Phonological grammars characterize distinctions between relatively well-formed (unmarked) and relatively ill-formed (marked) phonological structures. We review evidence that markedness influences speech error probabilities. Specifically, although errors result in both unmarked as well as marked structures, there is a markedness asymmetry: errors are more likely to produce unmarked outcomes. We ...

Vocabulary acquisition is such a major aspect of language learning in children, but also in adults when learning a foreign language, that a dedicated vocabulary learning device may exist within the language organ. To identify the relevant brain systems, we performed regional cerebral blood flow measurements in normal subjects while they were learning a list of neologisms or a list of word-nonwo...

Lexicons utilize a fraction of licit structures. Different theories predict either that lexicons prioritize contrastiveness or structural economy. Study 1 finds that the monosyllabic lexicon of Mandarin is no more distinctive than a randomly sampled baseline using the phonological inventory. Study 2 finds that the lexicons of Mandarin and American English have fewer phonotactically complex word...

Research in foreign accent has reported various factors of accentedness. However, very little attention has been given to the relationship between L2 speakers’ accentedness and their awareness of, or sensitivity to, L2 phonological system. The present study aims to explore the relationship between ESL learners’ phonological awareness, as measured by several tasks, and their accentedness, as rat...

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of word clustering method on vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL learners through a case of semantic versus phonological clustering. To this effect, 80 homogeneous students from four intermediate classes at an English institute in Torbat e Heydariyeh participated in this research. They were assigned to four groups according to semantic versus phon...

Language development entails four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Over the past four decades, a large body of evidence has indicated that reading acquisition is strongly associated with a child's listening skills, particularly the child's sensitivity to phonological structures of spoken language. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the cl...

Phonological awareness and morphological awareness have been shown to affect Chinese children’s reading development. Previous studies conducted in Hong Kong, which required children to read two-character words only or a mixture of single-character and two-character words in a Chinese reading test, exclusively found that morphological awareness was more important than phonological awareness in C...

conclusions the results suggested that pa skills in children with phonological disorders are affected by error type. we also found the type of errors that can play a more effective role in pa investigations as compared to pcc. the results also showed that children with cap require special attention. results the cap group showed significant difference with the nd group in alliteration (p = 0.001...

This paper takes Chinese five-syllable compounds as examples to re-examine the derivation of Chinese synthetic compounds. With phonological evidences which show that Chinese synthetic compounds are left stressed, the paper proves that Chinese synthetic compounds are derived in the interface of lexicon and syntax, based on argument structures of the root verbs. The paper assumes that Chinese syn...