Lecture 1

Question 1

Language

Answer 1

• generative
• comprised of small units combined (phonology)
• conveys meaning (semantics)
• social

Question 2

syntax

Answer 2

• rules on how words go together (order means different things)

Question 3

Preference study

Answer 3

• with no training, what do infants want to listen (or look) to

Question 4

habituation/familiarization study

Answer 4

first, we train infants and then measure what they prefer

Question 5

change detection studies

Answer 5

train infants to respond to a change (can infants tell the difference between two things)

Question 6

prosody

Answer 6

• pattern of stress and intonation in language
• languages have different prosodic patterns

Question 7

phonemes

Answer 7

• perceptually distinct units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another
• languages have different sounds for phonemes

Question 8

early phonological development: prosody (5)

Answer 8

• foetal auditory system is fully functioning in last trimester

newborns:
- prefer mothers voice
- discriminate languages with different prosody (german/spanish) but not languages of similar prososdy (english/dutch)
- prefer native laguage to foreign language
- cry with an ‘accent’

Question 9

how many phonemes in each language

Answer 9

~40

Question 10

children’s babble

Answer 10

• initially wide range of sounds
• towards end of first year move towards producing only sounds of target language

Question 11

early phonological development: phonemes

Answer 11

• 1-2 months discriminate between sounds,even foreign ones. Adult on in their language
• 7-11 months, systematic decline in distinguishing sounds from non-target language, increase for target language

Question 12

statistics: infants finding words

Answer 12

• track co-occurrence of syllables
• syllables that co-occur are likely part of the same word ~8 months
• in experiment infants listen to longer part-words, found words in the steam using statistics

Question 12

infants finding words

Answer 12

~7.5 months can segment words from their language
- react differently to words they know

Question 13

Infant Directed Speeh: (prosody)

Answer 13

• higher pitched
• slower speaking rate
• exaggerated prosodic pattern
• boundaries between phrases are enhanced, making it easier to segment speech

Question 14

IDS vs ADS

Answer 14

• infants segment speech better with IDS than ADS and prefer to listen to IDS

Question 15

frequency can help infants find words

Answer 15

• salient words e.g. child’s name
• linguistic words e.g. he/she
• ‘anchor’ to differentiate known word and adjacent word

Question 16

familiar words: Bortfeld et al. 2005

Answer 16

• highly familiar words help 6-month-old segment words
• e.g. pairing with names helps anchor segmentation

Question 17

linguistic categories and infants

Answer 17

• some linguistic categories are highly frequent
• infants can use ‘the’ to segment nouns ~8 months

Question 18

frequency in infants

Answer 18

• different languages have different frequency order
  e.g. italian is frequent first, japanense is frequent-final
• infants prefer to listen to the frequency order rules for their language

Question 19

note

Answer 19

infants tune to specifics of their language (sounds,order) before they begin to speak