It is yet unclear whether congenitally deaf cochlear implant (CD CI) users' visual and multisensory emotion perception is influenced by their history in sign language acquisition. We hypothesized that early-signing CD CI users, relative to late-signing CD CI users and hearing, non-signing controls, show better facial expression recognition and…

Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with…

It is well known that mental state verbs are difficult to acquire, but little is known about the acquisition of mental state language encoded through intonation. Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) has at least three intonation contours available for marking polar questions (PQs): ¡H*L% marks an utterance as a PQ; H+L*L%, in addition to doing the former,…

This study tests the hypothesis that late first-language English / second-language Spanish learners (L1 English / L2 Spanish learners) acquire spirantization in stages according to the prosodic hierarchy (Zampini, 1997, 1998). In Spanish, voiced stops [b d g] surface after a pause or nasal stop, and continuants [ß? ð? ??] surface postvocalically,…

This study aimed to examine the relationship between fourth-graders' reading fluency, reading comprehension and attention. It was conducted using the relational screening model and included 132 fourth-graders with grade level adequate reading skills. The study results showed that good readers' attention had significant effects on reading speed,…

Infants perceive intonation contrasts early in development in contrast to lexical stress but similarly to lexical pitch accent. Previous studies have mostly focused on pitch height/direction contrasts; however, languages use a variety of pitch features to signal meaning, including differences in pitch timing. In this study, we investigate infants'…

The present study examines narrative competence and its relationships with syntactic and prosodic skills in preschool children. The narrative skills of 30 typically developing Italian children were assessed during their first year of kindergarten attendance (T1) and again one year later (T2). A picture book was used to elicit children's…

Phonemic and prosodic awareness are both phonological processes that operate at different levels: the former at the level of the individual sound segment and the latter at the suprasegmental level across syllables. Both have been shown to be related to word reading in young readers. In this study we examine how these processes are differentially…

Purpose: Our aim is to explore the complex interplay of prosody (tone of speech) and semantics (verbal content) in the perception of discrete emotions in speech. Method: We implement a novel tool, the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech. Eighty native English speakers were presented with spoken sentences made of different combinations of 5…

Many languages have processes which lengthen or shorten a vowel or consonant. In this dissertation, I concentrate on Open Syllable Lengthening, Closed Syllable Shortening, Monosyllabic Lengthening and Trochaic Lengthening, and present a formal model which captures these lengthenings and shortening as the insertion, deletion or reassignment of a…

Bayburt University's English Language Teaching (ELT) department, is starting its courses as of 2016 fall season, using the Turkish sage Dede Korkut's tales as part of its speech training curriculum. The story "Wild Dumrul" presented in this article is famous in world literature for its theme of "marital love and sacrifice."…

Supra-segmental features refer to various forms of intonation and how words and sentences are uttered. Such features challenge meaning and comprehension, too. Despite the importance of these features and their reported association with phonological awareness and linguistic comprehension, their effects on reading comprehension have not been…

This article reports a study that aimed to find out whether F0 patterns of L2 English produced by Vietnamese speakers are different to those of native English speakers, whether the non-native F0 patterns are transferred from Vietnamese, and to what extent English and Vietnamese F0 profiles differ. Ten native/L1 Australian English speakers, 20…

Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4;5 to 5;6 reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness.…

This study investigated the integration of word- and phrase-level prominences in speech produced by twenty-five school-aged children (6;2 to 7;3) and twenty-five adults. Participants produced disyllabic number words in a straight count condition and in two phrasal conditions, namely, a stress clash and non-clash phrasal context. Duration and…