What kind of learning mechanisms allow language to be learned? For my dissertation research project I want to dissect how language users learn the sounds of their native and non-native language, how they learn their function in the linguistic system, and how they learn to use them to distinguish between meanings. I will consider two domain general learning theories which have been proposed in the last few decades: Associative learning – also referred to as distributional learning, statistical learning, or Hebbian learning (Aslin, Saffran, and Newport, 1998, Hebb, 1949, Maye, Werker, and Gerken, 2002, Newport and Aslin, 2004, Saffran, 2020, Saffran and Kirkham, 2018) – and discriminative error-driven learning (Nixon, 2020, Olejarczuk, Kapatsinski, and Baayen, 2018, Ramscar, Dye, and McCauley, 2013, Ramscar et al., 2010, Rescorla and Wagner, 1972).