This dissertation examines native speakers' word recognition of, differentiation between, and social attitudes toward varieties of Arabic. It is a particularly interesting test case because of the Arabic unique regional variation situation and the available literature lacks data on how Arabic speakers perceive different accents, with a particular…

As there is a growing population of non-native speakers worldwide, facilitating communication involving native and non-native speakers has become increasingly important. While one way to help communication involving native and non-native speakers is to help non-native speakers improve proficiency in their target language, another way is to help…

This dissertation examines how L2 Japanese speaker international students experience their subjectivity (Harre & Gillett, 1994), that is, how their language use and actions convey their thoughts and feelings, their sense of self, and how they relate to the world around them, in casual conversations with L1 Japanese speaker peers. In order to…

In Asia, English is used as a lingua franca (ELF; Kirkpatrick, 2010). For Thai university graduates to be successful in their future careers, being able to understand various accents with Thailand's major trading partners, particularly American, Chinese, and Japanese, seems vital. As a listening test which includes these accents is needed, the…

The study abroad (SA) experience is often viewed as an opportunity to gain proficiency in a foreign language due to immersion in the target language and culture. Nevertheless, the increased amount of research conducted on SA over the last two decades indicates that it does not necessarily lead to gains in all areas (Collentine & Freed, 2004;…

This dissertation explores dialect diversification in the long-distance New World Plautdietsch speech community. Plautdietsch dialects are traditionally classified as belonging to one of two types: either Chortitza or Molotschna. The traditional dialect classification has recently come under scrutiny because speakers rarely use features exclusive…

During communication with a novel individual, nonnative accent can be one of the first factors that determine the course of the conversation. This dissertation aims to understand perceptions toward nonnative accented speakers. We aimed to understand the effect of the targets' accent, background, and race on the perceivers' perceptions. In the…

This dissertation explores the processes that drive perceptual adaptation to variation in speech by examining how sources of prediction and uncertainty modulate perceptual learning processes. In particular, we examined how the perceptual system leverages different types of information during adaptation, varying in the degree to which they predict…

This dissertation presents new research on the "Bavarian Quantity Law" (the BQL) in the northern Bavarian dialect of Hahnbach. Building upon earlier investigation of the BQL (cf. Bannert 1976a,b for Central Bavarian) this study examines the historical, phonological, and phonetic motivations for this feature as well the variability in its…

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a description of some aspects of the syntax of Indonesian Teochew, a Southern Min Chinese language spoken in Indonesian. This dissertation examines two dialects of Indonesian Teochew: Jambi Teochew, which is spoken in Jambi City, Sumatra, and Pontianak Teochew, which is spoken in Pontianak, West…

I do two things in my dissertation. One is to tell the history of academic research on my language from the perspective of a Native person who has been involved in this work as an assistant to non-Native researchers. The other is to explain more about my culture and language and how it works from the perspective of a Yakima person who has spoken…

This dissertation investigated the perception and production of dialectally variant prosodic properties in Korean. The current study was focused on the tonal system of North Kyungsang and South Cholla Korean to understand how lexical pitch accent, which is a property of the North Kyungsang variety, is realized by native and non-native speakers of…

This study discusses the banlieue language in an innovative and multi-fronted manner. It seeks to challenge many theories in research on banlieue language, especially stereotypes regarding its speaker base. By expanding current research may be expanded to include more sociolinguistic factors than ever before, we can begin to see that banlieue…

This dissertation examines the Imperfective aspectual system of urban Bahamian Creole English (BahE), a mesolectal creole spoken in The Bahamas. Specifically, following Comrie (1976) I examine three Imperfective aspectual categories in the creole--continuous progressiveness (variable auxiliary "be" use with V- "ing" verbs and…

Systematic differences among regional U.S. English speech are recognizable to native speakers to varying degrees. This has been demonstrated by researchers in perceptual dialectology who ask listeners to match a speaker to his or her dialect region. Machines have also been able to identify the regional origin of a speaker to some degree, although…