EARLY ONTOGENY OF ATTUNEMENT--LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT

该项目旨在通过以下方式揭示语言发展的基础 跟踪婴儿对感知和生产的调整 他们的语言环境的属性。项目的第一部分 将使用母语和非母语的音位对比来检查年轻人 幼儿对语音区分的知觉敏感度及其影响因素 这些基因在发育过程中会与本地音系范畴相协调。这个 第二节重点讨论了特定语言的语调在发展中的作用 言语产生的影响。拟议的研究将寻找个体发育 语言特有的韵律和音段特征在英语中出现 婴儿发声和幼儿发声的跨语言录音 语言--使用儿童对母语的模仿。在中国的实验 第三节考察了婴幼儿导游的性质 Talk(IDT)语域，它显示了与 大多数语言中的成人定向对话(ADT)。需要更多信息 关于IDT的发音/声学特性，以及这些特性如何 与婴儿早期的语言发展有关。这里面的实验 部分将评估节段和韵律的发展变化 IDT的特性，以及婴儿对IDT的感知。评选结果 建议的研究应结合起来，以加强我们对 幼儿存在的基本语言能力得以实现 随着婴儿获得它的母语。这方面的知识对于 试图理解、诊断和干预语言发展 不能正常进行。 这项研究计划是候选人直接参与的结果。 提高对婴幼儿科学认识的职业目标 转变为母语的说话人/听话人，并且是一致的 她的长期目标是增进对生物基础的了解 人类语言的一部分。研究职业发展奖将有力地 通过以下方式促进候选人作为独立调查员的发展 使她能够将所需的时间用于追求最近开发的 这里概述的研究方向，并在 早期语言习得和语言语音学/音系学领域。她 系里为她提供了一流的场地、设备和学生 帮助进行拟议的研究。此外，该署亦会 把她从大部分的标准年度教学中解脱出来 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.