6. Prosody and grammar

Prosody is tightly linked to grammatical structure but the process of learning these links is largely unknown in adult L2 learning. This project aims at illuminating the acquisition of speech sounds with predictive, morphological, or syntactic roles as well as the cognitive variables and social factors that can influence the ability of acquisition. One important outcome of the project will be an artificial spoken language learning paradigm that can be used as a testing ground for investigating basic neural processes. This allows us to probe the importance of grammatical and phonetic structures and their interaction in language learning and processing. In a second phase of the project, we will employ the carefully tested learning paradigm to study the neural correlates of the learning of grammar-associated speech sounds using event-related potentials (ERP) in young adults.