This dissertation examines the interface between music and language in "Huju", which is a Shanghai dialect based regional opera. Chapter I is a short introduction. Chapter II presents a thorough review of the studies on linguistic tone and music tune, and provides descriptive background information about "Huju" and Shanghai…

This dissertation explores a purportedly unusual word type known as the "sesquisyllable," which has long been considered characteristic of mainland Southeast Asian languages. Sesquisyllables are traditionally defined as "one and a half" syllables, or as one "major" syllable preceded by one "minor" syllable,…

Recent literature has sought to understand the presence of epenthetic vowels after the productions of postvocalic word-final consonants by second language (L2) learners whose first languages (L1s) restrict the presence of obstruents in coda position. Previous models include those in which epenthesis is seen as a strategy to mitigate the effects of…

This paper evaluates two classes of hypotheses about how people prosodically segment utterances: (1) meaning-based proposals, with a focus on Watson and Gibson's (2004) proposal, according to which speakers tend to produce boundaries before and after long constituents; and (2) balancing proposals, according to which speakers tend to produce…

Models of reading aloud have tended to focus on the mapping between graphemes and phonemes in monosyllables. Critical adaptations of these models are required when considering the reading of polysyllables, which constitute over 90% of word types in English. In this paper, we examined one such adaptation--the process of stress assignment in…

This paper investigates whether the rhythmic properties of varieties of English found in each of the concentric circles of Kachru's model can, in any way, be elucidated by the "Three Circles" model. A measurement and comparison of the rhythm of three varieties of English: British English (from the Inner Circle), Singapore English (from…

In a recent article, Aichert and Ziegler (2004) explore whether apraxia of speech (AOS) can be explained by disruption of the phonetic plans for high frequency syllables. This approach is a hybrid one, combining the notion of a mental syllabary with an explanation that the impairment in AOS results from reduced access to supra-segmental phonetic…

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic…

Greek is a language with lexical stress that marks stress orthographically with a special diacritic. Thus, the orthography and the lexicon constitute potential sources of stress assignment information in addition to any possible general default metrical pattern. Here, we report two experiments with secondary education children reading aloud…

Under the assumption that, with the exception of certain learned, retarded, and borrowed words, the bulk of any language undergoes sound changes that are regular over any given geographical area, over any given time span, and in any given sound environment, these sound changes have been reduced to logical terms and have been programmed to generate…

The interaction between prosodic and segmental aspects of infant representations for speech was explored using the head-turn paradigm, with untrained everyday familiar words and phrases as stimuli. At 11 months English-learning infants, like French infants (Halle & Boysson-Bardies, 1994), attended significantly longer to a list of familiar lexical…

A comparison of the application of two current theories of stress to a particular stress pattern found in the Salish language Sooke is presented. Hammond's (1986) grid-like tree structure representation of stress is compared with Halle and Vergnaud's (1986) tree-like grid structure. Examples in the Australian language Maranungku show that, in…

A model of early phonotactic and prosodic development in Swedish children is described. Although the model is based on data about the phonology of language disordered children, it is valid for normal development and useful for diagnosis of phonological impairment. Data included a cross-sectional study of 31 language disordered children aged 4 to 8…

This paper deals with methods and models appropriate to the systematic linguistic study of the child's acquisiton of phonology. Sections I through IV present a review of previous studies in the field, discuss the usefulness of the concept of "innateness," discriminate between phonetic and phonological ability, and discuss the concept of discrete…

Analysis of the distributional properties of non-syllabic vowels within word boundaries in Italian demonstrates: the role of phonological constraints on the distribution of non-syllabic words; the syllabification possibilities within each type of sequence by setting up a structural model; and the phonemic occurrences in vowel sequences collected…