We investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference…

"Interactional competence" is a theoretical construct that has only recently been tested empirically. Speakers contribute to an interaction with their individual resources; however, interactional competence is co-constructed by all participants. Interactional competence can be observed in spoken interaction as speakers' combined ability…

This study investigates 3- to 5-year-old children's sensitivity to lexical, intonational and gestural information in the comprehension of speaker uncertainty. Most previous studies on children's understanding of speaker certainty and uncertainty across languages have focused on the comprehension of lexical markers, and little is known about the…

The present investigation seeks to determine whether and under what circumstances can adult bilinguals deploy segmentation strategies characteristic of their two languages, or of their dominant language. To that end, we inquired whether the context language employed during the segmentation experiment (i.e., the language in which participants…

This study investigates the preferences for attachment of a relative clause (RC) to a complex noun phrase (NP) of the type: NP1 of NP2, in Spanish-English bilinguals and advanced learners of Spanish. Spanish speakers show a moderate preference for attaching the RC to the first NP, while speakers of English prefer the second NP. Subjects were…

Yucatec Maya (YM) is an indigenous language of Mexico that features both phonemic tonal distinctions and phonemic vowel length. These features are primarily associated with the phonetic cues of pitch and duration, which are also considered the primary correlates of stress in language. Though scholars have noted the existence of stress or accent…

This dissertation project examined the influence of language typology on the use of segmentation cues by second language (L2) learners of English. Previous research has shown that native English speakers rely more on sentence context and lexical knowledge than segmental (i.e. phonotactics or acoustic-phonetics) or prosodic cues (e.g., word stress)…

Prosodic information aids segmentation of the continuous speech signal and thereby facilitates auditory speech processing. Durational and pitch variations are prosodic cues especially necessary to convey prosodic boundaries, but alaryngeal speakers have inconsistent control over acoustic parameters such as F0 and duration, being as a result noisy…

Non-native speakers of English often experience problems in pronunciation as they are learning English, many such problems persisting even when the speaker has achieved a high degree of fluency. Research has shown that for a non-native speaker to sound most natural and intelligible in his or her second language, the speaker must acquire proper…

This paper investigates the acquisition of prosodic words in European Portuguese (EP) through analysis of grammatical and statistical properties of the target language and child speech. The analysis of grammatical properties shows that there are solid cues to the prosodic word (PW) in EP, and the presence of early word-based phonology in child…