Variation awaiting bias: Substantively biased learning of vowel harmony variation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Youngah DO ◽  
Shannon MOONEY
Keyword(s):  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Natural Form ◽  
Morphosyntactic Variation ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Phonological Learning ◽  
Child Learning

Abstract This article examines whether children alter a variable phonological pattern in an artificial language towards a phonetically-natural form. We address acquisition of a variable rounding harmony pattern through the use of two artificial languages; one with dominant harmony pattern, and another with dominant non-harmony pattern. Overall, children favor harmony pattern in their production of the languages. In the language where harmony is non-dominant, children's subsequent production entirely reverses the pattern so that harmony predominates. This differs starkly from adults. Our results compare to the regularization found in child learning of morphosyntactic variation, suggesting a role for naturalness in variable phonological learning.

Phonetic Effects in Child and Adult Word Segmentation

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 854-869
Author(s):  
Jonah Katz ◽  
Michelle W. Moore
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Learning Effect ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
School Age ◽  
Laboratory Studies ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Phonological Learning ◽  
Forced Choice Task

Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of specific acoustic patterns on word learning and segmentation in 8- to 11-year-old children and in college students. Method Twenty-two children (ages 8;2–11;4 [years;months]) and 36 college students listened to synthesized “utterances” in artificial languages consisting of six iterated “words,” which followed either a phonetically natural lenition–fortition pattern or an unnatural (cross-linguistically unattested) antilenition pattern. A two-alternative forced-choice task tested whether they could discriminate between occurring and nonoccurring sequences. Participants were exposed to both languages, counterbalanced for order across subjects, in sessions spaced at least 1 month apart. Results Children showed little evidence for learning in either the phonetically natural or unnatural condition nor evidence of differences in learning across the two conditions. Adults showed the predicted (and previously attested) interaction between learning and phonetic condition: The phonetically natural language was learned better. The adults also showed a strong effect of session: Subjects performed much worse during the second session than the first. Conclusions School-age children not only failed to demonstrate the phonetic asymmetry demonstrated by adults in previous studies but also failed to show strong evidence for any learning at all. The fact that the phonetic asymmetry (and general learning effect) was replicated with adults suggests that the child result is not due to inadequate stimuli or procedures. The strong carryover effect for adults also suggests that they retain knowledge about the sound patterns of an artificial language for over a month, longer than has been reported in laboratory studies of purely phonetic/phonological learning. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13641284

Verbal statistical learning: Prior knowledge impacts word identification but not metacognition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laetitia Zmuda ◽  
Charlotte Baey ◽  
Paolo Mairano ◽  
Anahita Basirat
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Bayesian Approach ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Transitional Probabilities ◽  
Fully Bayesian

It is well-known that individuals can identify novel words in a stream of an artificial language using statistical dependencies. While underlying computations are thought to be similar from one stream to another (e.g. transitional probabilities between syllables), performance are not similar. According to the “linguistic entrenchment” hypothesis, this would be due to the fact that individuals have some prior knowledge regarding co-occurrences of elements in speech which intervene during verbal statistical learning. The focus of previous studies was on task performance. The goal of the current study is to examine the extent to which prior knowledge impacts metacognition (i.e. ability to evaluate one’s own cognitive processes). Participants were exposed to two different artificial languages. Using a fully Bayesian approach, we estimated an unbiased measure of metacognitive efficiency and compared the two languages in terms of task performance and metacognition. While task performance was higher in one of the languages, the metacognitive efficiency was similar in both languages. In addition, a model assuming no correlation between the two languages better accounted for our results compared to a model where correlations were introduced. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding the computations which underlie the interaction between input and prior knowledge during verbal statistical learning.

Principles of compiling artificial languages

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (07) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Khayala Mugamat Mursaliyeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The explosion of information and the ever-increasing number of international languages make the modern language situation very difficult. The interaction of languages ultimately leads to the creation of international artificial languages that operate in parallel with the world`s languages. The expansion of interlinguistic issues is a natural consequence of the aggravation of the linguistic landscape of the modern world. The modern interlinguistic dialect, which is defined as a field of linguistics that studies international languages and international languages as a means of communication, deals with the importance of overcoming the barrier.The problem of international artificial languages is widely covered in the writings of I.A.Baudouin de Courtenay, V.P.Qrigorev, N.L.Gudskov, E.K.Drezen, A.D.Dulchenko, M.I.Isayev, S.N.Kuznechov, A.D.Melnikov and many other scientists. Key words:the concept of natural language, the concept of artificial language, the degree of artificiality of language, the authenticity of language

scholarly journals A comparison between the concept of Newspeak in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel and the way of thinking about language in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-498
Author(s):  
Andrzej Wicher
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Language ◽  
Thought Control ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Totalitarian State ◽  
The Way

The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s concept of the artificial language called Newspeak, which, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is shown as an effective tool of enslavement and thought control in the hands of a totalitarian state. The author discusses, in this context, the putative links between Newspeak and really existing artificial languages, first of all Esperanto, and also between Orwell’s notion of “doublethink”, which is an important feature of the totalitarian mentality, and Czesław Miłosz’s notion of “ketman”, developed in his book The Captive Mind. But the main emphasis is on the connection between Orwell’s book and the slightly earlier novel by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. It is well known that Orwell knew Lewis’s book and expressed his mixed feelings about it. There are many specific, though far from obvious, similarities between the two books, but what seems to have been particularly inspiring for Orwell was Lewis’s vision of a thoroughly degenerate language that is used for political manipulation rather than for communication.

scholarly journals Does Learning Alternations Affect Phonotactic Judgments?

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Presley Pizzo ◽  
Joe Pater
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nonsignificant Trend ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Phonological Learning ◽  
Potential Interactions

It has long been recognized that alternations often serve to resolve violations of the phonotactic constraints of a language, and it has often been claimed that this entails a unified analysis. However, alternations and phonotactics do not always reflect identical constraints or processes. We provide experimental evidence that the learning of an alternation may affect phonotactic judgments.Participants were trained on one of two artificial languages. Each language contained evidence for one of two alternations, while not excluding the possibility that the other alternation occurs. The constraints motivating the alternations were not violated in either language. All participants were then tested on their phonotactic preference for the sequences avoided by each alternation. Experiment 1 found a significant interaction between alternation trained on and phonotactic preference, supporting the hypothesis that the learning of an alternation to avoid a sequence reduces the phonotactic acceptability of that sequence. Experiment 2 found a nonsignificant trend in the same direction. We conclude that while further investigation is needed, there is reason to consider potential interactions between alternations and phonotactics in the modeling of phonological learning.

scholarly journals Production and Substantive Bias in Phonological Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngah Do ◽  
Jonathan Havenhill
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Pattern Learning ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Phonological Learning ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
Learning Contexts ◽  
Learning Conditions ◽  
Show Evidence

The role of inductive biases has been actively examined in work on phonological learning. While previous studies systematically supported a structural bias hypothesis, i.e., patterns with simpler phonological featural descriptions are easier to learn, the results have been mixed for a substantive bias hypothesis, i.e., phonetically motivated patterns are easier to learn. This study explores an explanation for the uncertain status of substantive bias in phonological learning. Among the aspects of phonetic substance, we focus on articulatory factors. We hypothesize that practice producing phonological patterns makes salient to learners the articulatory factors underlying articulatorily (un-)grounded patterns. An artificial language learning experiment was conducted to test the learning of postnasal (de)voicing, a pattern which is primarily grounded on articulatory components. We examine the role of production in the learning of articulatorily grounded (postnasal voicing) vs. ungrounded patterns (postnasal devoicing), by comparing the outcomes of perception-only vs. perception-with-production learning contexts, both in categorical and variable pattern learning conditions. The results show evidence for a production effect, but it was restricted to certain contexts, namely those involving a higher level of uncertainty and for languages exhibiting dominant natural patterns. We discuss the implications of our findings for phonological learning and language change.

scholarly journals Coarticulation and learnability of transparent vowels in vowel harmony

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Sara Finley
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Natural Condition ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Front Vowel ◽  
Psychological Reality ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
Back Vowel ◽  
Training Control

The representations of transparent vowels in vowel harmony have been of interest to phonologists because of the challenges they pose for constraints on locality and complexity. One proposal is that transparent vowels in back vowel harmony may be intermediate between front and back. The present study uses two artificial language learning experiments to explore the psychological reality of acoustic differences in transparent vowels in back vs. front vowel contexts. Participants were exposed to a back/round vowel harmony language with a neutral vowel that was spliced so that the F2 was lower in back vowel contexts and higher in front vowel contexts (the Natural condition) or the reverse (the Unnatural condition). While only participants in the Natural condition of Experiment 1 were able to learn the behavior of the transparent vowel relative to a No-Training control, there was no difference between the Natural and Unnatural conditions. In Experiment 2, only participants in the Natural condition learned the vowel harmony pattern, though there were no significant differences between the two conditions. No condition successfully learned the behavior of the transparent vowel in Experiment 2. These results suggest that the effects of small differences in the F2 value of transparent back vowels on learnability are minimal.

Statistical learning in infant language development

2007 ◽  
pp. 600-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Prior Learning ◽  
Phonological Learning ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
Learning Capabilities ◽  
Statistical Regularities ◽  
Infant Language

Children learn language over such a short span of time and with such seeming ease, that many have assumed they must master language by means of a language-specific device. Artificial languages provide a useful tool for controlling prior learning and for manipulating specific variables of interest. This approach has resulted in a wealth of findings regarding the learning capabilities of children. Infant artificial language learning has become synonymous with statistical learning because of the emphasis in much of the work on learning statistical regularities. However, not all cases of artificial language learning entail learning statistical structure. For instance, some learning requires generalisation of relational patterns. This article explores statistical learning in language development in infants, phonological learning (discrimination of speech sounds, learning phonotactic regularities, phonological generalization), word segmentation, rudiments of syntax, generalization of sequential word order, category-based abstraction, and bootstrapping from prior learning.

Evidence against a link between learning phonotactics and learning phonological alternations

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngah Do ◽  
Ping Hei Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Single Mechanism ◽  
Do So

Abstract Phonological alternations often happen to conform to phonotactic regularities, from which a single mechanism for phonotactics and alternations has been claimed. We note, however, that empirical evidence supporting the link between phonotactics and alternations comes only from English native speakers whose first language (L1) does exhibit phonotactically motivated alternation patterns. This article examines whether the link between phonotactics and alternations is universally available. To do so, we test learning of phonotactics and alternations with Cantonese native speakers, whose L1 provides no evidence for or against the link. We address learning of a vowel harmony pattern through the use of three artificial languages; one with a harmony pattern both within and across stems, another with a harmony pattern only across stems; and the other with a disharmony pattern within stems but harmony across stems. Learners successfully acquired harmony phonotactics according to input patterns, but they showed no difference in learning alternation patterns across the three languages. Our results suggest that the link between phonotactics and alternations might be language-specific: Only upon receiving L1 evidence, learners can use a unified mechanism to encode phonotactics and alternations.

Phonetically natural rules benefit from a learning bias: a re-examination of vowel harmony and disharmony

Phonology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Martin ◽  
Sharon Peperkamp
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Memory Consolidation ◽  
Rule Learning ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
Better Than

Substance-based phonological theories predict that a preference for phonetically natural rules (those which reflect constraints on speech production and perception) is encoded in synchronic grammars, and translates into learning biases. Some previous work has shown evidence for such biases, but methodological concerns with these studies mean that the question warrants further investigation. We revisit this issue by focusing on the learning of palatal vowel harmony (phonetically natural) compared to disharmony (phonetically unnatural). In addition, we investigate the role of memory consolidation during sleep on rule learning. We use an artificial language learning paradigm with two test phases separated by twelve hours. We observe a robust effect of phonetic naturalness: vowel harmony is learned better than vowel disharmony. For both rules, performance remains stable after twelve hours, regardless of the presence or absence of sleep.

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