The Perceptual Acquisition of Phonological Contrasts

Abstract

Stager and Werker (1997) show that fourteen-month-olds engaged in a word-learning task fail to respond to a switch between the minimal pair [bI] and [dI], though they do respond to a switch between [lIf] and [nim] in the same task. In this article we show that the [bI]/[dI] results extend to stimuli that respect English phonotactics ([bIn] vs. [dIn]), to a voicing contrast ([pIn] vs. [bIn]), and to voicing and place combined ([pIn] vs. [dIn]). Our interpretation of these results is that when a phonological contrast like place or voicing is first acquired, it remains only partially integrated and can be lost under the processing demands of word learning. We formalize partial integration in terms of unranked optimality-theoretic constraints and discuss the predictions of this account for further research.

Desempenho Perceptivo-Auditivo De Crianças Na Identificação De Contrastes Fônicos

“…The obtained results corroborate those found in international classic studies (SHVACHKIN, 1973;EDWARDS, 1974;BROWN, 1997;2000;PATER;STAGER;WERKER, 2004), which predict not only a gradual auditory perceptual acquisition, but also a an acquisition hierarchy.…”

“…Further studies (EDWARDS, 1974;BARTON, 1980;BROWN;MATTHEWS, 1993;HAZAN;BARRETT, 2000;PATER et al, 2004) have systematically reinforced three broad trends for auditory perceptual phonemic acquisition, namely: (a) sevenyear old children are still to finish the process of phonemic contrasts perception; (b) phonemic perception gradually develops, usually with production advancement; (c) the order of perceptual acquisition tends to become uniform among the world languages, but it is not universal. Trends in differentiations are common in varied languages (e.g.…”

Grammatical Processing without Semantics? An Event-related Brain Potential Study of Preschoolers using Jabberwocky Sentences

“…In addition, many of the pseudowords sounded sufficiently like real words, and may have been processed in a holistic way. Evidence from younger toddlers has suggested that, under processing situations that are high in their cognitive demands, fine phonetic detail is not always accessed in words (e.g., Mills et al, 2004;Pater, Stager, & Werker, 2004;Stager & Werker, 1997). Thus, it is possible that during this cognitively demanding sentence processing paradigm, children may have been using phonological information to map the pseudowords onto their representations of similar sounding real words.…”

Bridging the gap between receptive and productive development with minimally violable constraints

“…section 3.2). The choice between this approach, and the one suggested in sections 3.1 and 3.2, seems to hinge on whether restrictions on the complexity of lexical representations are truly phonologically determined, which can only be ascertained through further empirical research (see Pater et al 2001 for some discussion).…”