There is an active debate within the field of phonology concerning the cognitive status of substantive phonetic factors such as ease of articulation and perceptual distinctiveness. A new framework is proposed in which substance acts as a bias, or prior, on phonological learning. Two experiments tested this framework with a method in which participants are first provided highly impoverished evidence of a new phonological pattern, and then tested on how they extend this pattern to novel contexts and novel sounds. (...) Participants were found to generalize velar palatalization (e.g., the change from [k] as in keep to [t⌢∫S] as in cheap) in a way that accords with linguistic typology, and that is predicted by a cognitive bias in favor of changes that relate perceptually similar sounds. Velar palatalization was extended from the mid front vowel context (i.e., before [e] as in cape) to the high front vowel context (i.e., before [i] as in keep), but not vice versa. The key explanatory notion of perceptual similarity is quantified with a psychological model of categorization, and the substantively biased framework is formalized as a conditional random field. Implications of these results for the debate on substance, theories of phonological generalization, and the formalization of similarity are discussed. (shrink)

Freud proposes that in unconscious processing, logical connections are also (heavily) based upon phonological similarities. Repressed concerns, for example, would also be expressed by way of phonologic ambiguity. In order to investigate a possible unconscious influence of phonological similarity, 31 participants were submitted to a tachistoscopic subliminal priming experiment, with prime and target presented at 1ms. In the experimental condition, the prime and one of the 2 targets were phonological reversed forms of each other, though graphemically dissimilar (e.g., “nice” and (...) “sign”); in the control condition the targets were pseudo-randomly attributed to primes to which they don’t belong. The experimental task was to “blindly” pick the choice most similar to the prime. ERPs were measured with a focus on the N320, which is known to react selectively to phonological mismatch in supraliminal visual word presentations. The N320 amplitude-effects at the electrodes on the midline and at the left of the brain significantly predicted the participants’ net behavioral choices more than half a second later, while their subjective experience is one of arbitrariness. Moreover, the social desirability score (SDS) significantly correlates with both the behavioral and the N320 brain responses of the participants. It is proposed that in participants with low SDS the phonological target induces an expected reduction of N320 and this increases their probability to pick this target. In contrast, high defensive participants have a perplexed brain reaction upon the phonological target, with a negatively peaking N320 as compared to control and this leads them to avoid this target more often. Social desirability, which is understood as reflecting defensiveness, might also manifest itself as a defense against the (energy-consuming) ambiguity of language. The specificity of this study is that all of this is happening totally out of awareness and at the level of very elementary linguistic distinctions. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the phonological similarity of different elements of the phonological pole of multi-word units. I discuss two case studies on slightly different levels of abstractness. The first case study investigates lexically fully-specified V-NPDirObj idioms such as kick the bucket and lose one's cool; the idioms investigated are taken from the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (Harper Collins, 2002). The second case study investigates the lexically less specified way-construction, which is exemplified by He fought his way through (...) the crowd (cf. Goldberg, Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure, The University of Chicago Press, 1995: Ch. 9), on the basis of data from the British National Corpus 1.0. I show that both patterns exhibit a strong phonological within-pole relation, namely a strong preference for having their slots filled with phonologically similar elements, where phonological similarity is manifested in alliteration patterns. These preferences are statistically significant when compared to chance-level expectations derived both from the corpora and from the CELEX database (Baayen et al., The CELEX Lexical Database (CD-ROM), University of Pennsylvania, 1995) and are explained on the basis of Langacker's concept of syntactic and phonological constituents as well as current exemplar-/usage-based approaches. (shrink)

Productivity—the hallmark of linguistic competence—is typically attributed to algebraic rules that support broad generalizations. Past research on spoken language has documented such generalizations in both adults and infants. But whether algebraic rules form part of the linguistic competence of signers remains unknown. To address this question, here we gauge the generalization afforded by American Sign Language (ASL). As a case study, we examine reduplication (X→XX)—a rule that, inter alia, generates ASL nouns from verbs. If signers encode this rule, then they (...) should freely extend it to novel syllables, including ones with features that are unattested in ASL. And since reduplicated disyllables are preferred in ASL, such rule should favor novel reduplicated signs. Novel reduplicated signs should thus be preferred to nonreduplicative controls (in rating), and consequently, such stimuli should also be harder to classify as nonsigns (in the lexical decision task). The results of four experiments support this prediction. These findings suggest that the phonological knowledge of signers includes powerful algebraic rules. The convergence between these conclusions and previous evidence for phonological rules in spoken language suggests that the architecture of the phonological mind is partly amodal. (shrink)

In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the most talented linguists of the Soviet Union, among whom one can highlight N.F. Jakovlev and E.D. Polivanov, were involved in the process of “language building”. Their role in the success of this process is examined from the point of view of the phonological theory that they developed for creating scripts for the numerous peoples of the Soviet Union, Turkic and Caucasian above all. Jakovlev’s phonology, that Polivanov termed “social phonology”, was (...) very different from the one that N. Trubetskoj proposed some 10 years later. We will try to explain their ambitious script projects, which remain difficult to understand from the point of view of the modern phonology. (shrink)

This book scrutinizes recent work in phonological theory from the perspective of Chomskyan generative linguistics and argues that progress in the field depends on taking seriously the idea that phonology is best studied as a mental computational system derived from an innate base, phonological Universal Grammar. Two simple problems of phonological analysis provide a frame for a variety of topics throughout the book. The competence-performance distinction and markedness theory are both addressed in some detail, especially with reference to phonological (...) acquisition. Several aspects of Optimality Theory, including the use of Output-Output Correspondence, functionalist argumentation and dependence on typological justification are critiqued. The authors draw on their expertise in historical linguistics to argue that diachronic evidence is often mis-used to bolster phonological arguments, and they present a vision of the proper use of such evidence. Issues of general interest for cognitive scientists, such as whether categories are discrete and whether mental computation is probabilistic are also addressed. The book ends with concrete proposals to guide future phonological research.The breadth and depth of the discussion, ranging from details of current analyses to the philosophical underpinnings of linguistic science, is presented in a direct style with as little recourse to technical language as possible. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that the mental lexicon contains both abstract and word-specific acoustic information. To investigate their relative importance for word recognition, we tested to what extent perceptual learning is word specific or generalizable to other words. In an exposure phase, participants were divided into two groups; each group was semantically biased to interpret an ambiguous Mandarin tone contour as either tone1 or tone2. In a subsequent test phase, the perception of ambiguous contours was dependent on the exposure (...) phase: Participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone1 during exposure were more likely to perceive ambiguous contours as tone1 than participants who heard ambiguous contours as tone2 during exposure. This learning effect was only slightly larger for previously encountered than for not previously encountered words. The results speak for an architecture with prelexical analysis of phonological categories to achieve both lexical access and episodic storage of exemplars. (shrink)

One key insight of Frost's target article is that morphology has priority over phonology in writing and in cognitive processing. I argue that this insight raises challenges for theories that put phonology at the heart of the reading process. Instead, it highlights the potential importance of a morphemically based visual pathway to meaning in this process.

Studies show bilingualism entails an advantage in cognitive control tasks. There is evidence of a bilingual advantage in the context of aphasia, resulting in better cognitive outcomes and recovery in bilingual persons with aphasia compared to monolingual peers. This bilingual advantage also results in structural changes in the right hemisphere gray matter. Very few studies have examined the so-called bilingual advantage by reference to specific anomia therapy efficacy. This study aims to compare the effect of French-Phonological Component Analysis (Fr-PCA) in (...) monolinguals and bilingual persons with aphasia, both at the linguistic and cognitive control level, and to examine the structural impact of left hemisphere lesion location and right hemisphere structural data. Eight participants with chronic aphasia received Fr-PCA for a total of 15 h over 5 weeks. The results showed improved accuracy for treated words and generalization to untreated items and discourse in both groups, and improved Flanker task performance for some participants. Bilingual participants improved more than monolinguals for picture-naming tasks and narrative discourse. Damage to the left postcentral gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus was associated with less therapy-induced improvement. Additionally, left hemisphere damage to the inferior parietal gyrus and postcentral gyrus was associated with reduced cognitive control pre-therapy. Undamaged right hemisphere cortical thicknesses were significantly different between groups; the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus were greater for the bilingual participants and correlated with cognitive control skills. These results suggest a bilingual advantage in anomia recovery following Fr-PCA, potentially resulting from enhanced cognitive control abilities that could be supported by right hemisphere neural reserve. (shrink)

In this, the first comprehensive survey of the phonological system of Dutch, Geert Booij lays particular stress on the relation between morphology, syntax, and prosodic structure at both word- and sentence-level. His primary aim is to provide an overview of the system as a whole, based in part on a number of more detailed studies of particular aspects of Dutch phonology. As a reference work, the book directs the reader to the available literature. The book is not primarily intended (...) as a contribution to phonological theory; however, it is couched in terms of present-day non-linear generative phonology, and the author's analyses are relevant for a number of current issues in phonological theory such as the principles of syllable structure, the interaction of phonology and morphology, underspecification, rule typology, the domain specification of phonological rules, cliticization, and the role of rhythm in word stress. (shrink)

The question of identifying the properties of language that are specific human linguistic abilities, i.e. Universal Grammar, lies at the center of linguistic research. This paper argues for a largely Emergent Grammar in phonology, taking as the starting point that memory, categorization, attention to frequency, and the creation of symbolic systems are all nonlinguistic characteristics of the human mind. The articulation patterns of American English rhotics illustrate categorization and systems; the distribution of vowels in Bantu vowel harmony uses frequencies (...) of particular sequences to argue against Universal Grammar and in favor of Emergent Grammar; prefix allomorphy in Esimbi illustrates the Emergent symbolic system integrating phonological and morphological generalizations. The Esimbi case has been treated as an example of phonological opacity in a Universal Grammar account; the Emergent analysis resolves the pattern without opacity concerns. (shrink)

Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by the same models. We test GMECCS, an implementation of the Configural Cue Model in a Maximum Entropy phonotactic-learning framework with a single free parameter, against the alternative hypothesis that learners (...) seek featurally simple algebraic rules. We study the full typology of patterns introduced by Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (), instantiated as both phonotactic patterns and visual analogs, using unsupervised training. Unlike SHJ, Experiments 1 and 2 found that both phonotactic and visual patterns that depended on fewer features could be more difficult than those that depended on more features, as predicted by GMECCS but not by rule-seeking. GMECCS also correctly predicted performance differences between stimulus subclasses within each pattern. A third experiment tried supervised training to elicit simple rule-seeking phonotactic learning, but cue-based behavior persisted. We conclude that similar cue-based cognitive processes are available for phonological and visual concept learning, and hence that studying either kind of learning can lead to significant insights about the other. (shrink)

Examination of naturally occurring cases in which a person reports that a word is on the tip of his or her tongue has led several theorists to propose that an important role is played by blocking words whose intrusions hinder access to the correct targets. As yet, however, the blocking mechanism appears to have received little direct investigation experimentally. It was studied here by adapting the classic method of Brown and McNeill in which a person is presented with a definition (...) of a rare word and uses it to attempt to generate that target word. The adaptation that was made was to append a potential blocking word to the presentation of each definition. The potential blocking words were either phonologically related to the target or not, either semantically related to the target or not, and either rare or not. Only the first of these factors exerted a significant effect—more cases of tip of the tongue were experienced when the potential blocking word was phonologically related to the target than when it was not. This result suggests that the recall of a word on the basis of its meaning may proceed via an intermediate stage characterised by partial retrieval of its phonology. (shrink)

Phonological Knowledge addresses central questions in the foundations of phonology and locates them within their larger linguistic and philosophical context. Phonology is a discipline grounded in observable facts, but like any discipline it rests on conceptual assumptions. This book investigates the nature, status, and acquisition of phonological knowledge: it enquires into the conceptual and empirical foundations of phonology, and considers the relation of phonology to the theory of language and other capacities of mind. The authors address (...) a wide range of interrelated questions, the most central of which is this: is phonological knowledge different from linguistic knowledge in general? They offer responses to this question from a variety of perspectives, each of which has consequences for how phonology and language are conceived. Each also involves a host of further questions concerning the modularity of mind and of language; whether phonology should be included in the language faculty; the nature-convention debate; the content of phonological elements and its relation to phonetic substance; the implications of sign languages for phonology; whether functional and variationist considerations are relevant in phonology; how phonological knowledge arises; and, not least, the data and methods appropriate for phonological inquiry. Phonological Knowledge is an important contribution to the most fundamental issues in phonology and the understanding of language. It will interest researchers in and advanced students of phonology, linguistic theory, and philosophy of language.In addition to the editors, the authors are Mary Beckman, Silvain Bromberger, Jennifer Fitzpatrick, Paul Foulkes, Mark Hale, Morris Hallé, John Harris, Harry van der Hulst, Robert Ladd, G. Lindsey, Scott Myers, Janet Pierrehumbert, Charles Reiss, Shelley Velleman, Marilyn Vihman, and Linda Wheeldon.By relating foundational questions of phonology to their larger linguistic, cognitive, and philosophical contexts this book will generate interest not only among phonologists and their advanced students, but also among all those concerned to understand the forms and functions of language. (shrink)

This commentary supports MacNeilage's dismissal of an evolutionary development from sign language to spoken language but presents evidence of a feature in sign language (echo phonology) that links iconic signs to abstract vocal syllables. These data provide an insight into possible mechanism by which iconic manual gestures accompanied by vocalisation could have provided a route for the evolution of spoken language with its characteristically arbitrary form–meaning relationship.

In the context of comparing linguistic profiles across neurodevelopmental disorders, Down syndrome has captured growing attention for its uneven profile. Although specific weaknesses in grammatical and phonological processing have been reported, research evidence on phonological development remains scarce, particularly beyond early childhood. The purpose of this study was to explore the phonological profiles of children and adolescents with Down syndrome. The profiles were based on the frequency and relative proportion of the processes observed by classes, and they were compared to (...) those of typically developing preschool children of similar verbal age. A complementary goal was to assess the effect of two different methods of elicitation: a test of articulation and spontaneous speech sampling. Finally, intergroup and intragroup differences in full match percentages between three positions at syllable-level were assessed. The results of the present study confirmed that the frequency of phonological processes in children and adolescents with DS is atypically high and is above what is expected for lexical age and at the same level as grammatical age. Highly increased frequency of processes, consistent in all kinds of processes and positions at the syllable-level, and asynchronous with verbal age and mental age suggest atypical developmental trajectories of phonological development in the Down syndrome population. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo se ocupa del estatus fonético-fonológico de las consonantes interdentales, en el Mapudungun hablado en el sector costa de isla Huapi, IX Región de La Araucanía. Después del análisis de pares mínimos, cuantificación de los segmentos interdentales versus alveolares, y la consciencia fonológica de los hablantes encuestados, se pudo concluir la vigencia de estos segmentos en tanto fonos y en tanto fonemas. Es decir, en esta zona son fonemas.This article deals with the phonetic-phonological status of the interdental consonants (...) ],, in the Mapudungun spoken in the Coastal area of the Huapi Island, IX Region of Araucania. After analyzing minimal pairs, quantification of interdental segments versus alveolar, and the phonological awareness of the assessed speakers, the validity of these segments could be concluded both as phones and as phonemes. That is to say,, are phonemes in this area. (shrink)

Phonemes are minimal segments within the spoken message whose presence is relevant for distinguishing one message from a different one with another meaning. Each phoneme underlies different phonetic realizations. What sets a phoneme from another is fuzzy cluster of the fuzzy features. Thus the study of phonemic structures is likely to have much to gain from a gradualistic approach. Through a gradualistic treatment synchronic phonology could tally with the diachronic study in a simpler way than is customary. In this (...) connection, an obstacle to be overcome is a widespread adherence to classical logic. (shrink)

Mainstream work tends to hold that syntax is blind to phonological content, with certain exceptions, for example sometimes phonetically null elements require special syntactic licensing (Chomsky 1981), or certain syntactic rules only apply to nodes with phonetically visible features (Holmberg 2001). Basically falling within the mainstream are proposals that syntactic movement can be blocked by or driven by requirements that have phonological effect at the output, such as adjacency (Bobaljik 1995, Kidwai 1999) or rules matching prosodic structure with focus structure (...) (Zubizarreta 1998). Such accounts generally describe movements in the syntactic terms of specifiers and feature checking and so on, and do not rely on the visibility to syntax of strictly phonological features. We can call these all Syntactic accounts.1 Most accounts of OS are Syntactic in these terms, for example those of Holmberg (1986), Holmberg and Platzack (1995), and Bobaljik (1995, 2002). (shrink)

The neural basis of phonological working memory was investigated through an examination of the effects of irrelevant speech distractors and disruptive neural stimulation from transcranial magnetic stimulation. Embedded processes models argue that the same regions involved in speech perception are used to support phonological WM whereas buffer models assume that a region separate from speech perception regions is used to support WM. Thus, according to the embedded processes approach but not the buffer approach, irrelevant speech and TMS to the speech (...) perception region should disrupt the decoding of phonological WM representations. According to the buffer account, decoding of WM items should be possible in the buffer region despite distraction and should be disrupted with TMS to this region. Experiment 1 used fMRI and representational similarity analyses with a delayed recognition memory paradigm using nonword stimuli. Results showed that decoding of memory items in the speech perception regions was possible in the absence of distractors. However, the decoding evidence in the left STG was susceptible to interference from distractors presented during the delay period whereas decoding in the proposed buffer region persisted. Experiment 2 examined the causal roles of the speech processing region and the buffer region in phonological WM performance using TMS. TMS to the SMG during the early delay period caused a disruption in recognition performance for the memory nonwords, whereas stimulations at the STG and an occipital control region did not affect WM performance. Taken together, results from the two experiments are consistent with predictions of a buffer model of phonological WM, pointing to a critical role of the left SMG in maintaining phonological representations. (shrink)

Dealing with phonological variations is important for speech processing. This article addresses whether phonological variations introduced by assimilatory processes are compensated for at the pre-lexical or lexical level, and whether the nature of variation and the phonological context influence this process. To this end, Swedish nasal regressive place assimilation was investigated using the mismatch negativity component. In nasal regressive assimilation, the coronal nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following segment, most clearly with a velar or labial place (...) of articulation, as in utan mej “without me” > [ʉːtam mɛjː]. In a passive auditory oddball paradigm, 15 Swedish speakers were presented with Swedish phrases with attested and unattested phonological variations and contexts for nasal assimilation. Attested variations – a coronal-to-labial change as in utan “without” > [ʉːtam] – were contrasted with unattested variations – a labial-to-coronal change as in utom “except” > ∗[ʉːtɔn] – in appropriate and inappropriate contexts created by mej “me” [mɛjː] and dej “you” [dɛjː]. Given that the MMN amplitude depends on the degree of variation between two stimuli, the MMN responses were expected to indicate to what extent the distance between variants was tolerated by the perceptual system. Since the MMN response reflects not only low-level acoustic processing but also higher-level linguistic processes, the results were predicted to indicate whether listeners process assimilation at the pre-lexical and lexical levels. The results indicated no significant interactions across variations, suggesting that variations in phonological forms do not incur any cost in lexical retrieval; hence such variation is compensated for at the lexical level. However, since the MMN response reached significance only for a labial-to-coronal change in a labial context and for a coronal-to-labial change in a coronal context, the compensation might have been influenced by the nature of variation and the phonological context. It is therefore concluded that while assimilation is compensated for at the lexical level, there is also some influence from pre-lexical processing. The present results reveal not only signal-based perception of phonological units, but also higher-level lexical processing, and are thus able to reconcile the bottom-up and top-down models of speech processing. (shrink)

Neural markers, such as the mismatch negativity, have been used to examine the phonological underspecification of English feature contrasts using the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model. However, neural indices have not been examined within the approximant phoneme class, even though there is evidence suggesting processing asymmetries between liquid and glide phonemes. The goal of this study was to determine whether glide phonemes elicit electrophysiological asymmetries related to [consonantal] underspecification when contrasted with liquid phonemes in adult English speakers. Specifically, /ɹɑ/ is categorized (...) as [+consonantal] while /wɑ/ is not specified [i.e., ]. Following the FUL framework, if /w/ is less specified than /ɹ/, the former phoneme should elicit a larger MMN response than the latter phoneme. Fifteen English-speaking adults were presented with two syllables, /ɹɑ/ and /wɑ/, in an event-related potential oddball paradigm in which both syllables served as the standard and deviant stimulus in opposite stimulus sets. Three types of analyses were used: traditional mean amplitude measurements; cluster-based permutation analyses; and event-related spectral perturbation analyses. The less specified /wɑ/ elicited a large MMN, while a much smaller MMN was elicited by the more specified /ɹɑ/. In the standard and deviant ERP waveforms, /wɑ/ elicited a significantly larger negative response than did /ɹɑ/. Theta activity elicited by /ɹɑ/ was significantly greater than that elicited by /wɑ/ in the 100–300 ms time window. Also, low gamma activation was significantly lower for /ɹɑ/ vs. /wɑ/ deviants over the left hemisphere, as compared to the right, in the 100–150 ms window. These outcomes suggest that the [consonantal] feature follows the underspecification predictions of FUL previously tested with the place of articulation and voicing features. Thus, this study provides new evidence for phonological underspecification. Moreover, as neural oscillation patterns have not previously been discussed in the underspecification literature, the ERSP analyses identified potential new indices of phonological underspecification. (shrink)

Phonological rules create alternations in the phonetic realizations of related words. These rules must be learned by infants in order to identify the phonological inventory, the morphological structure, and the lexicon of a language. Recent work proposes a computational model for the learning of one kind of phonological alternation, allophony . This paper extends the model to account for learning of a broader set of phonological alternations and the formalization of these alternations as general rules. In Experiment 1, we apply (...) the original model to new data in Dutch and demonstrate its limitations in learning nonallophonic rules. In Experiment 2, we extend the model to allow it to learn general rules for alternations that apply to a class of segments. In Experiment 3, the model is further extended to allow for generalization by context; we argue that this generalization must be constrained by linguistic principles. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the most talented linguists of the Soviet Union, among whom one can highlight N. F. Jakovlev and E. D. Polivanov, were involved in the process of "language building". Their role in the success of this process is examined from the point of view of the phonological theory that they developed for creating scripts for the numerous peoples of the Soviet Union, Turkic and Caucasian above all. Jakovlev's phonology, that Polivanov termed "social (...) class='Hi'>phonology", was very different from the one that N. Trubetskoj proposed some 10 years later. We will try to explain their ambitious script projects, which remain difficult to understand from the point of view of the modern phonology. (shrink)

Pulvermüller's Hebbian model implies that an impairment in the word form system will affect phonological articulation and phonological comprehension, because there is only a single representation. Clinical evidence from patients with word-form deafness demonstrates a dissociation between input and output phonologies. These data suggest that auditory comprehension and articulatory production depend on discrete phonological representations localized in different cortical networks.

In this study, we conducted a pseudosign repetition task with 22 children acquiring American Sign Language as a first language from deaf parents. Thirty-nine pseudosigns with varying complexity were developed and organized into eight categories depending on number of hands, number of simultaneous movement types, and number of movement sequences. Pseudosigns also varied in handshape complexity. The children’s performance on the ASL pseudosign task improved with age, displaying relatively accurate production of location and orientation, but much less accurate handshape and (...) movement, a finding in line with real sign productions for both L1 and L2 signers. Handshapes with higher complexity were correlated with lower accuracy in the handshape parameter. We found main effects of sequential and simultaneous movement combinations on overall performance. Items with no movement sequence were produced with higher overall accuracy than those with a movement sequence. Items with two simultaneous movement types or a single movement type were produced with higher overall accuracy than those with three simultaneous movement types. Finally, number of hands did not affect the overall accuracy. Remarkably, movement sequences impose processing constraints on signing children whereas complex hands and two simultaneous movement types do not significantly lower accuracy, indicating a capacity for processing multiple simultaneous components in signs. Spoken languages, in contrast, manifest greater complexity in temporal length. Hearing children’s pseudoword repetition still displays high levels of accuracy on disyllabic words, with complexity effects affecting only longer multisyllabic words. We conclude that the pseudosign repetition task is an informative tool for studies of signing children’s phonological development and that sheds light on potential modality effects for phonological development. (shrink)