here - Linguistic Society of America

Matthew Cecil (University of California, Santa Barbara) Session 17Cross-linguistic variation in turn-taking practicesThis study is a computational investigation of the Callhome corpus of telephone conversations in six major languages to explorethe question of whether and to what extent conversational turn-taking practices are universal. The phenomena of gap / overlapbetween turns, utterance length, and frequency of reactive token (backchannel) production are all measured and analyzedstatistically. The present findings show that along all of these parameters, there are stark differences across languages inconversational turn-taking practices. Among other findings, we have found that some languages (including Japanese) usesignificantly more reactive tokens, and some languages (including Spanish) exhibit significantly longer utterances.Wallace Chafe (University of California, Santa Barbara/SSILA) Session 104Toward a digitized Iroquoian dctionaryThe polysynthetic structure of the Northern Iroquoian languages creates a problem for the construction of exhaustive, userfriendlydictionaries, because a single English verb may correspond to several hundred verbs in the target language. Computersoffer a way around this problem, a way that is currently being implemented for the Seneca language under the collaborativesponsorship of the Seneca Nation of Indians and the Rochester Institute of Technology. An English entry is processed through asystem of drop-down menus, morphological templates, and phonological processes that lead to a Seneca word. Selected exampleswill be shown. Other languages of a similar type could be treated in a similar way.Vincent Chanethom (New York University) Session 21Adult-child differences in the production of American English diphthongsThis study investigates adult-child differences in the production of diphthongs by native speakers of American English. Previousstudies on English vowel development mainly focused on monophthongs. It is unclear, however, whether diphthongs followsimilar patterns of acquisition, especially given their dynamic properties. Are diphthongs more difficult to acquire thanmonophthongs? To address this question, a picture-naming experiment was carried out to test the following hypotheses: (1) adultchilddifferences in diphthong production are similar to those found in the literature for monophthongs; (2) diphthongs involvinggreater spectral change are harder to acquire than those with less spectral change.Charles B. Chang (University of Maryland) Session 39Benefits of L1 transfer for L2 speech perceptionTo investigate effects of first-language (L1) perceptual biases on second-language (L2) speech perception, we examined whetherunreleased voiceless stops in American English would be better perceived by L1 listeners of English (where unreleased stops arefrequent, but non-canonical) or by L2 listeners of English whose L1 is Korean (where unreleased stops are canonical). Twoexperiments showed that Koreans were more accurate with English unreleased stops than Americans, and that Korean Americanswere even better. These findings demonstrate that L1 transfer can lead to a perceptual advantage for L2 listeners and underscorethe benefits of early exposure to a heritage language.Charles B. Chang (University of Maryland) Session 17Ryan P. Corbett (University of Maryland)Anita R. Bowles (University of Maryland)The influence of phonological context on L2 learning of tonal contrastsTo examine effects of context on second language (L2) learning of tonal contrasts, we trained adult speakers of English to matchmonosyllabic and disyllabic Mandarin words to pictures. Disyllables were harder to learn than monosyllables, and the fourMandarin tones varied in relative difficulty depending on word type. These findings demonstrate that, like L2 learning ofsegmental contrasts, L2 learning of tonal contrasts is mediated by context. Thus, examination of word types representing a varietyof contexts would provide greater insight into how L2 tone is mastered, especially in an L2 where the majority of the lexicon isnot monosyllabic.Carole E Chaski (Institute for Linguistic Evidence) Session 12Re Forensic linguistic data: five issues in handling textual dataFive issues related to linguistic data in the forensic context and affecting admissibility of evidence are discussed. Ground truthdata, needed for validation testing, is difficult to obtain. Data Scarcity is a fact of forensic casework and affects methodological140