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Full-Text Articles in Phonetics and Phonology

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson Jan 2024

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper investigates individuals who are proficient in two languages (bilinguals) and the speeds at which bilinguals process cognates (words with comparable form and meaning across languages). This paper cites two ongoing experiments: The Language Identification (LID) task and the Self-Paced Listening (SPL) task. Findings from the LID suggest that phonological overlap in cognates facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in isolation. Findings from the SPL suggest that syntactic overlap in cognates also facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in sentences. These findings are significant in that the tasks present cognates to participants in …


Examining Variability In Spanish Monolingual And Bilingual Phonotactics: A Look At Sc-Clusters, Katerina A. Tetzloff Oct 2022

Examining Variability In Spanish Monolingual And Bilingual Phonotactics: A Look At Sc-Clusters, Katerina A. Tetzloff

Doctoral Dissertations

Current models of generative phonology have failed to address the variability that is observed in bilingual language patterns patterns. This dissertation addresses exactly that issue by examining the perception of Spanish sC-clusters in Spanish monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals. Surface sC-clusters in onset position are prohibited in Spanish and are repaired by inserting a prothetic /e/ (sC $\rightarrow$ esC). English differs in that it allows sC-cluster onsets, and the structure of the sC-cluster has been shown to differ based on the sonority profile (i.e., s+stop clusters are bisyllabic, s+liquid clusters are tautosyllabic). A batch version of a Harmonic Grammar Gradual Learning …


(Not) Speaking Spanish: Explicit Pronunciation Instruction In The Online High School Classroom, Brahm Vanwoerden Apr 2021

(Not) Speaking Spanish: Explicit Pronunciation Instruction In The Online High School Classroom, Brahm Vanwoerden

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Students in the language classroom often face a variety of challenges inherent to the process of learning a second language as an adult. These range from lack of sufficient motivation to structurally uninspired curriculum and are often amplified in the case of a drastic shift in environment. Such a shift took place rapidly over the course of 2020, transforming thousands of classrooms into virtual versions of themselves in a matter of weeks. Students began to receive vastly different quantities and types of language input and interacted with the language in substantially affected ways. Factors that previously played a large role …


The Interaction Of Domain-Initial Effects With Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data From English, Spanish, And Portuguese, Ricardo F. Napoleão De Souza Jun 2019

The Interaction Of Domain-Initial Effects With Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data From English, Spanish, And Portuguese, Ricardo F. Napoleão De Souza

Linguistics ETDs

The phonetic implementation of domain-initial boundaries has gained considerable attention in the literature. However, most studies of the phenomenon have investigated small samples of articulatory data in which target syllables were lexically prominent and/or phrasally accented, introducing important potential confounds. This dissertation tackles these issues by examining how domain-initial effects operate on the acoustic properties of fully unstressed word-initial CV syllables in phrasally unaccented words. Similar materials were designed for a reading task in which 14 speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese, languages that differ in how lexical prominence affects segmental makeup, took part. Results from the acoustic analyses show …


Coarticulation In Two Fricative-Vowel Sequences Of Latin American Spanish, Jeff Renaud May 2018

Coarticulation In Two Fricative-Vowel Sequences Of Latin American Spanish, Jeff Renaud

Celebration of Learning

Dialectal surveys of Latin American Spanish (Perissinotto 1975, Resnick 1975) describe three main possible pronunciations for fu (fuego 'fire') and fo (foco 'focus') sequences: faithful [f], velarized [x], and bilabialized [ɸ], in order of frequency. While the velar realization has received phonetic and theoretical consideration (Lipski 1995, Mazzaro 2011), little is understood about the voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ] in Spanish. This paper describes a three-part production study to uniformly account for the unfaithful velar and bilabial realizations.

Mazzaro (2011) explains the velar [x] variant by arguing that, given the acoustic similarity of, e.g., [fu]/[xu], listeners misperceive a speaker's …


Context Of Learning And Second Language Development Of Spanish Vowels, Avizia Long, Megan Solon, Silvina Bongiovanni May 2018

Context Of Learning And Second Language Development Of Spanish Vowels, Avizia Long, Megan Solon, Silvina Bongiovanni

Faculty Publications

The present study explored development in Spanish vowel production during a short-term study abroad program. The production patterns of a group of learners studying abroad in a 4-week program in the Dominican Republic were compared in terms of overall vowel quality, tendency to diphthongize /e/ and /o/, and vowel duration to those of a similar group of learners studying in the at-home context. Results revealed no significant changes or differences between groups in vowel quality or diphthongization, but a significant improvement (i.e., reduction) in vowel duration for /a/, /o/, and /u/ for the at-home group only. Findings are discussed in …


El Andaluz Y El Español Estadounidense: Exploring Traces Of Andalusian Sibilants In U.S. Spanish, Carolyn M. Siegman Apr 2018

El Andaluz Y El Español Estadounidense: Exploring Traces Of Andalusian Sibilants In U.S. Spanish, Carolyn M. Siegman

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

The Andalucista Theory claims that Andalusian Spanish was particularly influential during the development of Spanish in Latin America during the time of Spanish colonization. The present study seeks to examine traces of Andalusian Spanish in Spanish in the United States, considering the added level of complexity brought by contact with English and heightened contact with other dialects of Spanish. By examining 10 interviews from Andalusian Spanish speakers and 12 interviews from Spanish speakers in the U.S., we provide a comparison of the modern-day phonetic realizations of , , and in these two distant linguistic regions.


Perception Of American–English Vowels By Early And Late Spanish–English Bilinguals, Miriam Baigorri, Luca Campanelli, Erika S. Levy Jan 2018

Perception Of American–English Vowels By Early And Late Spanish–English Bilinguals, Miriam Baigorri, Luca Campanelli, Erika S. Levy

Publications and Research

Increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are entering the US and learning American–English (AE) as a second–language (L2). Previous studies investigating the relationship between AE and Spanish vowels have revealed an advantage for early L2 learners for their accuracy of L2 vowel perception. Replicating and extending such previous research, this study examined the patterns with which early and late Spanish–English bilingual adults assimilated naturally-produced AE vowels to their native vowel-inventory and the accuracy with which they discriminated the vowels. Twelve early Spanish–English bilingual, 12 late Spanish–English bilingual, and 10 monolingual listeners performed perceptual-assimilation and categorical-discrimination tasks involving AE /i,ɪ,ɛ,ʌ,æ,ɑ,o/. Early bilinguals …


Cuasi Nomás Inglés: Prosody At The Crossroads Of Spanish And English In 20th Century New Mexico, Jackelyn Van Buren Nov 2017

Cuasi Nomás Inglés: Prosody At The Crossroads Of Spanish And English In 20th Century New Mexico, Jackelyn Van Buren

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation investigates prosodic change in the long-term language contact setting of Traditional New Mexican Spanish (NMS). NMS prosody is perceptually distinct from other contemporary varieties of Spanish (Hills 1906, Bowen 1952, Lipski 2011), yet the features which make it unique have not been acoustically examined. This study hypothesizes that bilingualism with English has affected NMS prosody and analyzes three features which are known to differ between Spanish and English and therefore provide a quantitative point of comparison: pitch peak alignment, pitch variability, and rhythmic timing. These variables have been demonstrated to be susceptible to transfer in contact situations, including …


Toggling The Switches, Zach Thomas Jan 2017

Toggling The Switches, Zach Thomas

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In this paper, I use Richard Lanham's work within the field of rhetoric to explore the rhetorical implications of multilingualism and code switching. Specifically, I will discuss and question some of the basic assumptions of employing another language: What is at stake when we communicate with others in another language, especially native speakers? How might using an L2 language and recognizing/using different dialects within that language cause a speaker to reconsider their native tongue? What does the presence of numerous regional peculiarities and nonstandard varieties within languages say about our desire for "ideal" or "standard" speech?


What Predicts The Effectiveness Of Foreign Language Pronunciation Instruction?: Investigating The Role Of Perception And Other Individual Differences, Elizabeth M. Kissling Nov 2014

What Predicts The Effectiveness Of Foreign Language Pronunciation Instruction?: Investigating The Role Of Perception And Other Individual Differences, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

This study investigated second language (L2) learners’ perception of L2 sounds as an individual difference that predicted their improvement in pronunciation after receiving instruction. Learners were given explicit pronunciation instruction in a series of modules added to their Spanish as a foreign language curriculum and were then tested on their pronunciation accuracy. Their perception of the target sounds was measured with an AX discrimination task. Though the best predictor of pronunciation posttest score was pretest score, perception made a unique and significant contribution. The other factors associated with better pronunciation of some L2 sounds were time spent using Spanish outside …


L2 Perception Of Spanish Palatal Variants Across Different Tasks, Christine Shea, Jeffrey Renaud Jan 2014

L2 Perception Of Spanish Palatal Variants Across Different Tasks, Christine Shea, Jeffrey Renaud

Spanish: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 …


Teaching Pronunciation: Is Explicit Phonetics Instruction Beneficial For Fl Learners?, Elizabeth M. Kissling Oct 2013

Teaching Pronunciation: Is Explicit Phonetics Instruction Beneficial For Fl Learners?, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Pronunciation instruction has been shown to improve learners’ L2 accent in some, though certainly not all, cases. A core component of traditional pronunciation instruction is explicit lessons in L2 phonetics. Studies suggest that Spanish FL learners improve their pronunciation after receiving instruction, but the effect of phonetics instruction has not been directly compared with other pedagogical alternatives. This study reports on the pronunciation gains that first, second, and third year learners (n = 95) made after receiving either explicit instruction in Spanish phonetics or a more implicit treatment with similar input, practice, and feedback. The target phones included a …


An Electropalatography (Epg) Study Of Nasal-Trill/Lateral Sequences In Spanish, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni Jun 2013

An Electropalatography (Epg) Study Of Nasal-Trill/Lateral Sequences In Spanish, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni

Alexei Kochetov

Trills and laterals require relatively precise articulatory and aerodynamic settings that are at least partly incompatible with setting necessary to produce nasal stops. Historically, this incompatibility has often been resolved through assimilation, deletion, or epenthesis in within-word [n+r] and [n+l] clusters (e.g. in Romance). It is expected that similar, yet gradient effects would be observed in across-word or hetero-morphemic sequences of nasals and liquids. This study examines the production of Spanish nasal-liquid sequences using electropalatography (EPG). Linguopalatal contact data were collected from 9 native speakers of Spanish (representing 3 dialects) producing various utterances with nasals before /r/ and /l/ (as …


Nasal Variability And Speech Style: An Epg Study Of Word-Final Nasals In Two Spanish Dialects, Laura Colantoni, Alexei Kochetov Dec 2011

Nasal Variability And Speech Style: An Epg Study Of Word-Final Nasals In Two Spanish Dialects, Laura Colantoni, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

Nasal consonants are notoriously prone to variation caused by various phonetic and sociolinguistic factors. A study of nasal variability in Spanish is of particular interest, as Spanish dialects neutralize their three-way nasal place contrast in coda position to either alveolar or velar nasals. For example, in Peninsular and Argentine Spanish final nasals are realized as alveolar, while in Caribbean varieties as velar. A number of sociolinguistic studies have concentrated on nasal variability in velarizing dialects. However, cross-dialectal comparisons have mostly relied on auditory-based transcriptions of sociolinguistic interviews, and articulatory investigations of velarizing Caribbean dialects are so far lacking. The goal …


Coronal Place Contrasts In Argentine And Cuban Spanish: An Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni Dec 2011

Coronal Place Contrasts In Argentine And Cuban Spanish: An Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni

Alexei Kochetov

Theoretical and descriptive work on Spanish phonetics and phonology has been largely based on Peninsular varieties. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigate articulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrasts in Argentine and Cuban Spanish. Simultaneous EPG and acoustic data were collected from five speakers from Buenos Aires (Argentina) and three speakers from Havana (Cuba) reading sentences with various syllable-initial coronal consonants corresponding to the orthographic . As a control, the same data were collected from a single speaker of Peninsular Spanish from Madrid. As expected, the main distinction in both varieties was made between anterior and posterior coronal consonants ((denti-)alveolars …


Gestural Coordination In Spanish /S/ Weakening: An Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni Jan 2011

Gestural Coordination In Spanish /S/ Weakening: An Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni

Alexei Kochetov

This study uses electropalatography to investigate syllable-final weakening of /s/ in Argentine Spanish. Results from 5 speakers from Buenos Aires show that the process applies consistently to /s/ before consonants, both within and across words. The phonetic realization of the fricative varies systematically as a function of place of articulation of the following consonant, and is to some extent affected by word boundaries and stress.


Spanish Nasal Assimilation Revisited: A Cross-Dialect Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni Dec 2010

Spanish Nasal Assimilation Revisited: A Cross-Dialect Electropalatographic Study, Alexei Kochetov, Laura Colantoni

Alexei Kochetov

This study employs electropalatography to investigate the implementation of nasal assimilation in two Spanish dialects (Argentine and Cuban) that differ in the realization of word-final nasals as alveolar or velar. 5 speakers of Argentine and 3 speakers of Cuban Spanish were presented with various utterances containing nasals followed by labial, coronal, and dorsal stops and fricatives under two stress conditions. Results revealed that place assimilation of nasals was consistently accompanied by stricture assimilation. The process was generally categorical, that is, the final alveolar or velar nasal adopted the articulation of the following consonant. Nasal + fricative sequences, however, showed a …


Phonological Facilitation Through Translation In A Bilingual Picture-Naming Task, Paul Amrhein, Aimee Knupsky Oct 2007

Phonological Facilitation Through Translation In A Bilingual Picture-Naming Task, Paul Amrhein, Aimee Knupsky

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present a critical examination of phonological effects in a picture-word interference task. Using a methodology minimizing stimulus repetition, English/Spanish and Spanish/English bilinguals named pictures in either L1 or L2 (blocked contexts) or in both (mixed contexts) while ignoring word distractors in L1 or L2. Distractors were either phonologically related to the picture name (direct; FISH–fist), or related through translation to the picture name (TT; LEG–milk–leche), or they were unrelated (bear–peach). Results demonstrate robust activation of phonological representations by translation equivalents of word distractors. Although both direct and TT distractors facilitated naming, TT facilitation was more consistent in L2 naming …