TY - JOUR
T1 - Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling
T2 - A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months
AU - Lee, Chia Cheng
AU - Jhang, Yuna
AU - Chen, Li mei
AU - Relyea, George
AU - Oller, D. Kimbrough
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NIH R01 DC011027 to D. Kimbrough Oller, PI and by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in Taiwan to Li-mei Chen.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2017/1/2
Y1 - 2017/1/2
N2 - Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese.
AB - Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese.
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U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2016.1180983
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2016.1180983
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84976334345
SN - 1547-5441
VL - 13
SP - 100
EP - 126
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
IS - 1
ER -