Bilingual children's use of statistical and usage-based learning to build rich cognitive representations of speech sounds

学习说话是一项复杂的任务，需要对语音进行丰富的认知表征，快速激活这些表征，并练习运动图式。通过日常练习，儿童学习他们语言的语音，到5岁时几乎没有错误;相反，学习第二语言的成年人尽管有多年的语言经验，但通常会保持口音。当我们说某人说话带有“口音”时，我们通常指的是这个说话者在语音学和音韵学上的差异。语音学描述了语音的声学和发音方面，音位学描述了这些语音在给定语言中是如何组织的。对于双语者来说，他们的言语受到言语声音习得和认知表征的内部机制以及外部社会因素（例如，谁说他们周围的语言，多久一次，在什么情况下）。 我的研究计划的长期目标是将这些内部机制和外部因素结合在一起，以了解双语儿童如何实现准确的，成人般的语音生产，特别注意语音-语音界面。本研究是将语音习得和表征模型推广到双语儿童的重要一步。我处于独特的地位，可以解决本提案所述的内部机制和外部因素（南苏丹人权委员会的平行资金流）。我的研究项目的短期目标是了解双语儿童如何使用统计和基于使用的学习来建立丰富的语音认知表征。这一系列的研究将提供关于双语儿童如何使用统计和基于使用的学习来建立丰富的语音认知表征的见解。他们将提供有关典型双语发展的变化的关键信息，并提供洞察力的感知和生产组件如何共同努力，以建立准确的语音表示。与以往的研究，侧重于发展的一个组成部分的语音习得，本研究计划采用了一个强大的方法，包括多个组成部分的语音表征。我们通过使用跨研究的通用测量集来获得统计能力，从而允许汇集儿童和语言之间的结果。我们将从双语儿童那里提供急需的数据。语音习得的发展轨迹模型将有助于理解儿童如何实现准确的，成人一样的语音生产，特别是注意语音-语音界面。这种理解将改善临床医生和教育工作者对发展迟缓的双语儿童的识别，并允许为双语发展提供支持和干预。

Learning to speak is a complex task that requires rich cognitive representations of speech sounds, rapid activation of these representations, and practiced motor schemas. Through daily practice, children learn the speech sounds of their language and produce few errors by the age of 5 years; in contrast, adults learning a second language often maintain accented speech despite years of experience with the language. When we say that someone speaks with an "accent", we typically are referring to the differences in the phonetics and phonology of this speaker. Phonetics describes the acoustic and articulatory aspects of speech sounds, and phonology describes how these speech sounds are organized in a given language. For bilinguals, their speech is influenced by internal mechanics of speech sound acquisition and cognitive representations, and external social factors (e.g., who speaks the languages around them, how often, in what contexts). The long-term objective of my research program is to bring these internal mechanisms and external factors together towards understanding HOW bilingual children achieve accurate, adult-like speech production with particular attention to the phonetic-phonological interface. This research is an essential step to extending models of speech sound acquisition and representation to bilingual children. I am uniquely positioned to address both the internal mechanics, as described in the present proposal, and the external factors (parallel stream of SSHRC funding). The short-term objective of my research program is to understand how bilingual children use statistical and usage-based learning to build rich cognitive representations of speech sounds. This series of studies will provide insight as to how bilingual children use statistical and usage-based learning to build rich cognitive representations of speech sounds. They will provide key information about variability of typical bilingual development and provide insight to how components of perception and production work together to build accurate phonological representations. In contrast with previous research that focuses on the development of a single component of phonological acquisition, this research program adopts a powerful approach that incorporates multiple components of phonological representation. We gain statistical power by using common set of measures across studies allowing for pooling of results across children and languages. We will contribute much needed data from bilingual children. A developmental trajectories model of phonological acquisition will contribute to understanding how children achieve accurate, adult-like speech production with particular attention to the phonetic-phonological interface. This understanding will improve the identification of bilingual children with delayed development by clinicians and educators, and allow for supports and interventions designed for bilingual development.