Intonational differences between the reduplicative babbling of French- and English-learning infants

The two- and three-syllable reduplicative babbling of five French-learning and five English-learning infants (0;5 to 1;1) was examined in two ways for intonational differences. The first measure was a categorization into one of five categories (RISING, FALLING, RISE-FALL, FALL-RISE, LEVEL) by expert listeners. The second was the fundamental frequency (F0) from the early, middle and late portion of each syllable. Both measures showed significant differences between the two language groups. 65% of the utterances from both groups were classified as either rising of falling. For the French children, these were divided equally into the rising and the falling categories, while 75% of those utterances for the English children were judged to have falling intonation. Proportions of the other three categories were not significantly different by language environment. In both languages, though, three-syllable utterances were more likely to have a complex contour than two-syllable ones. Analysis of the F0 patterns confirmed the perceptual assessment. Several aspects of the target languages help explain these intonational differences in prelinguistic babbling.