An important distinction between phonology and syntax has been overlooked. All phonological patterns belong to the regular region of the Chomsky Hierarchy, but not all syntactic patterns do. We argue that the hypothesis that humans employ distinct learning mechanisms for phonology and syntax currently offers the best explanation for this difference.

Using the artificial language paradigm, we studied the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations with exceptions by 160 German adult learners. We tested the acquisition of two types of alternations in two regularity conditions while additionally varying length of training. In the first alternation, a vowel harmony, backness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix. This process is grounded in substance (phonetic motivation), and this universal phonetic factor bolsters learning a generalization. In the second alternation, tenseness of the stem vowel (...) determines backness of the suffix vowel. This process is not based in substance, but it reflects a phonotactic property of German and our participants benefit from this language-specific factor. We found that learners use both cues, while substantive bias surfaces mainly in the most unstable situation. We show that language-specific and universal factors interact in learning. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 78-92, January 2022.

Non-local phonological patterns can be difficult to analyze in the context of speech production models. Some patterns – e.g., vowel harmonies, nasal harmonies – can be readily analyzed to arise from temporal extension of articulatory gestures (i.e., spreading); such patterns can be viewed as articulatorily local. However, there are other patterns – e.g., nasal consonant harmony, laryngeal feature harmony – which cannot be analyzed as spreading; instead these patterns appear to enforce agreement between features of similar segments without affecting intervening (...) segments. Indeed, there are numerous typological differences between spreading harmonies and agreement harmonies, and this suggests that there is a mechanistic difference in the ways that spreading and agreement harmonies arise. This paper argues that in order to properly understand spreading and agreement patterns, the gestural framework of Articulatory Phonology must be enriched with respect to how targets of the vocal tract are controlled in planning and production. Specifically, it is proposed that production models should distinguish between excitatory and inhibitory articulatory gestures, and that gestures which are below a selection threshold can influence the state of the vocal tract, despite not being active. These ideas are motivated by several empirical phenomena, which include anticipatory posturing before production of a word form, and dissimilatory interactions in distractor-target response paradigms. Based on these ideas, a model is developed which provides two distinct mechanisms for the emergence of non-local phonological patterns. (shrink)