Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation

Purported units of speech, e.g. phonemes or features, are essentially categories. The assignment of phonemic (or phonetic) identity is a process of categorization: potentially discriminable speech sounds are treated in an equivalent manner. Unfortunately the extensive literature on human categorization has typically focused on simple visual categories that are defined by the presence or absence of discrete features. Speech categories are much more complex. They are often defined by continuous values across a variety of imperfectly valid features. In this paper, several kinds of categories are distinguished and studies using human subjects, animal subjects and computational models are presented that endeavor to describe the structure and development of the sort of complex categories underlying speech perception.

[1]  L. Lisker,et al.  A Cross-Language Study of Voicing in Initial Stops: Acoustical Measurements , 1964 .

[2]  Richard Wright,et al.  The Hyperspace Effect: Phonetic Targets Are Hyperarticulated. , 1993 .

[3]  Eleanor Rosch,et al.  Principles of Categorization , 1978 .

[4]  Elizabeth K. Johnson,et al.  Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults , 1999, Cognition.

[5]  M. Posner,et al.  On the genesis of abstract ideas. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[6]  K. Stevens,et al.  Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. , 1992, Science.

[7]  R N Aslin,et al.  Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants , 1996, Science.

[8]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  वाक्यविन्यास का सैद्धान्तिक पक्ष = Aspects of the theory of syntax , 1965 .

[9]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Self-organizing processes and the explanation of phonological universals , 1983 .

[10]  B. Lindblom,et al.  Numerical Simulation of Vowel Quality Systems: The Role of Perceptual Contrast , 1972 .

[11]  S. Grossberg,et al.  Neural network models of categorical perception , 2000, Perception & psychophysics.

[12]  D B Pisoni,et al.  On prototypes and phonetic categories: a critical assessment of the perceptual magnet effect in speech perception. , 1997, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[13]  E. Newport,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article INCIDENTAL LANGUAGE LEARNING: Ustening (and Learning) out of the Comer of Your Ear , 2022 .

[14]  K. Spence.  The nature of discrimination learning in animals. , 1936 .

[15]  B. Lindblom.  Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction , 1963 .

[16]  A. Lotto,et al.  Role of experience for language-specific functional mappings of vowel sounds. , 1998, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  H. M. Hanson.  Effects of discrimination training on stimulus generalization. , 1959, Journal of experimental psychology.

[18]  K W SPENCE,et al.  The nature of the response in discrimination learning. , 1952, Psychological review.

[19]  K. Spence.  The differential response in animals to stimuli varying within a single dimension. , 1937 .

[20]  E Uusipaikka,et al.  Perceptual magnet effect in the light of behavioral and psychophysiological data. , 1997, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[21]  A. Liberman,et al.  The motor theory of speech perception revised , 1985, Cognition.

[22]  T. M. Nearey,et al.  Speech perception as pattern recognition. , 1997, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[23]  N. J. Mackintosh,et al.  Categorization by People and Pigeons: The Twenty-second Bartlett Memorial Lecture , 1995 .

[24]  P R Killeen,et al.  Japanese quail can learn phonetic categories. , 1987, Science.

[25]  B. Lindblom.  Phonetic Universals in Vowel Systems , 1986 .