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The Interaction of Language‐Specific and Universal Factors During the Acquisition of Morphophonemic Alternations With Exceptions
Author(s) -
BaerHenney Dinah,
Kügler Frank,
Vijver Ruben
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12209
Subject(s) - phonotactics , learnability , morphophonology , vowel harmony , vowel , german , suffix , linguistics , psychology , language acquisition , alternation (linguistics) , computer science , universal grammar , phonology , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , speech recognition , philosophy
Using the artificial language paradigm, we studied the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations with exceptions by 160 German adult learners. We tested the acquisition of two types of alternations in two regularity conditions while additionally varying length of training. In the first alternation, a vowel harmony, backness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix. This process is grounded in substance (phonetic motivation), and this universal phonetic factor bolsters learning a generalization. In the second alternation, tenseness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix vowel. This process is not based in substance, but it reflects a phonotactic property of German and our participants benefit from this language‐specific factor. We found that learners use both cues, while substantive bias surfaces mainly in the most unstable situation. We show that language‐specific and universal factors interact in learning.