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  -