It is proposed that syllable weight is driven by considerations of phonetic effectiveness and phonological simplicity. The phonetically best distinctions are claimed to be those which divide syllables into groups which are phonetically most distinct from each other. Phonologically complex distinctions are those which exceed an upper threshold in the number of phonological predicates to which th...

The representation of phonological features in the mental lexicon has been examined using eventrelated brain responses, such as mismatch negativeity (MMN; an automatic auditory change detection response in the brain) or the P350 component (a correlate of lexical activation). This presentation will summarize some MMN studies that demonstrate support for (i) models proposing abstract underspecifi...

The aim of the present study was to compare the phonological errors that occur in the speech of two 12-year-old Greek children with profound hearing loss. The first child used a cochlear implant (CI) and the second one used hearing aids (HA). The children’s phonological development has been assessed using the Phonetic and Phonological Development Test (PPDT), (Levandi et al. 1995). In alignment...

in order to simplify the pronunciation ofthe adult's words,children use phonological processes inthe initial years oftheir speech growth.the present study aims at considering phonological processes ina group oftwo tofour-year old farsi speaking children.the results indicate that itisnot possible to correctly and precisely account forthe occurrences ofsuch processes in children’s pronunciat...

Structuring of information proceeds through the foregrounding of certain parts of the information. In general, foregrounding can be realized on various linguistic levels and it is possible to distinguish: Conceptual, Functional, Discourse and Pragmatic devices, which can be represented by various formal means: Phonetic-Phonological, Morphological-Syntactic and Lexical-Pragmatic. All the devices...

PURPOSE To compare the phonological accuracy and speech intelligibility of boys with fragile X syndrome with autism spectrum disorder (FXS-ASD), fragile X syndrome only (FXS-O), Down syndrome (DS), and typically developing (TD) boys. METHOD Participants were 32 boys with FXS-O (3-14 years), 31 with FXS-ASD (5-15 years), 34 with DS (4-16 years), and 45 TD boys of similar nonverbal mental age. ...

The development of phonological and orthographic processing was studied from the middle of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 4 (age 6; 6-10 years) using the effects of regularity and of lexicality in reading aloud and in spelling tasks, and using the effect of pseudohomophony in a silent reading task. In all the tasks, signs of reliance on phonological processing were found even when indicators of re...

In a phonological priming experiment using spoken Dutch words, Dutch listeners were taught varying expectancies and relatedness relations about the phonological form of target words, given particular primes. They learned to expect that, after a particular prime, if the target was a word, it would be from a specific phonological category. The expectancy either involved phonological overlap (e.g....

Two experiments tested competing predictions about the nature of the irrelevant speech effect that were derived from Neath's (2000) feature model and from Salamé and Baddeley's (1982) phonological loop model. The first experiment examined the combined effects of irrelevant speech and articulatory suppression when target items were presented auditorily. Contrary to the suggestions of Neath, but ...

The influence of phonological similarity on bilingual language processing was examined within and across languages in three experiments. Phonological similarity was manipulated within a language by varying neighborhood density, and across languages by varying extent of cross-linguistic overlap between native and non-native languages. In Experiment 1, speed and accuracy of bilinguals' picture na...