One of the most well-studied current proposals for how infants learn which dimensions of their language are contrastive is known as distributional learning ( 6). By establishing this difference, we provide a potential answer to how infants learn about sound contrasts, a question whose answer in natural learning environments has remained elusive.ĭecades of research into how infants learn about contrastiveness in their first year of life has built a wealth of knowledge in this area however, we still do not know what aspects of the speech signal allow infants to make these inferences from the acoustically variable speech they hear in their daily lives. We predict that this should leave a signal that infants can pick up on and show that acoustic distributions indeed vary more by context along contrastive dimensions compared with noncontrastive dimensions. Our account is based on the cross-linguistic fact that even sounds that overlap in their acoustics differ in the contexts they occur in. Here we show that infants could learn which acoustic dimensions of their language are contrastive, despite the high acoustic variability. However, speech is highly variable, with different sounds overlapping substantially in their acoustics, and after decades of research, we still do not know what aspects of the speech signal allow infants to differentiate contrastive from noncontrastive dimensions. This has generally been taken as evidence that infants have learned which acoustic dimensions are contrastive, or useful for distinguishing among the sounds of their language(s), and have begun focusing primarily on those dimensions when perceiving speech. Wonkbook: NCLB reform coming Boehner opposes new gun laws John Kerry's speech oil spill recommendationsAt birth, infants discriminate most of the sounds of the world’s languages, but by age 1, infants become language-specific listeners. Rather than continuing to fight reform of work rules and protecting underperformers, unions could trade those away for across-the-board bonuses for service improvements and a guarantee that employees get a sizable share of any productivity gains. To boost loyalty, last year it began rolling out a 5% across-the-board discount for customers using its Target-branded credit and debit cards. "Arbitrarily imposing an across-the-board hiring freeze in the name of saving relatively small sums would be a mistake with the potential to seriously hamper the workforce and degrade government's performance," Stier wrote in Sunday's Post in a piece entitled, "The workers Obama abandoned."įederal worker advocate knocks Obama for pay freeze Unfortunately, the sommelier requested anonymity since he said that there is no across-the-board policy.īargains on restaurant wine lists – NYC edition | Dr Vino's wine blogĪs to whether I believe that full, across-the-board student loan forgiveness is likely to become a reality anytime soon - the answer, unfortunately, is an obvious "no." Shaun Johnson: Why I'm Marching to Save our Schools
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