Phonemes have variant pronunciations depending on context. For instance, in American English, the [t] in pat [pæt] and the [d] in pad [pæd] are both realized with a tap [ɾ] when the –ing suffix is attached, [pæɾɪŋ]. We show that despite greater distributional and acoustic support for the [t]-tap alternation, 12-month-olds successfully relate taps to stems with a perceptually-similar final [d], not the dissimilar final-[t]. Thus, distributional learning of phonological alternations is constrained by infants' preference for the alternation of perceptually-similar segments. Further, the ability to relate variant surface forms emerges between 8- and 12-months. Our findings of biased learning provide further empirical support for a role for perceptual similarity in the acquisition of linguistically-relevant categories. We discuss the implications of our findings for phonological theory, language acquisition and models of the mental lexicon.

音素根据上下文具有不同的发音。例如，在美国英语时，[T]，以拍[PAET]和[d]在垫[PAED]都与一个抽头实现[ɾ]当-ing后缀，[pæɾɪŋ]。我们显示，尽管[t]抽头交替具有更大的分布和声学支持，但12个月大的孩子还是成功地将抽头与词尾相似[d]而非相似的[t]的词干联系起来。因此，语音交替的分布学习受到婴儿对感知相似段交替的偏好的限制。此外，在8到12个月之间就会出现关联各种表面形式的能力。我们对有偏向学习的发现为在语言相关类别的习得中感知相似性的作用提供了进一步的经验支持。我们讨论了我们的发现对语音理论，语言习得和心理词典模型的影响。