Phonetic accommodation in non‑native directed speech supports L2 word learning and pronunciation

Published: 02 December 2023This study assessed whether Non-native Directed Speech (NNDS) facilitates second language (L2) learning, specifically L2 word learning and production. Spanish participants (N = 50) learned novel English words, presented either in NNDS or Native-Directed Speech (NDS), in two tasks: Recognition and Production. Recognition involved matching novel objects to their labels produced in NNDS or NDS. Production required participants to pronounce these objects’ labels. The novel words contained English vowel contrasts, which approximated Spanish vowel categories more (/i-ɪ/) or less (/ʌ-æ/). Participants in the NNDS group exhibited faster recognition of novel words, improved learning, and produced the /i-ɪ/ contrast with greater distinctiveness in comparison to the NDS group. Participants’ ability to discriminate the target vowel contrasts was also assessed before and after the tasks, with no improvement detected in the two groups. These findings support the didactic assumption of NNDS, indicating the relevance of the phonetic adaptations in this register for successful L2 acquisition.This research was supported by a Doctoral Fellowship (LCF/BQ/DI19/11730045) from “La Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) to G.P., and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Ramon y Cajal Research Fellowship (RYC2018-024284-I) to M.K. This research was supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010-S. The research was also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PID2020-113926GB-I00 to C.D.M.), and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 819093 to C.D.M.)

Exploring Early Language Acquisition from Different Kinds of Input: The Role of Attention

While most research on infant word segmentation has investigated the extraction of words from fluent speech in standard laboratory settings, the series of experiments in this dissertation examined the role of different kinds of input and exposure on infants’ word segmentation and word learning abilities. The first experiment suggests that infants are able to successfully segment words from fluent infant-directed speech (hereafter, IDS), which includes longer pauses, shorter utterances, higher fundamental frequencies, and wider pitch ranges, but also the fast and monotone input of adult-directed speech (hereafter, ADS) provided they were familiarized with these words over an extended-exposure period of six weeks at home. These 9-month-old infants, however, seem to be unable to segment words from fluent IDS during a standard laboratory-familiarization. Therefore, the second experiment examined whether German infants might require a more exaggerated IDS exposure similar to the one American English infants are addressed with. Here, 9-month-old, but not 7.5-month-old, infants successfully segmented the words presented in an exaggerated IDS register. Using neurophysiological measures, the third experiment further explored 7.5-month-old infants’ segmentation abilities and revealed that these infants were only able to successfully segment words from fluent exaggerated IDS. The final study of the dissertation extended the investigations to infants’ word learning abilities. Critically, infants were trained on word-object associations in fluent IDS or ADS. The results of this study demonstrated that infants were able to learn words regardless of the register they were trained in and suggest that infants are able to learn from a much greater variety of input available to them than previously suggested, extending the findings from word segmentation to word learning. Importantly, this dissertation presents the earliest evidence of ADS word segmentation and word learning presented in the literature to date. Hence, it provides new insights into infant word segmentation and word learning from different kinds of input and different kinds of exposure. Furthermore, the idea of attention as being a central mechanism in early language acquisition is supported by this dissertation.2018-05-0

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies

Exploring The Facilitating Effect Of Diminutives On The Acquisition of Serbian Noun Morphology

Studies of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian language learners converge on the finding that morphological features of nouns are first generalized to word clusters of high morpho-phonological similarities such as diminutives, that grammatical categorisation is are more easily applied to novel words that fall into these clusters. The present thesis explores whether the facilitating effect of diminutives on the acquisition of complex noun morphology can be extended to Serbian, a south Slavic language, morphologically similar to Russian and Polish. Specifically, the thesis explores the role of parameters responsible for the obtained diminutive advantage: high frequency of a particular cluster of words in child-directed speech (CDS) and morpho-phonological homogeneity within this cluster. A corpus analysis of the distribution of diminutives in Serbian CDS indicated a rather unexpected difference in frequency relative to Russian and Polish CDS, despite the high similarity of the diminutive derivation across these three Slavic languages. Out of the total number of nouns in Serbian CDS only 7% were diminutives, compared to 20-30% in Polish and 45% in Russian. Two experimental studies explored whether the low frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS attenuates the diminutive advantage in morphology learning compared to Russian and Polish. In the first two experiments, Serbian children exhibited a strong diminutive advantage for both gender agreement and case marking in the same range as Russian children, indicating that morpho-phonological homogeneity within the cluster of diminutives may play as important a role as their frequency for grammatical categorisation of novel nouns. A third study investigated in more detail the effects of morpho-phonological homogeneity on the emergence of the diminutive advantage using a gender-agreement task with novel nouns in simplex and pseudo-diminutive form over four sessions with Serbian children. The results showed a pseudo-diminutive advantage for gender agreement by Session 2, suggesting that the categorisation of nouns into grammatical categories is based on morpho-phonological homogeneity of the word cluster, emerges relatively fast, and can occur despite the much lower frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS. Finally, a series of neural network simulations designed to capture the pattern of results from the third experimental study was used to examine to what extent a simple associative learning mechanism, relying on morpho-phonological similarity of the noun endings, can explain the findings. The performance of three models, a whole-word feed-forward network, a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) and a last-syllable feed-forward network, was compared to the experimental data. The superior fit of the SRN suggests that gender learning is based on a very fast sequential build-up of representations of the entire word, allowing the system to exploit the predictive power of word stems to anticipate regularised endings. Overall, the findings of this thesis contribute to our general understanding of mechanisms responsible for the acquisition of complex inflectional noun morphology in two ways. First, by extending experimental studies and neural network simulations to Serbian, the results underline the universality of the idea that noun morphology is learned and processed through a single-route associative mechanism based on the frequency and morpho-phonological structure of nouns. More specifically, the results from experimental studies and neural network simulations demonstrate that for diminutives, the low-level grammatical categorisation is based mainly on the morpho-phonological similarity of word endings, and can emerge after just a few exposures. And second, the neural network simulations suggest that during the process of categorisation of nouns into gender categories, learners rely not only on predictable information from the noun endings, but also on phonological regularities in the stems of nouns. Taken together, these findings contribute also to a better understanding of the facilitating role of CDS in morphology acquisition

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

Laterality and Babble: Does asymmetry in lip opening during babble indicate increasing left hemisphere dominance as babies gain articulatory experience?

Speech and language are supported by task-dependent neural networks that are predominantly lateralised to the left hemisphere of the brain, whilst emotion is supported by predominantly right hemispheric networks. This is reflected in the asymmetry of lip openings during speech and facial expressions in adults. One cross-sectional orofacial asymmetry study found an analogous distinction between 5-12-month-old babies’ lip openings during reduplicated babble and during positively valenced emotional facial expressions and this has been interpreted as evidence to support the hypothesis that babble is fundamentally linguistic in nature (Holowka & Petitto, 2002). However, a similar distinction is also observed in orofacial behaviours in some non-human primates. Differential hemispheric specialisation for emotional and vocal communicative functions may then be an ancient trait, long predating human language. Additionally, characterising babble as babies’ immature attempts to do language marginalises the critical role of endogenously motivated vocal exploration and may assume a degree of goal-directedness in infant behaviour around the time of babble emergence for which we have little other supporting evidence. This thesis explores laterality in eight 5-12-month-old’s babble, positive facial expressions, and other vocalisations longitudinally. Singleton and variegated babble are captured as well as reduplicated babble, and an alternative method for analysing orofacial asymmetry – hemimouth measurement – is used. Overall, Holowka and Petitto’s between-category distinction was replicated. However, babble was found to show right laterality at emergence and become left lateralised gradually over developmental time. Some interactional effect of utterance complexity was also observed. Bisyllabic babbles showed significant leftward shift over developmental time, whilst monosyllabic and polysyllabic babbles did not. Furthermore, hemimouth measurement revealed a degree of real-time variability in the laterality of babble not previously observed. An alternative theory of the underlying nature of babble – the Old Parts, New Machine hypothesis – is proposed

Exploring the facilitating effect of diminutives on the acquisition of Serbian noun morphology

Studies of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian language learners converge on the finding that morphological features of nouns are first generalized to word clusters of high morpho-phonological similarities such as diminutives, that grammatical categorisation is are more easily applied to novel words that fall into these clusters. The present thesis explores whether the facilitating effect of diminutives on the acquisition of complex noun morphology can be extended to Serbian, a south Slavic language, morphologically similar to Russian and Polish. Specifically, the thesis explores the role of parameters responsible for the obtained diminutive advantage: high frequency of a particular cluster of words in child-directed speech (CDS) and morpho-phonological homogeneity within this cluster. A corpus analysis of the distribution of diminutives in Serbian CDS indicated a rather unexpected difference in frequency relative to Russian and Polish CDS, despite the high similarity of the diminutive derivation across these three Slavic languages. Out of the total number of nouns in Serbian CDS only 7% were diminutives, compared to 20-30% in Polish and 45% in Russian. Two experimental studies explored whether the low frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS attenuates the diminutive advantage in morphology learning compared to Russian and Polish. In the first two experiments, Serbian children exhibited a strong diminutive advantage for both gender agreement and case marking in the same range as Russian children, indicating that morpho-phonological homogeneity within the cluster of diminutives may play as important a role as their frequency for grammatical categorisation of novel nouns. A third study investigated in more detail the effects of morpho-phonological homogeneity on the emergence of the diminutive advantage using a gender-agreement task with novel nouns in simplex and pseudo-diminutive form over four sessions with Serbian children. The results showed a pseudo-diminutive advantage for gender agreement by Session 2, suggesting that the categorisation of nouns into grammatical categories is based on morpho-phonological homogeneity of the word cluster, emerges relatively fast, and can occur despite the much lower frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS. Finally, a series of neural network simulations designed to capture the pattern of results from the third experimental study was used to examine to what extent a simple associative learning mechanism, relying on morpho-phonological similarity of the noun endings, can explain the findings. The performance of three models, a whole-word feed-forward network, a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) and a last-syllable feed-forward network, was compared to the experimental data. The superior fit of the SRN suggests that gender learning is based on a very fast sequential build-up of representations of the entire word, allowing the system to exploit the predictive power of word stems to anticipate regularised endings. Overall, the findings of this thesis contribute to our general understanding of mechanisms responsible for the acquisition of complex inflectional noun morphology in two ways. First, by extending experimental studies and neural network simulations to Serbian, the results underline the universality of the idea that noun morphology is learned and processed through a single-route associative mechanism based on the frequency and morpho-phonological structure of nouns. More specifically, the results from experimental studies and neural network simulations demonstrate that for diminutives, the low-level grammatical categorisation is based mainly on the morpho-phonological similarity of word endings, and can emerge after just a few exposures. And second, the neural network simulations suggest that during the process of categorisation of nouns into gender categories, learners rely not only on predictable information from the noun endings, but also on phonological regularities in the stems of nouns. Taken together, these findings contribute also to a better understanding of the facilitating role of CDS in morphology acquisition.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo