Phonological redeployment and the mapping problem: Cross-linguistic E-similarity is the beginning of the story, not the end

In this research note I want to address some misunderstandings about the construct of redeployment and suggest that we need to fit these behavioural data from Yang, Chen and Xiao (YCX) into a broader context. I will suggest that these authors’ work is not just about the failure of three models to predict equivalence classification. Equivalence classification is not the end of the story but only the beginning. We need to look at what cues are detected in the input, which subset of the input becomes intake, and how this intake is parsed onto phonological structures. The empirical results of YCX should not be viewed as some sort of non-result inasmuch as none of the proposed predictors of Mandarin equivalence classification foresaw that the Russian prevoiced stops and short-lag stops would be equated with the Mandarin short-lag stops. Rather, the empirical results need to be contextualized by considering such factors as cue reweighting as part of the learning theory which maps intake onto phonological representations. In this light, the results are not a repudiation of phonological redeployment, but help to shed light on the parsing of the acoustic signal, the importance of robust burst-release cues, and the non-local nature of L2 phonological learning (as opposed to noticing).

Phonological Deficit Traits in Verbal Language of Dyslexics

Developmental dyslexia is a common learning disorder which is defined as a specific deficit in reading acquisition that cannot be accounted for by low IQ , lack of typical educational opportunities, or an obvious sensory or neurological damage. Dyslexic children commonly present with delayed language development first, which selectively affects phonological processing more than other aspects of language. The problem at the level of phonological representations causes a range of typical symptoms which include problems of verbal short-term memory, non-word repetitions, phonological learning of new verbal information, word retrieval, and rapid naming. This chapter will address the picture of early oral language difficulties especially phonological deficits in dyslexia, and how reading problems are related to them.

Modelling a subregular bias in phonological learning with Recurrent Neural Networks

A number of experiments have demonstrated what seems to be a bias in human phonological learning for patterns that are simpler according to Formal Language Theory (Finley and Badecker 2008; Lai 2015; Avcu 2018). This paper demonstrates that a sequence-to-sequence neural network (Sutskever et al. 2014), which has no such restriction explicitly built into its architecture, can successfully capture this bias. These results suggest that a bias for patterns that are simpler according to Formal Language Theory may not need to be explicitly incorporated into models of phonological learning.

Variation awaiting bias: Substantively biased learning of vowel harmony variation

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.

Production and Substantive Bias in Phonological Learning

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.

Phonetic Effects in Child and Adult Word Segmentation

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

Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) Teaches Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences More Explicitly Than Phonics Does: An open letter to Jennifer Buckingham and the reading research community

This “open letter” responds to a recent article by Buckingham (2020) which made the claim that the instructional approach known as “Structured Word Inquiry” (SWI) does not teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC). I counter this claim and provide evidence for SWI’s teaching of GPCs by citing not only the publications on SWI, including the original article introducing it in 2010, but also provide many links to publicly available illustrations of GPC instruction by teachers working with SWI. A description is provided of the qualitative differences between how GPCs are taught in SWI and phonics. Unlike phonics, SWI explicitly teaches the role of morphology and etymology for making sense of grapheme choice in our morphophonemic language and provides graphic representations of orthographic structure to support this instruction. Research evidence about the effects of morphological instruction, including its positive effects on phonological learning, provide a strong basis to motivate more explicit research attention to structured word inquiry in general and specifically as a proposal for a novel form of instruction about GPCs across a wide range of ages and abilities. The debate about whether SWI type instruction is appropriate in the earliest instruction is addressed. I highlight two tools used in SWI, the matrix and the word sum. I show why these are essential for teaching the interrelation of morphology and phonology, but have been largely ignored by the research community so far.