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Delayed acquisition of non-adjacent vocalic distributional regularities
Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez1, Thierry Nazzi2
1Oxford Brookes University,Department of Psychology,Oxford,England,and Université Paris Descartes,Sorbonne Paris Cité,Paris,France.
Journal of Child Language
|March 20, 2015
Summary
Infants learning French develop a preference for posterior-anterior vowel patterns (PA) over anterior-posterior (AP) between 10 and 13 months. This shows a later sensitivity to non-adjacent vowel patterns compared to consonant patterns.
Area of Science:
- Developmental linguistics
- Psychoacoustics
- Phonological acquisition
Background:
- Sensitivity to non-adjacent consonant patterns emerges by 7-10 months.
- Language acquisition relies on identifying complex, non-adjacent regularities.
- Vowel and consonant processing may differ in early language development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the emergence of a posterior-anterior (PA) vowel bias in French-learning infants.
- To determine the age at which infants detect non-adjacent vocalic regularities.
- To compare the developmental timeline of vowel vs. consonant non-adjacent regularity detection.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments using preferential listening tasks with French-learning infants aged 10-13 months.
- Stimuli included words with PA and AP vowel sequences.
- Control experiments assessed adjacent and positional preferences.
Main Results:
- A significant preference for PA over AP words emerged between 10 and 13 months.
- This bias was not attributable to adjacent or positional cues.
- Infants showed a delayed sensitivity to non-adjacent vocalic regularities compared to consonantal ones.
Conclusions:
- Infants become sensitive to non-adjacent vocalic distributional regularities between 10 and 13 months.
- A developmental delay exists for acquiring non-adjacent vocalic regularities relative to consonantal ones.
- Findings support the CV hypothesis, suggesting distinct roles for consonants and vowels in language acquisition.
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