LINGUIST List 23.4273
Fri Oct 12 2012
Diss: Lang Acq/ Phonetics/ Phonology/ Psycholing: Pajak: 'Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning'
Editor for this issue: Lili Xia
<lxialinguistlist.org>
Date: 12-Oct-2012
From: Bozena Pajak <bpajak
bcs.rochester.edu>
Subject: Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning
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Institution: University of California, San Diego
Program: Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2012
Author: Bozena Pajak
Dissertation Title: Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning
Dissertation URL:
http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/bpajak/pdfs/Pajak_2012_diss.pdf
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Phonetics
Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Dissertation Director:
Roger Levy
Eric Bakovic
Dissertation Abstract:
Despite extensive research on language acquisition, our understandingof how people learn abstract linguistic structures remains limited. In thephonological domain, we know that perceptual reorganization ininfancy results in attuning to native language (L1) phonetic categoriesand, consequently, in difficulty discriminating and learning non-nativecategories. This difficulty has been proposed to originate from novelsounds being perceptually mapped onto L1 phonetic categories,leading to massive L1 interference. However, ample evidence that theadult speech processing system preserves a considerable degree ofplasticity suggests that more complex learning mechanisms might be inplace. In this dissertation I propose an alternative theory in which non-native speech processing is guided by principles of hierarchicalinductive inference regarding how likely a given phonetic dimension isto be phonologically informative in any novel language. This theorydiffers crucially from mapping theories in predicting that when aphonetic dimension is informative (e.g., phonologically contrastive) inone's native language, discriminations involving that dimension shouldbe enhanced even among classes of sounds for which the dimension isnot informative in the native language. I provide experimental evidencesupporting the inductive theory, demonstrating that language learninggoes beyond the acquisition of specific phonetic categories, andincludes higher-order generalizations regarding the relative importanceof phonetic dimensions in the language as a whole. I argue that thistheory can be extended beyond phonetic category learning to otherdomains of language acquisition, and that it suggests that adults andinfants recruit the same domain-general learning mechanisms whenacquiring novel languages.
Page Updated: 12-Oct-2012