Variation awaiting bias: Substantively biased learning of vowel harmony variation

2021/06/29 by Youngah DO, Shannon MOONEY
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Language Development and Disorders #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Phonetics and Phonology Research

paper · doi:10.1017/s0305000920000719

openalex publication_date 2021/06/29 · openalex created_date 2021/07/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This article examines whether children alter a variable phonological pattern in an artificial language towards a phonetically-natural form. We address acquisition of a variable rounding harmony pattern through the use of two artificial languages; one with dominant harmony pattern, and another with dominant non-harmony pattern. Overall, children favor harmony pattern in their production of the languages. In the language where harmony is non-dominant, children's subsequent production entirely reverses the pattern so that harmony predominates. This differs starkly from adults. Our results compare to the regularization found in child learning of morphosyntactic variation, suggesting a role for naturalness in variable phonological learning.

Citations

• Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change
• Analytic bias and phonological typology
• Infants' sensitivity to vowel harmony and its role in segmenting speech

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