human hearing depends on a combination of cognitive and sensory processes that function
by means of an interactive circuitry of bottom-up and top-down neural pathways, extending …

This study examines whether second language (L2) learners from tonal and non-tonal first
language (L1) backgrounds differ in their perception and production of L2 tones. Ten …

A primary undertaking in communicative language teaching is to ensure second language
(L2) speakers develop the ability to interact in real-world communicative events, a skill …

Mandarin Chinese tones are known to be difficult for second language learners. A large
body of research has examined non-native perception of tones, and may provide useful and …

This chapter presents a working model of L2 intonation learning, the L2 Intonation Learning
theory (LILt), which ultimately aims to account for the difficulties that L2 learners encounter in …

Previous studies have suggested that the perception of vowels and consonants changes
from language-universal to language-specific between 6 and 12months of age. This report …

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone
languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence …

Recent research indicates that knowledge of words' spellings can influence knowledge of
the phonological forms of second language (L2) words when the first and second languages …

The present experiments tested bilingual infants' developmental narrowing for the
interpretation of sounds that form words. These studies addressed how language …

It is commonly believed that second language (L2) acquisition of lexical tones presents a
major challenge for learners from nontonal language backgrounds. This belief is somewhat …