TY - JOUR A1 - Baer-Henney, Dinah A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben T1 - The Interaction of Language-Specific and Universal Factors During the Acquisition of Morphophonemic Alternations With Exceptions JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - 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. KW - Phonology KW - Exceptional alternation KW - Acquisition KW - Substance KW - Phonotactics KW - Artificial language paradigm Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12209 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 39 IS - 7 SP - 1537 EP - 1569 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Kager, Rene T1 - Is speech processing influenced by abstract or detailed phonotactic representations? The case of the Obligatory Contour Principle JF - Lingua : international review of general linguistics N2 - Many languages restrict their lexicons by OCP-Place, a phonotactic constraint against co-occurrences of consonants with shared [place] (e.g., McCarthy, 1986). While many previous studies have suggested that listeners have knowledge of OCP-Place and use this for speech processing, it is less clear whether they make reference to an abstract representation of this constraint. In Dutch, OCP-Place gradiently restricts non-adjacent consonant co-occurrences in the lexicon. Focusing on labial-vowel-labial co-occurrences, we found that there are, however, exceptions from the general effect of OCP-Labial: (A) co-occurrences of identical labials are systematically less restricted than co-occurrences of homorganic labials, and (B) some specific pairs (e.g., /pVp/, /bVv/) occur more often than expected. Setting out to study whether exceptions such as (A) and (B) had an effect on processing, the current study presents an artificial language learning experiment and a reanalysis of Boll-Avetisyan and Kager's (2014) speech segmentation data. Results indicate that Dutch listeners can use both knowledge of phonotactic detail and an abstract constraint OCP-Labial as a cue for speech segmentation. We suggest that whether detailed or abstract representations are drawn on depends on the complexity of processing demands. KW - OCP KW - Artificial language learning KW - Speech segmentation KW - Phonotactics KW - Identity KW - Phonotactic probability Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.11.008 SN - 0024-3841 SN - 1872-6135 VL - 171 SP - 74 EP - 91 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth A1 - Mock, Julia A1 - Stephan, Franziska A1 - Richter, Maria A1 - Vignotto, Micol A1 - Rossi, Sonja T1 - Impact of associative word learning on phonotactic processing in 6-month-old infants: A combined EEG and fNIRS study JF - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience KW - fNIRS KW - Phonotactics KW - Associative training KW - Language development Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2016.09.001 SN - 1878-9293 SN - 1878-9307 VL - 25 SP - 185 EP - 197 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER -