The Obligatory Contour Principle as a Substantive Bias in Phonological Learning

Abstract

Understanding how native speakers acquire the phonological patterns in their language is a key task for the field of phonology. Numerous studies have suggested that phonological learning is a biased process: certain phonological patterns are more easily accessed and learned by the speakers and thus more likely to appear in languages, while others show acquisition difficulties and may occur less frequently. Therefore, an important aspect of understanding phonological learning and typology is to understand the nature of these learning biases. Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), i.e., the avoidance of adjacent similar units in the lexicon, is one of the typologically well-attested phenomena that may originate from phonological learning biases. Using a series of artificial grammar learning experiments, we present evidence that the OCP plays an active role in phonological learning, in that similarity avoidance patterns are easier to learn compared to other patterns. Specifically, Experiment 1 showed that an OCP-based phonotactic pattern was better learned than a complexity-matching consonant major place harmony phonotactic pattern, and an arbitrary control pattern. Experiment 2 replicated this finding in the learning of alternations: OCP-triggered alternation pattern was better learned than an arbitrarily conditioned alternation pattern. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that an OCP effect in stem phonotactics could aid the learning of an OCP-triggered alternation. Based on these AGL experiment results and the phonetic foundation of similarity avoidance, we argue that the OCP can serve as a substantive bias that influences phonological learning and, eventually, linguistic typology.

Keywords: Obligatory Contour Principle, Artificial grammar learning, Phonological learning, Phonological typology, Learning bias