Phonological cognisance and allied linguistic representations: acquisition, bilingualism, change and script
Project number: 101167219
ERC-2024-SyG: European Research Council
Project start date: 1 September 2025 End date: 31 August 2031 Duration: 72 months
Participants:
Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, The Netherlands - (Coordinator): Professor Paula Fikkert
University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom – Professor Aditi Lahiri, CBE, FBA, MAE
Universitetet i Agder, Kristiansand, Norway – Professor Allison Wetterlin, Professor Linda Wheeldon
Project Summary: PAAL's objective is to investigate the interaction of phonological representations with cognisance, and their relationship to script. We view cognisance as part of the native speaker's core knowledge of their language. This includes generalisations about constraints on phonological representations in terms of features, size and shapes of morphemes, tone and metrical structures. Cognisance is not identical to the phonological representation of particular lexical items; rather, cognisance is the knowledge about what might be a conceivable word in a given language. . We argue that cognisance is involved in all levels of language processing and change, in both spoken and written modalities. Speakers may have different vocabularies, but the phonological cognisance of individuals within a speech community should converge. It has been widely claimed that the notion of "phonological awareness" supports script acquisition. We propose that "phonological awareness" has to make sense in terms of cognisance, which is fundamental to all native speakers, regardless of their level of literacy.
Novelty and Impact:
Novel to our approach is that it makes explicit predictions about the relationship between cognisance and representation and their relationship to script. Most scripts encode aspects of phonological structure but vary across languages and change over time. Even the closely related Germanic languages we primarily investigate, all using Latinate script, differ in their relationship between phonology and script. We compare the Latinate script to Bengali (also an Indo-European language) whose writing system is very different. Our working hypothesis is that phonological cognisance and representation govern spoken and written language processing, language acquisition, and change of all languages. In this interdisciplinary project, we combine expertise and methodologies across the fields of theoretical phonology, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics, language acquisition, and language change.
Our predictions will be tested using a novel combination of methodologies from psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and theoretical linguistics. We will generate novel data to elucidate the role of phonological representations and cognisance in neuro- and psycholinguistic theories of first and second language processing, and historical linguistic approaches to language change. Our findings will also impact speech and language professionals working with language and literacy disorders, adult second language teaching, and will enhance approaches to automatic speech processing.
