Talker variation in phonotactic learning 1 Running head: TALKER VARIATION IN PHONOTACTIC LEARNING Talker variation aids young infants’ phonotactic learning

We investigated how talker variability impacts novel phonological pattern learning in 4and 11-month-olds. Both age groups were better able to discriminate between legal and illegal phonotactic strings after exposure to multiple talkers than a single talker. It is argued that these data may be best accounted for by hybrid models including linguistic representations that abstract from talker identity, provided that neither a lexicon nor a protolexicon are necessary to allow the separation of the two. Talker variation in phonotactic learning 3 Talker variation aids young infants’ phonotactic learning