Understanding Perceptual Compensation in Sound Change

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Linguists have long hypothesized that sound change--changes in a language over time that alter pronunciation--occurs when a listener misinterprets a speaker and incorporates the misperception into his/her own grammar. However, little is known about the mechanism through which such adjustments occur and mounting evidence is in fact suggesting that listeners are adept at compensating for variation in speech perception and production. From this, it should follow that sound change would occur minimally, contrary to fact. This research investigates the circumstances under which perceptual compensation (PC) fails to correct for variation in speech and how such failures lead to sound change. The research team will develop a formal representation of PC (and by extension sound change) to corroborate the experimental findings using Bayesian inference, a statistical tool commonly employed in cognitive science research. This model predicts that the effects of PC may be minimized or even overcome when certain parameters in the model are adjusted; that is, the relative magnitude of compensation is mediated by the properties of a language and the speaker's prior experience with it. To test this theory of PC and its connection to sound change, the research team will conduct a number of laboratory experiments testing the limit and variability of PC effects. The experimental paradigm involves testing listeners' compensatory responses by varying (1) the frequency of the sounds involved, (2) the context in which the speech signal occurs, and (3) the nature of the speech signal itself.The results of this research will broaden the empirical database on which theories of phonology, sound change, and speech production and perception are grounded and will advance novel venues for theoretical investigations. This research will fill a gap in work on sound change and in linguistics in general by providing detailed and in-depth experimental and theoretical investigations on speakers' evaluative responses to various linguistic inputs from a cross-linguistic perspective. A better understanding of sound change will offer a unique window into the nature of language change, language acquisition, and human communication and may provide insight into first/second language acquisition, language-teaching, and the development of speech technology.