Non-tone Monolingual and Bilingual Infants' Tone Perception under Perceptual Reorganization
نویسندگان
چکیده
Perceptual reorganization (PR) for tones occurs from 6 to 9 months in the first year of life (Mattock & Burnham, 2006; Mattock, Molnar, Polka & Burnham, 2008). No previous study has discussed whether monolingual and bilingual infants follow the same trajectory in tonal PR. Monolingual Dutch infants and bilingual infants with Dutch as one of their native languages and a non-tone language as the other language were tested on their perception of two tonal contrasts. Results suggest that 1) both monolingual and bilingual infants show PR for tones at the same age range between 5-6 and 8-9 months; 2) bilingual infants seem to show greater sensitivity towards difficult tonal contrasts at a later age; 3) the acoustic salience of the tonal contrast alters infants' tone perception.
منابع مشابه
Monolingual and Bilingual Infants’ Ability to Use Non-native Tone for Word Learning Deteriorates by the Second Year After Birth
Previous studies reported a non-native word learning advantage for bilingual infants at around 18 months. We investigated developmental changes in infant interpretation of sounds that aid in object mapping. Dutch monolingual and bilingual (exposed to Dutch and a second non-tone-language) infants' word learning ability was examined on two novel label-object pairings using syllables differing in ...
متن کاملThe discrimination of tonal contrasts by monolingual and bilingual adults
In previous TAL [1], we have demonstrated non-tone-learning monolingual and bilingual infants' tone perception in the first year of life. This talk presents a follow-up study on the tone discrimination patterns in the adulthood, specifically in Chinese (tone-language), Dutch (non-tone-language), and Dutch simultaneous bilingual adults (non-tone-languages). Interestingly, adults from all languag...
متن کاملLimits on Monolingualism? A Comparison of Monolingual and Bilingual Infants’ Abilities to Integrate Lexical Tone in Novel Word Learning
To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the...
متن کاملConstraints on Tone Sensitivity in Novel Word Learning by Monolingual and Bilingual Infants: Tone Properties Are More Influential than Tone Familiarity
This study compared tone sensitivity in monolingual and bilingual infants in a novel word learning task. Tone language learning infants (Experiment 1, Mandarin monolingual; Experiment 2, Mandarin-English bilingual) were tested with Mandarin (native) or Thai (non-native) lexical tone pairs which contrasted static vs. dynamic (high vs. rising) tones or dynamic vs. dynamic (rising vs. falling) ton...
متن کاملA Tale of Two Features: Perception of Cantonese Lexical Tone and English Lexical Stress in Cantonese-English Bilinguals
This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English monolingual adults. All three groups were asked to discriminate pairs of syllables that minimally differed in either Cantonese tone or in English stress. Bilingual children's performance on tone perception was comparab...
متن کامل