Doctoral Dissertation Research: When is Phonetic Variation Helpful for Word Learning?

当我们听某人用我们的语言说句子时，每个单词似乎都像人群中的一张熟悉的面孔一样清晰可辨。但事实上，我们每次听到一个特定的单词时，它在听觉上都与我们上次听到它时不同。不同的说话者、不同的语速和不同的情绪状态都会影响单词的特定声学形式。有经验的语言使用者可以毫不费力地克服单词在声音表现上的这种差异，但仍在学习这种语言的人--幼儿和第二语言学习者--却很难做到。因此，从高度可变的声音信号中唯一地识别特定的单词是一项必须通过经验掌握的技能，对于所学的每一种语言。这项研究的主要目的是探索可能有助于这种掌握的一个因素。第二个问题是单词是如何在大脑中表达的，以便能够从声音信号中快速识别并快速产生。理解来自多个说话者的输入有助于学习新单词，这将解决更广泛的问题，即人们如何学习感知和产生单词，这是学习第一语言或第二语言的关键任务。此外，言语知觉与产出的关系是语音学和语言发展中的一个长期存在的问题。关于如何感知一个单词的知识会影响到关于如何产生该单词的知识，这一点通常是一致的。然而，对于是否存在既用于感知单词又用于产生单词的单一表征，或者是否存在两种不同但相关的表征，存在许多分歧。如果在从多个说话者获得的益处方面，感知和产出之间存在差异，我们就会有证据证明感知和产出的不同表征，至少当一个单词是新学的时候。对多个说话者的益处的更细微的理解可能会为第二语言学习方法提供参考。更广泛地说，它还可能揭示语言在人类思维中的表现方式。

When we listen to someone speaking sentences in our language, each word seems as clearly identifiable as a familiar face in a crowd. But in fact, each time we hear a particular word spoken, it is acoustically different from the last time we heard it spoken. Different talkers, different rates of speech, and different emotional states all affect the specific acoustic form that a word takes. Experienced language users have no trouble overcoming this variability in the acoustic manifestation of words, but people who are still learning the language - young children and second language learners - struggle. Thus, uniquely identifying particular words from a highly variable acoustic signal is a skill that must be mastered through experience for each language learned. The main goal of this research is to explore one factor that might contribute to that mastery. A secondary question is how words are represented in the mind so as to allow both rapid identification from the acoustic signal and rapid production. Understanding when input from multiple talkers is helpful for learning new words will address the broader question of how people learn to perceive and produce words, a crucial task in learning a first or second language. Additionally, the way that speech perception and production are related has been a long-standing issue in phonetics as well as in language development. There is usually agreement that the knowledge about how to perceive a word influences knowledge about how to produce that word. However, there is much disagreement as to whether there is a single representation that is used for both perceiving a word and producing a word, or whether there are two different, but related representations. If there is a difference between perception and production in terms of benefit from multiple talkers, we will have evidence for different representations for perception and production, at least when a word is newly learned. A more nuanced understanding of the benefit of multiple talkers may inform methods for second language learning. More broadly, it may also shed light on how language is represented in the human mind.