Phonological Sequences Research Articles

The Reason for Omission of the First Letter of Verb (mitāl alwaw ī)

Objectives: This study aims to examine the opinions of Arab grammarians from the Basra and Kufa linguistic schools regarding the phenomenon of the omission of the first letter of verb (mitāl alwawī) in some patterns, and not deleting it in other patterns, and to interpret this variation by tracing such types of verbs in lingustiv dictionaries.
 Methods: The study employed an inductive approach in tracing the present tense verb with the ‘waw’ root consonant in linguistic dictionaries. In addation, a descriptive-analytical methodology was utilized to describe the forms of the mitāl verb, analyze them, and provide interpretations based on contemporary phonological principles.
 Results:. The deletion of the ‘waw’ from the present tense verb form (يَفْعِلُ) is caused by the heavy phonological sequencing, characterized by the juxtaposition of semi-vowel (y) with the short vowel (ɑ) in the first syllable, alongside the semi-vowel (w) in the first segment and the short vowel (i) in the second segment.
 Conclusions: The study concludes that grammarians' explanations for this issue are different, and that the rationale for the deletion of the ‘waw’ in certain patterns of the present tense (mitāl alwawī) verb is predominantly a phonological defect, stemming from the sonorous weight resulting from phonological sequences within the verb's segments.

Sensory processing of native and non-native phonotactic patterns in the alpha and beta frequency bands

The phonotactic patterns of one's native language are established within cortical network processing during development. Sensory processing of native language phonotactic patterns established in memory may be modulated by top-down signals within the alpha and beta frequency bands. To explore sensory processing of phonotactic patterns in the alpha and beta frequency bands, electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded from native Polish and native English-speaking adults as they listened to spoken nonwords within same and different nonword pairs. The nonwords contained three phonological sequence onsets that occur in the Polish and English languages (/pət/, /st/, /sət/) and one onset sequence /pt/, which occurs in Polish but not in English onsets. Source localization modeling was used to transform 64-channel EEGs into brain source-level channels. Spectral power values in the low frequencies (2–29 Hz) were analyzed in response to the first nonword in nonword pairs within the context of counterbalanced listening-task conditions, which were presented on separate testing days. For the with-task listening condition, participants performed a behavioral task to the second nonword in the pairs. For the without-task condition participants were only instructed to listen to the stimuli. Thus, in the with-task condition, the first nonword served as a cue for the second nonword, the target stimulus. The results revealed decreased spectral power in the beta frequency band for the with-task condition compared to the without-task condition in response to native language phonotactic patterns. In contrast, the task-related suppression effects in response to the non-native phonotactic pattern /pt/ for the English listeners extended into the alpha frequency band. These effects were localized to source channels in left auditory cortex, the left anterior temporal cortex and the occipital pole. This exploratory study revealed a pattern of results that, if replicated, suggests that native language speech perception is supported by modulations in the alpha and beta frequency bands.

Apraxia of speech with phonological alexia and agraphia following resection of the left middle precentral gyrus: illustrative case.

Apraxia of speech is a disorder of speech-motor planning in which articulation is effortful and error-prone despite normal strength of the articulators. Phonological alexia and agraphia are disorders of reading and writing disproportionately affecting unfamiliar words. These disorders are almost always accompanied by aphasia. A 36-year-old woman underwent resection of a grade IV astrocytoma based in the left middle precentral gyrus, including a cortical site associated with speech arrest during electrocortical stimulation mapping. Following surgery, she exhibited moderate apraxia of speech and difficulty with reading and spelling, both of which improved but persisted 6 months after surgery. A battery of speech and language assessments was administered, revealing preserved comprehension, naming, cognition, and orofacial praxis, with largely isolated deficits in speech-motor planning and the spelling and reading of nonwords. This case describes a specific constellation of speech-motor and written language symptoms-apraxia of speech, phonological agraphia, and phonological alexia in the absence of aphasia-which the authors theorize may be attributable to disruption of a single process of "motor-phonological sequencing." The middle precentral gyrus may play an important role in the planning of motorically complex phonological sequences for production, independent of output modality.

Language-specific phonological skills and the relationship with reading accuracy in Sylheti-English sequential bilinguals.

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phonology on second language (L2) early reading skills in Sylheti-English bilinguals (N=58; 48% girls; British Bangladeshi) and their monolingual-English peers (N=43; 45% girls; 96% White British, 4% multiethnic British) in a diaspora context. Language-specific phonological awareness and nonword repetition were tested at two time points (6;2-7;8 years-old). At Time 1, the bilinguals had lower productive accuracy for phonological sequences that violated their L1 phonology (d=.56; .84), and these skills accounted for a significant amount of variance in their reading accuracy. At Time 2, the language-specific effects were no longer present. These findings highlight the importance of considering language structure in multilingual early literacy development.

Analysis of Two-Piano Teaching Assistant Training Based on Neural Network Model Sound Sequence Recognition.

In today's society, with the gradual improve5ment of material living standards, people are also more in pursuit of their own spiritual enjoyment. The study of piano has gradually become a way for people to enrich their spiritual life, and more and more people attach importance to it. In the field of piano teaching, the two-piano method is a unique form of playing the piano. In order to solve the problem that the recognition accuracy of the sequence of two pianos is seriously reduced in the environment of noise and reverberation, this paper proposes an auxiliary training analysis system based on the neural network model. Firstly, in order to learn the nonlinear relationship between the sound order and the target task label from the massive data, a multitask preprocessing method combining speech enhancement and detection is used to supervise the deep neural network training. Then, convolutional neural network is used to construct the end-to-end recognition system, and the initial recognition results are checked and corrected by the phonological sequence model. Finally, the sequence recognition is carried out under the condition of noise, and the articulation is improved by speech enhancement front-end module, and then the sequence recognition model is used for recognition. Compared with traditional training methods, it is proved that our method is effective in improving the training efficiency and performance quality of players. At the same time, this method breaks through the limitation of traditional training method of double piano, creates a more scientific training means, and realizes the practice and application of artificial intelligence technology in the teaching of double piano.

“shewa” + Secondary Gemination in Late Antique Hebrew as seen in Greek and Latin Transcriptions of Hebrew and in Samaritan

From a historical perspective, shewa mobile (shewa na') in the Biblical Hebrew reading traditions may be regarded as an epenthetic vowel which breaks up a consonant cluster that came into being through the process of deletion, syncope, etc. Evidence from the attested reading traditions of Biblical Hebrew suggests that the kind of vowel reduction that would bring about the ubiquity of “shewa” in the medieval traditions was already underway in the Second Temple period. At the same time, there is evidence from antiquity that other phonological strategies were implemented to prevent such (complete) reduction of short vowels in open unstressed syllables. In particular, there is evidence in both the ancient transcription traditions of Hebrew and in the Samaritan tradition for non-etymological gemination of a consonant immediately following a vowel in the “shewa slot.” Though some such examples of gemination may be explained as variant morphological patterns, etc., it will be argued that such gemination was implemented to ensure the distinct pronunciation of the phonological sequence. While some cases of this phenomenon are best explained as orthoepic strategies for careful reading, other cases may have developed more naturally in the spoken language. This conclusion is significant because it demonstrates both that vowel reduction/deletion was already prone to occur in the late Second Temple period and that there was an impulse in both speech and in a careful reading of the Biblical Hebrew tradition to avoid consonant clusters (at least in some cases) already in this early period.

Acoustic-level and language-specific processing of native and non-native phonological sequence onsets in the low gamma and theta-frequency bands

Acoustic structures associated with native-language phonological sequences are enhanced within auditory pathways for perception, although the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. To elucidate processes that facilitate perception, time–frequency (T–F) analyses of EEGs obtained from native speakers of English and Polish were conducted. Participants listened to same and different nonword pairs within counterbalanced attend and passive conditions. Nonwords contained the onsets /pt/, /pət/, /st/, and /sət/ that occur in both the Polish and English languages with the exception of /pt/, which never occurs in the English language in word onset. Measures of spectral power and inter-trial phase locking (ITPL) in the low gamma (LG) and theta-frequency bands were analyzed from two bilateral, auditory source-level channels, created through source localization modeling. Results revealed significantly larger spectral power in LG for the English listeners to the unfamiliar /pt/ onsets from the right hemisphere at early cortical stages, during the passive condition. Further, ITPL values revealed distinctive responses in high and low-theta to acoustic characteristics of the onsets, which were modulated by language exposure. These findings, language-specific processing in LG and acoustic-level and language-specific processing in theta, support the view that multi scale temporal processing in the LG and theta-frequency bands facilitates speech perception.

L2 within-language morphological competition during spoken word recognition

ABSTRACT Bilinguals recognize words with shared morphology and phonology cross-linguistically (i.e., cognates) faster than words that do not have these characteristics. Moreover, higher phonological overlap in cognates enhances the effects, which suggests that phonology eases word recognition. However, it is currently unclear whether words compete purely morphologically before spoken word recognition within language and whether proficiency in the L2 modulates the degree of morphological competition. Spanish monolinguals and English L2 learners of Spanish with varying L2 proficiency completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish. Stimuli were phonological sequences of Spanish words prior to a recognition point (e.g., /mark/ in /marko/) whose activated cohorts were minimal pairs. Some pairs were morphologically related (e.g., huerto ‘vegetable patch’ versus huerta ‘vegetable garden’), whereas some others had no morphological relationship (e.g., marco ‘frame’ versus marca ‘brand’). Results showed that both groups processed solely phonological competitors in a similar way as they did with morphological competitors. Taken together, these findings suggest that morphological relatedness does not modulate either L1 or L2 spoken word recognition prior to a recognition point when speakers listen to words in absence of context. In addition, the findings suggest that the L2 recognition architecture is qualitatively similar to that of native speakers.

A longitudinal study of the phonological organisation of novel word forms in children with developmental language disorder

Purpose: Deficits in the production of novel words, such as in nonword repetition tasks, are one of the early hallmarks of developmental language disorder (DLD). In children with DLD, the production of novel nonwords is characterised by speech sound inaccuracy. The focus of the present study is on the stable organisation of phonological sequences. Specifically, we aimed to identify the persistence of deficits in accuracy and in variability in sound sequencing in novel word production from pre-school to the early school years. Method: Children with and without DLD produced a set of six nonwords 12 times each, initially collected when children were 4- to 5-years old. Children repeated this task over the course of two years. Analyses included phonetic accuracy as well as network science indices of sound sequence organisation. Result: Children with DLD were less accurate than their peers with typical language at each timepoint, and their productions were markedly variable, as revealed by network science metrics; these children never converged with their peers with typical language. Conclusion: The findings suggest a unique deficit in phonological sequence production that persists beyond the pre-school years. These results offer new theoretical and clinical insights into mechanisms that underlie deficits in novel word form learning.

The challenge of achieving greater generalization in phonological treatment of Aphasia

ABSTRACT Background Stimulus selection is important to anomia treatment because similarity between trained and untrained words in the mental lexicon may influence treatment generalization. We focused on phonological similarity between trained and untrained words from a clinical trial of Phonomotor Treatment (PMT) that showed gains in confrontation naming accuracy of untrained words post-treatment. One way to capture the amount of similarity between the trained and untrained words is to consider the phonological network path distance between words. We posited that the distance between trained and untrained words in a phonological network could account for the improvement in confrontation naming accuracy post-treatment. Aim To define the phonological network distance between trained and untrained words that influences change in confrontation naming accuracy post-treatment. Methods and procedures We retrospectively analyzed data from 28 people with aphasia who received PMT as part of a clinical trial. Participants completed confrontation naming (baseline, post-treatment, and 3-months post-treatment) of words varying in phonological distance to the treatment stimuli. We used a phonological network to calculate the average shortest path length (ASPL), defined by the number of phoneme differences, between an untrained word and all trained words. We used mixed effects regression models to predict change in confrontation naming accuracy of untrained words post-treatment from ASPL. Several post-hoc analyses were also conducted. Outcomes and results We found no effect of ASPL on change in confrontation naming accuracy of untrained words immediately post- and 3-months post-treatment. However, post-hoc analyses indicated significant subject heterogeneity and limitations in observable path distance between trained and untrained words. Conclusion Despite the clinical trial report that confrontation naming of untrained words improved after PMT, we found no overall effect of ASPL on the amount of improvement. We discuss further investigation of the entire domain of phonological sequence knowledge (the phonological sequence knowledge landscape) and its influence on treatment generalization, and the potential importance of identifying predictors of treatment response to enhance the effects of treatment generalization.

Lowercase Writing in Loanword Transliteration in Japanese

This paper shows how the so-called lower case katakana writing is utilized for the transliteration of loanwords in Japanese, avoiding unpermitted phonological sequences. In order to adapt the foreign ti, di, tu, du, hu sequences, Japanese orthography employs lowercase writing (i. e., written in “small letters”) to preserve the phonological entity of the target words in the transliteration, e. g., disko “disco” → <deisko>, feis “face” → <ɸue:su>. That is, the diphthongal representations have to depend on special symbols, i. e., lowercase glides. Due to many complexities, Japanese writing system, especially the Romanization, is regarded as one of the most complicated systems which cannot be accounted for in a simple way. In order to provide a unified account on this issue, we employ the framework of Optimality Theory and show what kinds of constraints and their ranking relations are required the Japanese lowercase writing. We here claim that vowel correspondence is ranked higher than consonantal correspondence in Japanese lowercase writing. Moreover, the preservation of mora is another important factor in loan adaptation. Furthermore, the constraint ranking is different, depending on the period of adaptation; the new and old loanwords are realized differently from each other, although they have the same phonemic inputs.

The Effect of Multimedia Videos in Reducing English Consonant Sequence Clusters Errors among 9th-Grade Students in the Northern Region of Jerash District: An Experimental Study

Abstract This study aims to analyze the phonological consonant sequence clusters errors in the process of learning English as a second language among 9th-grade students in Jerash District. The participants' speech was recorded using a high-quality recorder before it was transcribed. The study sample consisted of ten students; five of them were males and five of them were females. It was found that most of the phonological sequence clusters errors committed by the 9th-grade students were represented by inserting a short vowel between the last two consonants of the morphological words and geminating the fricative consonant sound. As a remedial plan for those errors, the participants were exposed to an American language pronunciation by watching native speakers pronouncing the same words to improve their consonant sequence clusters errors. It was concluded that the phonological sequence clusters errors committed by the students were significantly reduced after they were exposed to the authentic language pronunciation. Keywords: multimedia videos, phonology, consonant sequence clusters, Jerash district

Associations and Dissociations among Phonological Processing Skills, Language Skills and Nonverbal Cognition in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Aims: The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of phonological processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as it pertains to their nonverbal cognitive and linguistic abilities. Methods: Twenty-one participants between the ages of 9 and 21 years were administered a nonverbal cognitive assessment (Raven test), a language measure that requires receptive and expressive knowledge of semantics, syntax and morphology, as well as the integration across these language domains (CELF-4), and a measure of phonological processing (CTOPP). Results: Results show that performance on nonword repetition (NWR) that reflects an aspect of phonological memory was significantly low, whereas performance on phoneme reversal, phoneme elision, blending words and memory for digits was within the normal range. Hierarchical regressions with age, nonverbal intelligence (Raven test) and receptive language (CELF) as predictors showed that for NWR and phoneme elision the receptive part of the CELF was the main significant ­predictor, after controlling for age. For phoneme reversal and memory for digits, however, the Raven score was the significant predictor, suggesting that cognitive nonverbal ability is the main factor explaining variability in these tasks. Conclusions: A deficit in phonological memory characterizes individuals in the autistic population. This deficit may influence language acquisition in this population consistent with other populations of children with language impairments. Other tasks of phonological awareness, however, might be preserved especially when they do not involve memory for long phonological sequences and when the cognitive abilities are within the norm.

Orthographic variation as evidence for the development of the Linear B writing system

AbstractThis paper investigates the issue of orthographic variation in the Linear B writing system in order to explore ways in which studying a writing system’s orthographic conventions may shed light on the history of its development. Linear B was used in the palatial/administrative centres of Late Bronze Age Greece and Crete (c.1400–1200 B.C.E.) and records an early Greek dialect known as ‘Mycenaean’. The writing system’s structure and orthographic conventions permit flexibility in the spelling of particular phonological sequences: this paper discusses the varying orthographic representation of such sequences and shows that synchronic variation is common or even the norm in many cases. Investigating the factors which underlie this variation demonstrates the potential for a study of synchronic variation to illuminate a writing system’s diachronic development; it also underlines the importance of analysing the ways in which writers actually choose to use writing systems in order to fully understand their development.

Phonomotor Versus Semantic Feature Analysis Treatment for Anomia in 58 Persons With Aphasia: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose The ultimate goal of anomia treatment should be to achieve gains in exemplars trained in the therapy session, as well as generalization to untrained exemplars and contexts. The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of phonomotor treatment, a treatment focusing on enhancement of phonological sequence knowledge, against semantic feature analysis (SFA), a lexical-semantic therapy that focuses on enhancement of semantic knowledge and is well known and commonly used to treat anomia in aphasia. Method In a between-groups randomized controlled trial, 58 persons with aphasia characterized by anomia and phonological dysfunction were randomized to receive 56-60 hr of intensively delivered treatment over 6 weeks with testing pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3 months posttreatment termination. Results There was no significant between-groups difference on the primary outcome measure (untrained nouns phonologically and semantically unrelated to each treatment) at 3 months posttreatment. Significant within-group immediately posttreatment acquisition effects for confrontation naming and response latency were observed for both groups. Treatment-specific generalization effects for confrontation naming were observed for both groups immediately and 3 months posttreatment; a significant decrease in response latency was observed at both time points for the SFA group only. Finally, significant within-group differences on the Comprehensive Aphasia Test-Disability Questionnaire (Swinburn, Porter, & Howard, 2004) were observed both immediately and 3 months posttreatment for the SFA group, and significant within-group differences on the Functional Outcome Questionnaire (Glueckauf et al., 2003) were found for both treatment groups 3 months posttreatment. Discussion Our results are consistent with those of prior studies that have shown that SFA treatment and phonomotor treatment generalize to untrained words that share features (semantic or phonological sequence, respectively) with the training set. However, they show that there is no significant generalization to untrained words that do not share semantic features or phonological sequence features.

Patterns of gender assignment in the Jamtlandic variety of Scandinavian

AbstractIn this study, we present an analysis of gender assignment tendencies in Jamtlandic, a language variety of Sweden, using a word list of 1029 items obtained from fieldwork. Most research on gender assignment in the Scandinavian languages focuses on the standard languages (Steinmetz 1985; Källström 1996; Trosterud 2001, 2006) and Norwegian dialects (Enger 2011, Kvinlaug 2011, Enger & Corbett 2012). However, gender assignment principles for Swedish dialects have not previously been researched. We find generalizations based on semantic, morphological, and phonological principles. Some of the principles apply more consistently than others, some ‘win’ in competition with other principles; a multinomial logistic regression analysis provides a statistical foundation for evaluating the principles. The strongest tendencies are those based on biological sex, plural inflection, derivational suffixes, and some phonological sequences. Weaker tendencies include non-core semantic tendencies and other phonological sequences. Gender assignment in modern loanwords differs from the overall material, with a larger proportion of nouns assigned masculine gender.

The effect of experience with phonological sequences on the suppression effect, used to assess echoic sensory memory, within the auditory‐evoked potentials (AEPs)

Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a developmental language disorder, has been associated with deficits in working memory (Gathercole, 2006). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), Helenius and colleagues (2009, 2014) have shown that adults and children with SLI have impaired sensory memory for the repetition of meaningful spoken words. Also, of interest is whether individuals with SLI show impaired sensory memory for phonological sequences, which would likely affect vocabulary learning. As a first step in pursuing this question, we examined the effects of experience with phonological sequences on the suppression effect used to assess sensory memory. The suppression effect, is a reduced response within the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) or its magnetic counterpart, to repetition of an auditory event, including phonological sequences. EEGs were recorded from 24 native‐English and 24 native‐Polish adults as they listened to same and different non‐word pairs within two experimental sessions. Non‐word pairs contained a phonological sequence contrast, /st‐sət/that occurs in the English and Polish languages and a contrast /pt‐pət/that occurs only in the Polish language. The EEG was time locked to the second word in the non‐word pairs, which was the same non‐word in the same pairs (pətilɑ‐pətilɑ) and different pairs (ptilɑ‐pətilɑ). Thus, a larger AEP response to the second word in the different pairs relative to the second word in the same pairs indicates that the brain registered the additional sound in the different pair. Likewise, evidence of the suppression effect within the same pairs suggest an intact sensory memory for the phonological sequences within the first non‐word. Preliminary examination of results at averaged fronto‐central electrode sites within the AEP revealed an effect of language experience between ~400–600 ms post‐word onset. The native‐Polish listeners showed a larger response to their native language /pt‐pət/contrast than the English listeners and the English listeners showed a larger response to the /st‐sət/contrast that is more prominent in the English language than the Polish language. Thus, native‐language experience and frequency of phonological sequences within a language should be considered when assessing sensory memory in clinical populations.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

The Sense of Sounds: Brain Responses to Phonotactic Frequency, Phonological Grammar and Lexical Meaning.

Two outstanding questions in spoken-language comprehension concern (1) the interplay of phonological grammar (legal vs. illegal sound sequences), phonotactic frequency (high- vs. low-frequency sound sequences) and lexicality (words vs. other sound sequences) in a meaningful context, and (2) how the properties of phonological sequences determine their inclusion or exclusion from lexical-semantic processing. In the present study, we used a picture-sound priming paradigm to examine the ERP responses of adult listeners to grammatically illegal sound sequences, to grammatically legal sound sequences (pseudowords) with low- vs. high-frequency, and to real words that were either congruent or incongruent to the picture context. Results showed less negative N1-P2 responses for illegal sequences and low-frequency pseudowords (with differences in topography), but not high-frequency ones. Low-frequency pseudowords also showed an increased P3 component. However, just like illegal sequences, neither low- nor high-frequency pseudowords differed from congruent words in the N400. Thus, phonotactic frequency had an impact before, but not during lexical-semantic processing. Our results also suggest that phonological grammar, phonotactic frequency and lexicality may follow each other in this order during word processing.

Generalisation and maintenance across word classes: comparing the efficacy of two anomia treatments in improving verb naming

ABSTRACTBackground: Many language treatments have been developed to remediate anomia, a debilitating and pervasive symptom of aphasia. The two major types of anomia treatments, semantic and phonological, have been shown to improve spoken production of trained words. However, generalisation to untrained words has been considerably variable and few studies have examined the improvement of untrained words from a different word class despite the presence of unbalanced noun-verb impairments in the majority of people with aphasia.Aim: This retrospective study investigated within and between treatment group effects of two anomia treatments (Semantic Feature Analysis, SFA, and Phonomotor Treatment, PMT) on naming of untrained verbs.Methods & Procedures: The data for this study were retrospectively analysed from a randomised controlled trial with 57 persons with aphasia randomised to one of two treatment groups. Each participant received 56–60 hours of intensively delivered treatment over 6 weeks, with testing before, immediately after, and three months after treatment termination.Outcomes & Results: There was no significant between-group difference on confrontation naming of untrained verbs immediately post-treatment or three months following treatment termination (maintenance). Significant within-group findings were evident immediately post-treatment for the individuals in the SFA group and at maintenance for the PMT group.Conclusions: Our results show that neither SFA nor PMT was superior at inducing generalisation effects across word class (i.e. from nouns to verbs). These findings were consistent with the between-group results from the larger randomised controlled trial from which these data are analysed (Kendall, Oelke, Allen, Torrence, & Nadeau, 2018) in that there was no between-group difference in generalization to untrained words that do not share semantic or phonological sequence features. However, the within-treatment group results in the maintenance phase add to evidence from prior studies that Phonomotor Treatment is more likely to facilitate generalisation. Although generalisation to untrained stimuli was minimally maintained after SFA treatment, there was further improvement to untrained exemplars over time following Phonomotor Treatment.

Task-Dependent Mechanisms in the Perception of Music and Speech: Domain-Specific Transfer Effects of Elementary School Music Education

Previous studies have demonstrated that active engagement in musical activities benefits auditory and cognitive processing. However, it is still unclear whether musical experience improves domain-general mechanisms reflected in superior functioning in language or the enhancement is selective and limited to musical abilities. In the present study, we evaluated the transfer effect of general elementary school music education on the development of linguistic abilities. The relationship between specific musical auditory skills, phonological awareness, and reading was investigated in 30 second-grade children who attended either a class with an intensive music curriculum or a class with a regular curriculum. Results indicated no significant differences between the music and the regular class, suggesting that 1 year of Kodály-based classroom music education is not enough to yield relevant improvement in musical and linguistic abilities. Although there was no considerable relationship between reading and musical abilities, phoneme deletion accuracy was specifically associated with tonal memory. These findings suggest that similar cognitive mechanisms may be required to process melodic and phonological sequences. Therefore, we assume that task-dependent mechanisms may exist in melody and speech perception, which might account for the presence of inconsistent findings in the music transfer literature.