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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 11, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
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Speaker Input Variability Does Not Explain Why Larger Populations Have Simpler Languages.

Mark Atkinson1, Simon Kirby1, Kenny Smith1

  • 1Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Plos One
|June 10, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Higher speaker input variability does not influence language learning. This study found no evidence that variability in linguistic input affects a learner's ability to acquire language structure or explains why larger populations have simpler languages.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Language Acquisition
  • Sociolinguistics

Background:

  • Speaker input variability, higher with more speakers, may influence language structure.
  • It's hypothesized that variability affects morphology acquisition, explaining why larger communities have simpler languages.
  • Previous research suggests variability aids phonemic boundary acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effect of speaker input variability on language learning.
  • To test if variability influences speech stream segmentation and morphological complexity acquisition.
  • To evaluate the hypothesis linking speaker variability to language structural simplification in larger populations.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted to assess the impact of speaker input variability.
  • Learners' ability to segment continuous speech was examined.
  • Acquisition of a morphologically complex miniature language under varying input conditions was tested.

Main Results:

  • No evidence was found to support the proposal that speaker input variability influences language learning.
  • The study did not find that input variability affects speech segmentation or morphological acquisition.
  • Results do not support the hypothesis that speaker variability explains language simplification in larger groups.

Conclusions:

  • Speaker input variability does not appear to influence language learning processes.
  • The proposed mechanism linking speaker variability to language structure simplification is not supported by this research.
  • This study fails to provide evidence for the hypothesis that population size determines language complexity through speaker input variability.