Production and Substantive Bias in Phonological Learning

Bias in Phonological Learning: Evidence from Saltation

Learning Bias and Phonological-Rule Induction

A fundamental debate in the machine learning of language has been the role of prior knowledge in the learning process. Purely nativist approaches, such as the Principles and Parameters model, build parameterized linguistic generalizations directly into the learning system. Purely empirical approaches use a general, domain-independent learning rule (Error Back-Propagation, InstanceBased Generali...

Modelling Modularity Bias in Phonological Pattern Learning

Phonological dependencies in natural language tend to relate elements which are phonetically similar. As Yip (2002:222) puts it, “In general in phonology, like things interact. We do not expect to find labials causing vowel fronting, or laterals blocking rounding harmony, for example. What makes sounds ‘alike’ are their articulatory and acoustic properties phonologized as feature specifications...

Substantive Bias and Velar Palatalization

There is an active debate within the field of phonology concerning the cognitive status of substantive phonetic factors such as ease of articulation and perceptual distinctiveness. A new framework is proposed in which substance functions as a bias, or prior, on phonological learning. Two experiments tested this framework with a method in which participants are provided highly impoverished evide...

Phonetic Motivation as a Learning Bias in Phonological Acquisition :

v Acknowledgments I would like to thank Colin Wilson for introducing me to this project and supporting my progress in it; Bruce Hayes and Megha Sundara for their invaluable comments; Henry Tehrani, the designer and builder of the essential custom hardware that controlled the physical peripherals necessary to the experiment; Brook Lillehaugen for recording the versatile stimuli; and of course La...