The Trans-Linguistic Robustness of Prosodic Cues
in Language Acquisition
Kara Hawthorne & LouAnn Gerken Reiko Mazuka June 7th, 2012University of Arizona RIKEN BSI, Japan Minneapolis, MN
When Grandma gets here, we'll go to the zoo!
final syllable lengthening
pausepitch resetSoderstrom, Blossom, Foygel, & Morgan (2008)
Hirsh-Pasek et al. (1987)
John doesn't know what rabbits eat. Leafy vegetables taste so good. They don't cost much either.
Soderstrom, Kemler Nelson, & Jusczyk (2005)
Many animals prefer some things. Rabbits eat leafy vegetables. Taste so good is rarely encountered.
The Approach
syntax = a system of hierarchically organized constituents
constituent = a group of words that acts together
act together = move together
Familiarization Sentences
1-clause group: ABCDEF2-clause group: ABC, DEF
Test Sentences
consistent: DEF, ABCinconsistent: EFA, BCD
Words
A: bup, nimB: div, peletc.
Hypothesis: Children can use prosody to locate clausal constituents
Children in the 2-clause group should discriminate between the consistent and inconsistent test items
Children in the 1-clause group should not discriminate
Children can use prosody to chunk a string of speech into substrings and they recognize those substrings when they have moved and have a new prosodic contour.
Hypothesis 1: The children used their acquired knowledge of English prosody
Hypothesis 2: The children capitalized on the general acoustic salience of the prosodic cues
Englishstress timed
final-syllable lengthening
exaggerated pitch in IDS
SVO
Japanesemora timed
final-syllable amplitude decrease
*Fisher & Tokura (1996)
subtler pitch changes in IDS, pitch accents
*Fernald et al. (1989)
SOV*Nespor et al. (2008)
Hypothesis 1: The American children used their acquired knowledge of English prosody
Japanese children should act differently from the American children
Hypothesis 2: The American children capitalized on the general acoustic salience of the prosodic cues
Japanese children should act like the American children
The Second Experiment
19-month-old Japanese children
10 + 2 minutes of familiarization
Head-Turn Preference Procedure
Familiarization Sentences
1-clause group: ABCDEF2-clause group: ABC, DEF
Test Sentences
consistent: DEF, ABCinconsistent: EFA, BCD
Words
A: bup, nimB: div, peletc.
Japanese children can use non-native prosody to chunk a string of speech into substrings and they recognize those substrings when they have moved and have a new prosodic contour.
Implications?
Prosodic cues are sufficiently robust that they can be used for syntax acquisition without prior language-specific prosodic learning.
Thank you:Drs. Rebecca Gomez, Heidi Harley, Diane Ohala, & Colin Dawson
Sara Knight, Brianna McMillan, JulietMinton, Erin Huff, Omar Aujani, Kelly McGinn
Yuka Miyake, Ai Kanato, Mihoko Hasegawa, Mari Kanamura, Yuri Hatano, Yumiko Maeda
This research was supported by NSF 0950601 to LouAnn Gerken, NSF GRFP and EAPSI grants to Kara Hawthorne, and by RIKEN Brain Science Institute funding to Reiko Mazuka.