Past events: Rachel Hayes-Harb. The influence of written input on phonological and phonolexical development in adult language learners

What: The influence of written input on phonological and phonolexical development in adult language learners

Where:  Zoom room 2. (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Prof. Rachel Hayes-Harb, Department of Linguistics, Speech Acquisition Lab, Associate Dean for Academic & Faculty Affairs, Honors College, University of Utah, US

When:  Thursday,  Dec 1st  at 3:00 PM.

The past 20 years have seen a dramatic increase in attention to the influence of written input on adult language learners’ acquisition of new phonological and phonolexical. Our lab has investigated the facilitation and interference effects of orthographic forms on learners’ developing phonological representations and lexical processing structures in spoken languages. We have found that written input interacts with auditory input in complex ways to shape learners’ representations and processing, depending on a number of factors, including the familiarity of the orthographic symbols, the similarity of grapheme-phoneme correspondences among learners’ languages, and the difficulty of the auditory contrasts. We have also found that these effects may not be strictly orthographic, but rather may arise due to the systematic visual cues that orthographic forms provide. I will provide an overview of these studies and discuss areas for future inquiry.