French sentences with a long ambiguous word just before a target phoneme led to faster reaction times than did sentences with a short unambigous word just before the target phoneme. (Author/SW)

Using standard classical conditioning and concept-formation paradigms, research showed that all phones of a phoneme were considered "the same" by linguistically naive speakers. Results also supported the notion of the phoneme as a unit that functions in speech perception. (RL)

Fourteen two-year-olds were presented with minimal word pairs in a new and efficient experimental perception paradigm. Data provide a view of relative difficulty of various minimal phonological contrasts for children. (CHK)

Canadian English-Italian bilingual children were administered phonological, reading, spelling, syntactic, and working memory tasks in both languages. Results suggest English-Italian interdependence is most clearly related to phonological processing but may influence other linguistic modules. Exposure to a language with more predictable…

This paper offers some partial identifications of the communicative functions of Tarahumara alternations and underscores their implications for a cognitive phonology. (Contains 17 references.) (JL)

This article describes morphophonemic elements in Mazahua, a language of the Otomian family of Central Mexico. The study makes use of the theoretical and notational framework of generative phonology. (CLK)

Research has shown that the commonly taught phonics rule "a vowel in the middle of a one-syllable word is short" is accurate only 68% of the time, given that a single-syllable word has been correctly identified. A recent research endeavor, which analyzed 138,000 words listed in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of…

THIS 7-YEAR LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE SKILLS OF 338 OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, SCHOOL CHILDREN UTILIZES A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF BOTH THE SEMANTIC AND STRUCTURAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE. A SPECIFIC METHOD OF LANGUAGE ANALYSIS HAS BEEN SHAPED. THE "SEGMENTATION" METHOD OF ANALYSIS USES SEVERAL TYPES OF SENTENCE SEGMENTS. A…

The premise of this paper is that English orthography has formed a system that represents more than phonetic values, but also represents semantic, etymological, and preferential values. The paper notes that English is a fairly regular and complex system in which both sound and meaning share leading roles in determining spelling. Studies are…

This report is one of a regular series about the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. The 11 papers discuss the dissociation of spectral and temporal cues to the voicing distinction in initial stopped consonants; perceptual integration and selective attention in…

Weakening and deletion of syllable-final and word-final phonemes, a phenomenon prevalant in Puerto Rican Spanish, was studied. Two of these phonemes, /s#/ and /n#/ were examined for their capacity as plural markers. Data were collected during a one-year ethnographically-oriented study of a single block in the Puerto Rican community in north…

Patterns which partly resemble the proposed "fronting,""voicing," and "stopping" tendencies exist to a statistically significant degree in David Olmsted's large sample of child speech. Instead of the "voicing" pattern that has been suggested, however, voiced stops seem to be favored word-initially, but voiced fricatives are favored word-finally.…

Speech discrimination by 12 children aged about 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 years was tested, using the discrimination learning procedure of Shvachkin's 1948 Russian study. Recent work on the acquisition of syntax and semantics shows an ordered acquisition for linguistic items; this pilot study was to test whether the ability to discriminate between consonants…

Fricatives and affricates in different word positions and initial fricative clusters were elicited from three linguistically deviant children (ages five years, two months to seven years) and one normal child (age two years, nine months) by means of pictures depicting familiar objects. Data from two of the older children and the normal child are…

Forty normal children aged 3 and-one-half to 5 and-one-half were tested on the pronunciation of initial /-1/, /-r/, and /s-/ clusters in 120 words, occurring 36, 48, and 42 times, respectively; other phonemes in the cluster occurred from 6 to 18 times. Articulation errors of individual subjects were examined for evidence of (1) degree and type of…