The assimilation hypothesis argues that second language learning recruits the brain network for processing the native language, whereas the accommodation hypothesis argues that learning a second language recruits brain structures not involved in native language processing. This study tested these hypotheses by examining brain activation of a group of native Chinese speakers, who were late bilin...

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that directed selective attention either to sub-sylla...

In spontaneous speaking, the is normally pronounced as thuh, with the reduced vowel schwa (rhyming with the first syllable of about). But it is sometimes pronounced as thiy, with a nonreduced vowel (rhyming with see). In a large corpus of spontaneous English conversation, speakers were found to use thiy to signal an immediate suspension of speech to deal with a problem in production. Fully 81% ...

fMRI was used to determine the frontal, basal ganglia, and thalamic structures engaged by three facets of language generation: lexical status of generated items, the use of semantic vs. phonological information during language generation, and rate of generation. During fMRI, 21 neurologically normal subjects performed four tasks: generation of nonsense syllables given beginning and ending conso...

We explored the role that poetic form can play in people's perceptions of the accuracy of aphorisms as descriptions of human behavior. Participants judged the ostensible accuracy of unfamiliar aphorisms presented in their textually surviving form or a semantically equivalent modified form. Extant rhyming aphorisms in their original form (e.g., "What sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals") were jud...

The naming of a word (e.g., CAVE) is delayed if participants first name a formally similar, but nonrhyming, prime (e.g., HAVE). Taraban and McClelland (1987) interpreted this effect in terms of competition between activated phonological codes, while Bradshaw and Nettleton (1974) argued that these interference effects are due to conflicting output codes and only arise when primes are named. Expe...

Imperfect and internal rhymes are two important features in rap music previously ignored in the music information retrieval literature. We developed a method of scoring potential rhymes using a probabilistic model based on phoneme frequencies in rap lyrics. We used this scoring scheme to automatically identify internal and line-final rhymes in song lyrics and demonstrated the performance of thi...

The forms of Chinese classic poetry have been developed through thousands years of history and are still current in today’s poetry society. A re-classification of the rhyming words, however, is necessary for the classic poetry writing to be done in the new settings of modern Chinese language. In order to maintain the continuation of the poetry forms, computing technology can be used to help the...