The Acquisition of Discontinuous Phonic Relations: Three Distributional Studies and Two Connectionist Simulations

The learning of discontinuous phonetic patterns, such as harmony & contour, in child language acquisition is investigated using Brazilian Portuguese data. Statistical analyses of corpora discover probabilistic pattern distribution in the vocabulary of this language. Connectionist simulations published earlier (E. Francozo et al, 2003, & O. Coelho et al, 2003) are described. The statistical tendencies uncovered in the distributional studies provide counterevidence to a purely symbolic interpretation of the acquisition process. The simulation studies indicate the involvement of neural networks in the perception & processing of vocalic harmonies & contours, however, shed no light on the symbolic nature of the operations involved. More research is needed to determine whether a formalization is possible that would capture the transition between subsymbolic & symbolic manifestations of patterns in acquisitional phonology. 11 References. Z. Dubiel