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The influence of syllabic structure, lexical class and stress patterns of known words on the acquisition of the English stress system was investigated in ten native Thai speakers. All participants were adult learners of English with an average length of residence in the US of 1.4 years. They were asked to produce and give perceptual judgments on 40 English non-words of varying syllabic structures in noun and verb sentence frames. Results of the production data suggested that syllables with a long vowel attracted stress more often than syllables containing a short vowel and nouns received initial stress more often than verbs. Additionally, regression analyses with the three factors as predictors suggested that Thai participants’ pattern of stress assignment on non-words was significantly influenced by the stress patterns of phonologically similar real words. These results were compared and contrasted to those found in previous work with Spanish–English and Korean–English bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interaction of Korean and English stop systems in Korean-English bilinguals as a function of age of acquisition (AOA) of English was investigated. It was hypothesized that early bilinguals (mean AOA=3.8 years) would more likely be native-like in production of English and Korean stops and maintain greater independence between Korean and English stop systems than late bilinguals (mean AOA=21.4 years). Production of Korean and English stops was analyzed in terms of three acoustic-phonetic properties: voice-onset time, amplitude difference between the first two harmonics, and fundamental frequency. Late bilinguals were different from English monolinguals for English voiceless and voiced stops in all three properties. As for Korean stops, late bilinguals were different from Korean monolinguals for fortis stops in voice-onset time. Early bilinguals were not different from the monolinguals of either language. Considering the independence of the two stop systems, late bilinguals seem to have merged English voiceless and Korean aspirated stops and produced English voiced stops with similarities to both Korean fortis and lenis stops, whereas early bilinguals produced five distinct stop types. Thus, the early bilinguals seem to have two independent stop systems, whereas the late bilinguals likely have a merged Korean-English system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of native English and native Chinese speakers to identify and discriminate the mid-versus the low-tone contrast in Thai was investigated before and after auditory training. This study reports the findings of an experiment designed to answer the question of whether native speakers of a nontone language in discriminating tones from a tone language with which they have no prior experience. In addition, this study investigates these two groups' ability to acquire tones from the same unfamiliar tone language using a training procedure.

Seventeen native English speakers participated in an investigation of language users' knowledge of English main stress patterns. First, they produced 40 two-syllable nonwords of varying syllabic structure as nouns and verbs. Second, they indicated their preference for first or second syllable stress of the same words in a perception task. Finally, they indicated words they considered to be phonologically similar to the nonwords. Analyses of variance on the production and perception data indicated that both syllabic structure and lexical class (noun or verb) had an effect on main stress assignment. In logistic regression analyses on the production and perception responses, predictions of stress placement made by (1) syllable structure, (2) lexical class, and (3) stress patterns of phonologically similar words all contributed significantly and uniquely to the prediction of main stress assignment. The results indicate that phonological theories of English word stress need to allow for multiple, competing, probabilistic factors in accounts of main stress placement including syllabic structure (most notably vowel length), lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both its classical and modern forms, Nahuatl is usually described as having penultimate accent (with little discussion as to whether this is a phrase- or word-level phenomena). However, some varieties of Mexican Guerrero Nahuatl have recently been described as having word accent in locations related to the position of a historical non-word-final coda *h. Here, the hypothesis is investigated that coda *h lowered the fundamental frequency (F0) of the tautosyllabic vowel and that a H-L pitch contour was subsequently incorporated into the lexical representation of the word as *h was weakened and lost. Recordings were made of four dialects at varying stages of *h loss and tonal innovation. Six speakers from each dialect were recorded producing words in phrase medial and phrase final positions, some with historical coda *h and some without, and the F0 of each syllable in these words measured. The results indicated that the new accentual patterns found in some dialects have their origin in the phonetic lowering of F0 in syllables containing coda *h. It also seems that once a new accentual pattern is developed and the *h lost, the resulting phonologized pattern may not correspond to the phonetic locus of the sound change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]