Dokument-ID Dokumenttyp Verfasser/Autoren Herausgeber Haupttitel Abstract Auflage Verlagsort Verlag Erscheinungsjahr Seitenzahl Schriftenreihe Titel Schriftenreihe Bandzahl ISBN Quelle der Hochschulschrift Konferenzname Quelle:Titel Quelle:Jahrgang Quelle:Heftnummer Quelle:Erste Seite Quelle:Letzte Seite URN DOI Abteilungen OPUS4-38621 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Baer-Henney, Dinah; Kügler, Frank; van de Vijver, Ruben The Interaction of Language-Specific and Universal Factors During the Acquisition of Morphophonemic Alternations With Exceptions Using the artificial language paradigm, we studied the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations with exceptions by 160 German adult learners. We tested the acquisition of two types of alternations in two regularity conditions while additionally varying length of training. In the first alternation, a vowel harmony, backness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix. This process is grounded in substance (phonetic motivation), and this universal phonetic factor bolsters learning a generalization. In the second alternation, tenseness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix vowel. This process is not based in substance, but it reflects a phonotactic property of German and our participants benefit from this language-specific factor. We found that learners use both cues, while substantive bias surfaces mainly in the most unstable situation. We show that language-specific and universal factors interact in learning. Hoboken Wiley-Blackwell 2015 33 Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society 39 7 1537 1569 10.1111/cogs.12209 Department Linguistik