Department of Linguistics and Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2010 Feb;36(1):235-50. doi: 10.1037/a0017164.
Structural regularities in language have often been attributed to symbolic or statistical general purpose computations, whereas perceptual factors influencing such generalizations have received less interest. Here, we use phonotactic-like constraints as a case study to ask whether the structural properties of specific perceptual and memory mechanisms may facilitate the acquisition of grammatical-like regularities. Participants learned that the consonants C and C had to come from distinct sets in words of the form CVccVC (where the critical consonants were in word edges) but not in words of the form cVCCVc (where the critical consonants were in word middles). Control conditions ruled out attentional or psychophysical difficulties in word middles. Participants did, however, learn such regularities in word middles when natural consonant classes were used instead of arbitrary consonant sets. We conclude that positional generalizations may be learned preferentially using edge-based positional codes, but that participants can also use other mechanisms when other linguistic cues are given.
语言中的结构规律通常归因于符号或统计通用计算，而影响这些概括的感知因素则较少受到关注。在这里，我们使用类似音韵规则的约束作为案例研究，来探讨特定感知和记忆机制的结构特性是否有助于获得类似语法的规则。参与者学习到，在 CVccVC 形式的单词中（关键辅音在单词边缘），辅音 C 和 C 必须来自不同的集合，但在 cVCCVc 形式的单词中（关键辅音在单词中间）则不需要。控制条件排除了在单词中间出现注意力或心理物理困难的可能性。然而，当使用自然辅音类别而不是任意辅音集时，参与者确实在单词中间学习到了这些规则。我们的结论是，位置概括可以优先使用基于边缘的位置代码来学习，但当提供其他语言线索时，参与者也可以使用其他机制。
