This study examines the role of syllable structure in Russian-speaking children, both Typically Developing (TD) and with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We report results of a pseudo-word repetition task in which syllable number and syllable complexity are manipulated. The results show that children with SLI perform significantly worse than TD children on this task, indicating that Russian ...

This paper investigates a stress phenomenon which I refer to as “contextual metrical invisibility” in several languages, the primary examples being from Mohawk and Passamaquoddy. In each of these languages, there is a class of vowels which are, in certain contexts but not in others, invisible to syllable-sensitive processes. The proposal I make is that such vowels, which I refer to as “weak vow...

Production and perception of syllables in a second language (L2) that has relatively complex syllable structure, such as English, is expected to be difficult for native speakers of a language with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. A series of experiments investigated the perception, production, and learning of English syllables by native Japanese speakers. Results showed t...

Birdsong is a learned motor skill that is performed with a high degree of stereotypy in adult birds. Nevertheless, even in species where song "crystallizes" in a form that remains stable over time, there is residual variability. Such variability in well-learned skills is often construed as uncontrolled and irrelevant biological "noise." However, studies in the zebra finch indicate that variabil...