EARLY ONTOGENY OF ATTUNEMENT--LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT

该项目旨在揭示语言发展的基础， 跟踪婴儿对环境的感知和生产的调整， 语言环境的特点。项目第一部分 将采用母语和非母语音素对比来研究年轻人 婴儿对语音区分的知觉敏感性，以及如何 它们在发展过程中与本地语音类别协调一致。的 第二部分主要论述了语言特有的谐调现象的发展 的演讲制作。拟议的研究将寻找个体发育的 语言特有的韵律和音段特性的出现， 婴儿发声的跨语言记录， 语言使用儿童对母语的模仿。中的实验 第三部分将研究婴儿导向的性质 说话（IDT）寄存器，这表明显着的韵律差异， adult-directed talk（ADT）成人导向谈话（ADT）在大多数语言中。需要更多信息 关于IDT的发音/声学特性，以及这些特性如何可能 与婴儿早期语言发展有关。这个实验 部分将评估音段和韵律的发展变化 的属性，以及婴儿对它们的感知。的结果 建议的研究应集中在一起，以加强我们对 存在于幼儿中的基本语言能力得以实现 因为婴儿掌握了母语。这些知识对于 试图理解，诊断和干预，当语言发展 无法正常进行。 这项研究计划是候选人的直接产物， 提高对婴儿的科学理解的职业目标 过渡到其母语的说话者/听话者，并且是一致的 她的长期目标是推进对生物学基础的认识， 人类的语言。研究职业发展奖将有力地 促进候选人作为独立调查员的发展， 使她能够投入所需的时间来追求最近开发的 这里概述的研究方向，并发展相关技能， 早期语言习得和语言语音学/音系学领域。她 系为她提供了良好的空间，设备和学生 帮助开展拟议的研究。此外，该部门将 把她从大部分的标准年度教学中解放出来， 行政责任。

The project seeks to reveal the foundations for language development, by tracking adjustments of perception and production that infants make to the properties of their language environment. The first section of the project will employ native and nonnative phoneme contrasts to examine the young infant's perceptual sensitivities to speech sound distinctions, and how these become developmentally attuned to native phonological categories. The second section focuses on language-specific attunement in the development of speech production. The proposed studies will look for the ontogenetic emergence of language-specific prosodic and segmental properties in cross-language recordings of infant vocalizations, and in young language-using children's imitations of native speech. The experiments in the third section will investigate the properties of the infant-directed talk (IDT) register, which shows salient prosodic differences from adult-directed talk (ADT) in most languages. More information is needed regarding the articulatory/acoustic properties of IDT, and how these might relate to the infant's early language development. The experiments in this section will assess for developmental changes in the segmental and prosodic properties of IDT, and in infants' perception of them. The results of the proposed studies should converge to enhance our understanding of how the basic capacities for language that exist in young infants become realized as the infant acquires its native language. This knowledge is crucial for attempts to understand, diagnose, and intervene when language development does not proceed normally. This research plan is a direct outgrowth of the candidate's immediate career goal of improving the scientific understanding of the infant's transition to a speaker/hearer of its native language, and is consistent with her long-range goal of advancing knowledge about the biological bases of human language. A Research Career Development Award will strongly enhance the candidate's development as an independent investigator, by enabling her to devote the needed time to pursue the recently-developed research directions outlined here, and to develop related skills in the areas of early language acquisition and linguistic phonetics/phonology. Her department has provided her with excellent space, equipment, and student help to conduct the proposed research. In addition, the department would release her from the majority of her standard annual teaching and administrative responsibilities.