23.4273, Diss: Lang Acq/ Phonetics/ Phonology/ Psycholing: Pajak: 'Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-4273. Fri Oct 12 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.4273, Diss: Lang Acq/ Phonetics/ Phonology/ Psycholing: Pajak: 'Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning'

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Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:11:38
From: Bozena Pajak [bpajak at bcs.rochester.edu]
Subject: Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning

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Institution: University of California, San Diego 
Program: Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2012 

Author: Bozena Pajak

Dissertation Title: Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and
learning 

Dissertation URL:  http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/bpajak/pdfs/Pajak_2012_diss.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Psycholinguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Roger Levy
Eric Bakovic

Dissertation Abstract:

Despite extensive research on language acquisition, our understanding 
of how people learn abstract linguistic structures remains limited. In the 
phonological domain, we know that perceptual reorganization in 
infancy results in attuning to native language (L1) phonetic categories 
and, consequently, in difficulty discriminating and learning non-native 
categories. This difficulty has been proposed to originate from novel 
sounds being perceptually mapped onto L1 phonetic categories, 
leading to massive L1 interference. However, ample evidence that the 
adult speech processing system preserves a considerable degree of 
plasticity suggests that more complex learning mechanisms might be in 
place. In this dissertation I propose an alternative theory in which non-
native speech processing is guided by principles of hierarchical 
inductive inference regarding how likely a given phonetic dimension is 
to be phonologically informative in any novel language. This theory 
differs crucially from mapping theories in predicting that when a 
phonetic dimension is informative (e.g., phonologically contrastive) in 
one's native language, discriminations involving that dimension should 
be enhanced even among classes of sounds for which the dimension is 
not informative in the native language. I provide experimental evidence 
supporting the inductive theory, demonstrating that language learning 
goes beyond the acquisition of specific phonetic categories, and 
includes higher-order generalizations regarding the relative importance 
of phonetic dimensions in the language as a whole. I argue that this 
theory can be extended beyond phonetic category learning to other 
domains of language acquisition, and that it suggests that adults and 
infants recruit the same domain-general learning mechanisms when 
acquiring novel languages. 






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