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Adults can learn novel phonotactic constraints from brief listening experience. We investigated the representations underlying phonotactic learning by testing generalization to syllables containing new vowels. Adults heard consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) study syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted to onset or coda position (e.g., /f/ is an onset, /s/ is a coda). Subjects were quicker to repeat novel constraint-following (legal) than constraint-violating (illegal) test syllables whether they contained a vowel used in the study syllables (training vowel) or a new (transfer) vowel. This effect emerged regardless of the acoustic similarity between training and transfer vowels. Listeners thus learned and generalized phonotactic constraints that can be characterized as simple first-order constraints on consonant position. Rapid generalization independent of vowel context provides evidence that vowels and consonants are represented independently by processes underlying phonotactic learning. Keywords speech perception; phonological development; statistical learning; phonotactic learning; generalization Phonotactic constraints describe how speech segments are combined in a language. For example, the /ŋ/ at the end of 'sing' never begins English words, though it can be word-initial in other languages. Alongside such categorical constraints, languages have probabilistic constraints: Some permissible sequences are more likely than others (e.g., Frisch, Pierrehumbert, & Broe, 2004;Kessler & Treiman, 1997;Lee & Goldrick, 2008). Implicit knowledge of these categorical and probabilistic constraints influences speech processing: Native speakers more readily perceive and produce sound sequences that are more probable in their language (e.g., Brown & Hildum, 1956;Pitt, 1998;Stemberger, 1990;Treiman, Kessler, Knewasser, Tincoff, & Bowman, 2000;Vitevitch, Armbrüster, & Chu, 2004).Address for correspondence: Kyle E. Chambers, Department of Psychology, Gustavus Adolphus College, 800 West College Ave, Saint Peter, MN 56082 United States kchamber@gustavus.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xlm. Cross-linguistic variability in phonotactic patterns suggests that these patterns are at least partly learned (e.g., Moreton, 2002;Wilson, 2006). Furthermore, evidence of sensitivity to probabilistic constraints suggests that phonotactic learning arises from ongoing experience with phonological sequences (Frisch et al., 2004). On this hypothesis, natural phonotactic knowledge is continually...

Infants rapidly learn novel phonotactic constraints from brief listening experience. Four experiments explored the nature of the representations underlying this learning. 16.5- and 10.5-month-old infants heard training syllables in which particular consonants were restricted to particular syllable positions (first-order constraints) or to syllable positions depending on the identity of the adjacent vowel (second-order constraints). Later, in a headturn listening-preference task, infants were presented with new syllables that either followed the experimental constraints or violated them. Infants at both ages learned first- and second-order constraints on consonant position (Experiments 1 and 2) but found second-order constraints more difficult to learn (Experiment 2). Infants also spontaneously generalized first-order constraints to syllables containing a new, transfer vowel; they did so whether the transfer vowel was similar to the familiarization vowels (Experiment 3), or dissimilar from them (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that infants recruit representations of individuated segments during phonological learning. Furthermore, like adults, they represent phonological sequences in a flexible manner that allows them to detect patterns at multiple levels of phonological analysis.

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