Language-specific prosodic acquisition
- 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 foundThis 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.…
Author details: | Sandrien van OmmenORCiD, Natalie Boll-AvetisyanORCiDGND, Saioa LarrazaORCiD, Caroline WellmannORCiD, Ranka Bijeljac-BabicORCiD, Barbara HöhleORCiDGND, Thierry NazziORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108 |
ISSN: | 0749-596X |
ISSN: | 1096-0821 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of memory and language: JML |
Subtitle (English): | a comparison of phrase boundary perception by French- and German-learning infants |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | Amsterdam |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/02/19 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2023/12/07 |
Tag: | Acquisition; Infant; Language-specific; Perception; Prosodic boundaries; Prosody |
Volume: | 112 |
Article number: | 104108 |
Number of pages: | 16 |
Funding institution: | ANR-DFG grant "Multilevel prosodic processing in a crosslinguistic; perspective" [ANR-13-FRAL-0010, DFG Ho 1960/15-1] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |