Speech sound learning across languages and talkers by adults and infants

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To understand how language is learned and used we must know about language representations: the information they contain, how they are formed, and how we appropriately extract information from them. My research program focuses on how we become competent language users; and within this broader aim, the current proposal explores the formation and content of speech sound representations. ******We have been examining knowledge of speech sound ordering. In English, "ng" (sound at the end of "sing") never starts words. This type of existing regularity affects how we process speech: sound sequences are more easily processed when the existing regularities are followed (e.g., "fing" would make a reasonable English word), than when the regularities are violated (e.g., "ngif" would make a poor word). To study the formation and content of representations we expose adults and infants to novel sequence regularities, e.g., restricting "f"s to the starts of syllables. We then test whether listeners treat syllables that start or end with "f" differently. If they do, it suggests that they learned about the new regularities. Adding to difficulty for learning, languages differ in how sounds can be ordered, and worse, speakers of the same language (e.g., English) may differ in their specific pronunciation of sounds depending on, for example, their native language (e.g., English vs French). ******Here, we propose to explore how native-language experience can be overcome when learning a novel language. Adults and children can learn multiple languages, yet our first language (L1) affects later language (L2) learning. We investigate some ways in which novel phonotactic patterns (inconsistent with L1) can be learned; asking whether some types of exposure are more helpful for acquiring novel patterns. We also ask whether details (e.g., talker accent) are represented when learning. When watching a British sitcom, generalizing our knowledge of Canadian English sound patterns (e.g., no "ng" at the starts of words) may be beneficial, but sometimes compartmentalizing our knowledge may be more useful, e.g., when an L1-French speaker says "heat", she might mean temperature or food ("eat"), so tracking sound patterns (e.g., involving H) relative to the speaker's background, might improve comprehension. Finally, cross-age comparison (adults, infants) helps clarify the role of experience. ******Our research explores novel questions in the acquisition and processing of speech sounds; adding to basic knowledge of human learning and memory, speech perception, and language acquisition.