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Sharon Peperkamp (CNRS/University of Paris 8)Katrin Skoruppa (CNRS)Implicit phonological learning in an artificial language learning paradigmWe report on experiments involving implicit phonological rule learning. French adults were exposed to short stories in 'accentedFrench', that is, in their native language equipped with a novel phonological alternation (vowel harmony). During the test phase, theyperformed a forced-choice grammaticality task. We found that subjects perform above chance level both for words known fromexposure and for novel words, suggesting that they have learned the vowel harmony rule. We also address the question of the role ofphonetic naturalness by comparing the acquisition of (natural) vowel harmony to that of (unnatural) vowel disharmony.Anne Pycha (University of California, Berkeley)Eurie Shin (University of California, Berkeley)Ryan K. Shosted (University of California, Berkeley)An experimental approach to perceptual naturalness in consonant cluster assimilationsLinguists disagree as to whether phonetic factors play a synchronic role in phonological patterns, such as the tendency toward ‘natural'regressive place assimilation in consonant clusters. If unnaturalness costs the grammar, does it impact the learnability of patterns?We trained listeners in a word-building process that involved consonant assimilation whose direction was progressive, regressive, orarbitrary. We found no evidence that the progressive and regressive conditions were learned differently, but listeners had considerabledifficulty learning the arbitrary condition. These results question the synchronic role of perceptual naturalness and suggest that formalcomplexity can impact learning.Amanda Seidl (Purdue University)Eugene Buckley (University of Pennsylvania)Alejandrina Cristia (Purdue University)Complexity trumps naturalnessIt has been argued that infants prefer phonologically natural alternations over unnatural ones. Formal complexity may affect learningto a greater degree than naturalness. We tested this claim in two experiments. Infants were familiarized with a series of pseudowordsexemplifying a sound pattern. We predicted that infants who learned the pattern would show a novelty preference and attend longer totest words that violated the familiarized pattern. We found that infants performed equally well at rule learning in natural and unnaturalconditions but were affected adversely by complexity. This suggests it is possible for infants to learn unnatural phonological patterns.Colin Wilson (University of California, Los Angeles)Artificial grammar & implicational universalsTypological studies of phonological systems have discovered many universal, or nearly universal, implicational relations. Suchuniversals reflect a cognitive structure that shapes the learning and extension of phonological generalizations. As evidence for thisclaim I provide three artificial grammar experiments in which participants were exposed to examples of velar palatalization in onevowel context and then tested on their generalization of palatalization to the other context. Results reveal asymmetric patterns ofgeneralization in line with the typological findings. These results support theories of phonology in which substantive phonetic factorsare accessible and active in shaping the learner's generalizations.86