title: Evidence for a learning bias against saltatory phonological alternations.
abstract: This study provides new experimental evidence that people learn phonological alternations in a biased way. Adult participants were exposed to alternations between phonetically dissimilar sounds (i.e., those differing in both voicing and manner, such as [p] and [v]). After learning these alternations, participants assumed, without evidence in the input, that more similar sounds (e.g., [b] and [v]) also alternated (Exp. 1). Even when provided with explicit evidence that dissimilar sounds (e.g., [p] and [v]) alternated but similar sounds ([b] and [v]) did not, participants tended to make errors in assuming that the similar sounds also alternated (Exp. 2). By comparison, a control group of participants found it easier to learn the opposite pattern, where similar sounds alternated but dissimilar sounds did not. The results are taken as evidence that learners have a soft bias, considering alternations between perceptually similar sounds to be more likely.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, United States. Electronic address: jwhit6@uottawa.ca.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: White
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Artificial language; Phonological alternations; Phonology; Substantive bias