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Related Concept Videos

Language Development01:22

Language Development

397
Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
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Components of Language01:24

Components of Language

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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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Factors Affecting Dissolution: Polymorphism, Amorphism and Pseudopolymorphism01:21

Factors Affecting Dissolution: Polymorphism, Amorphism and Pseudopolymorphism

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Polymorphism refers to the existence of a drug substance in multiple crystalline forms, known as polymorphs. Recently, this term has been expanded to include solvates (forms containing a solvent), amorphous forms (non-crystalline forms), and desolvated solvates (forms from which the solvent has been removed).
Some polymorphic crystals possess lower aqueous solubility than their amorphous counterparts, leading to incomplete absorption. For instance, the oral suspension of Chloramphenicol, which...
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Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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What is Variation?01:14

What is Variation?

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Apart from the measures of central tendency, distribution, outliers, and the changing characteristics of data with time, an important characteristic of any data set is its variation or spread. In some data sets, the data values are concentrated closely near the mean; in others, the data values are more widely spread out from the mean.
The range, standard deviation, standard error, and variance are the different measures of variation.
Range: The range is the difference between its maximum and...
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Lateralization01:28

Lateralization

364
Brain lateralization refers to the division of mental processes and functions between the two hemispheres of the brain, a phenomenon that optimizes neural efficiency and underpins complex abilities in humans. This specialization allows each hemisphere to perform tasks where it has a comparative advantage, facilitating more refined cognitive capabilities across different domains.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 21, 2025

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
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Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

Published on: September 27, 2024

475

Variation learning in phonology and morphosyntax.

Youngah Do1, Jonathan Havenhill1, Samuel Sui Lung Sze1

  • 1Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Cognition
|July 27, 2023
PubMed
Summary

Children

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Developmental Linguistics
  • Phonetics and Phonology

Background:

  • Language acquisition involves learning both phonological and morphosyntactic patterns.
  • Cognitive biases influence learning in both domains, but phonological learning may also be affected by physical factors.
  • Phonetically motivated alternations might be more easily learned due to physical grounding.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate differences in children's learning of phonological versus morphosyntactic patterns of equal complexity.
  • To determine if phonological learning is qualitatively different from morphosyntactic learning, particularly when patterns are variable.
  • To explore the influence of phonetic grounding on phonological pattern acquisition.

Main Methods:

  • Cantonese-speaking children were exposed to an artificial language with either rounding harmony (phonology) or gender agreement (morphosyntax).
Keywords:
Artificial language learningLanguage acquisitionMorphosyntaxPhonologyVariation

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  • Patterns were presented categorically or variably (67% of training items).
  • Children's generalization to novel stems was tested to assess learning.

    • Main Results:

    • Categorical learning led to comparable rates for both harmony and agreement.
    • In variable conditions, phonological rounding harmony was overgeneralized compared to exposure, suggesting a phonetic bias.
    • Variable morphosyntactic agreement was undergeneralized, indicating less influence from exposure.

    Conclusions:

    • Phonological learning, particularly when phonetically grounded, shows a bias that enhances learnability even with variable input.
    • Morphosyntactic learning does not exhibit the same bias, suggesting a qualitative difference between the two domains.
    • Substantive grounding plays a role in phonological acquisition but not in morphosyntactic acquisition.