Language and Speech最新文献

Native speakers generally outperform non-native speakers in identifying and discriminating speech sounds. Yet, the categorical perception of native speech sounds can sometimes impede the discrimination of sounds within the same phonemic category. It remains unclear whether different linguistic features show similar patterns in cross-linguistic comparisons. Therefore, we studied the categorization and discrimination of vowel duration and lexical tone-two features that differ fundamentally. Vowel duration (short vs. long) typically requires phonemic context for categorization, while tone (rising vs. falling) can be recognized directly from acoustics. Participants were native Finnish and Mandarin Chinese speakers, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers exposed to Finnish. As expected, Mandarin speakers demonstrated a steeper category boundary for tonal stimuli than Finnish speakers. In contrast, no group difference was found for categorization slope for duration. In discrimination, native speakers outperformed non-native speakers for between-category pairs, as anticipated. For within-category pairs, however, native speakers performed worse than non-native speakers-but only for the tone feature. Mandarin speakers exposed to Finnish showed differences in categorization of vowel duration and in associated reaction times compared with the other groups. The results suggest that native language does not influence vowel perception uniformly across tone and duration features. Moreover, exposure to a foreign language in adulthood may, at least initially, lead to categorization preferences that diverge from, rather than align with, those of native speakers. These findings provide a basis for future theoretical models of how native language and late exposure shape speech perception across different phonetic features.

In Spanish, words may begin or end with a vowel, creating a scenario where two vowels meet across a word juncture, such as in mono enano "dwarf monkey." Vowel sequences of this sort are said to be affected by a post-lexical process of hiatus resolution in which one of the two vowels becomes a glide. This study explores the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of vowel sequences across word junctures in Castilian Spanish. We focus on vowel sequences with no high vocoids: /ea ae eo oe/. Production data were collected from a sample of 23 speakers, and acoustic analyses focused on duration and the shape of first (F1) and second formant (F2) tracks. Our findings suggest that cross-lexical vowel sequences are resolved via a phonetic coalescence process that retains some of the linearity in (or recoverability of) the underlying sequence, displaying both some diphthongal qualities and some blending qualities. We find no obvious evidence of a "dominant" (syllabic) vowel in the sequence, casting doubt on impressionistic transcription-based descriptions postulating a strict dichotomy between syllabic vowels and glides in post-lexical syllable contraction. We discuss alternative accounts of the resolution of Castilian Spanish vowel sequences across word junctures couched within the framework of Articulatory Phonology, and we argue that post-lexical hiatus resolution is not a phonologized process in this language variety.

This study investigates the emergence of prepositions in Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;6-6;0 years, analyzing a peer talk corpus of 75 children across five age groups. Across 45-minute triadic conversations, we examined the distributions, semantic functions, and form-function relations of prepositions. Two results sections are presented. First, using network analysis, we modeled the development of form-function correlations of Hebrew prepositions. Second, we conducted qualitative developmental analyses of the distributions and semantics of all prepositions identified in the study. Our findings reveal that prepositions expressed 22 functions, predominantly grammatical, spatial, and temporal. With age, the use of prepositions increased, abstract functions became more prevalent, and functions were served by a broader range of prepositions. The data suggest the emergence of systematic relations, forming network-based clusters or communities of semantically related functions. This systematic growth of the prepositional category signifies not just lexical but also syntactic development in Hebrew, transitioning from lexicalized preposition-marked verb arguments to diverse, abstract preposition-marked syntactic adjuncts, which enrich clause-level complexity.

This paper explores the early lexicons of nine infants acquiring English or French to determine the extent of systematicity in the early vocabulary, and how this changes over time. Network graphs are generated from the point of first word production in the dataset until age 30 months. Two measures of systematicity-mean path length and clustering coefficient-are analyzed to establish the extent to which the early productive lexicon consists of closely connected clusters of similar-sounding forms. Results show that early production is highly systematic when compared with random networks, but that the network becomes more dispersed as it increases in size. Connectivity within the network is consistently higher for infants' actual productions when compared with the adult target forms, and this effect increases over time. This suggests a systematic approach to production over the course of early development.

This study investigated the role of systematicity in word learning, focusing on Semitic morpho-phonology where words exhibit multiple levels of systematicity. Building upon previous research on phonological templates, we explored how systematicity based on such templates, whether they encode meanings or not, influenced word learning in preschool-age Hebrew-speaking children. We examined form-meaning systematicity, where words share phonological templates and carry similar categorical meanings of manner-of-motion (e.g., finupál and bizudáx carry the meaning of skipping), and form-only systematicity, where words are phonologically similar but do not share a meaning (e.g., finupál and bizudáx belong to different categories of manner-of-motion). We aimed to discern how these systematicity types impact the learning of the meaning of the word as a whole, that is, the encoding of visual form combined with manner-of-motion. Using novel Semitic-like stimuli, our experiments demonstrated that different types of systematicity involve different effects on word learning. Experiment 1 showed that form-meaning systematicity hindered the learning of the manner-of-motion. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that form systematicity facilitated learning these features. The findings suggest a complex interplay of top-down and bottom-up processes in word learning, expanding our understanding of systematicity in word learning.

Young children often produce non-target-like word forms in which non-adjacent consonants share a major place of articulation (e.g., [gɔgi] "doggy"). Termed child consonant harmony (CCH), this phenomenon has garnered considerable attention in the literature, primarily due to the apparent absence of analogous patterns in mature phonological systems. This study takes a close look at a potential account of CCH that is compatible with findings from adult word learning, serial recall, and phonological typology. According to this account, CCH is a response to memory pressure involved in remembering and retrieving multiple consonantal contrasts within a word. If this is the main motivation behind CCH, we would expect the resulting child forms to be biased toward full assimilation (i.e., consonant repetition) as it allows maximal reduction of phonolexical memory load. To test this prediction, children's productions of target words containing consonants that differ in both major place and manner were analyzed using two data sources: a single session sample from 40 children aged 1-2 years learning English, French, Finnish, Japanese, or Mandarin; and longitudinal samples from seven English-learning children between 1 and 3 years of age. Prevalence of consonant repetitions was robustly evidenced in early child forms, especially in those produced for target words with the structure CVCV(C). The results suggest that early word production is shaped by constraints on phonolexical memory.

Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic are known for having a non-concatenative morphology: words are typically built of a combination of a consonantal root, typically tri-consonantal (e.g., k-t-b "related to writing" in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)), with a prosodic template. Research on Hebrew language development suggests early sensitivity to frequently occurring templates. For the Arabic dialects, little is known about whether implicit sensitivity to non-concatenative morphology develops at a young age through exposure to speech, and how templatic the spoken language is in comparison to MSA. We focus on Lebanese Arabic. We hypothesized that prolonged contact with French and English may have "diluted" the salience of roots and patterns in the input. We used three different corpora of adult-directed-speech (ADS), child-directed-speech (CDS), and child speech. We analyzed the root and pattern structures in the 50 most frequent Lebanese Arabic word types in each corpus. We found fewer words with templatic patterns than expected among the most frequent words in ADS (35/50), even fewer in CDS (23/50) and still fewer in the children's target words (15/50). In addition, only a minority contains three root consonants in their surface forms: 22 in ADS, 15 in CDS, and only 7 in words targeted by the children. We conclude that Semitic structure is less evident in either input to children or words targeted by children aged 1-3 than has been assumed. We discuss implications for the development of sensitivity to templatic structure among Lebanese-acquiring children.

This study examined how infants exploit an interlocutor's eye gaze for word learning, using a novel eye-tracking paradigm. The final sample included 25 Hebrew-speaking infants aged 12 and 18 months. Infants completed three experimental phases: (a) a 2-part validation phase: (1) recognition of a familiar object (ball) among two items (ball, bottle) upon hearing its label (e.g., "Where is the ball?"), and (2) exposure to an interlocutor gazing at and talking to an unfamiliar object (rattle) without labeling it (e.g., "Look, it is here"); (b) a learning phase, in which two unfamiliar animal dolls of similar visual salience were presented, and the interlocutor labeled one doll (e.g., "Look, here is bícket"); and (c) a test phase, in which the four objects (ball, rattle, and the two animal dolls) were shown together, and infants were tested to see if they look at the target object upon hearing the learned label (e.g., "Where is bícket?") but not upon hearing a novel label. Eighteen-month-olds followed the interlocutor's gaze more often and attended longer to the labeled object during learning compared with 12-month-olds. In the test phase, both age groups showed word recognition, looking longer at the target object after hearing its label than at familiar or unlabeled distractors, although differences with the visually similar distractor were nonsignificant. When hearing the non-learned word, infants looked longer at the similar distractor. Infants demonstrated word-object learning based on the interlocutor's gaze, with gaze -following abilities strengthening with age.

This collection of papers is drawn from those presented in 2022, at a workshop on early phonological, lexical, and morphological development that my co-editors and I called to mark my retirement from the University of York, in 2020. We planned the workshop around the theme, "Building linguistic systems," although that was not the main focus of all of the papers. Here, I review the reasons for orienting the workshop in that way, divide the nine papers into five topics-Systematicity, Variability, Memory, Phonological complexity and accuracy in production and Social cues and sustained attention-and briefly summarize each of them. In closing I offer some reflections on the nature of learning as we might now begin to think about it in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

In this study, we investigate whether two structurally distinct languages, Norwegian and Russian, influence the use of Estonian morphosyntax by bilingual 5 to 7-year-olds. Using a sentence-repetition task, we tested the acquisition and use of Estonian morphosyntax by children acquiring Estonian alongside Norwegian and Russian, which differ in their use of morphological marking. We tested 69 children aged 4;9 to 7;10 (24 Estonian-Norwegian and 24 Russian-Estonian bilinguals, 21 Estonian monolinguals), using three sentence structures that vary across the languages (copula clauses, experiencer clauses, and complex conditional sentences). Quantitative results showed no significant differences between the bilingual groups. Both groups were at ceiling for copula clauses, but they performed in opposite directions with the other two structures, suggesting possible effects of the other language. An error analysis revealed small differences in children's use of experiencer and conditional constructions. Contrary to expectations, Norwegian-speaking bilinguals did not produce more errors of omission than of commission in either sentence type. Rather, they used a wider array of cases in the experiencer clauses than Russian-speaking children. In the conditional items, both groups exhibited a tendency to use indicative past in place of conditional present, transferring the use of past forms for conditional meanings from Norwegian or Russian. Other differences are discussed in light of language structure, Estonian exposure, and study design.