We are pleased to announce that Xiaoyu and Youngah’s paper, “Preference for Distinct Variants in Learning Sound Correspondences During Dialect Acquisition,” has been published in the journal Language and Speech.

This research delves into how learners acquire sound correspondences (SCs) in second dialect acquisition. SCs occur when sounds occupy corresponding positions in cognate words of related languages or dialects. While SCs can consist of both similar and distinct variants, the impact of this similarity on learning has been understudied.

In their study, Xiaoyu and Youngah investigated whether the degree of similarity between dialect variants affects SC learning. They employed an artificial language learning experiment where participants learned SCs between Standard Mandarin and “artificial dialects,” using a set of carefully controlled sound contrasts. The degree of similarity between the variants was evaluated using multiple measures, including phonetic and phonological metrics validated by typological evidence.

The findings revealed that while similarity did not impact the learning of simple one-to-one SCs, learners showed a preference for more distinct variants when the SC mapping structure was more complex (i.e., two-to-one or one-to-two mappings). This preference, however, only emerged when the dissimilarity between the variants was sufficiently large to cross a certain threshold.

This study demonstrates that although learners initially display a general lack of sensitivity to similarity differences, a preference for distinct variants emerges when SC mapping structures become more complex and the dissimilarity between variants reaches a critical level. This suggests that when acquiring complex SC patterns, learners seek out more salient cues, leading to an improved ability to differentiate between distinct variants.