Segmental production in Mandarin-learning infants

Abstract

The early development of vocalic and consonantal production in Mandarin-learning infants was studied at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations were recorded for 24 infants grouped by age: G1 (0 ; 7 to 1 ; 0) and G2 (1 ; 1 to 1 ; 6). Additionally, the infant-directed speech of 24 caregivers was recorded during natural infant-adult interactions to infer language-specific effects. Data were phonetically transcribed according to broad categories of vowels and consonants. Vocalic development, in comparison with reports for children of other linguistic environments, exhibited two universal patterns: the prominence of [symbol: see text] and [symbol: see text], and the predominance of low and mid vowels over high vowels. Language-specific patterns were also found, e.g. the early appearance and acquisition of low vowels [symbol: see text]. Vowel production was similar in G1 and G2, and a continuum of developmental changes brought infants' vocalization closer to the adult model. Consonantal development showed two universal patterns: labials and alveolars occurred more frequently than velars; and nasals developed earlier than fricatives, affricates and liquids. We also found two language-specific patterns: alveolars were more prominent than labials and affricates developed early. Universal and language-specific characteristics in G1 continued to be prominent in G2. These data indicate that infants are sensitive to the ambient language at an early age, and this sensitivity influences the nature of their vocalizations.

Canonical Babbling: A Marker for Earlier Identification of Late Detected Developmental Disorders?

“…Moreover, this age range for CBO appears to be relatively consistent across languages, as reported for English, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, and German, to name but a few [9-11, 32, 36]. Data from Mandarin-or Cantonese-learning infants revealed a similar age range of CBO [37], with slightly higher CBR syl -values as compared to English-learning infants [38••]. Thus, like many other developmental phenomena, age of CBO may reveal considerable individual variation, while nevertheless pointing to a critical window before 10 months of age.…”

Articulating What Infants Attune to in Native Speech

“…Those authors conclude that mirror neurons code the meaning of actions expressed in terms of goals, not in terms of linking or translation of modality-specific information. Thus, mirror neurons are unlikely to form unimodal representations of other-produced acoustic patterns, and then form links between those auditory representations and self-produced speech motor patterns, as has been proposed for infant babbling drift and speech imitation (Chen & Kent, 2010; Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982, 1996; Vihman, 2002). Instead, even monkey mirror neurons respond amodally to a specific meaningful action, whatever its distal source event or proximal medium of transmission.…”

“…Yet most research on babbling drift fails to address either the nature of information that infants may perceive in the speech of caregivers and other adults, or how they relate that perceived information to their own productions. Both issues are discussed, however, in a recent report (Chen & Kent, 2010). Those authors posit that: 1) perceptual tuning to native speech occurs via adjustments in sensitivity to the “external auditory patterns” of the infant’s language environment; 2) perception-action links are then generated which associate internal representations of those auditory patterns to representations of specific articulatory muscular actions the infant has produced (see Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982, 1996, for a similar argument re: infant vocal imitation); and 3) those learned perception-action associations are effected by mirror neurons (see Vihman, 2002, for a similar account of the similarity between segmental preferences in late babbling and in early words).…”

“…Several studies have used phonetic transcription by trained listeners to examine the relative frequencies of occurrence of a range of consonants (e.g., /b/, /d/, /g/, /n/, /m/) in the recorded babbling of infants being raised in English, French, Swedish, Japanese and Mandarin language environments, and have found language-specific distributional differences by 10–13 month olds (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart & Bacri, 1981; de Boysson-Bardies & Vihman, 1991; de Boysson-Bardies, Vihman, Roug-Hellichius, Durand, Landberg, & Arao, 1992; Levitt & Aydelott Utman, 1992; Chen & Kent, 2010; Levitt & Wang, 1991). Moreover, a recent acoustic examination of VOTs in the syllable-initial stops of infants from two language environments found native language-consistent differences in proportion of pre-voiced stops produced by French vs. English infants at 9 months (Whalen, Levitt, & Goldstein, 2007).…”

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

“…In both cases the recordings were made during natural interactions of parents and sometimes experimenters with infants. The data selected here overlapped with but were not identical to the data used in any of several prior studies drawn from these archives (Buder, Chorna, Oller, & Robinson, 2008; Chen & Kent, 2009, 2010; Oller et al, 2013; Ramsdell, Oller, Buder, Ethington, & Chorna, 2012). …”