Development of language-specific influences on speech perception and production in pre-verbal infancy.
| Number | 1131 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Drawer | 21 |
| Entry Date | 12/03/1999 |
| Authors | Best, C.T. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, (pp. 1261-1264). San Francisco, CA. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1131.pdf |
| Abstract | Adults have difficulty discriminating non-native speech contrasts, yet young infants discriminate both native and non-native contrasts. Language-specific influences appear by 9-10 months for consonants and phontactic sequences, and by t6 months for vowels. Early experience is still influential in adulthood, when fluent early bilinguals still show L1 rather than L2 effects on consonant discrimination, and those exposed to a language only during their first year show enhanced sensitivity to its contrasts. Preferences for some native prosodic properties appear even earlier. Newborns prefer native over non-native connected speech, while common native syllable structures and stress patterns are preferred by 6 months. Infants babbling displays similar developmental trends, with native prosodic biases present by 6 months and segmental biases emerging by 10 months. These effects take place prior to true word production, and well before morphology and syntax. Thus, they necessarily occur at a prelexical level. It is hypothesized, then, that language-specific phonetic learning precedes acquisition of contrastive phonology, a concept of fundamental significance to understanding the nature of phonological knowledge and its function in spoken language. |
| Notes |
Search Publications