A picture of the participants

organized with the financial support of the CNRS

 français

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from several (sub)disciplines, including theoretical phonology, phonetics, experimental psychology, diachrony, and computational phonology.

Besides the oral sessions, for which 15 speakers are invited, there will be a poster session with selected posters.

Invited Speakers

Call for Posters

Program

Workshop Location

Registration

Contact

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Phonological acquisition has been a research topic in both theoretical linguistics and experimental psychology. Much progress has been made on either side, and researchers from these disciplines can undoubtedly benefit from each other’s findings.

On the one hand, phonologists typically gather early production data to describe the various stages in the acquisition process. They have provided much evidence that children’s productions evolve from universally unmarked structures to the marked structures present in their ambient language. However, experimental research with infants shows that phonological acquisition begins right after birth and develops considerably during the first year of life, i.e. before the first words are uttered. Although the development in production resembles the one in perception in certain respects, there are also many divergences. A valid theory of phonological acquisition should contain a description of the initial state and hence take into consideration the earliest perception data.

Phonologists have also proposed models of how phonological systems might be acquired by young children. These models contain concrete algorithms by which children could derive parts of the phonological grammar of their language, but they are based upon the assumption that children have access to individual word forms, often coupled with their meaning. This latter assumption is highly unrealistic for the same reason that much of the native phonology appears to be acquired before word segmentation is in place and before lexical acquisition has started altogether.

Experimental psychologists, on the other hand, have gathered data concerning the perceptual capacities of infants from birth to 18 months of life. They have thus provided evidence that during this period, infants build a phonological representation of their ambient language, and, consequently, come to perceive speech sounds in a language-specific fashion, much the same way as adults do. However, these data pertain to a relatively small number of languages, and hence to only a small amount of variation that is attested in the phonological systems of human language. Moreover, although experimental psychologists have started to propose models concerning the acquisition of basic phonological parameters such as the segmental inventory and surface syllable structure, they typically are not concerned with the acquisition of phonological rules.

Besides phonology and experimental psychology, phonetics and diachrony are equally relevant to the study of early phonological acquisition. As to phonetics, it is often assumed that infants build a phonological representation of their native language by passing through a stage of a universal phonetic representation. It is thus important to carry out detailed phonetic analyses of the incoming speech signal. As to diachrony, under the common assumption that language change is induced by children acquiring their native language, diachronic data may provide insight into the acquisition process.

Abstracts are being solicited for POSTER presentations.

Please send 2 copies of an anonymous 2-page abstract plus one copy with your name, affiliation, and e-mail address to:

or to:

sharon@lscp.ehess.fr

For electronic submissions, please attach the abstract in Rich Text Format or as a PDF file to your e-mail.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: July 1^st

Notification of acceptance: July 25

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Given its interdisciplinary character, the workshop will start with three tutorials, introducing infant speech perception, adult speech perception, and phonological acquisition in Optimality Theory, respectively. There will also be a special evening lecture on birdsong acquisition. The complete program is as follows:

Friday, October 5^th

Saturday, October 6^th

Sunday, October 7^th

Monday, October 8^th

Poster presentations:

Ranka Bijeljac-Babic, Claire Gérard & Sabine Metta (Langage et Cognition, Université de Poitiers):
Acquisition précoce de la phonologie chez le sujet bilingue.

Stefanie Brosda, Rafael Laboissière & Christian Abry (ICP / INPG, Grenoble):
Grounding productive phonology in speech physiology: canonical babbling or the discovery of speech-like production.

Suzanne Curtin, Toben Mintz & Dani Byrd (University of Southern California):
Stress, Segmentation and Early Representations.

Gerry Docherty, Paul Foulkes, Jenny Tillotson & Dominic Watt (University of Newcastle upon Tyne & University of York):
On the Emergence of Structured Phonological Variation.

Christopher Fennell & Janet Werker (University of British Columbia):
Early Word Learners’ Representation of Well-Known Words.

Teodora Gliga, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz & Emmanuel Dupoux (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Paris):
Normalisation de la variation phonétique en contexte de coarticulation variable chez le nourrisson.

Géraldine Hilaire, Harriet Jisa & Valérie Régol (Université Lyon2):
Morpho-phonological Development in Cochlear Implanted Children Acquiring French.

Yvan Rose (University of California, Berkeley):
Markedness and Learnability in the Acquisition of Word-final Consonants.

Joost van de Weijer (University of Lund):
The Distribution of Function and Content Words in the Linguistic Input.

Tania Zamuner, LouAnn Gerken & Michael Hammond (University of Arizona / University of Nijmegen):
Phonotactic probability in the acquisition of English.

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The workshop will take place in a beautiful conference center at the seaside, called Vacanciel La Calanque. All workshop participants will be lodged in this center, where all meals will be served. With this arrangement there will be many opportunities for informal discussion.

The address of the conference center is:
Vacanciel La Calanque
13620 Carry-le-Rouet
Phone : +33-(0)4-42-45-00-45
Fax : +33-(0)4- 42-44-52-70

Vacanciel La Calanque is located at 3,5 kilometers outside of Carry-le-Rouet, 30 kilometers west from Marseilles and 19 kilometers from Marseilles' airport Marseille Provence à Marignane. There will probably be a shuttle service from the airport to the conference site on Friday. Carry-le-Rouet can also be reached by train from Marseilles.

If you want to visit Paris before or after the workshop, there is a fast train (TGV) between Paris and Marseilles that connects the two cities in about three hours. Click here for more information. Of course, there are also numerous daily flights between Paris and Marseilles. For the Air France web site, click here.

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A limited number of rooms for participants has been reserved in the conference center. Registration fees, covering 4 nights (October 5 – October 9), a welcome dinner on October 5, as well as all meals during the three days of the workshop, are as follows.

In order to register, please send an e-mail to sharon@lscp.ehess.fr with the following information:
• name
• affiliation
• student / faculty member
• address
• credit card number plus expiration date
• single / double room
• vegetarian meals yes/no

Participants from within France can also send a cheque instead of providing their credit card number. The cheque should be payable to Vacanciel La Calanque and sent to the following address:

Sharon Peperkamp
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique
EHESS - CNRS
54, Bd. Raspail
75270 Paris Cedex 6

Registration will be confirmed upon receipt of your credit card number or cheque.

Notice that there will be no on site registration.

If you would like to participate in the workshop without staying overnight, please send an e-mail to sharon@lscp.ehess.fr in order to register.

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For further information, please contact Sharon Peperkamp
e-mail: sharon@lscp.ehess.fr.
phone: 00+33-(0)1.49.54.24.98
Please do not contact the conference center with questions concerning the workshop or the registration procedure.

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