Bozena Pajak

Difficulty in Learning Similar-Sounding Words: A Developmental Stage or a General Property of Learning?

How are languages learned, and to what extent are learning mechanisms similar in infant native-language (L1) and adult second-language (L2) acquisition? In terms of vocabulary acquisition, we know from the infant literature that the ability to discriminate similar-sounding words at a particular age does not guarantee successful word-meaning mapping at that age (Stager & Werker, 1997). However, it is unclear whether this difficulty arises from developmental limitations of young infants (e.g., poorer working memory) or whether it is an intrinsic part of the initial word learning, L1 and L2 alike. In this study, we show that adults of particular L1 backgrounds-just like young infants-have difficulty learning similar-sounding L2 words that they can nevertheless discriminate perceptually. This suggests that the early stages of word learning, whether L1 or L2, intrinsically involve difficulty in mapping similar-sounding words onto referents. We argue that this is due to an interaction between 2 main factors: (a) memory limitations that pose particular challenges for highly similar-sounding words, and (b) uncertainty regarding the languages phonetic categories, because the categories are being learned concurrently with words. Overall, our results show that vocabulary acquisition in infancy and adulthood shares more similarities than previously thought, thus supporting the existence of common learning mechanisms that operate throughout the life span. (PsycINFO Database Record

Perceptual warping of phonetic space applies beyond known phonetic categories: Evidence from the perceptual magnet effect

What is the mental representation of phonetic space? Perceptual reorganization in infancy yields a reconfigured space “warped” around native-language (L1) categories. Is this reconfiguration entirely specific to L1 category inventory? Or does it apply to a broader range of category distinctions that are non-native, yet discriminable due to being defined by phonetic dimensions informative in the listener’s L1 (Bohn & Best, 2012; Pajak, 2012)? Here we address this question by studying perceptual magnets, which involve attrition of within-category distinctions and enhancement of distinctions across category boundaries (Kuhl, 1991). We focus on segmental length, known to yield L1-specific perceptual magnets: e.g., L1-Finnish listeners have one for [t]/[tt], but L1-Dutch listeners, who lack (exclusively) length-based contrasts, do not (Herren & Schouten, 2008). We tested 31 L1-Korean listeners in an AX discrimination task for [n]-[nn] and [f]-[ff] continua. Korean listeners have been shown to discriminate both...

Perception of Moroccan Arabic geminates by native English speakers.

Adult listeners often have difficulty perceiving phonetic distinctions that are not contrastive in their native language (e.g., Lisker and Abramson 1970, Miyawaki et al. 1975, Trehub 1976, MacKain et al. 1980, Werker et al. 1981, among others). However, the same contrast may be perceived with more or less difficulty depending on the environment in which it is embedded. This study investigated the perception of geminate consonants in Moroccan Arabic by native English speakers who had not had previous exposure to the geminate‐singleton contrast. The geminates [ss] and [zz] were paired with singleton counterparts in four different environments: medial‐intervocalic ([assa]‐[asa], [azza]‐[aza]); medial‐consonant‐adjacent ([assta]‐[asta], [azzda]‐[azda]); initial‐vowel‐adjacent ([ssa]‐[sa], [zza]‐[za]); and initial‐consonant‐adjacent ([ssta]‐[sta], [zzda‐[zda]]). The words were recorded by a native Moroccan Arabic speaker, and subsequently used as stimuli in a perception experiment (AX discrimination task; 80 p...