scholarly journals Questioning the role of lexical contrastiveness in phonological development: Converging evidence from perception and production studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 580-608
Author(s):  
Yvan Rose ◽  
Sarah Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Phonological Contrast ◽  
Relative Independence ◽  
Infant Speech Perception ◽  
Perceptual Abilities ◽  
Phonological Contrasts

AbstractIn this article, we address relations between lexical and phonological development, with an emphasis on the notion of phonological contrast. We begin with an overview of the literature on word learning and on infant speech perception. Among other results, we report on studies showing that toddlers’ perceptual abilities do not correlate with the development of phonological contrasts within their lexicons. We then engage in a systematic comparison between the lexical development of two child learners of English and their acquisition of consonants in syllable onsets. We establish a developmental timeline for each child's onset consonant system, which we compare to the types of phonological contrasts that are present in their expressive vocabularies at each relevant milestone. Like the earlier studies, ours also fails to return tangible parallels between the two areas of development. The data instead suggest that patterns of phonological development are best described in terms of the segmental categories they involve, in relative independence from measures of contrastiveness within the learners’ lexicons.

The perceptual foundations of phonological development

2007 ◽  
pp. 578-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Curtin ◽  
Janet F. Werker
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Receptive Language ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Initial Work ◽  
Infant Speech Perception ◽  
Infant Speech ◽  
The Individual

Phonological development involves learning the organisation of the individual sound units, the syllable structure, the rhythm, and the phonotactics of the native language, and utilising these in both productive and receptive language. The initial work in phonological development focused exclusively on production, with detailed description of the onset of babbling and first words. This article examines how infant speech perception provides a foundation for acquiring the phonological system, and how production data and perception studies together can provide a more complete picture of the course of phonological development. The discussion begins with a review of key empirical findings that show how speech perception provides the foundation for phonological development. It then looks at language-general speech perception capabilities as evident in infants from birth through the first few months of life. The discussion also considers the ways in which the ambient language modifies infant speech perception; phonological and phonetic factors in word segmentation and word form recognition; the role of phonology in early lexical comprehension; and theories and models of phonological development.

scholarly journals Speech perception under the tent: A domain-general predictive role for the cerebellum

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy I Skipper ◽  
Daniel R Lamett
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
General Mechanism ◽  
Related Activity ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Predictive Role ◽  
Meta Analyses

AbstractThe role of the cerebellum in speech perception remains a mystery. Given its uniform architecture, we tested the hypothesis that it implements a domain-general predictive mechanism whose role in speech processing is determined by connectivity. We used standard and coactivation neuroimaging meta-analyses of speech perception studies without motor responses, with (n = 72) or without (n = 92) cerebellum activity. We compared these to speech production studies (n = 175). Results show multiple, distinct regions of perception- and production-related activity throughout the cerebellum with some overlap. Each task had distinct patterns of cortico-cerebellar connectivity. Perception regions/connections were associated with task-related terms mined from thousands of neuroimaging studies that were neither speech nor domain-specific but were prediction related. Finally, when the cerebellum was active, there was less cortical activity compared to when it was inactive, a marker of predictive processing. Results suggest that the cerebellum implements a domain-general mechanism related to prediction during passive speech perception.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 262-276
Author(s):  
Marilyn May Vihman
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Template Model ◽  
System Building ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Prosodic Structures

This chapter reviews the phases of early phonological and lexical development, based on the analyses of early words and prosodic structures (Chs. 3, 4), templatic patterns (Chs. 3, 5, 6), and the replacement of templates by more adult-like forms (Ch. 6). The role of memory in the process of template formation is discussed, contrasting the template model of lexical development with other theoretical approaches. The emergence of system-building is then related to the discussion (Ch. 1) of current studies in adult word learning and the distinction between lexical configuration and lexical engagement. In a brief account of current models of phonological development particular attention is given to the recently disseminated A-map model, which emphasizes accuracy and child-to-adult continuity within an Optimality Theoretic perspective. In a concluding section the function of adult and child templates is discussed again, highlighting the similarities observed in our data analyses (Ch. 8).

Infant perception of gestural contrasts: prerequisites for the acquisition of a visually specified language

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Carroll ◽  
Eleanor J. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Partial Failure ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Infant Speech Perception ◽  
Infant Speech ◽  
Perceptual Abilities

ABSTRACTResearch is reported which investigated the ability of 4-month-old hearing infants to discriminate between gestures, derived from American Sign Language (ASL), that differ solely in terms of contrasts along underlying movement dimensions. Using an habituation–dishabituation task, it is shown that young infants can make such discriminations for global movement contrasts as well as contrasts along a single movement dimension. Thus, at four months, infants possess certain prerequisite perceptual abilities for the analysis of the signs of a visually specified language. Partial failure to dishabituate to another movement contrast, however, suggests that readiness to utilize the information in gestural events may vary depending on the movement in question. Results are contrasted to infant speech perception findings and implications for further research in the development of sign perception are discussed.

scholarly journals The Contribution of Functional Load on Children’s Vocalic Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Cychosz ◽  
Susan E. Kalt
Keyword(s):  
Motor Development ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Speech Development ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Phonological Acquisition ◽  
Functional Load ◽  
Phonological Contrasts ◽  
Children's Speech ◽  
Contradictory Data

Children’s phonology is replete with regular, predictable phenomena that nevertheless differ from adults. Discrepancies between adult and child speech cannot solely be attributed to environmental input, so immature motor development is often cited. Normally-developing children quickly acquire the motor skills and segment planning necessary to avoid these “errors.” But phonological development continues well into late-childhood. For example, age and segment duration/variability are negatively correlated in English and French. Here we present contradictory data from Chuquisaca Quechua that show children producing shorter vowel durations than adults and attribute this to the role of functional load (FL). Interest in FL as an explanatory device for phoneme merger and segment inventories has recently resurfaced, but extension of the metric to phonological acquisition has been limited. FL is an important concept to apply to children’s speech development because children’s relatively smaller lexicons may lead them to make different generalizations regarding the relative importance of certain phonological contrasts. We test this hypothesis in Chuquisaca Quechua, a language where we predict maximal distinctiveness between adult and child lexica due to the language’s morphological structure. We find that FL addresses this developmental pattern in the children’s vowels. 

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document