Much of what is known about the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in second language Spanish is based on studies of English-speaking learners. This body of research has demonstrated common pathways in the acquisition of multiple variable structures, as well as how second language learners come to use (or not) Spanish in linguistically and…

In this interview study involving the analysis of narratives collected from Japanese American professionals teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) who have lived more than ten years in Japan, I focus on how the participants negotiated their often contested identities in the TESOL context in Japan. I use the notion of identity…

The triad dimensions of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) has been widely used for assessing second language performance and development. Unlike accuracy and fluency, the construct of Chinese syntactic complexity has not been comprehensibly conceptualized or operationalized. Moreover, not tailored to the typological differences such as the…

Second language (L2) learners of tone languages do not perceive and produce the different tones of the target language with equal ease. The most common explanation for these asymmetries is that acoustically salient tones are the easiest to learn. An alternative explanation is that tones are easiest to learn when they are highly frequent in the…

Building upon current research in native-speaker (NS) perception of L2 learner phonology (Zielinski, 2008; Derwing & Munro, 2009), the present investigation analyzed multiple dimensions of NS speech perception in order to achieve a more complete understanding of the specific linguistic elements and attitudinal variables that contribute to…

The present longitudinal study describes and categorizes the primary changes in L2 Spanish intonation over time by 11 learners studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina for one academic semester. Via the autosegmental metrical model of analysis, this dissertation classifies intonational contours for absolute interrogatives and declarative…

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…

This dissertation explores discourse anaphora in English and Korean by using a neo-Gricean pragmatic approach with corpus-based data. Very little study of Korean discourse anaphora has yet taken place at the inter-sentential level, except works looking at zero anaphor and a logophoric reflexive pronoun "caki" "self." This…

The purpose of this research is to identify a core set of vocabulary used by native Urdu language (UL) speakers during dyadic conversation for social interaction and relationship building. This study was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan at an institution of higher education. This research seeks to distinguish between general (nonspecific…

Understanding of visual representations is a pivotal skill necessary in science. These visual, verbal, and numeric representations are the crux of science discourses "by scientists, with students and the general public" (Pauwels, 2006, p.viii). Those who lack the understanding of these representations see it as a foreign language, one…

Research has shown that lexical tones, a suprasegmental feature, are processed by native speakers as linguistic elements just like other segmental information. Among the four tones of Mandarin Chinese, in particular, Tone 2 and Tone 3 are very similar in their pitch contour shapes and thus can be difficult to distinguish in native and nonnative…

Speech prosody is a multi-faceted dimension of speech which can be measured and analyzed in a variety of ways. In this study, the speech prosody of Mandarin L1 speakers, English L2 speakers, and English L1 speakers was assessed by trained raters who listened to sound clips of the speakers responding to a graph prompt and reading a short passage.…

Previous Language Testing research has largely reported that although many raters' characteristics affect their evaluations of language assessments (Reed & Cohen, 2001), being a native speaker or non-native speaker rater does not significantly affect final ratings (Kim, 2009). In Second Language Acquisition, some researchers conclude that…

This dissertation investigated the effects of technological mediation on second language (L2) learning, focusing, as a case study, on gains in listening perception of the subtle but important feature of pitch placement in Japanese. Pitch accent can be difficult to perceive for non-native speakers whose first language (L1) does not rely on pitch or…

This dissertation offers a detailed account of the phonology, morphophonology and elements of the morphosyntax of Kubeo, a language from the Eastern Tukanoan family, spoken in the Northwest Amazon. The dissertation is itself an experiment of how language documentation and empowering of the native speaker community can be combined with academic…