Structure and Substance in Artificial‐phonology Learning, Part I: Structure

Abstract

Artificial analogues of natural-language phonological patterns can often be learned in the lab from small amounts of training or exposure. The difficulty of a featurallydefined pattern has been hypothesized to be affected by two main factors, its formal structure (the abstract logical configuration of the defining features) and its phonetic substance (the concrete phonetic interpretation of the pattern). This paper, the first of a two-part series, reviews the experimental literature on structural effects. The principal finding is a robust complexity effect: Patterns which depend on more features are reliably harder to learn.

Not crazy after all these years? Perceptual grounding for long-distance vowel harmony

“…The size of the interaction was small, and detectable only among identical vowels. This offers the potential for a perceptual explanation for distance effects, but such an explanation is not the only plausible account; for example, it may very well be the case that biases in learning systematically disadvantage patterns that require associations across increasing distances (see Moreton, 2012;Moreton & Pater, 2012 for more on structural biases in learning).…”

“…Moreton and Pater (2012) further divide analytic bias into 'structural' bias, the preferential learning of computationally simpler patterns, and 'substantive' bias, the preferential learning of patterns which correspond with sources of phonetic grounding.…”

What happens to large changes? Saltation produces well-liked outputs that are hard to generate

“…If alternation magnitude influences learnability, labial palatalization should be harder to learn than alveolar or velar palatalization. In particular, if large alternations (of which saltation is one example) are hard to learn to produce (Skoruppa et al, 2011) (Hayes & White, 2015;Moreton & Pater, 2012a;White, 2013White, , 2014White, , 2017White & Sundara, 2014), the same not-to-be-palatalized consonants should be palatalized more in the Labial condition than in the other conditions. For example, [t] might be palatalized more often when participants are trained on ptʃi than when they are trained on ktʃi.…”

“…It may instead be due to a first-language influence, namely the influence of English spelling-sound correspondence patterns. In English, orthographic <g> often maps onto [dӡ] (~30% of <g>'s are [dӡ] and ~70% are [g], Gontijo, P. F., Gontijo, I., & Shillcock, 2003 Moreton & Pater (2012a), it is easier to learn alternations between sounds grouped into a single category, which may account for the otherwise unexpected asymmetry between [k] and [g]. It would be interesting to see whether the difference between /k/ and /g/ observed here and in Wilson (2006) is nullified or reversed with speakers of other languages or preliterate children.…”

“…Several recent studies have argued that phonological learning is biased against alternations involving dissimilar sounds (Hayes & White, 2015;Moreton & Pater, 2012a, 2012bPeperkamp, Le Calvez, Nadal, & Dupoux, 2006;Steriade, 2001Steriade, /2009White, 2013White, , 2014White, , 2017White & Sundara, 2014;Zuraw, 2007). While dissimilarity between sounds can in principle be defined in terms of phonological features, articulatory gestures, or perceptual dimensions, it is often operationalized in terms of the alternation 'skipping over' an intermediate sound (Peperkamp et al, 2006;Skoruppa, Lambrechts, & Peperkamp, 2011;White, 2013White, , 2014.…”