University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“The furious friend whacked with books” interferes: The effect of concurrent experiences of English on the learning of artificial phonotactic rules

Hwang, Suyeon

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115614

Description

Title
“The furious friend whacked with books” interferes: The effect of concurrent experiences of English on the learning of artificial phonotactic rules
Author(s)
Hwang, Suyeon
Issue Date
2022-04-27
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
  • Dell, Gary S
  • Fisher, Cynthia L
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
  • language diversity
  • speech errors
  • phonotactics
  • implicit learning
Abstract
Adults can rapidly learn new first-order phonotactic constraints like /f/ only occurs at the beginning of syllables, by producing strings of nonsense syllables such as "hes feng neg kem". The learning is measured by observing their speech errors, e.g., whether /f/'s then always slip to syllable onset position. Context-dependent (second-order) constraints such as /f/ occurs at the beginning of syllables if the vowel is /æ/, but occurs at the end of syllables if the vowel is /ɪ/ can be learned as well, but errors only follow these constraints after a period of sleep. It has been suggested that the knowledge of newly-learned second-order constraints is isolated from English knowledge in a separate "mini-grammar" and that the creation of the mini-grammar requires a period of sleep. The present study investigates the mini-grammar notion in the learning of first-order constraints, which are learned quickly in a single session. We interleaved trials in which participants produced strings of nonsense syllables with trials in which they repeated English sentences. The English sentences and nonsense sequences either showed the same consonant-position constraints or the opposite constraints. Speech error data showed that the English sentences interfered with the learning of the first-order constraints within the nonsense sequences, suggesting that the constraints in the nonsense context were not separated from ordinary English in a mini-grammar. We hypothesize that the formation of mini-grammars may require consolidation and that no mini-grammar is created for first-order constraint learning.
Graduation Semester
2022-05
Type of Resource
Thesis
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2022 Suyeon Hwang

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