Lexical constraints in phonological acquisition

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDITH A. GIERUT ◽  
MICHELE L. MORRISETTE ◽  
ANNETTE HUST CHAMPION
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Dependent Measure ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Phonological Acquisition ◽  
Lexical Diffusion ◽  
Phonological Change ◽  
Lexical Constraints ◽  
Neighbourhood Structure

Lexical diffusion, as characterized by interword variation in production, was examined in phonological acquisition. The lexical variables of word frequency and neighbourhood density were hypothesized to facilitate sound change to varying degrees. Twelve children with functional phonological delays, aged 3;0 to 7;4, participated in an alternating treatments experiment to promote sound change. Independent variables were crossed to yield all logically possible combinations of high/low frequency and high/low density in treatment; the dependent measure was generalization accuracy in production. Results indicated word frequency was most facilitative in sound change, whereas, dense neighbourhood structure was least facilitative. The salience of frequency and avoidance of high density are discussed relative to the type of phonological change being induced in children's grammars, either phonetic or phonemic, and to the nature of children's representations. Results are further interpreted with reference to interactive models of language processing and optimality theoretic accounts of linguistic structure.

scholarly journals Exploring the role of token frequency in phonological change: evidence from TH-Fronting in east-central Scotland

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYNN CLARK ◽  
GRAEME TROUSDALE
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
East Central ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
Phonological Change ◽  
The Relationship

Recent research on frequency effects in phonology suggests that word frequency is often a significant motivating factor in the spread of sound change through the lexicon. However, there is conflicting evidence regarding the exact nature of the relationship between phonological change and word frequency. This article investigates the role of lexical frequency in the spread of the well-known sound change TH-Fronting in an under-researched dialect area in east-central Scotland. Using data from a corpus of conversations compiled over a two-year period by the first author, we explore how the process of TH-Fronting is complicated in this community by the existence of certain local variants which are lexically restricted, and we question to what extent the frequency patterns that are apparent in these data are consistent with generalisations made in the wider literature on the relationship between lexical frequency and phonological change.

scholarly journals Aligning the timelines of phonological acquisition and change

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Beckman ◽  
Fangfang Li ◽  
Eun Jong Kong ◽  
Jan Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Phonological Acquisition ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Dialect Acquisition ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
Phonological Change

AbstractThis paper examines whether data from a large cross-linguistic corpus of adult and child productions can be used to support an assumed corollary of the Neogrammarian distinction between two types of phonological change. The first type is regular sound change, which is assumed to be incremental and so should show continuity between phonological development and the age-related variation observed in the speech community undergoing the change. The second type is dialect borrowing, which could show an abrupt discontinuity between developmental patterns before and after the socio-historical circumstances that instigate it. We examine the acquisition of two contrasts: the Seoul Korean contrast between lax and aspirated stops which is undergoing regular sound change, and the standard Mandarin contrast between retroflex and dental sibilants which has been borrowed recently into the Sōngyuán dialect. Acquisition of the different contrasts patterns as predicted from the assumed differences between continuous regular sound change and potentially abrupt dialect borrowing. However, there are substantial gaps in our understanding both of the extent of cross-cultural variability in language socialization and of how this might affect the mechanisms of phonological change that must be addressed before we can fully understand the relationship between the time courses of the two.

Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Bybee
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Exemplar Model ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Lexical Variation ◽  
Phonetic Detail ◽  
Lexical Diffusion ◽  
Context Of Use

The literature on frequency effects in lexical diffusion shows that even phonetically gradual changes that in some cases are destined to be lexically regular show lexical diffusion while they are in progress. Change that is both phonetically and lexically gradual presents a serious challenge to theories with phonemic underlying forms. An alternate exemplar model that can account for lexical variation in phonetic detail is outlined here. This model predicts that the frequency with which words are used in the contexts for change will affect how readily the word undergoes a change in progress. This prediction is tested on data from /t, d/ deletion in American English. Finally, the effect of bound morphemes on the diffusion of a sound change is examined. The data suggest that instances of a bound morpheme can affect the rate of change for that morpheme overall.

Semantic Relatedness Estimation using the Layout Information of Wikipedia Articles

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Chan ◽  
Yoshinori Hijikata ◽  
Toshiya Kuramochi ◽  
Shogo Nishida
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Conventional Approach ◽  
Explicit Semantic Analysis

Computing the semantic relatedness between two words or phrases is an important problem in fields such as information retrieval and natural language processing. Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA), a state-of-the-art approach to solve the problem uses word frequency to estimate relevance. Therefore, the relevance of words with low frequency cannot always be well estimated. To improve the relevance estimate of low-frequency words and concepts, the authors apply regression to word frequency, its location in an article, and its text style to calculate the relevance. The relevance value is subsequently used to compute semantic relatedness. Empirical evaluation shows that, for low-frequency words, the authors’ method achieves better estimate of semantic relatedness over ESA. Furthermore, when all words of the dataset are considered, the combination of the authors’ proposed method and the conventional approach outperforms the conventional approach alone.

A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Word Frequency and Rime-Neighborhood Size on Beginning Readers' Rime Reading Accuracy in Words and Nonwords

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Anne Calhoon ◽  
Lauren Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Beginning Readers ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Neighborhood Size ◽  
Reading Accuracy ◽  
High Frequency Words

Beginning readers' rime reading accuracy was assessed over three years to examine the influence of word frequency and rime-neighborhood size (the number of single syllable words with the same rime) on words presented in lists and stories. Twenty-seven 1st- and 2nd- grade students read 54 words and 27 nonwords containing rimes from different size neighborhoods. In Year 1, children showed effects of neighborhood size in high frequency words read in stories and in low frequency words read in lists and stories. In Year 2, rimes from large neighborhoods were read more accurately than rimes from medium and small neighborhoods in high- and low-frequency words. In Year 3, no effects of rime-neighborhood size were found for high-frequency words, but effects on low-frequency words continued. These results support Leslie and Calhoon's (1995) developmental model of the effects of rime-neighborhood size and word frequency as a function of higher levels of word learning.

scholarly journals The Effect of Phonological Neighborhood Density on Vowel Articulation

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1048-1058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Munson ◽  
Nancy Pearl Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Low Density ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood

Recent literature suggests that phonological neighborhood density and word frequency can affect speech production, in addition to the well-documented effects that they have on speech perception. This article describes 2 experiments that examined how phonological neighborhood density influences the durations and formant frequencies of adults’ productions of vowels in real words. In Experiment 1, 10 normal speakers produced words that covaried in phonological neighborhood density and word frequency. Infrequent words with many phonological neighbors were produced with shorter durations and more expanded vowel spaces than frequent words with few phonological neighbors. Results of this experiment confirmed that this effect was not related to the duration of the vowels constituting the high- and low-density words. In Experiment 2, 15 adults produced words that varied in both word frequency and neighborhood density. Neighborhood density affected vowel articulation in both high- and low-frequency words. Moreover, frequent words were produced with more contracted vowel spaces than infrequent words. There was no interaction between these factors, and the vowel duration did not vary as a function of neighborhood density. Taken together, the results suggest that neighborhood density affects vowel production independent of word frequency and vowel duration.

scholarly journals Eye Tracking Technology in Detecting the Switch Cost in the Intra-sentential Code-Switching Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (05) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Liqin Wu ◽  
Cuihua Xi
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Switch Cost ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Reading Efficiency ◽  
Areas Of Interest

Switch cost and cost site have been controversial issues in the code-switching studies. This research conducted an eye tracking experiment on eight bilingual subjects to measure their switch cost and cost site in comprehending the intra-sentential code-switching (Chinese and English) and the unilingual (pure Chinese) stimuli. The English words and their Chinese translations or equivalents were assumed as the key words in either a unilingual or an intra-sentential code-switching paragraph. These key words were located as areas of interest (AOI) with the same height and consisted of three word-frequency levels. After the experiment, the subjects were required to do a comprehension test to ensure their real understanding of the English words. Their performances in two different reading contexts were compared by adopting a paired sample t-test. Their eye movement data were validated by using 2 x 3 repeated measures ANOVA. It was revealed that: 1) the subjects’ scores in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts were higher than those in the unilingual ones, i.e. reading efficiency increased in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts; 2) word frequency had little effect on word recognition speed in the intra-sentential code-switching contexts, i.e., the least frequently used words did not necessarily take the subjects’ more time or vice versa; 3) even if a switch cost occurred(on rare occasions), it was not necessarily at the switching site, and low frequency words in alternating languages did impair performance even when the switch occurred at a sentence boundary.

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