As the most commonly established and attested language contact phenomenon, loanwords, also known as lexical borrowings, may undergo transformations when borrowed from the source language (SL) to the borrowing language (BL). Previous studies have separately illustrated the role of perception and phonology in the borrowing process. However, the…

In this dissertation, I investigated how cognitive resources as well as formal, and informal language experience impact language learning in two studies. In the first study (Chapter 2), I examined the learning of Spanish grammatical gender by Chinese international students who were studying abroad in the US. The goal of that study was to uncover…

The current study lays the groundwork for a model of Mandarin tones based on both native speakers' and non-native speakers' perception and production. It demonstrates that there is variability in non-native speakers' tone productions and that there are differences in the perceptual boundaries in native speakers and non-native speakers. There…

This paper compares the tone systems of Vietnamese and English, with emphasis on the teaching of English as a second language. Rising, level, high, low, and falling tones are identified for English. Vietnamese has all of these except the last. While in Vietnamese, tones are predictable in the sense that tones and words go together, English tones…

This introduction to elementary Yoruba is divided into two parts. The first section is on sound drills, and the second section concerns Yoruba greetings. The first part includes exercises to enable the student to master the Yoruba sound system. Emphasis is on pronunciation and recognition of the sounds and tones, but not memorization. A tape is…

This is an introductory text for the Swazi language, siSwati. Spoken by nearly a half million people in Swaziland, siSwati is one of the Nguni languages of the southeastern branch of the Bantu languages. Each of the 25 lessons in this text covers one or more basic grammatical structures. The first five lessons present the sound system in detail,…