We are pleased to announce a new publication by Jian, Hanna, Youngah and Jesse in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. The paper, titled “Investigating the Tone-Segment Asymmetry in Phonological Counting: A Learnability Experiment,” examines how learners acquire rules that rely on counting either tones or segments, two fundamental components of spoken language.
Tone-segment asymmetry has long attracted attention in phonological theory, with many proposals suggesting that tones and segments behave differently in how they pattern across languages. This study provides the first experimental test of whether these typological differences are connected to how easily such patterns can be learned. Using an artificial-language learning paradigm, the authors compared learners’ ability to acquire a tonal counting rule with their ability to learn a structurally parallel segmental rule.
The results reveal that an unattested segmental counting pattern is significantly more difficult for learners than its tonal equivalent. This asymmetry in learnability suggests that cognitive biases may contribute to the distribution of tone‑ and segment‑based counting patterns observed cross‑linguistically.
Cui, J., Shine, H., Do, Y., & Snedeker, J. (2026). Investigating the tone-segment asymmetry in phonological counting: A learnability experiment. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology, 2(1). open_in_newDOI