The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best, 1995) claims listeners directly perceive articulatory gestures of the vocal tract rather than acoustic/auditory signals. Accordingly, the articulatory similarities and discrepancies between native and non-native sounds determine the perceptual assimilation patterns of non-native sounds. This study…

Research on recognition of complex words has primarily focused on affixational complexity in concatenative languages. This dissertation investigates both templatic and affixational complexity in Hebrew, a templatic language, with particular focus on the role of the root and template morphemes in recognition. It also explores the role of morphology…

In this dissertation we examine the effects of pronunciation instruction on the perception of a novel L2 contrast. The novel contrast in this case is the glottal fricative which results in Spanish from the suppression buccal gestures of /s/ in the word-medial coda position. This process which occurs in Spanish, but not English is known as…