Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Words in puddles of sound: modelling psycholinguistic effects in speech segmentation
AU - Monaghan, Padraic
AU - Christiansen, Morten H.
PY - 2010/6
Y1 - 2010/6
N2 - There are numerous models of how speech segmentation may proceed in infants acquiring their first language. We present a framework for considering the relative merits and limitations of these various approaches. We then present a model of speech segmentation that aims to reveal important sources of information for speech segmentation, and to capture psycholinguistic constraints on children's language perception. The model constructs a lexicon based on information about utterance boundaries and deduces phonotactic constraints from the discovered lexicon. Compared to other models of speech segmentation, our model performs well in terms of accuracy, computational tractability and the number of components of the model. Finally, our model also reflects the psycholinguistic effects of language learning, in terms of the early advantage for segmentation provided by the child's name, and by revealing the overlap in usefulness of information for segmentation and for grammatical categorization of the language.
AB - There are numerous models of how speech segmentation may proceed in infants acquiring their first language. We present a framework for considering the relative merits and limitations of these various approaches. We then present a model of speech segmentation that aims to reveal important sources of information for speech segmentation, and to capture psycholinguistic constraints on children's language perception. The model constructs a lexicon based on information about utterance boundaries and deduces phonotactic constraints from the discovered lexicon. Compared to other models of speech segmentation, our model performs well in terms of accuracy, computational tractability and the number of components of the model. Finally, our model also reflects the psycholinguistic effects of language learning, in terms of the early advantage for segmentation provided by the child's name, and by revealing the overlap in usefulness of information for segmentation and for grammatical categorization of the language.
KW - LANGUAGE-ACQUISITION
KW - COMPUTATIONAL MODEL
KW - CHILDRENS LANGUAGE
KW - DISCOVERY
KW - CUES
KW - BOUNDARIES
KW - INFANTS
U2 - 10.1017/S0305000909990511
DO - 10.1017/S0305000909990511
M3 - Journal article
VL - 37
SP - 545
EP - 564
JO - Journal of Child Language
JF - Journal of Child Language
SN - 0305-0009
IS - 3
ER -