Phonological knowledge guides 2-year-olds’ and adults’ interpretation of salient pitch contours in word learning

Abstract

Phonology provides a system by which a limited number of types of phonetic variation can signal communicative intentions at multiple levels of linguistic analysis. Because phonologies vary from language to language, acquiring the phonology of a language demands learning to attribute phonetic variation appropriately. Here, we studied the case of pitch-contour variation. In English, pitch contour does not differentiate words, but serves other functions, like marking yes/no questions and conveying emotions. We show that, in accordance with their phonology, English-speaking adults and two-year-olds do not interpret salient pitch contours as inherent to novel words. We taught participants a new word with consistent segmental and pitch characteristics, and then tested word recognition for trained and deviant pronunciations using an eyegaze-based procedure. Vowel-quality mispronunciations impaired recognition, but large changes in pitch contour did not. By age two, children already apply their knowledge of English phonology to interpret phonetic consistencies in their experience with words.

Tone Attrition in Mandarin Speakers of Varying English Proficiency

“…Tone-language learners' tone discrimination is maintained within the first year of life, whereas intonation-language learners' tone discrimination worsens (Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock, Molnar, Polka, & Burnham, 2008;Yeung, Chen, & Werker, 2013; see also Harrison, 2000). At the lexical level, language-specific pitch processing seems to develop by about 11 months for recognition of word forms (Singh & Foong, 2012) and by about 17 months for word learning (Hay, Graf Estes, Wang, & Saffran, 2014;Quam & Swingley, 2010;Singh, Hui, Chan, & Golinkoff, 2014).…”

The Distribution of Talker Variability Impacts Infants’ Word Learning

“…They are willing to treat pitch contour as lexically contrastive (Singh et al, 2014;Frota et al, 2012;Hay et al, 2015; see also Quam & Swingley, 2010). Until roughly 20 months of age, children are generally more willing than older learners to accept even non-word-like symbols, such as gestures, noise-maker sounds, and pictograms, as potential words (Namy, 2001;Namy & Waxman, 1998;Woodward & Hoyne, 1999).…”

“…At the same time, younger infants are more willing than older learners to attend to acoustic dimensions that are not contrastive in their language. For instance, before about 17 months, English-learning infants are willing to learn and differentiate words based on their pitch patterns (Singh et al, 2014;Hay et al, 2015; see also Quam & Swingley, 2010). Thus, even after the early "perceptual reorganization" for native-language sound discrimination, infants are still learning to attend to contrastive dimensions and listen through noncontrastive dimensions in word learning.…”

Spoken word recognition in early childhood: Comparative effects of vowel, consonant and lexical tone variation

“…This is not an uncommon feature of infant word recognition paradigms, as the presence of familiar, known words is thought to help to sustain attention to the task (e.g. Ballem & Plunkett, 2005;Mani & Plunkett, 2007;Quam & Swingley, 2010;White & Morgan, 2008).…”