Dynamics of Phonological Learning

语音学习的动力学

• 批准号: 0719683
• 负责人: Viktor Jirsa
• 金额: $ 29.37万
• 依托单位: Florida Atlantic University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0719683&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dynamics; Phonological; Learning

Every year, there is a large influx of immigrants to the United States who do not understand or speak English. While learning a new language is not too difficult for children and adolescents, it is a much harder feat for adults. This is in part because adult speakers may not perceive meaningful sound distinctions in English if these distinctions are not part of their native language. For example, there are two different English vowels in ''bit'' and ''bead'', but Spanish does not distinguish between these vowel sounds. It therefore can be very difficult for native Spanish speakers to learn to hear the difference between words like ''bit'' and ''bead''. Likewise, American English speakers may not perceive the difference between the Hindi ''d'' and the American English ''d''. Perceiving such sound distinctions is essential to learning new languages, and difficulties in making these distinctions can greatly hinder language learning.With support of the National Science Foundation, Drs. Tuller and Jirsa are investigating how adults learn to perceive sound distinctions in non-native languages. They are training adult monolingual speakers of American English to perceive the difference between Spanish trilled ''r'' and tapped ''r'', a distinction that does not occur in English. Some people appear to learn new languages more rapidly and robustly than others, and previous work suggests that the perceptual ability is a factor in determining whether or not learning will occur, and how it will occur during language training. The investigators are proposing a dynamic systems theory that predicts two basic kinds of language learners with respect to speech sounds: Listeners either learn new speech sounds or they learn to make fine acoustic distinctions that are not language-based. Experiments are being conducted to test and explore this theory, and the results may have broad implications for understanding the nature of learning itself as well as the more specific question of second language learning. Knowledge gained from this research may also help to improve second language education practices and technologies, and remediation strategies for speech disorders.

每年都有大量不懂英语或不会说英语的移民涌入美国。虽然学习一门新语言对儿童和青少年来说并不太困难，但对成年人来说却要困难得多。这部分是因为成年人的发言者可能无法感知有意义的声音区别在英语中，如果这些区别不是他们的母语的一部分。例如，在“bit”和“bead”中有两个不同的英语元音，但西班牙语并不区分这些元音。 因此，对于母语为西班牙语的人来说，要学会听出像“bit”和“bead”这样的单词之间的区别是非常困难的。同样地，美国英语使用者可能无法感知印地语“d”和美国英语“d”之间的差异。感知这种语音差异对于学习新语言至关重要，而在进行这些区分时遇到的困难会极大地阻碍语言学习。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Tuller博士和Jirsa博士正在研究成年人如何学习感知非母语中的语音差异。 他们正在训练说美式英语的成年单语者感知西班牙语颤音r和轻敲r之间的区别，这种区别在英语中不会发生。有些人似乎比其他人更快，更强地学习新语言，以前的工作表明，感知能力是决定学习是否会发生的一个因素，以及在语言训练过程中如何发生。研究人员提出了一种动态系统理论，该理论预测了两种基本类型的语言学习者关于语音的情况：听者要么学习新的语音，要么学习进行非基于语言的精细声学区分。 实验正在进行测试和探索这一理论，其结果可能对理解学习本身的性质以及更具体的第二语言学习问题具有广泛的意义。从这项研究中获得的知识也可能有助于改善第二语言教育实践和技术，以及言语障碍的补救策略。