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Record W4412474939 · doi:10.1177/02676583251334518

A role for features in speech perception

2025· article· en· W4412474939 on OpenAlexafffund
Heather Goad

Bibliographic record

VenueSecond language Research · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicPhonetics and Phonology Research
Canadian institutionsMcGill University
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaFonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture
KeywordsLinguisticsPerceptionGrammarFeature (linguistics)PsychologyRepresentation (politics)PhonologyPhonotacticsIndirect speechComputer sciencePolitics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Archibald's article makes a strong case for abstract symbolic representations in the phonological grammars of second language learners/users (L2ers). The evidence he brings to bear on this comes principally from the prosodic domain. However, the case for abstractness is hardest to defend in the segmental domain, specifically when it comes to motivating a role for features. The goal of this commentary is to show that L2 speech perception is mediated, in part, by features and thereby provide support for Archibald's claim. Two speech perception studies are discussed. The first study shows that the status of the feature [nasal] in vowels in the first language (L1) grammar, as contrastive (French) or allophonic (English), impacts naive perception of novel nasal vowels. French listeners successfully perceive the novel vowels; English listeners' success is hindered by the phonological status of [nasal] in the L1 grammar. The results are proposed to support a role for abstract phonological representations: for features; for the conditions under which they must be shared across segments; and for a theory of licensing that can capture the licensing potential of different prosodic positions. The second study shows that the absence of the feature [SG] from the L1 grammar of French negatively impacts the ability to perceive and build an appropriate representation for English /h/. The lack of [SG] is proposed to account for three types of behaviour displayed by L2ers: their failure to perceive [h] as distinct from Ø; their VOT values for 'voiced' and 'voiceless' stops which fall between those of L1 French and those of target L2 English; and their overapplication of aspiration to stops in sC clusters. It is shown that these patterns cohere under a phonological account, as features have a classificatory function and are thereby expected to shape phonological behaviour across multiple groups of segments.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.008

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.005
Scholarly communication0.0040.003
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.037
GPT teacher head0.459
Teacher spread0.422 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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