TY - JOUR A1 - van Ommen, Sandrien A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Larraza, Saioa A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Language-specific prosodic acquisition BT - a comparison of phrase boundary perception by French- and German-learning infants JF - Journal of memory and language: JML N2 - This study compares the development of prosodic processing in French- and German-learning infants. The emergence of language-specific perception of phrase boundaries was directly tested using the same stimuli across these two languages. French-learning (Experiment 1, 2) and German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds (Experiment 3) listened to the same French noun sequences with or without major prosodic boundaries ([Loulou et Manou] [et Nina]; [Loulou et Manou et Nina], respectively). The boundaries were either naturally cued (Experiment 1), or cued exclusively by pitch and duration (Experiment 2, 3). French-learning 6- and 8-month-olds both perceived the natural boundary, but neither perceived the boundary when only two cues were present. In contrast, German-learning infants develop from not perceiving the two-cue boundary at 6 months to perceiving it at 8 months, just like German-learning 8-month-olds listening to German (Wellmann, Holzgrefe, Truckenbrodt, Wartenburger, & Hohle, 2012). In a control experiment (Experiment 4), we found little difference between German and French adult listeners, suggesting that later, French listeners catch up with German listeners. Taken together, these cross-linguistic differences in the perception of identical stimuli provide direct evidence for language-specific development of prosodic boundary perception. KW - Prosody KW - Acquisition KW - Language-specific KW - Perception KW - Infant KW - Prosodic boundaries Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 112 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schmandt, Silvana A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - New, Boris T1 - Consonant, vowel and lexical neighbourhood processing during word recognition: new evidence using the sandwich priming technique JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - Studies on French adults using a written lexical decision task with masked priming, in which targets were more primed by consonant- (jalu-JOLI) than vowel-related (vobi-JOLI) primes, support the proposal that consonants have more weight than vowels in lexical processing. This study examines the phonological and/or lexical nature of this consonant bias (C-bias), using a sandwich priming task in which a brief presentation of the target (pre-prime) precedes the prime-target sequence, a manipulation blocking lexical neighbourhood effects. Results from three experiments (varying pre-prime/prime durations) show consistent C-priming and no significant V-priming at earlier and later processing stages (50 or 66 ms primes). Yet, a joint analysis reveals a small V-priming, while confirming a significant consonant advantage. This demonstrates the contribution of the phonological level to the C-bias. Second, differences in performance comparing the classic versus sandwich priming task also establish a contribution of lexical neighbourhood inhibition effects to the C-bias. KW - consonants and vowels KW - phonological and lexical processing KW - visual word recognition KW - consonant bias KW - sandwich priming paradigm Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2022.2046115 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 37 IS - 9 SP - 1115 EP - 1130 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Poltrock, Silvana A1 - Chen, Hui A1 - Kwok, Celia A1 - Cheung, Hintat A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Adult learning of novel words in a non-native language BT - Consonants, Vowels, and Tones JF - Frontiers in psychology KW - word learning KW - minimal pairs KW - non-native speech perception KW - tones KW - adults Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01211 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 9 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Poltrock, Silvana A1 - Von Holzen, Katie T1 - The developmental origins of the consonant bias in lexical processing T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Consonants have been proposed to carry more of the weight of lexical processing than vowels. This consonant bias has consistently been found in adults and has been proposed to facilitate early language acquisition. We explore the origins of this bias over the course of development and in infants learning different languages. Although the consonant bias was originally thought to be present at birth, evidence suggests that it arises from the early stages of phonological and (pre-)lexical acquisition. We discuss two theories that account for the acquisition of the consonant bias: the lexical and acoustic-phonetic hypotheses. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 416 KW - language acquisition KW - lexical development KW - consonant bias KW - cross-linguistic differences Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405322 IS - 416 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Poltrock, Silvana A1 - Von Holzen, Katie T1 - The Developmental Origins of the Consonant Bias in Lexical Processing JF - Current directions in psychological science N2 - Consonants have been proposed to carry more of the weight of lexical processing than vowels. This consonant bias has consistently been found in adults and has been proposed to facilitate early language acquisition. We explore the origins of this bias over the course of development and in infants learning different languages. Although the consonant bias was originally thought to be present at birth, evidence suggests that it arises from the early stages of phonological and (pre-)lexical acquisition. We discuss two theories that account for the acquisition of the consonant bias: the lexical and acoustic-phonetic hypotheses. KW - language acquisition KW - lexical development KW - consonant bias KW - cross-linguistic differences Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416655786 SN - 0963-7214 SN - 1467-8721 VL - 25 SP - 291 EP - 296 PB - Sage Publ. CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Variability and stability in early language acquisition BT - comparing recognition and bilingual infants' speech perception and word recognition JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience. KW - language acquisition KW - bilingual infants KW - bilingual phonological KW - development KW - bilingual lexical development KW - simultaneous bilingualism Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000348 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 23 IS - 1 SP - 56 EP - 71 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Variability and stability in early language acquisition BT - Comparing monolingual and bilingual infants' speech perception and word recognition T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 683 KW - language acquisition KW - bilingual infants KW - bilingual phonological development KW - bilingual lexical development KW - simultaneous bilingualism Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-469718 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 683 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Herold, Birgit A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Language specific prosodic preferences during the first year of life : evidence from German and French infants Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01636383 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2009.03.004 SN - 0163-6383 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gonzalez-Gomez, Nayeli A1 - Schmandt, Silvana A1 - Fazekas, Judit A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Gervain, Judit T1 - Infants’ sensitivity to nonadjacent vowel dependencies BT - the case of vowel harmony in Hungarian JF - Journal of experimental child psychology N2 - Vowel harmony is a linguistic phenomenon whereby vowels within a word share one or several of their phonological features, constituting a nonadjacent, and thus challenging, dependency to learn. It can be found in a large number of agglutinating languages, such as Hungarian and Turkish, and it may apply both at the lexical level (i.e., within word stems) and at the morphological level (i.e., between stems and their affixes). Thus, it might affect both lexical and morphological development in infants whose native language has vowel harmony. The current study asked at what age infants learning an irregular harmonic language, Hungarian, become sensitive to vowel harmony within word stems. In a head-turn preference study, 13-month-old, but not 10-month-old, Hungarian-learning infants preferred listening to nonharmonic VCV (vowel-consonant-vowel) pseudowords over vowel harmonic ones. A control experiment with 13-month-olds exposed to French, a nonharmonic language, showed no listening preference for either of the sequences, suggesting that this finding cannot be explained by a universal preference for nonharmonic sequences but rather reflects language-specific knowledge emerging between 10 and 13 months of age. We discuss the implications of this finding for morphological and lexical learning. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc. KW - Early language acquisition KW - Speech perception KW - Vowel harmony KW - Nonadjacent phonological dependencies KW - Hungarian KW - French Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.08.014 SN - 0022-0965 SN - 1096-0457 VL - 178 SP - 170 EP - 183 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Rhythmic grouping biases in simultaneous bilinguals JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French-German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals. KW - simultaneous bilingualism KW - universal bias KW - rhythm KW - rhythmic grouping KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000140 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 23 IS - 5 SP - 1070 EP - 1081 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER -