The experimenter conducted three experiments to compare incidental language acquisition of familiar and non-familiar stimuli, and asses the effects of specific pairing experiences on the emergence of bidirectional naming (BiN) for familiar and non-familiar stimuli. In Experiment I the experimenter assessed the numbers of accurate untaught listener…

Understanding how people learn the phonological patterns of their language is a major challenge facing the field of phonology. In this dissertation, I approach the issue of phonological learning by focusing on "saltatory" alternations, which occur when two alternating sounds "leap over" an intermediate, invariant sound (e.g.,…

For the past several decades, researchers have been investigating the stages infants go through on their way to acquiring their native language. Research into the question of the order in which, and time when, various facets of phonology are acquired has resulted in a basic timeline of development. Exploration of a second question, namely what…

A central issue in second language acquisition (SLA) research is the relationship between morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic knowledge among L2 learners. It has been proposed that, L2 language acquisition starts with transfer of L1 semantic and morphosyntactic processing strategies; however, it has been observed that, at lower proficiency…

Debuccalization is a weakening phenomenon whereby various consonants reduce to laryngeals. Examples include Spanish s-aspiration (s becomes h word-finally) and English t-glottalization (t becomes glottal stop syllable-finally). Previous analyses of debuccalization view it as a lenition process that deletes or manipulates formal phonological…

This dissertation studies how people describe emotions with language and how computers can simulate this descriptive behavior. Although many non-human animals can express their current emotions as social signals, only humans can communicate about emotions symbolically. This symbolic communication of emotion allows us to talk about emotions that we…

Listeners segment words from the continuous speech stream in their native language by using rhythmic structure, phrasal structure, and phonotactics (e.g. Christophe et al, 2003: McQueen, 1998). One challenging aspect of second language acquisition is the extraction of words from fluent speech, possibly because learners apply a native language…

This dissertation investigates the relation between prosodic events at the phrasal level and component events at the rhythmic level. The overarching hypothesis is that the interaction among component rhythmic events gives rise to prosodic patterns at the phrasal level, while at the same time being constrained by the latter, and that in the case of…

Much recent research has described the development of innovative functions of "like" as a discourse marker ("'Like' they're trying to be discreet about it") or discourse particle ("Maybe it's 'like' a girl thing") and as a quotative marker ("He's 'like' 'I don't want to work until later'"). Comparatively little is known about how speakers acquire…