This study empirically investigates the relationship between a language user’s accumulation of episodic memories from a word’s typical context of use and that word’s pronunciation via analyses of 20 Mexican Spanish speakers’ realizations of 4,961 Spanish /bdɡ/-initial words to test a unique claim of an exemplar model of lexical representation that words’ representations contain fine-grained phonetic information. Each word’s cumulative exposure to a phonological and a prosodic context conditioning /bdɡ/ reduction is estimated from a large corpus, as are other aspects of each word’s idiosyncratic usage. The results from a Frequentist linear mixed-effects regression model reveal that /bdɡ/ reduction is impacted by a word’s cumulative exposure to its typical phonological, but not prosodic, context. There are also some additive effects of a word’s cumulative exposure to its typical context and other aspects of a word’s usage patterns, as well as with the immediate context. However, model simulations demonstrate that statistical evidence for these interactions is highly dependent on dataset size. Notwithstanding, the main effect of a word’s typical context on production remains robust. The results yield support and challenges for an exemplar model of lexical representation, as well as other theoretical models. Above all, the results suggest that phonological categories are best understood by considering a user’s experience with words in the contexts in which they occur.
Early in language learning, learners may know the meanings of only a small subset of the words they encounter. We refer to these meaningful words as semantic seeds. In three experiments, we asked how this sparse semantic knowledge shapes what learners extract from distributional experience and whether the resulting semantic expectations facilitate word learning. Adults were first introduced to Seed pseudowords. Half of participants learned meanings for these Seeds, whereas the other half were only familiarized with Seed forms. All participants were then exposed to an artificial language with Subject-Object-Verb-like structure, containing Seed and additional, novel Test pseudowords. In Experiments 1a and 1b, learners with meaningful Seeds developed category-consistent semantic expectations for previously meaningless Test words based on their distributional histories. These expectations depended on systematic alignment between Seed meanings and distributional categories: disrupting that alignment eliminated the corresponding semantic preferences. However, these expectations did not reliably accelerate subsequent cross-situational learning of specific word-referent mappings. Experiment 2 showed that Seed meanings generalized to Test words that had never directly co-occurred with Seeds, indicating that semantic properties became associated with distributionally defined categories and were propagated throughout the language. While meaningful Seeds affected the semantic interpretation of distributional categories, they did not affect the acquisition of distributional structure itself; distributional category learning occurred even when Seeds were meaningless. Together, these findings suggest that although learners can acquire distributional structure without semantic knowledge, sparse word meanings can reveal semantic properties of that structure and support meaning hypotheses for otherwise unfamiliar words.
When speakers choose how to refer to a previously mentioned character in the presence of several potential antecedents, they experience multiple competing pressures. Predictability is an important factor in this process, and its role in shaping speakers’ choices has been the topic of ongoing debate. Here, we examine how event predictability, viewed as a specific form of information predictability, shapes both the production and interpretation of anaphoric references. In Experiments 1a and 1b (free production), participants described events involving interacting characters. They used overt forms of reference, such as definite noun phrases, more often when describing surprising events compared to familiar ones. Speakers further produced fewer phonologically non-overt forms, such as zero anaphors, when events were surprising. This pattern is consistent with sensitivity to possible listener misinterpretation of non-overt forms despite them being grammatically unambiguous. In Experiments 2a and 2b (speech perception), listeners heard descriptions of the same kinds of events under varying levels of auditory noise. Listeners were more likely to interpret utterances containing unambiguous zero anaphors as if they contained ambiguous pronouns when this interpretation allowed them to construe a more plausible event, particularly under noisy conditions. Taken together, the results show that event-level expectations shape both referential production and interpretation: speakers favor more overt forms of reference for less predictable events, whereas listeners use event plausibility when interpreting potentially degraded input. This convergence between production and comprehension is consistent with audience-design accounts of reference and extends noisy-channel accounts of communication to the domain of anaphoric interpretation.
The phonological structure of a word can influence the ease with which it is learned. While there is evidence that words with identical consonants are better recalled than words with dissimilar consonants, it remains unclear whether similarity (i.e., partial identity) between consonants facilitates or hinders acquisition. Both possibilities are supported by different memory models: some posit that shared features within a sequence should lead to overlap and interference, while others suggest that repeated features can reinforce each other's representation. We tested these competing predictions in two experiments where English-speaking adults learned object labels containing repeated consonants (e.g., gegu), place-agreeing consonants (e.g., geku), or place-disagreeing consonants (e.g., getu). Experiment 1 used artificial lexicons in which all three word types were equally represented, whereas in Experiment 2, lexicons were systematically skewed towards one of the word types. In both experiments, repeated-consonant words were recalled more accurately than place-disagreeing words; words with place-agreeing consonants showed intermediate performance and did not differ reliably from either of their counterparts. Furthermore, analyses of erroneous trials revealed a tendency for participants to overproduce place-agreeing forms across all lexicons. These findings suggest that consonantal similarity is not detrimental to novel word learning and point towards a reconstruction bias favouring place agreement when recall is uncertain.
Contact between speakers and languages may play a key role in driving language change. During interaction, speakers tend to adapt to their interlocutors' speech, which can cumulatively lead to longer-term changes. Yet it remains unclear how innovations emerge, and who drives their adoption. These questions are addressed through two experiments on Italian motion-events framing. Study 1 examines German-Italian bilinguals with varying cumulative German contact, exploring whether exposure to innovative satellite-framed constructions triggers adaptation within Italian and across languages. Study 2 tests Italian monolinguals to assess adaptation in the absence of cross-linguistic influence. Results show that both bilinguals and monolinguals adapt to innovative structures at an abstract level, but only bilinguals with a high degree of German contact maintain these changes in a post-test, highlighting the role of bilingual experience. Findings suggest language contact may enhance the uptake of innovations, providing insight into the cognitive mechanisms underlying language change.
