Language acquisition is model-based rather than model-free
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Updated: Mar 15, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Felix Hao Wang1, Toben H Mintz1
1Department of PsychologyUniversity of Southern California,3620 McClintock Ave,Los Angeles,CA 90089-1061.wang970@usc.edutmintz@usc.eduhttp://dornsife.usc.edu/tobenmintz.
Abstract:
Christiansen & Chater (C&C) propose that learning language is learning to process language. However, we believe that the general-purpose prediction mechanism they propose is insufficient to account for many phenomena in language acquisition. We argue from theoretical considerations and empirical evidence that many acquisition tasks are model-based, and that different acquisition tasks require different, specialized models.
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