Word-internal segmental repetitions in lexical learning

我的项目旨在回答一些关于单词学习的基本问题。是什么让词汇（语言中的一组单词）更容易学习？学习整个词汇与学习单个单词有什么关系？词汇学习如何受到单词中相似/相同声音重复的影响？我对这些问题的兴趣源于最近的研究中揭示的一个差异，即自然语言中的单词内部重复是如何工作的，而人类在实验环境中发现什么更容易学习。尽管世界上的语言通常避免单词内部的辅音相似性，但在实验室实验中，有重复辅音的单词比没有重复的单词更容易学习。相比之下，单词中的元音相似是跨语言的常见现象，但重复的元音并不能在实验室中赋予单词学习优势。为什么自然语言最终会出现重复模式，使单词更难学习？虽然以前的研究通常集中在声音重复对单个单词学习的影响，我建议调查当整个词汇被认为是会发生什么。我假设有相似辅音的单词比有相似元音的单词更容易相互混淆。这将使单词内部辅音重复/相似的词汇更难学习，并有助于解释自然语言设计和单词学习优势之间的矛盾不匹配。为了验证这一想法，并确定在感知，记忆存储和辅音和元音匹配的单词处理的潜在差异，我将进行相似性判断，识别和回忆任务，使用人工词汇的听觉刺激。

My project aims to answer some fundamental questions on word learning. What makes a lexicon (the set of words in language) easier to learn? How does learning whole lexicons relate to learning individual words? How is lexical learning affected by the repetition of similar/identical sounds within words? My interest in these questions stems from a discrepancy revealed in recent studies between how word-internal repetition works in natural languages and what humans find easier to learn in experimental settings. Although word-internal consonant similarities are generally avoided by the languages of the world, in lab experiments words with repeated consonants are better learned than those with no repetitions. By contrast, it is cross-linguistically common for vowels within words to be similar, but repeated vowels do not confer a word learning advantage in the lab. Why would natural languages end up with repetition patterns that make words harder to learn? While previous research has typically focused on the effect of sound repetitions on individual word learning, I propose to investigate what happens when whole lexicons are considered. I hypothesise that words sharing similar consonants are more easily confused with each other than those sharing similar vowels. This would make lexicons with word-internal consonant repetitions/similarities harder to learn and contribute to explain the paradoxical mismatch between natural language design and word learning advantage. To test this idea and identify potential differences in the perception, memory storage, and processing of consonant- and vowel-matched words, I will carry out similarity judgement, recognition, and recall tasks using auditory stimuli from artificial lexicons.