Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:46:02.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

D. H. Whalen ,
Andrea G. Levitt  and
Qi Wang
D. H. Whalen*
Affiliation:
Haskins Laboratories
Andrea G. Levitt
Affiliation:
Haskins Laboratories and Wellesley College
Qi Wang
Affiliation:
Haskins Laboratories and University of Connecticut
*
Haskins Laboratories, 270 Crown Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , October 1991 , pp. 501 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research reported here was supported by NIH grant DC-00403 to Haskins Laboratories and Catherine T. Best. We thank Catherine T. Best, Carol A. Fowler, Janet F. Werker and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Allen, G. D. (1983). Some suprasegmental contours in French two-year-old children's speech. Phonetica 40, 269–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, H. (1988). Vowel intrinsic pitch in infants. Folia Phoniatrica 40, 138–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bernstein Ratner, N. (1984). Patterns of vowel modification in mother-child speech. Journal of Child Language 11, 557–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein Ratner, N. (1986). Durational cues which mark clause boundaries in mother-child speech. Journal of Phonetics 14, 303–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, C. T. & McRoberts, G. W. (1988). Mutual adjustments of pitch by infant and caregivers during vocal interactions: a longitudinal case study. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Washington DC.Google Scholar
Boysson-Bardies, B. de, Sagart, L. & Durand, C. (1984). Discernible differences in the babbling of infants according to target language. Journal of Child Language 11, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crompton, A. S. (1980). Intonation: tonetic stress marks versus levels versus configurations. Word 31, 151–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D. (1973). Non-segmental phonology in language acquisition: a review of the issues. Lingua 32, 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D. (1979). Prosodic development. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, A. (1986). Intonation. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Delattre, P. C. (1961). La leçon d'intonation de Simone de Beauvoir, étude d'intonation déclarative comparée. The French Review 35, 59–67.Google Scholar
D'Odorico, L. (1984). Nonsegmental features in prelinguistic communication: an analysis of some types of infant cry vocalizations. Journal of Child Language 11, 17–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferguson, C. A. (1964). Baby talk in six languages. American Anthropologist 66, 103–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A. (1985). Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese. Infant Behavior and Development 8, 181–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A. & Kuhl, P. K. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development 10, 279–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A. & Simon, T. (1984). Expanded intonation contours in mothers' speech to newborns. Developmental Psychology 20, 104–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., Boysson-Bardies, B. de & Fukui, I. (1989). A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language 16, 477–501.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garnica, O. K. (1977). Some prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech to young children. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Grieser, D. L. & Kuhl, P. K. (1988). Maternal speech to infants in a tonal language: support for universal prosodic features in motherese. Developmental Psychology 24, 14–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grover, C., Jamieson, D. G. & Dobrovolsky, M. B. (1987). Intonation in English, French and German: perception and production. Language and Speech 30, 277–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenning, M. -M. (1979). Intonation systems in French. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 9, 15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, R. D., & Murray, A. D. (1982). Acoustic features of infant vocalic utterances at 3, 6, and 9 months. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 72, 354–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leach, P. (1988). French intonation: tone or tune? Journal of the International Phonetic Association 18, 125–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lehiste, I., & Peterson, G. E. (1961). Some basic considerations in the analysis of intonation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 33, 419–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M. M. (1936). Infant speech: a study of the beginnings of language. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. (1976). The acquisition of tone in Mandarin-speaking children. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 33, 109–30.Google Scholar
Lin, H. -B. (1989). The intersection of tone and intonation in Taiwanese. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Locke, J. L. (1983). Phonological acquisition and change. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Macken, M. A. & Barton, D. (1980). The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English; a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants. Journal of Child Language 7, 41–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcos, H. (1987). Communicative functions of pitch range and pitch direction in infants. Journal of Child Language 14, 255–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menn, L. (1976). Pattern, control and contrast in beginning speech: a case study in the acquisition of word form and functions. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Pike, K. L.The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Robb, M. P., Saxman, J. H. & Grant, A. A. (1989). Vocal fundamental frequency characteristics during the first two years of life. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 85, 1708–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rossi, M. (1979). Les configurations et l'interaction des pentes de F0 et de intonation. Travaux de l'Institut de Phonetique d'Aix 6, 49–72.Google Scholar
Rossi, M. (1980). Prosodical aspects of speech productions. Travaux de l'Institut de Phonetique d'Aix 7, 343–73.Google Scholar
Silverman, K. (1986). F0 segmental cues depend on intonation: the case of the rise after voiced stops. Phonetica 43, 76–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1977). The development of conversation between mothers and babies. Journal of Child Language 4, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, D. N., Spieker, S., Barnett, R. K. & MacKain, K. (1983). The prosody of maternal speech: infant age and context-related changes. Journal of Child Language 10, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thevenin, D. M., Eilers, R. E., Oller, K. D. & Lavoie, L. (1985). Where's the drift in babbling drift? A cross-linguistic study. Applied Psycholinguistics 6, 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M. M., Ferguson, C. A. & Elbert, M. (1986). Phonological development from babbling to speech: common tendencies and individual differences. Applied Psycholinguistics 7, 3–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M., Macken, M., Miller, R., Simons, H. & Miller, J. (1985). From babbling to speech: a re-assessment of the continuity issue. Language 61, 397–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, R. H. (1962). Language in the crib. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Weir, R. H. (1966). Some questions on the child's learning of phonology. In Smith, F. & Miller, G. A. (eds), The genesis of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. (1989). Becoming a native listener. American Scientist 77, 54–9.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 7, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, D. H., Wiley, E. R., Rubin, P. E. & Cooper, F. S. (1990). The Haskins Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) system. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers 22, 550–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar