoA) on the use of second language rhythmic properties during syntactic ambiguity resolution. Syntactically ambiguous sentences embedded in rhythmically regular and irregular contexts were presented to Turkish early and late second language (L2) learners of…

This study examines the acquisition of the English laryngeal system by native speakers of (Belgian) Dutch. Both languages have a two-way laryngeal system, but while Dutch contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, English has a contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops. The primary aim of the article is to test two hypotheses on the acquisition…

Cognitive mechanisms underlying repetition priming in picture naming were decomposed in several experiments. Sets of encoding manipulations meant to selectively prime or reduce priming in object identification or word production components of picture naming were combined factorially to dissociate processes underlying priming in picture naming.…