Multilevel prosodic processing in a crosslinguistic perspective

关于早期语言习得的研究表明，韵律信息是婴儿用来习得目标语言词汇和句法特性的最早线索之一（例如Morgan & Demuth， 2006），婴儿在出生后的头几个月就习得语言特定的韵律特性（例如Höhle等人，2009）。然而，关于一般的听觉机制是如何促进和塑造婴儿语音系统的，我们所知甚少。基于之前共同工作的结果（bijeljacc - babic et al., 2012; Höhle et al., 2009），本项目采用跨语言视角研究单语法语和德语学习儿童，这两种语言在单词重音和韵律短语的韵律系统上存在重大差异。首先，我们将通过调查婴儿对不同语言中用于标记词性重音的三个主要线索（持续时间、强度、音高）的敏感性，探讨在词汇水平上涉及到扬格倾向习得的声学因素。其次，我们将探讨婴儿和成人在短语水平上对这些韵律线索的敏感性，因为有证据表明这些线索在法语和德语的两个水平上使用不同。同时，基于单语者在这两种语言中表现出的不同重音加工模式，我们将研究法德双语者韵律系统的发展。幼儿早期知觉机制受语言习得过程中语音特性的影响，这一发现为双语语言习得提供了一个特殊的挑战。因此，该项目将带来关于双语语言习得的关键数据，鉴于世界上大多数婴儿在成长过程中使用一种以上的语言，这是一个非常重要的问题。我们的研究结果也可以应用于第二语言习得领域，通过建立训练计划来提高法国婴儿/成人的压力感知和产生。德国和法国合作伙伴使用相同的实验程序（HPP和erp）和相同的材料将确保结果的可比性，并将允许对这两种语言的早期单语和双语习得的差异和相似性进行可靠的见解。

Research on early language acquisition has shown that prosodic information is one of the earliest cues infants use to bootstrap into the acquisition of lexical and syntactic properties of the target language (e.g. Morgan & Demuth, 2006) and that infants acquire language specific prosodic properties within the first months of life (e.g. Höhle et al., 2009). Still, less is known regarding how general auditory mechanisms contribute to and are shaped by infants developing phonological system. Based on results from previous common work (Bijeljac-Babic et al., 2012; Höhle et al., 2009), the present project approaches this issue taking a crosslinguistic view on monolingual French and German learning children, two languages that have crucial differences in their prosodic systems of word stress and prosodic phrasing. First, we will explore the acoustic factors that are implicated in the acquisition of the trochaic bias at the lexical level, by investigating infants sensitivity to the three main cues (duration, intensity, pitch) that are used to mark lexical stress in different languages. Second, we will explore infants and adults sensitivity to these same prosodic cues at the phrase level, given evidence that these cues are used differently at the two levels in French and German. In parallel, based on the results on monolinguals showing different patterns of stress processing in these two languages, we will investigate the development of the prosodic system in French-German bilinguals. The findings that infants early perceptual mechanisms are shaped by the phonological properties of the language in acquisition provide a specific challenge for bilingual language acquisition. This project will thus bring crucial data on bilingual language acquisition, an issue of great importance given the fact that most infants in the world grow up with more than one language. Our findings could also found applications in the domain of second language acquisition, by setting up training programs to enhance stress perception and production in French infants/adults. The use of same experimental procedures (HPP and ERPs) and the same materials by the German and the French partners will ensure comparability of the results and will allow for reliable insights into differences and similarities of early monolingual and bilingual acquisition of these two languages.