Learning phonotactic constraints from brief auditory experience

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Three experiments asked whether phonotactic regularities not present in English could be acquired by adult English speakers from brief listening experience. Subjects listened to consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) syllables displaying restrictions on consonant position. Responses in a later speeded repetition task revealed rapid learning of (a) first-order regularities in which consonants were restricted to particular positions (e.g. [bæp] not *[pæb]), and (b) second-order regularities in which consonant position depended on the adjacent vowel (e.g. [bæp] or [pIb], not *[pæb] or *[bIp]). No evidence of learning was found for second-order regularities in which consonant position depended on speaker's voice. These results demonstrated that phonotactic constraints are rapidly learned from listening experience and that some types of contingencies (consonant–vowel) are more easily learned than others (consonant–voice).