It has long been recognized that there is a natural dependence between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition, with the idea that the right knowledge representation enables acquisition to happen as reliably as it does. Given this, a reasonable criterion for a theory of knowledge representation is that it be…

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)…

Many languages have processes which lengthen or shorten a vowel or consonant. In this dissertation, I concentrate on Open Syllable Lengthening, Closed Syllable Shortening, Monosyllabic Lengthening and Trochaic Lengthening, and present a formal model which captures these lengthenings and shortening as the insertion, deletion or reassignment of a…

This study provides a systematic phonetic analysis of the basic entities of Kabardian prosodic units above the word and investigates the predictability of prosodic units from grammatical and discourse factors. This dissertation is the first extensive description of Kabardian prosody and grammar based on natural data. This study proposes that…

In the English lexicon, laryngeal alternations in the plural (e.g. "leaf" ~ "leaves") impact monosyllables more than finally stressed polysyllables. This is the opposite of what happens typologically, and would thereby run contrary to the predictions of "initial-syllable faithfulness." Despite the lexical pattern, in a wug test we found…

Bih is a Chamic (Austronesian) language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Southern highlands of Vietnam. This dissertation is the first descriptive grammar of the language, based on extensive fieldwork and community-based language documentation in Vietnam and written from a functional/typological perspective. The analysis in this work is…

North Kyungsang Korean (NKK) is a pitch accent language in which each word has one of a restricted set of possible tonal patterns, and where the tonal pattern of a given lexical word is not fully predictable. This dissertation reports on a corpus study of accent patterns in existing words and the results of a study in which NKK speakers were asked…

The dissertation study aims to contribute mainly to the field of loanword phonology in general and particularly to Indonesian and its phonology that are rarely studied to date. The study investigates what consonantal and syllabic repair strategies are employed by Indonesian in adapting Arabic and Dutch loanwords, whether these adaptation…

Certain ill-formed phonological structures are systematically under-represented across languages and misidentified by human listeners. It is currently unclear whether this results from grammatical phonological knowledge that actively recodes ill-formed structures, or from difficulty with their phonetic encoding. To examine this question, we gauge…

THIS STUDY OF THE CANTONESE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM IS A CASE STUDY OF THE PHONOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. ATTEMPTS ARE MADE IN CHAPTER III TO SOLVE SOME OLD PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE ANALYSIS OF CANTONESE WITHIN THIS NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. MOST OF THE PROBLEMS ARE PSEUDO-PROBLEMS, IN THE SENSE THAT THEY POSE DIFFICULTIES ONLY…

This study examines the acquisition of English syllable codas by two native speakers of Vietnamese. Data were collected at three intervals over 1 year. Results indicate that a developmental sequence may exist and that this sequence may not be linear, with some longer (i.e., two and three member) codas emerging before some singleton codas.…

The seven working papers on linguistic theory contained in this volume include: "Two Properties of the Intransitive Resultative Construction" (Yoichi Miyamoto); "Multiple Subject Construction in Korean: A Functional Explanation" (Youngjun Jang); "Constraints on Noun Incorporation in Korean" (Hangyoo Khym);…

Some Japanese examples of several common phonological phenomena (whispered vowels, nuclear friction, and consonant-vowel articulation) are examined. The segmental and transformational characterizations of these and related phenomena are reassessed and it is shown that by paying more careful attention to phonetic detail and abandoning conventional…

Four working papers in linguistics are presented. "Basic Configurations of Pragmatic Structuring" (Robert A. Dooley) presents evidence for basic or unmarked pragmatic configurations in three Brazilian languages: Topic-Comment in Mbya Guarani, Comment-Topic in Hixkaryana, and Focus-Presupposition in Xavante. "The Syllable Structure…

Seven papers on various topics in language research are presented, including: "What Makes the Japanese Inscrutable?: A Linguistic Perspective" (Julie Bruch); "A New Look at Old English Metrics" (Alison K. Huettner); "A Class of Indefinites in Vietnamese" (Laura A. Michaelis); "Cohesion and the Yiddish Consecutive…