Research has shown that contoids (phonetically defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (phonetically defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish, a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech, have suggested that the reduced occurrence of contoids may make…

This study investigates a strategy based on predictability of consecutive sub-lexical units in learning to segment a continuous speech stream into lexical units using computational modeling and simulations. Lexical segmentation is one of the early challenges during language acquisition, and it has been studied extensively through psycholinguistic…

The present experiments investigated the flexibility of statistical word segmentation. There is ample evidence that infants can use statistical cues (e.g., syllable transitional probabilities) to segment fluent speech. However, it is unclear how effectively infants track these patterns in unfamiliar phonological systems. We examined whether…

The present investigation seeks to determine whether and under what circumstances can adult bilinguals deploy segmentation strategies characteristic of their two languages, or of their dominant language. To that end, we inquired whether the context language employed during the segmentation experiment (i.e., the language in which participants…

This dissertation presents a comprehensive instrumental acoustic analysis of phonation type distinctions in Marathi, an Indic language with numerous breathy voiced sonorants and obstruents. Important new facts about breathy voiced sonorants, which are crosslinguistically rare, are established: male and female speakers cue breathy phonation in…

We tested whether adult listeners can simultaneously keep track of variations in pitch and syllable duration in order to segment continuous speech into phrases and group these phrases into sentences. The speech stream was constructed so that prosodic cues signaled hierarchical structures (i.e., phrases embedded within sentences) and non-adjacent…

The present investigation examines English speakers' ability to identify and discriminate non-native consonant length contrast. Three groups (L1 English No-Instruction, L1 English Instruction, and L1 Finnish control) performed a speeded forced-choice identification task and a speeded AX discrimination task on Finnish non-words (e.g.…

How do infants find the words in the speech stream? Computational models help us understand this feat by revealing the advantages and disadvantages of different strategies that infants might use. Here, we outline a computational model of word segmentation that aims both to incorporate cues proposed by language acquisition researchers and to…

This study combined artificial language learning (ALL) with conventional experimental techniques to test whether statistical speech segmentation outputs are integrated into adult listeners' mental lexicon. Lexicalization was assessed through inhibitory effects of novel neighbors (created by the parsing process) on auditory lexical decisions to…

The purpose of the current study is to document phonological change from a multidimensional perspective for a 3-year-old boy with phonological disorder by comparing three measures: (1) accuracy of consonant productions, (2) dynamic assessment, and (3) acoustic analysis. The methods included collecting a sample of the targets /s, [image omitted],…

Artifically constructed words were presented to kindergarten children, first graders, undergraduate and graduate students. (PR)