Language Discrimination by English-Learning 5-Month-Olds: Effects of Rhythm and Familiarity

Nazzi, Thierry; Jusczyk, Peter W.; Johnson, Elizabeth

doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2698

Cited by 323 publications

(334 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…These types of information (prosodic stress, phonotactics, context-sensitive allophones, and so on) are all exploited efficiently by adult listeners. And infants within the first year of life likewise exploit prosodic information (Jusczyk et al, 1999b), phonotactic sequence constraints (Mattys et al, 1999;Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001), context-sensitive allophones (Jusczyk et al, 1999a), and even statistical cues to word boundaries (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996) and talker-specific idiosyncasies (Houston, 1999;Nazzi, Jusczyk, & Johnson, 2000). All of these types of information can be learned from experience with language input and all can help with the problem of segmenting words from context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical viability constraints on speech segmentation by infants

Johnson

Jusczyk

Cutler

et al. 2003

Cognitive Psychology

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The Possible Word Constraint limits the number of lexical candidates considered in speech recognition by stipulating that input should be parsed into a string of lexically viable chunks. For instance, an isolated single consonant is not a feasible word candidate. Any segmentation containing such a chunk is disfavored. Five experiments using the head-turn preference procedure investigated whether, like adults, 12-month-olds observe this constraint in word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants were familiarized with target words (e.g., rush), then tested on lists of non-

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical viability constraints on speech segmentation by infants

Johnson

Jusczyk

Cutler

et al. 2003

Cognitive Psychology

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“…But these assumptions are contradicted by evidence. First, discrimination is possible between languages that belong to the same class, such as English and Arabic (see Komatsu 2007 and references therein), and even between dialects of the same language (e.g., Nazzi et al 2000; White, Mattys, and Wiget 2012). Second, several unrelated experiments have shown that percepts of duration are affected by other prosodic variables.…”

Section: Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of rhythm class, speaking rate, and F0 in language discrimination

Arvaniti

Rodriquez

2013

Laboratory Phonology

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Abstract:The division of languages into stress-, syllable-, and mora-timing is said to be supported by experiments showing that languages are discriminated only if they belong to different rhythm classes, a distinction said to be reflected in the duration and variability of consonantal and vocalic intervals (timing). The role of rhythm classes in discrimination is tested here along with the alternative that discrimination is due to speaking rate and F 0 differences and is independent of rhythm class. Five AAX experiments with English as context (AA) and Polish, Danish, Spanish, Greek, or Korean as test (X) were conducted using the sasasa transform and modifying F 0 and speaking rate, so as to compare responses to stimuli that retained the original speaking rate and F 0 of each language and stimuli that were stripped of this information (speaking rate, F 0 , or both) while retaining their timing. Discrimination was possible both across and within rhythm classes when speaking rates differed between context and test but was largely impossible once speaking rate differences were eliminated. F 0 also played a significant if less consistent role in discrimination. The changes in responses associated with speaking rate and F 0 indicate that language discrimination arises from interactions between prosodic factors and that timing contributes but little. Consequently the results cast doubt both on the ecological validity of the sasasa transform, which brings timing to the fore while eliminating F 0 modulation, and on the rhythm class typology said to be reflected in timing distinctions.

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“…One factor often overlooked in the research into infant speech perception is the effect that early pre-lexical production or babble may have on perception of and/or attention to incoming speech, even though infants typically begin rhythmic production of adult-like syllables Ð 'canonical babbling' Ð between six and eight months (Oller, 2000), the period of the first major advances in speech perception (cf., e.g., Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995;Tincoff & Jusczyk, 1999;Shi & Werker, 2001;Soderstrom, Seidl, Kemler-Nelson, & Jusczyk, 2003;Jusczyk, Houston, & Newsome, 1999;Nazzi, Jusczyk, & Johnson, 2000;Soderstrom, Kemler-Nelson, & Jusczyk, 2005). This study tests the idea that increasing use of consonants in production will directly affect the processing of running speech.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants?

DePaolis

Vihman

Keren‐Portnoy

2011

Infant Behavior and Development

125

102

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The headturn preference procedure was used to test 18 infants on their response to three different passages chosen to reflect their individual production patterns. The passages contained nonwords with consonants in one of three categories: (a) often produced by that infant (ÔownÕ), (b) rarely produced by that infant but common at that age (ÔotherÕ), and (c) not generally produced by infants. Infants who had a single ÔownÕ consonant showed no significant preference for either ÕownÕ (a) or ÔotherÕ (b) passages. In contrast, infantsÕ with two ÔownÕ consonants exhibited greater attention to ÔotherÕ passages (b). Both groups attended equally to the passage featuring consonants rarely produced by infants of that age (c). An analysis of a sample of the infantdirected speech ruled out the mothersÕ speech as a source of the infant preferences. The production-based shift to a focus on the ÔotherÕ passage suggests that nascent production abilities combine with emergent perceptual experience to facilitate word learning.

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Language Discrimination by English-Learning 5-Month-Olds: Effects of Rhythm and Familiarity

Cited by 323 publications

References 51 publications

Lexical viability constraints on speech segmentation by infants

Lexical viability constraints on speech segmentation by infants

The role of rhythm class, speaking rate, and F0 in language discrimination

Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants?

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