This study examined the production of English lexical stress by Japanese speakers to determine which acoustic features associated with English lexical stress are difficult for Japanese speakers to acquire. Realization of lexical accent differs between languages. English is a stress-accent language where the accent is expressed by a combination of pitch, duration, intensity and vowel quality (Fr...

In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, an...

The paper reports findings of a production experiment investigating the realisation of post-vocalic /r/ produced by native (L1) speakers of English and German and late second language (L2) learners of two varieties of English; one rhotic variety spoken in Belfast and one non-rhotic variety spoken in Oxford. The study aims to explore whether there is a difference in the realisation of post-vocal...

This study examined the processing correlates of aspectual coercion among native and non-native speakers of English. For native English speakers, results suggested that the processing delay associated with aspectual coercion is minimal. Aspectual coercion was perhaps cognitively easy to perform. By contrast, non-native speakers of English from unlike first language (L1) backgrounds differed in ...

The mothers of 29 Spanish English bilingual 25-month-olds kept diary records of their children's dual language exposure and provided information on their children's English and Spanish language development using the MacArthur-Bates inventories. Relative amount of exposure predicted language outcomes in English and Spanish. In addition, the number of different speakers from whom the children hea...

The present study investigated variability in the production of English by London Bengali adults who speak the Sylheti dialect of Bengali. Speakers had been resident in London for differing lengths of time. They were recorded producing /l/, /r/ and the eleven monophthongal vowels in English. Phonetically trained listeners rated speakers' productions of /l/ and /r/ in terms of manner and place. ...

Focus is of communication function in discourse. How it is realized by native speakers has long been in vigorous discussion. However, studies on focus concerning language learners are few, with the ones taking dialects into account even fewer. This study takes eight Zhenjiang dialect speakers as the subjects and investigates if their phonetic and phonological realization of narrow focus in Engl...

The development of English language learners (ELLs) was explored from kindergarten through eighth grade within a nationally representative sample of first-time kindergartners (N = 19,890). Growth curve analyses indicated that, compared to native English speakers, ELLs were rated by teachers more favorably on approaches to learning, self control, and externalizing behaviors in kindergarten and g...

This study investigates the use of discourse markers by Spanish learners of English. It is intended as an initial contribution to the study of how discourse markers are used by foreign language learners. We conduct two pilot studies involving the use of English discourse markers by native speakers of Spanish. We first study if these speakers use English discourse markers at all in their writing...

Speakers of all languages gesture, but there are differences in the gestures that they produce. Do speakers learn language-specific gestures by watching others gesture or by learning to speak a particular language? We examined this question by studying the speech and gestures produced by 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English and Turkish (n = 20/language), and comparing them wit...