A naturalness bias in learning stress

Recent research on the acquisition of natural vs. unnatural phonological processes provides some support for the idea that learning a natural process is easier than learning an unnatural one (Wilson 2003, 2006, Pycha et al. 2003, Pater & Tessier 2005). This study extends those findings by comparing the acquisition of two stress patterns that are identical except in naturalness. Learners were native speakers of English, a language with variable stress, and French, a fixed stress language. Both English and French speakers learned the natural pattern significantly better than the unnatural. The artificial languages specifically neutralized the phonetic cues that might have given a perceptual advantage to the natural language. The findings suggest that a naturalness bias aids in the distinguishing and learning of a phonological pattern. To explain the results, I argue for an interaction between a general and a language-specific cognitive mechanism.