Within a language, there is considerable variation in the pronunciations of words owing to social factors like age, gender, nationality, and race. In the present study, we investigate whether toddlers link social and linguistic variation during word learning. In Experiment 1, 24- to 26-month-old toddlers were exposed to two talkers whose front…

The current dissertation investigated clear speech production of Korean stops to examine the proposal that the phonetic targets of phonological categories are more closely approximated in hyperarticulated speech. The investigation also considered a sound change currently underway in Korean stops: younger speakers of the Seoul dialect produce the…