This study investigates the interference of L1 phonology with L2 speech perception, focusing
on the identification of the English fricatives/f/and/h/by Japanese listeners. In Japanese, the …

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some
sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate …

In human languages, different speech sounds can be contextual variants of a single
phoneme, called allophones. Learning which sounds are allophones is an integral part of …

This study's purpose was to analyse the influence of neutralisation on the perception of
European Portuguese (EP) close-mid and open-mid vowels, and the gradient between …

The ability to discriminate phonetically similar first language (L1) and second language (L2)
sounds has significant consequences for achieving target-like proficiency in second …

This dissertation explores two learning problems in L2 phonology:(1) acquiring a new L2
distribution when both sounds exist in the L1 as allophones;(2) acquiring the same L2 …

Much of the formal linguistic research on third language (L3) acquisition has focused on
transfer source selection, with the overall finding that (global) structural similarity between …

Two speech perception experiments explored the physical and linguistic bases of phonetic
similarity. Because phonological features are grounded in phonetic similarity, these …

The phonological processes known as 'lenition'have traditionally been explained as
articulatory effort reduction. However, such a motivation for lenition has never been directly …

This study investigated the perception and production of two L2 stop consonants, examining
the importance of lexical stress and motivation to learners' ability to discriminate and …