Project C07

(Hidden) Variability in vowel phonotactic systems

PI(s): Prof. Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan & Prof. Dr. Adamantios Gafos

Project C07 investigates the interplay of (hidden) phonetic variability and phonotactics. We focus on two key areas: (1) vowel harmony, specifically the acquisition and processing puzzle presented by vowels with very similar acoustics but distinct phonological identities in Niger-Kongo languages, and (2) metaphony systems, exploring the hypothesis that variability in how vowels are produced and perceived shape key properties of these systems. Corpus analyses and perception/production experiments with infants and adults will contribute to our understanding of the links between phonetic properties, phonological structure and change.

in Phase 2

Limits of variability in phonotactic acquisition due to universal biases

PI(s): Prof. Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan

This project aims at disentangling to what extent phonotactic acquisition is experience-dependent, leading to variability across infants with different language experiences (learning different or multiple languages), and to what extent experience-independent universal biases might place a limit on this acquisition. To this end, we will compare infants growing up mono- or bilingually with German and/or Russian, two phonotactically distinct languages. We will conduct corpus-based lexical statistics to understand what phonotactic input the infants receive, and eye-tracking experiments to test whether the infants’ phonotactic listening preferences are shaped by universal biases beyond their language experience conditions.

Members

Prof. Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan natalie.boll-avetisyan@uni-potsdam.de (+49) 331 977-2374

Prof. Dr. Adamantios Gafos adamantios.gafos@uni-potsdam.de (+49) 331 977-2777

Papers

Author(s)	Title	Year	Published in
Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E.	Online data collection to address language sampling bias: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.	2022	Linguistics Vanguard.
Aravena-Bravo, P., Cristia, A., Garcia, R., Kotera, H., Kunene Nicolas, R., Laranjo, R., Arokoyo, B., Benavides, S., Benders, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Cychosz, M., Dal Ben, R., Diop, Y., Durán-Urzúa, C., Havron, N., Manalili, M., Narasimhan, B., Omane, P., Rowland, C., Kolberg, L., Ssemata, A., Styles, S., Troncoso-Acosta, B., & Woon, F.	Towards diversifying early language development research: First Truly Global International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/) 2021	2023	Journal of Cognition and Development
Barrios, A., & Garcia, R.	Filipino Children’s Acquisition of Nominal and Verbal Markers in L1 and L2 Tagalog.	2023	Languages, 8(3), 188.
Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E.	Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming.	2023	Cognition, 236, 105424.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Phonotactic intuition in French/German bilingual adults, a metalinguistic wellformedness judgment task.	2023	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Phonetic discrimination in Tagalog-learning infants.	2023	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., Lu, Y., Tsuji, S., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	German infants' sonority sequencing preference: Rises vs. falls.	2023	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., Albert, H. M. D., Bondoc, I. P., & Marzan, J. C. B.	Collecting language acquisition data from understudied urban communities: A reply to Cristia et al.	2023	Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 522-526.
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., Duah, R. A., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Diversifying language acquisition research can be (partly) achieved in urban societies and with simplified methodologies: Insights from multilingual Ghana.	2023	Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 532-536.
Piot, L., Nazi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic regularities related to perceptually low-salient fricatives: a cross-linguistic study.	2024	Frontiers in Psychology, 15.
Pizarro-Guevara, J. S., & Garcia, R.	Philippine Psycholinguistics.	2024	Annual Review of Linguistics, 10, 145-167.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Bilingual adults’ phonotactic knowledge: a lexical decision task.	2024	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., Lu, Y., Tsuji, S., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Japanese-learning infants' sonority sequencing preference: Rises vs. falls.	2024	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., Lu, Y., Tsuji, S., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	German infants' sonority sequencing preference: Plateaus vs. falls.	2024	OSF pre-registration.
Panchenko, Y., Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	The perception of consonant clusters in Russian speakers: The Sonority Sequencing Principle as a gradient phenomenon?	2024	OSF pre-registration.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Phonetic discrimination in Tagalog-learning infants: Follow-up experiments.	2024	OSF pre-registration.
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Vowel harmony preferences in infants growing up in multilingual Ghana (Africa).	2024	Developmental Psychology, 60(8), 1372-1383.
Kaland, C., Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Nazzi, T.	Prosodic grouping in Akan and the applicability of the iambic-trochaic law.	2024	In Y. Chen, A. Chen, & A. Arvaniti (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2024 (pp. 1040-1044).
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Van Ommen, S., & Schmandt, S.	Phonological biases in lexical access in French and German: Data from a familiar word-recognition conflict task.	2025	Infant Behavior and Development, 79, 102070.
Omane, P. O., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T.	Tongue root harmony cues for speech segmentation in multilingually raised infants learning languages with and without vowel harmony in Ghana (Africa).	2025	Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-11.
Garcia, R., Valdez, M. C., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infants discriminate subtle nasal contrasts late: Evidence from field psycholinguistic experiments on Tagalog-learning infants in the Philippines.	2025	Developmental Psychology, Advance online publication, 1-15.
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Exploring the nature of multilingual input to infants in multiple caregiver families in an African city: The case of Accra (Ghana).	2025	Cognitive Development, 74, 101558.
Kaland, C., Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Nazzi, T.	Iambic-Trochaic grouping in native listeners of Papuan Malay, Akan, and German.	2025	The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 158(1), 776-789.

Talks

Author(s)	Title	Year	Published in
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infant-directed speech might be tailored for learning phonotactics.	2022	Paper presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies (XXIII ICIS - Developmental Cascades), Ottawa, Canada. 07 - 10 July.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infant-directed speech might be tailored for learning phonotactic principles.	2022	Paper presented at the 18th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (Online). 23 - 25 June, 2022.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infant-directed speech supports phonotactic learning in German.	2022	Paper presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, San Sebastián, Spain. 09 - 11 June, 2022.
Omane, P.O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Effects of multilingual exposure to harmonic and non-harmonic languages on perceptual preferences in infants growing up in Africa	2022	Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (XXIII ICIS - Developmental Cascades), Ottawa, Canada. 07 - 10 July.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Gradient phonotactics in acquisition: A cross-linguistic corpus study.	2022	Paper presented at the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition Conference (GALA 15), Goethe-University Frankfurt, Frankfurt a.M., Germany. 22-24 September.
Garcia, R., & The Truly Global L+ school organziers	Running a truly international school on early language development.	2022	Poster presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies (XXIII ICIS - Developmental Cascades), Ottawa, Canada. 07 - 10 July.
Garcia, R.	The lack of diversity in child language research and what we can do about it.	2022	Invited talk at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan colloquium, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Online. 07 Septembe
Garcia, R., Lu, Y., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Limits of variability in infant phonotactic acquisition: A study on the sonority sequencing principle.	2023	Poster presented at the Many Paths to Language (MPaL) 2023, Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 25-27 October.
Omane, P.O., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T.	Does exposure to tongue root harmony and non-vowel harmony languages affect perceptual preferences in infants growing up in Africa? Data from multilingual infants in Ghana	2023	Paper presented at the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 54), University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA. 12-14 June.
Omane, P.O., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T.	How do multilingual infants in Ghana use vowel harmony cues for word segmentation? Effects of exposure to harmonic and non-harmonic languages	2023	Paper presented at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. 26-30 June.
Omane, P.O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Tongue Root harmony acquisition and word segmentation in multilingual infant learners of languages with and without vowel harmony	2023	Paper presented at the Many Paths to Language (MPaL 2023), Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 25-27 October.
Garcia, R.	Sonority sequencing effects on infants’ phonotactic acquisition: A study on German and Japanese.	2023	Invited Talk at the University of Tokyo, Japan. December.
Garcia, R.	Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline: A challenge for language acquisition.	2023	Invited talk at the RTG 2070 Colloquium, University of Göttingen, Göttingen,Germany. November.
Garcia, R.	Conducting psycholinguistic research in urban communities: Challenges and solutions.	2023	Invited talk at the Cameroonian Association of Psycholinguistics and Clinical linguistics conference, Online. July.
Garcia, R.	Diversity in child language acquisition research.	2023	Invited talk at the Friday Primes, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. 27 January.
Garcia, R., Langus, A., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infants’ sensitivity to sonority sequencing: evidence from behavior and pupillary synchronization.	2024	Paper presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD 2024), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. 19-21 June.
Omane, P.O., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T.	Multilingual infants in Ghana’s ability to use tongue root harmony cues for word segmentation in Akan	2024	Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (XXIV ICIS), Glasgow, UK. 08 - 11 July.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Infants’ phonotactic sensitivities to regularities involving low-salient fricatives: a cross-linguistic study.	2024	Paper presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD 2024), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. 19-21 June.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Auditory phonotactic wellformedness intuitions depend on the nativeness of a speaker’s pronunciation.	2024	Paper presented at the Linguistic Evidence 2024, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. 22-23 February.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Wordlikeness intuitions depend on the nativeness of a speaker’s pronunciation.	2024	Paper presented at the 19th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon 19 - Where speech sounds meet the architecture of the grammar and beyond), Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. 27 - 29 June.
Piot, L., Van Ommen, S., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Schmandt, S., & Nazzi, T.	The consonant-bias is influenced by syllabic position in a familiar word recognition conflict task, a cross-linguistic study of German- and French-learning toddlers.	2024	Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (XXIV ICIS), Glasgow, UK. 08 - 11 July.
Garcia, R., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Phonetic discrimination in Tagalog-learning infants: Testing the influence of acoustic salience.	2024	Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (XXIV ICIS), Glasgow, UK. 08 - 11 July.
Garcia, R., Valdez, M., & Boll-Avetisyan, N.	Acquisition of Tagalog nasals: A field psycholinguistic study with infants.	2024	Poster presented at the The 31st Annual Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA), University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA., USA. 11-14 June.
Garcia, R.	Casting a wider linguistic net: Language acquisition insights from an Austronesian language.	2024	Plenary talk at the 16th International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Prague, Czech Republic. 15-19 July.
Garcia, R.	Infants’ sensitivity to phonotactics: From universal to language-specific preferences.	2024	nvited talk at the Potsdam Phonotactics Workshop, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. March.