Abstract
Phonetic category acquisition involves a distributional learning mechanism (Maye, Werker, and Gerken 2002). Some researchers suggest that phonetic category acquisition is only the first step in a two-step model of phonological acquisition by modelling these two steps separately (Guenther and Gjaja, 1996; Boersma, Escudero, and Hayes, 2003; Peperkamp, Pettinato, and Dupoux 2003; Peperkamp, Calvez, Nadal, and Dupoux 2006), while others have argued for a one-step model (Dillon, Dunbar, and Idsardi 2013). This experimental study maps the learning trajectory of three groups of adult learners: (1) a group exposed to a bimodal frequency distribution where both halves of the bimodal distribution occur in complementary environments (Bimodal-Comp group), (2) a group exposed to a bimodal frequency distribution where both halves of the bimodal distribution occur in non-complementary environments (Bimodal-NonComp group), and (3) a group exposed to a monomodal frequency distribution (Monomodal group). This study finds support for a one-step model of phoneme acquisition, with the Bimodal-Comp group having lower sensitivities to critical stimuli than even the Monomodal group at all three exposure times tested.
Highlights
At least two theories regarding the acquisition of sound categories have been proposed: a one-step model, and a two-step model
This study maps the learning trajectory of three groups of learners: one group exposed to a bimodal frequency distribution where both halves of the bimodal distribution occur in complementary environments, one group exposed to a bimodal frequency distribution where both halves of the bimodal distribution occur in non-complementary environments, and one group exposed to a monomodal frequency distribution
This study finds support for a one-step model of phoneme acquisition, with the Bimodal-Comp group having: 1) numerically lower sensitivities to critical stimuli than both the Monomodal and Bimodal-NonComp groups at all three times tested, 2) significantly lower sensitivities than the Monomodal group at ExposureTime Two, and 3) significantly lower sensitivities to critical stimuli than the Bimodal-NonComp group at ExposureTime Three
Summary
At least two theories regarding the acquisition of sound categories have been proposed: a one-step model, and a two-step model. The acquisition of phonetic categories has been noted to occur in infants anywhere between the age of 6 months (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens, and Lindblom 1992) to 10 months of age (Werker and Tees 1984; Werker, Gilbert, Humphrey, and Tees 1981; Eilers, Gavin, and Wilson 1979; Eimas, Siqueland, Juscyk, and Vigorito 1971), and has been found in adult participants of artificial language learning studies (Maye and Gerken 2000; Feldman, Griffiths, and Morgan 2009; Maye and Gerken 2001; Escudero, Benders, and Wanrooij 2011) Researchers such as Maye et al (2002) and Werker et al (2012) argue that language learners acquire phonetic categories through distributional learning. Learners exposed to a bimodal distribution of tokens along some phonetic dimension(s) will infer that there are two phonetic categories, whereas learners exposed to a monomodal distribution will infer that there is only one phonetic category
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