How variable input shapes word recognition

词汇学习是语言发展的核心部分-语言的所有其他方面都在词汇层面上交叉。这是一个令人惊讶的复杂任务。单词学习者面临两个主要的分类问题-除了确定单词应该映射到世界上的对象集之外，他们还必须确定构成同一个单词的标记集。这是一个困难的问题，因为没有两个单词的实例在声学上是相同的。说话者内部和说话者之间的一些差异并不影响单词的含义。然而，当说话者用不同的口音说出单词时，也会发生沿着维度的变化，从而改变单词的含义。例如，当一个说法语的人说出英语单词“pig”时，对一个英语听众来说，它可能听起来像单词“big”，因为两种语言中“B”和“p”的发音方式不同。

Word learning is a core part of language development - all other aspects of language intersect at the level of the word. And it is a surprisingly complex task. Word learners face two major categorization problems - in addition to determining the sets of objects in the world to which words should be mapped, they must also determine the set of tokens that constitute the same word. This is a difficult problem because no two instances of a word are acoustically identical. Some differences within and across speakers do not affect the meanings of words. However, when words are produced by speakers with different accents, changes can also occur along dimensions that alter the meanings of words. For example, when a French speaker produces the English word “pig”, it may sound to an English listener like the word “big”, because of differences in how the sounds “b” and “p” are produced in the two languages.