@article{GonzalezGomezSchmandtFazekasetal.2018, author = {Gonzalez-Gomez, Nayeli and Schmandt, Silvana and Fazekas, Judit and Nazzi, Thierry and Gervain, Judit}, title = {Infants' sensitivity to nonadjacent vowel dependencies}, series = {Journal of experimental child psychology}, volume = {178}, journal = {Journal of experimental child psychology}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {New York}, issn = {0022-0965}, doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2018.08.014}, pages = {170 -- 183}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Vowel harmony is a linguistic phenomenon whereby vowels within a word share one or several of their phonological features, constituting a nonadjacent, and thus challenging, dependency to learn. It can be found in a large number of agglutinating languages, such as Hungarian and Turkish, and it may apply both at the lexical level (i.e., within word stems) and at the morphological level (i.e., between stems and their affixes). Thus, it might affect both lexical and morphological development in infants whose native language has vowel harmony. The current study asked at what age infants learning an irregular harmonic language, Hungarian, become sensitive to vowel harmony within word stems. In a head-turn preference study, 13-month-old, but not 10-month-old, Hungarian-learning infants preferred listening to nonharmonic VCV (vowel-consonant-vowel) pseudowords over vowel harmonic ones. A control experiment with 13-month-olds exposed to French, a nonharmonic language, showed no listening preference for either of the sequences, suggesting that this finding cannot be explained by a universal preference for nonharmonic sequences but rather reflects language-specific knowledge emerging between 10 and 13 months of age. We discuss the implications of this finding for morphological and lexical learning. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{MarimonTarter2019, author = {Marimon Tarter, Mireia}, title = {Word segmentation in German-learning infants and German-speaking adults}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43740}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437400}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {132}, year = {2019}, abstract = {There is evidence that infants start extracting words from fluent speech around 7.5 months of age (e.g., Jusczyk \& Aslin, 1995) and that they use at least two mechanisms to segment words forms from fluent speech: prosodic information (e.g., Jusczyk, Cutler \& Redanz, 1993) and statistical information (e.g., Saffran, Aslin \& Newport, 1996). However, how these two mechanisms interact and whether they change during development is still not fully understood. The main aim of the present work is to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by infants when learning the language in their environment, as well as to explore whether this ability is related to later language skills. In Chapter 3 we pursued to determine the reliability of the method used in most of the experiments in the present thesis (the Headturn Preference Procedure), as well as to examine correlations and individual differences between infants' performance and later language outcomes. In Chapter 4 we investigated how German-speaking adults weigh statistical and prosodic information for word segmentation. We familiarized adults with an auditory string in which statistical and prosodic information indicated different word boundaries and obtained both behavioral and pupillometry responses. Then, we conducted further experiments to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by 9-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 5) and by 6-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 6). In addition, we conducted follow-up questionnaires with the infants and obtained language outcomes at later stages of development. Our findings from this thesis revealed that (1) German-speaking adults show a strong weight of prosodic cues, at least for the materials used in this study and that (2) German-learning infants weight these two kind of cues differently depending on age and/or language experience. We observed that, unlike English-learning infants, 6-month-old infants relied more strongly on prosodic cues. Nine-month-olds do not show any preference for either of the cues in the word segmentation task. From the present results it remains unclear whether the ability to use prosodic cues to word segmentation relates to later language vocabulary. We speculate that prosody provides infants with their first window into the specific acoustic regularities in the signal, which enables them to master the specific stress pattern of German rapidly. Our findings are a step forwards in the understanding of an early impact of the native prosody compared to statistical learning in early word segmentation.}, language = {en} } @article{CiaccioClahsen2019, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Variability and consistency in first and second language processing}, series = {Language Learning}, volume = {70}, journal = {Language Learning}, number = {1}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0023-8333}, doi = {10.1111/lang.12370}, pages = {103 -- 136}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: .}, language = {en} } @misc{CiaccioClahsen2019, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Variability and consistency in first and second language processing}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51772}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517727}, pages = {36}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science.}, language = {en} } @article{SotiropoulouGibsonGafos2020, author = {Sotiropoulou, Stavroula and Gibson, Mark and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Global organization in Spanish onsets}, series = {Journal of phonetics}, volume = {82}, journal = {Journal of phonetics}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {London}, issn = {0095-4470}, doi = {10.1016/j.wocn.2020.100995}, pages = {22}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This paper addresses the relation between syllable structure and inter-segmental temporal coordination. The data examined are Electromagnetic Articulometry recordings from six speakers of Central Peninsular Spanish (henceforth, Spanish), producing words beginning with the clusters /pl, bl, kl, gl, p(sic), k(sic), t(sic)/ as well as corresponding unclustered sonorant-initial words in three vowel contexts /a, e, o/. In our results, we find evidence for a global organization of the segments involved in these combinations. This is reflected in a number of ways: shortening of the prevocalic sonorant in the cluster-initial case compared to the unclustered case, reorganization of the relative timing of the internal CV subsequence (in a CCV) in the obstruent-lateral context, early vowel initiation, and a strong compensatory relation between the duration of the obstruent-to-lateral transition and the duration of the lateral. In other words, we find that the global organization presiding over the segments partaking in these tautosyllabic CCVs is pleiotropic, that is, simultaneously expressed over a set of different phonetic parameters rather than via a privileged metric such as c-center stability or any other such given single measure (employed in prior works).}, language = {en} } @article{MokariGafosWilliams2021, author = {Mokari, Payam Ghaffarvand and Gafos, Adamantios I. and Williams, Daniel}, title = {Perceptuomotor compatibility effects in vowels}, series = {JASA Express Letters}, volume = {1}, journal = {JASA Express Letters}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {2691-1191}, doi = {10.1121/10.0003039}, pages = {8}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In a cue-distractor task, speakers' response times (RTs) were found to speed up when they perceived a distractor syllable whose vowel was identical to the vowel in the syllable they were preparing to utter. At a more fine-grained level, subphonemic congruency between response and distractor-defined by higher number of shared phonological features or higher acoustic proximity-was also found to be predictive of RT modulations. Furthermore, the findings indicate that perception of vowel stimuli embedded in syllables gives rise to robust and more consistent perceptuomotor compatibility effects (compared to isolated vowels) across different response-distractor vowel pairs.}, language = {en} } @article{TobinHullebusGafos2018, author = {Tobin, Stephen and Hullebus, Marc Antony and Gafos, Adamantios I.}, title = {Immediate phonetic convergence in a cue-distractor paradigm}, series = {The journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, volume = {144}, journal = {The journal of the Acoustical Society of America}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {0001-4966}, doi = {10.1121/1.5082984}, pages = {EL528 -- EL534}, year = {2018}, abstract = {During a cue-distractor task, participants repeatedly produce syllables prompted by visual cues. Distractor syllables are presented to participants via headphones 150 ms after the visual cue (before any response). The task has been used to demonstrate perceptuomotor integration effects (perception effects on production): response times (RTs) speed up as the distractor shares more phonetic properties with the response. Here it is demonstrated that perceptuomotor integration is not limited to RTs. Voice Onset Times (VOTs) of the distractor syllables were systematically varied and their impact on responses was measured. Results demonstrate trial-specific convergence of response syllables to VOT values of distractor syllables.}, language = {en} } @article{TamasiMckeanGafosetal.2018, author = {Tamasi, Katalin and Mckean, Cristina and Gafos, Adamantios I. and H{\"o}hle, Barbara}, title = {Children's gradient sensitivity to phonological mismatch}, series = {Journal of child language}, volume = {46}, journal = {Journal of child language}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0305-0009}, doi = {10.1017/S0305000918000259}, pages = {1 -- 23}, year = {2018}, abstract = {In a preferential looking paradigm, we studied how children's looking behavior and pupillary response were modulated by the degree of phonological mismatch between the correct label of a target referent and its manipulated form. We manipulated degree of mismatch by introducing one or more featural changes to the target label. Both looking behavior and pupillary response were sensitive to degree of mismatch, corroborating previous studies that found differential responses in one or the other measure. Using time-course analyses, we present for the first time results demonstrating full separability among conditions (detecting difference not only between one vs. more, but also between two and three featural changes). Furthermore, the correct labels and small featural changes were associated with stable target preference, while large featural changes were associated with oscillating looking behavior, suggesting significant shifts in looking preference over time. These findings further support and extend the notion that early words are represented in great detail, containing subphonemic information.}, language = {en} }