Department of Linguistics, UCLA.
Cogn Sci. 2006 Sep 10;30(5):945-82. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_89.
There is an active debate within the field of phonology concerning the cognitive status of substantive phonetic factors such as ease of articulation and perceptual distinctiveness. A new framework is proposed in which substance acts as a bias, or prior, on phonological learning. Two experiments tested this framework with a method in which participants are first provided highly impoverished evidence of a new phonological pattern, and then tested on how they extend this pattern to novel contexts and novel sounds. Participants were found to generalize velar palatalization (e.g., the change from [k] as in keep to [t?∫S] as in cheap) in a way that accords with linguistic typology, and that is predicted by a cognitive bias in favor of changes that relate perceptually similar sounds. Velar palatalization was extended from the mid front vowel context (i.e., before [e] as in cape) to the high front vowel context (i.e., before [i] as in keep), but not vice versa. The key explanatory notion of perceptual similarity is quantified with a psychological model of categorization, and the substantively biased framework is formalized as a conditional random field. Implications of these results for the debate on substance, theories of phonological generalization, and the formalization of similarity are discussed.
在音韵学领域，关于实体语音因素（如发音容易度和感知区别度）的认知地位存在着激烈的争论。本文提出了一个新的框架，其中实体因素作为音韵学习的偏向或先验因素。通过一种方法，利用该框架进行了两项实验，该方法首先向参与者提供了关于新语音模式的高度简化的证据，然后测试他们如何将该模式扩展到新的语境和新的声音。研究发现，参与者以一种符合语言类型学的方式，以及一种有利于感知相似声音变化的认知偏向，来推广软腭化（例如，从[k] 如 keep 到[t?∫S] 如 cheap）。软腭化从中前元音语境（即在[e] 如 cape 之前）扩展到高前元音语境（即在[i] 如 keep 之前），反之则不然。感知相似性的关键解释概念通过类别心理学模型进行量化，而受实体因素偏向的框架则形式化为条件随机场。讨论了这些结果对实体争论、语音概括理论和相似性形式化的影响。
