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Yiyun Zhao – ProQuest LLC, 2022
While most animals have communication systems, few exhibit such high-level of complexity as human languages. One central question of linguistics and cognitive science is to explore what human cognitive underpinnings and learning mechanisms are necessary to master such a complex system. One influential approach is Chomskyan generativism which…
Descriptors: Psycholinguistics, Language Acquisition, Language Patterns, Bias
Carter, William Thomas Jeffrey – ProQuest LLC, 2019
Despite OT's success, opaque alternations prove difficult to capture with constraints, and some violate the theory's formal restrictions. Here, I propose a novel account of opacity drawing upon developments in psychology. Rather than one grammar, I propose a dual-system model with implicit and explicit mechanisms, a domain-specific OT-like system…
Descriptors: Grammar, Language Patterns, Models, Psychology
Charles Patrick O'Hara – ProQuest LLC, 2021
This dissertation investigates the soft typology of phonological patterns. By studying the types of patterns observed in the world's languages, we can do more than determine what is attested and what is unattested, or what is possible and what is impossible, but discover a wide range of more gradient phenomena. Phonological patterns range from…
Descriptors: Bias, Phonology, Grammar, Language Classification
Shuxiao Gong – ProQuest LLC, 2022
Understanding how native speakers acquire the phonological patterns in their language is a key task for the field of phonology. Numerous studies have suggested that phonological learning is a biased process: certain phonological patterns are easily accessed and learned by the speakers, while others show acquisition difficulties. These differences…
Descriptors: Phonology, Native Speakers, Language Patterns, Language Acquisition
Nicole Irene Mirea – ProQuest LLC, 2022
Phonotactic patterns are generalizations that govern the order of consonants and vowels, within words and syllables. Certain second-order phonotactic patterns--those that relate multiple sounds within a syllable, such as "if the vowel is [near-close near-front unrounded vowel], then [s] can only appear at the end of the…
Descriptors: Generalization, Prior Learning, Speech Communication, Phonemes
Chong, Junxiang Adam – ProQuest LLC, 2017
This dissertation examines the question of how phonological alternations are learnt. In constraint-based models of phonological learning, it is hypothesized that prior learning of phonotactics from the lexicon facilitates the learning of alternations. While this is an influential assumption, the empirical evidence for it is equivocal. In this…
Descriptors: Grammar, Phonology, Morphemes, Korean
Chepyshko, Roman – ProQuest LLC, 2018
The current project investigates developmental aspects of acquiring locative verb constructions in English as a second language. Locative verbs, such as "to pour," "to spill," "to spray," and "to sprinkle," constitute a prototypical case of an overgeneralization problem in language learning: Whereas some of…
Descriptors: Verbs, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction
Greenwood, Anna – ProQuest LLC, 2016
This dissertation begins with the observation of a typological asymmetry within phonological patterns related to phonetic naturalness. Patterns that are rooted within existing tendencies of perception and/or production--in other words, patterns that are phonetically "natural"--are common in phonological typology and seen in a variety of…
Descriptors: Phonetics, Language Patterns, Phonology, Classification
Leben, Derek – ProQuest LLC, 2012
Lexical semantics is the field of cognitive science which attempts to explain how speakers learn to use and accept sentences like "She filled the glass with water" but avoid and reject sentences like "She poured the glass with water," often with poor or impoverished evidence. In order to explain why some verbs alternate in…
Descriptors: Semantics, Verbs, Language Patterns, Epistemology