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The Perceptual Acquisition of Phonological Contrasts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Joe Pater,
Christine Stager and
Janet Werker
Joe Pater*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
Christine Stager*
Affiliation:
Thames Valley District School Board, London, Ontario
Janet Werker*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
*
Pater, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 [pater@linguist.umass.edu]
Stager, Speech-Language Pathologist, Program Services, Thames Valley District School Board, 1250 Dundas St., P.O. Box 5888, London, ON N6A 5LI, Canada [chrisandjason@sympatico.ca]
Werker , Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada [jwerker@psych.ubc.ca]
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Abstract

Stager and Werker (1997) show that fourteen-month-olds engaged in a word-learning task fail to respond to a switch between the minimal pair [bI] and [dI], though they do respond to a switch between [IIf] and [nim] in the same task. In this article we show that the [bI]/[dI] results extend to stimuli that respect English phonotactics ([bIn] vs. [dIn]), to a voicing contrast ([pIn] vs. [bIn]), and to voicing and place combined ([pIn] vs. [dIn]). Our interpretation of these results is that when a phonological contrast like place or voicing is first acquired, it remains only partially integrated and can be lost under the processing demands of word learning. We formalize partial integration in terms of unranked optimality-theoretic constraints and discuss the predictions of this account for further research.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , September 2004, pp. 384 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

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