From the ethologist perspective, speech is to the human being as echolocation is to the bat or song is to the bird. Thus, speech, as well as the phonological communication it underlies, is plainly a species-typical product of evolution. Speech defined as the production and perception of vowels and consonants originates from a pre-phonetic capacity to perform speech sounds and gestures. Similarl...

If we accept the view that language first evolved from the conceptual structure of our pre-linguistic ancestors, several questions arise, including: What kind of structure? Concepts about what? Here we review research on the vocal communication and cognition of nonhuman primates, focusing on results that may be relevant to the earliest stages of language evolution. From these data we conclude, ...

This study investigates the relationship between non-native perception and production of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels by eight European Spanish monolinguals. Participants’ accuracy on a non-native discrimination task was used to predict performance in non-native production. We also investigated the acoustic similarity between participants’ non-native and native vowel productions. The findin...

Sounds like h-nmm, hh-aaaah, hn-hn, unkay, nyeah, ummum, uuh and um-hmuh-hm, occur in American English conversation but have thus far escaped systematic study. This article reports a study of both the forms and functions of these items, together with related tokens such as um and uh-huh, in a corpus of American English conversations. These sounds appear not to be lexical, in that they are produ...

It has long been argued that abnormal cerebral lateralisation might underlie the language problems that characterise Down syndrome, but to date only behavioural evidence has been provided. We used the auditory event-related potentials Ta and Tb of the T-complex to investigate lateralised processing of speech (vowels) and non-speech (simple and complex tones) sounds in children with Down syndrom...

Which aspects of language and cognitive processing take place irrespective of whether subjects focus their attention on incoming stimuli and are, in this sense, automatic? The Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a neurophysiological brain response recorded in the EEG and MEG, is elicited by attended and unattended stimuli alike. Recent studies investigating the cognitive processes underlying spoken lang...

BACKGROUND The capacity to memorize speech sounds is crucial for language acquisition. Newborn human infants can discriminate phonetic contrasts and extract rhythm, prosodic information, and simple regularities from speech. Yet, there is scarce evidence that infants can recognize common words from the surrounding language before four months of age. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We studied on...

Pronunciation is an essential part of language learning. We need to possess intelligible pronunciation communicate effectively. The study sometimes becomes fatigued and challenging for teachers. They should not employ a repeat after me technique but include senses, sights, or even move teach pronunciation. Sounds spelling exercises could be helpful effective practice because they relate phonemi...

Abstract The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation awareness L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce effects English on Italian native speakers’ sounds. Italians perceive, produce, judge same sound as a short if it is spelled with one letter long digraph, due to L1 gr...

Production of certain English phonemes relies heavily on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization this region by second language speakers can create difficulties pronouncing these sounds. In particular, production long vowel/diphthong sounds requires sustained contraction to maintain length phonemes, voiced fricative consonants a sharp burst expel air lungs adequately voice conso...