mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A phonetic model of non-native spoken word processing

arXiv 2101.11332 ↗First posted 27 Jan 2021cs.CLcited by 5

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Abstract (arXiv)

Non-native speakers show difficulties with spoken word processing. Many studies attribute these difficulties to imprecise phonological encoding of words in the lexical memory. We test an alternative hypothesis: that some of these difficulties can arise from the non-native speakers' phonetic perception. We train a computational model of phonetic learning, which has no access to phonology, on either one or two languages. We first show that the model exhibits predictable behaviors on phone-level and word-level discrimination tasks. We then test the model on a spoken word processing task, showing that phonology may not be necessary to explain some of the word processing effects observed in non-native speakers. We run an additional analysis of the model's lexical representation space, showing that the two training languages are not fully separated in that space, similarly to the languages of a bilingual human speaker.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 13 of its 51 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Jan 2021.

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13 of 51 references.

References · 13

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1 more
  1. 2020Evaluating computational models of infant phonetic learning across languagescited by 6

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Cited by year

Citing papers per year: 2021: 2; 2022: 1; 2023: 1; 2024: 0; 2025: 1.

5 papers.

  1. 2021Do Acoustic Word Embeddings Capture Phonological Similarity? An Empirical Studycited by 8
  2. 2021How Familiar Does That Sound? Cross-Lingual Representational Similarity Analysis of Acoustic Word Embeddingscited by 8
  3. 2022Integrating Form and Meaning: A Multi-Task Learning Model for Acoustic Word Embeddingscited by 2
  4. 2023Analyzing the Representational Geometry of Acoustic Word Embeddingscited by 2
  5. 2025Do Self-Supervised Speech Models Exhibit the Critical Period Effects in Language Acquisition?cited by 0