We consider how the existence of different signifiers for mathematical objects in different languages manifests in discourse about those objects. Based on the observation that there is a common signifier "derivative" in English used for both the derivative at a point and the derivative function and two phonetically and semantically…

In this article we look at some of the structural properties of second language (L2) Japanese WH questions. In Japanese the WH words are licensed to remain "in situ" by the prosodic contiguity properties of the phrases which have no prosodic boundaries between the WH word and the question particle. In a rehearsed-reading, sentence…

The speech of second language learners is often influenced by phonetic patterns of their first language. This can make them difficult to understand, but sometimes for listeners of the same first language to a lesser extent than for native listeners. The present study investigates listeners' awareness of the accent by asking whether accented speech…

When speaking to infants, adults typically alter the acoustic properties of their speech in a variety of ways compared with how they speak to other adults; for example, they use higher pitch, increased pitch range, more pitch variability, and slower speech rate. Research shows that these vocal changes happen similarly across industrialized…

Research in second language speech has often focused on listeners' accent judgment and factors that affect their perception. However, the topic of listeners' application of specific sound categories in their own perceptual judgments has not been widely investigated. The current study explored how listeners from diverse language backgrounds weighed…

The [voice] distinction between homorganic stops and fricatives is made by a number of acoustic correlates including voicing, segment duration, and preceding vowel duration. The present work looks at [voice] from a number of multidimensional perspectives. This dissertation's focus is a corpus study of the phonetic realization of [voice] in two…

This study of L-2 Russian interlanguage production examined the salience of phonetic, lexical and syntactical features for L-1 listener intelligibility, based on L-2 recitation of written scripts (Part I) and also unrehearsed speech (Part II). Part III of the study investigated strategies used by native-speaking teachers of Russian as a Second…

The effects of dialectal differences upon the speech production skills of children with phonological disorders are poorly understood. One might predict that the phonological profile of children using a radical dialect (e.g., Puerto Rican Spanish, which alters consonants in the syllable rhyme) will differ from that of children who use a…

This paper discusses the concept of error in the learning of the phonology of a second language and argues that the concept of error must be viewed as a positive element, an initiation of the process of successive approximations toward the correct phonetic realization. Based on the idea that interference between two languages generates a…