Language and accent strongly influence the formation of social groups. By five years of age, children already show strong social preferences for peers who speak their native language with a familiar accent (Kinzler, Shutts, DeJesus, & Spelke, 2009). However, little is known about the factors that modulate the strength and direction of…

Reviews of literature made manifest that native English speakers who were research participants in many studies on disagreements were Americans (e.g., Beebe & Takahashi, 1989; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993; Dogacay-Aktuna & Kamisli 1996; Rees-Miller, 2000; Guodong & Jing, 2005; Chen, 2006). The excessive use of Americans as research…

This paper examines the usage frequency of phonetically reduced modals (i.e. "gonna," "wanna," "gotta") in Present-day English. It is assumed that in distinct sociolinguistic and discourse contexts, the use of reduced modals is dynamic. To collect the data, there are five corpora used in this study, "Corpus of…

This article examines the influence of gradient foreign accentedness on lexical competition during spoken word recognition. Using native and Mandarin-accented English words ranging in degree of foreign accentedness, we investigate the effect of increased accentedness on (a) the size of the competitor space and (b) the strength and duration of…

Purpose: This study investigated nasalance in speakers from six different dialectal regions across North America using recent versions of the Nasometer. It was hypothesized that many of the sound changes observed in regional dialects of North American English would have a significant impact on measures of nasalance. Method: Samples of the Zoo…

The current study examined how two groups of native speakers--monolingual Canadians and multilingual Singaporeans--differentially perceive foreign accentedness in spontaneous second language (L2) speech. The Singaporean raters, who had exposure to various models of English and also spoke multiple L2s on a daily basis, demonstrated more lenient…

This introduction to the symposium approaches the themes of autonomy and homogeneity in Canadian English from a historical perspective. We trace the debates on these topics back to the late 19th century and relate them to changing public attitudes toward Canadian linguistic autonomy over time. We review the scholarly evidence on autonomy and…

In their keynote contribution, Poplack, Zentz & Dion (henceforth PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) propose an interesting "scientific test of convergence" (under section heading: "Introduction") which contains criteria to check whether a particular feature in a given language in contact with another one is…

Newfoundland English has long been considered autonomous within the North American context. Sociolinguistic studies conducted over the past three decades, however, typically suggest cross-generational change in phonetic feature use, motivated by greater alignment with mainland Canadian English norms. The present study uses data spanning the past…

Ultrasound imaging was used to investigate the articulation of the voiceless velar stop [k] in five speakers with compensatory articulation related to cleft palate. The perceptual evaluation of the acoustic realization and the visual assessment of the tongue movement for the target sound were made by three examiners. The analysis revealed a…

Systematic syllable-based variation has been observed in the relative spatial and temporal properties of supralaryngeal gestures in a number of complex segments. Generally, more anterior gestures tend to appear at syllable peripheries while less anterior gestures occur closer to syllable peaks. Because previous studies compared only two gestures,…

The language settings used on personal computers interact with the spell-checker in Microsoft Word, which directly affects the flagging of spellings that are deemed incorrect. This study examined the language settings of personal computers owned by a group of Canadian university students. Of 21 computers examined, only eight had their Windows…

In this study, we investigate whether preposition stranding, a stereotypical non-standard feature of North American French, results from convergence with English, and the role of bilingual code-switchers in its adoption and diffusion. Establishing strict criteria for the validation of contact-induced change, we make use of the comparative…

Acoustic properties of 980 tokens of sibilants /s, z, [approximately]/ produced by 17 Canadian English-speaking female and male tongue cancer patients were studied. The patients had undergone tongue resection and tongue reconstruction with a radial forearm free flap (RFFF). The spectral moments (mean, skewness) and frication duration were analysed…

A methodological shortcoming in previous second language (L2) acquisition studies has been that researchers have assumed an overly homogenous first language (L1) ignoring dialect differences. In the current study English and German vowel production data were collected from 72 English-speaking learners of German from three distinct North American…