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Leslie Ruolan Li

A portrait of PhD student Leslie Li, in three-quarter profile, right hand raised to her cheek, wind blowing

Graduate Student, Linguistics

Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

1407 D Marie Mount Hall
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Research Expertise

Computational Linguistics
Computational Modeling
Phonology

Publications

Language Discrimination May Not Rely on Rhythm: A Computational Study

Challenging the relationship between rhythm and language discrimination in infancy.

Linguistics | College of Arts and Humanities

Contributor(s): Leslie Ruolan Li, Naomi Feldman
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Abi Aboelata (UMD), Thomas Schatz (Marseilles)
Dates:

It has long been assumed that infants’ ability to discriminate between languages stems from their sensitivity to speech rhythm, i.e., organized temporal structure of vowels and consonants in a language. However, the relationship between speech rhythm and language discrimination has not been directly demonstrated. Here, we use computational modeling and train models of speech perception with and without access to information about rhythm. We test these models on language discrimination, and find that access to rhythm does not affect the success of the model in replicating infant language discrimination results. Our findings challenge the relationship between rhythm and language discrimination,

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