Learners often struggle with L2 sounds, yet little is known about the role of prior pronunciation knowledge and explicit articulatory training in language acquisition. This study asks if existing pronunciation knowledge can bootstrap word learning, and whether short-term audiovisual articulatory training for tongue position with and without a production component has an effect on lexical retention. Participants were trained and tested on stimuli with perceptually salient segments that are challenging to produce. Results indicate that pronunciation knowledge plays an important role in word learning. While much about the extent and shape of this role remains unclear, this study sheds light in three main areas. First, prior pronunciation knowledge leads to increased accuracy in word learning, as all groups trended toward lower accuracy on pseudowords with two novel segments, when compared with those with one or none. Second, all training and control conditions followed similar patterns, with training neither aiding nor inhibiting retention; this is a noteworthy result as previous work has found that the inclusion of production in training leads to decreased performance when testing for retention. Finally, higher production accuracy during practice led to higher retention after the word-learning task, indicating that individual differences and successful training are potentially important indicators of retention. This study provides support for the claim that pronunciation matters in L2 word learning.

ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Comox-Sliammon) is a Central Salish language spoken in British Columbia with a large fricative inventory. Previous impressionistic descriptions of ʔayʔaǰuθəm have noted perceptual ambiguity of select anterior fricatives. This paper provides an auditory-acoustic description of the four anterior fricatives /θ s ʃ ɬ/ in the Mainland dialect of ʔayʔaǰuθəm. Peak ERBN trajectories, noise duration, and formant transitions are analysed in the fricative productions of five speakers. These analyses provide quantitative and qualitative descriptions of these fricative contrasts, indicating more robust acoustic differentiation for fricatives in onset versus coda position. In a perception task, English listeners categorized fricatives in CV and VC sequences from the natural productions. The results of the perception experiment are consistent with reported perceptual ambiguity between /s/ and /θ/, with listeners frequently misidentifying /θ/ as /s/. The production and perception data suggest that listener L1 categories play a role in the categorization and discrimination of ʔayʔaǰuθəm fricatives. These findings provide an empirical description of fricatives in an understudied language and have implications for L2 teaching and learning in language revitalization contexts.

This paper explores the role of binarity in prosodic morphology by proposing that all representations are maximally binary branching, as stated in (1).(1) Binarity Hypothesis: All representations are maximally binary branching.Our evidence comes from examining patterns in which fission (Integrity violations) and fusion (Uniformity violations) of segments satisfies morphological and phonological constraints: multiple reduplication, haplology, coalescence, and breaking. Where there appears to be 1:3 or a 3:1 mapping between input and output segments, we propose that this must arise from two separate 1:2 or 2:1 mappings (perhaps at a stem and word level). We illustrate that a number of seemingly complex patterns of multiple reduplication in Salish, Wakashan and Uto-Aztecan languages follow naturally from the Binarity Hypothesis.

Though some Coast Salish languages have innovated /θ/, a typologically rare segment, the only study of Salish fricatives describes Montana Salish, an Interior language without /θ/ [Gordon et al. (2002). A cross-linguistic acoustic study of voiceless fricatives. JIPA, 32(2), 141-174.]. In addition to being typologically noteworthy, /θ/ is also interesting within Salish, as impressionistic descriptions suggest articulatory similarity and perceptual ambiguity between /θ/ and /s/. This is found in Halkomelem, Northern Straits, and Comox-Sliammon. Motivated by a gap in documentation and reported ambiguity, this paper is an acoustic study of /θ/ and /s/ in Comox-Sliammon. Following the methodology of Reidy [(2016). Spectral dynamics of sibilant fricatives are contrastive and language specific. JASA, 140(4), 2518–2529.], PeakERBN trajectories are compared for /θ/ and /s/ across four fluent speakers of Comox-Sliammon. The results suggest that the fricatives are acoustically distinct, though there is considerable inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability for /θ/. Lack of overlap for three of four speakers suggests that the source of the reported ambiguity may be L1 English speaker perception, rather than the realization of Mainland Comox fricatives. The high level of variation suggests that /θ/ may be a recent and unstable innovation, supporting the reconstruction of a Proto-Comox [s]-like form.

Crosslinguistically rare sounds may be uncommon as a result of being phonologically marked (Trubetzkoy 1939) or due to articulatory or perceptual biases (Maddieson 1998). Certain types of sound changes are often argued to have roots in articulatory and perceptual biases (Blevins 2004). But in cases where there is limited data available, such as with understudied languages, it may be difficult to find evidence for the roots of sound changes. Synchronic variation can be used to provide evidence for diachronic sound changes (Blevins 2004; Lindblom 1990; Ohala 1993), which is particularly useful when historical data is limited. In this investigation we discuss phonetic biases, including acoustic and perceptual factors, that contribute to a set of sound changes in Tlingit, a critically endangered Indigenous language of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon, that resulted in a primary split-merger (Blust 2012). This investigation provides further support for including explicit discussion of synchronic variation as part of the description of understudied languages. We propose that there should be a stronger emphasis on documenting and analyzing variation within understudied languages because excluding variation potentially masks significant intralinguistic and crosslinguistic phenomena.