Formulaic expressions (FEs), such as conventional collocations (e.g., fresh air) and phrases (e.g., take a break), constitute a significant part of language use in our daily lives (Erman & Warren, 2000). FEs are defined as multiword units that holistically represent a single meaning, and they are likely stored and retrieved as unanalyzed…

The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the (in)effectiveness of the Usage-based grammar approach through explicit instruction of adverbials in the US educational context. One area that can complicate the question of native speakers' grammar knowledge is their awareness of grammatical terms and their functions. Along with exploring…

Second language (L2) phonological acquisition involves learning novel target-language sounds, variable forms of sounds that arise in different phonological contexts, and any phonotactic constraints that govern their appearance. Interlanguage (IL) grammars must adapt to represent sounds and constraints that are novel to the native language (L1)…

The traditional Philadelphia allophonic /ae/ system (henceforth: PHL shown in (1) below) is characterized by a set of complicated conditioning factors and a dramatic acoustic distinction between the two allophones. In recent years, some Philadelphians have begun to exhibit a new allophonic system (NAS, shown in (2) below). Like PHL, NAS is…

The study of short-"a" (e.g., the vowel in words such as "bat," "bad," "bang," "ban") in New York City English (NYCE) has a long history, and with many different descriptions of this complex system (e.g., Babbitt 1896; Trager 1930; Labov 1966/2006; Cohen 1970; Labov 2007). It is complex due to the…

Recent research has shown that distinct event-related potential (ERP) signatures are associated with switching between languages compared to switching between dialects or registers (e.g., Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2007; Moreno, Federmeier & Kutas, 2002). The current investigation builds on these findings to examine whether contrastive and…

This thesis argues that rhythmic well-formedness preferences contribute to conditioning morphosyntactic choices, providing evidence from patterns in language use that constraints on phonological constructs are at work in the assessment of competing morphosyntactic variants. The results of the thesis call into question a fundamental empirical…

This dissertation explores the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by speakers of non-tonal languages within the framework of Optimality Theory. The effects of three L1s are analyzed: American English, a stress-accent language; Tokyo Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language; and Seoul Korean, a non-stress and non-pitch accent…

This study examined the linguistic competence in Korean of Korean heritage language learners (HLLs), compared to English-speaking non-heritage language learners (NHLLs) of Korean. It is unclear and controversial as to whether heritage languages learners are exposed to early but are interrupted manifest as L1 competence or share more…

Utilizing the methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA), this study examines teaching moments observed in free conversations by pairs of Japanese and American friends. CA's detailed turn-by-turn analysis reveals that teaching of vocabulary, idioms, and culture occurs when native speakers orient to the non-nativeness of the other speakers.…

This dissertation is a reference grammar of the Malimiut Coastal dialect of Inupiaq (ISO: ESI, ESK, IPK), an Eskimo-Aleut language of northwestern Alaska spoken by the Inupiat people. It complements existing descriptions of Inupiaq by filling gaps in documentation. With approximately 2000 speakers, mainly above 50 years of age, Inupiaq is…

Using the Practice Theory Approach to Language, this dissertation examines how social actors use communicative practices within activities to constitute a communicative context that I call the American English Stuttering Speech Community (AESSC). Building on previous linguistic research on stuttering and sociological research on collectives of…

Function (i.e., grammatical) words very frequently lack word-level stress and display phonetic reduction relative to content (i.e., lexical) words. However, word-class (function vs . content) may not be the only factor that affects phonetic realization of function words; prosodic and syntactic context can also play a significant role in…

This study of L-2 Russian interlanguage production examined the salience of phonetic, lexical and syntactical features for L-1 listener intelligibility, based on L-2 recitation of written scripts (Part I) and also unrehearsed speech (Part II). Part III of the study investigated strategies used by native-speaking teachers of Russian as a Second…