Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child-directed speech

Abstract

The study examines prosodic characteristics of Hebrew speech directed to children between 0 ; 9-3 ; 0 years, based on longitudinal samples of 228,946 tokens (8,075 types). The distribution of prosodic patterns - the number of syllables and stress patterns - is analyzed across three lexical categories, distinguishing not only between open- and closed-class items, but also between these two categories and a third, innovative, class, referred to as between-class items. Results indicate that Hebrew CDS consists mainly of mono- and bisyllabic words, with differences between lexical categories; and that the most common stress pattern is word-final, with parallel distributions found for all categories. Additional analyses showed that verbs take word-final stress, but nouns are both trochaic and iambic. Finally, a developmental analysis indicates a significant increase in the number of iambic words in CDS. These findings have clear implications regarding the use of prosody for word segmentation and assignment of lexical class in infancy.

Motherese in Interaction: At the Cross-Road of Emotion and Cognition? (A Systematic Review)

“…Specific forms of IDS are evident across various languages, including Western European languages [11,36,37], Hebrew [38], Korean [39], Mandarin [40,41], Japanese [42] and even American Sign Language (ASL) between deaf mothers and their deaf children [43-45]. Although general trends in the form of IDS exist, they may be mediated by linguistic and cultural factors.…”

Motor excitability during visual perception of known and unknown spoken languages

“…English and Hebrew are both stress-timed languages, but the dominant stress patterns are different. English is a trochaic language (i.e., strong–weak pattern is most frequent), whereas Hebrew is an iambic language (i.e., weak–strong pattern is most frequent) (see e.g., Segal, Nir-Sagiv, Kishon-Rabin, & Ravid, 2009). It is possible that the participants used subtle differences in speech rhythms to discriminate these two languages.…”

Listening Preference for the Native Language Compared to an Unfamiliar Language in Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Infants After Cochlear Implantation

“…Moreover, early sensitivity to rhythmic properties of the native language is thought to be enhanced through the first year of life, resulting in identification of the initial prosodic unit (e.g., the syllable or the strong-weak template) required for segmentation in the native language (26). This is of particular interest considering the stress pattern of bisyllabic words in English is very different from that in Hebrew (strongweak versus weak-strong, respectively) (28). Thus, the ability of infants with CI to prefer their native language over a foreign one may suggest initial sensitivity to prosodic properties important for the development of language-specific segmentation procedures.…”