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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Effects Of Orthographic Silent ‘L’ On Preceding Vowel Duration, Sylvia Cohen Apr 2022

Effects Of Orthographic Silent ‘L’ On Preceding Vowel Duration, Sylvia Cohen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper discusses the preliminary results of a phonetics/phonology study investigating the effects of orthographic (written) ‘l’ on the pronunciation of English words like ‘walk’ and ‘talk’. These words would typically be transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wak/ and /tak/, with no /l/ sound present; however, there is some reason to suspect that the written ‘l’ is salient in speakers’ mental representations of these words and may influence their pronunciation. In English (as well as many other languages) vowels before voiced consonants have longer durations than vowels before voiceless consonants. Experimentation by Walsh (1985) has indicated that this …


(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 …


Competing Semantic And Phonological Constraints In Novel Binomials, Eli George Apr 2020

Competing Semantic And Phonological Constraints In Novel Binomials, Eli George

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This experiment investigates why certain pairs of words, called “frozen binomials” always appear in the same order. It uses an electronic survey that asks subjects to determine what order they would prefer to say pairs of certain words. Specifically, the experiment tests whether it is the sound of the words or the meaning of the words that determines their order. While the data was inconclusive, it does suggest the existence of deeper rules for the ordering of these words.