Relating referential clarity and phonetic clarity in infant‐directed speech
Relating referential clarity and phonetic clarity in infant‐directed speech
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将婴儿定向言语中的指称清晰度和语音清晰度联系起来
DOI：
10.1111/desc.13442
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发表时间：
2023
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Swingley, Daniel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Beech, Caroline;Swingley, Daniel
对儿童早期语言环境的心理语言学研究揭示了语言习得的许多潜在挑战。一是在许多情况下，如果没有语言的先验知识，就很难识别语言表达的所指对象。同样，语音信号本身的清晰度也有很大差异，有些产品非常清晰，而另一些则在语音上被削弱，甚至达到了无法解释的程度。在这项研究中，我们试图通过测试婴儿定向言语中语音清晰度和指称清晰度的协调程度来更好地描述美国英语学习幼儿的语言学习环境。使用现有的具有参照透明度测量的人类模拟范式（HSP）语料库并添加新的语音清晰度测量，我们发现单词第一次提及的语音清晰度显着预测了当时的参照清晰度（仅从视觉信息猜测预期参照物是多么容易）。因此，当父母的言语特别清晰时，所指语义也更加清晰。这表明，幼儿可以利用语音语音来识别具有全球价值的实例，通过关注更清晰的实例并过滤掉不太清晰的实例，从而支持更好的参考假设。这种多模态“宝石”为早期单词学习提供了特殊的机会。 研究亮点 在亲子互动中，父母的指涉意图有时明确，有时模糊；同样，父母的发音有时很清晰，有时很难理解。我们发现，更清晰的指称实例伴随着更清晰的语音实例，比偶然的预期要多。因此，存在具有全球价值的实例（“宝石”），孩子们可以从中同时了解单词的发音和单词的含义。聚焦清晰的语音实例并过滤掉不太清晰的实例将有助于孩子在单词中识别这些多模态“宝石” 学习。
Psycholinguistic research on children's early language environments has revealed many potential challenges for language acquisition. One is that in many cases, referents of linguistic expressions are hard to identify without prior knowledge of the language. Likewise, the speech signal itself varies substantially in clarity, with some productions being very clear, and others being phonetically reduced, even to the point of uninterpretability. In this study, we sought to better characterize the language‐learning environment of American English‐learning toddlers by testing how well phonetic clarity and referential clarity align in infant‐directed speech. Using an existing Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP) corpus with referential transparency measurements and adding new measures of phonetic clarity, we found that the phonetic clarity of words’ first mentions significantly predicted referential clarity (how easy it was to guess the intended referent from visual information alone) at that moment. Thus, when parents’ speech was especially clear, the referential semantics were also clearer. This suggests that young children could use the phonetics of speech to identify globally valuable instances that support better referential hypotheses, by homing in on clearer instances and filtering out less‐clear ones. Such multimodal “gems” offer special opportunities for early word learning.Research HighlightsIn parent‐infant interaction, parents’ referential intentions are sometimes clear and sometimes unclear; likewise, parents’ pronunciation is sometimes clear and sometimes quite difficult to understand.We find that clearer referential instances go along with clearer phonetic instances, more so than expected by chance.Thus, there are globally valuable instances (“gems”) from which children could learn about words’ pronunciations and words’ meanings at the same time.Homing in on clear phonetic instances and filtering out less‐clear ones would help children identify these multimodal “gems” during word learning.