Variation Awaiting Bias: Substantively Biased Learning of Vowel Harmony Variation

• Published in: Journal of child language Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 397 - 407
• Main Authors: Do, Youngah, Mooney, Shannon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Cambridge University Press 01-03-2022
• Subjects: Adult; Artificial Languages; Child; Child Language; Family; Humans; Language; Language Acquisition; Language Development; Language Patterns; Language Variation; Learning; Learning Processes; Morphology (Languages); Phonetics; Phonology; Syntax; Vowels; substantive bias; artificial language learning; learning biases; variation; phonology
• ISSN: 0305-0009; 1469-7602
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000920000719

This article examines whether children alter a variable phonological pattern in an artificial language towards a phonetically-natural form. We address acquisition of a variable rounding harmony pattern through the use of two artificial languages; one with dominant harmony pattern, and another with dominant non-harmony pattern. Overall, children favor harmony pattern in their production of the languages. In the language where harmony is non-dominant, children's subsequent production entirely reverses the pattern so that harmony predominates. This differs starkly from adults. Our results compare to the regularization found in child learning of morphosyntactic variation, suggesting a role for naturalness in variable phonological learning.