EARLY ONTOGENY OF ATTUNEMENT TO THE LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT

描述：(改编自申请者摘要)远景目标 这个项目是为了了解语音结构是如何开始出现的 随着婴儿获得它的第一语言。该项目的中心 理论假设是感知和产生的原语 语言的发音模式是发音的手势，而不是 抽象音位与传统语言描写的特点。 这些手势是声道运动或协调的模式 影响某些语音结尾的动作，如嘴唇闭合、膜片 降低，等等。不同的语言在手势的选择和 它们如何将它们组织成功能模式，或星座， 它们被称为音素；因此，手势是语言的单位 对比度。手势视图使我们能够解释 标准抽象单位的个体发生起源，而不是假设 它们是与生俱来的。因此，这种方法允许检查 从一个共同的理论框架中感知和生产。它提供了 这是从 语言.语言前期婴儿对语言的一般组织 音素(及其特征描写词)作为一个单位逐渐出现 语言上的反差。 该项目的具体目标是了解语音结构是如何 通过研究调谐到婴儿的个体发育开始出现在婴儿身上 环境语言的手势属性。第一节重点 论言语知觉对几种韵律和音段的调谐 母语的属性。这些研究包括歧视 具有语言对比的测试，不同于 婴儿正在学习。预计这一结果将证实之前的 报告语言--幼儿的一般辨别能力(6-8岁 几个月)，并将探索在 较大的婴儿(10-12个月)和成年人的上一次赠款期限。 这项研究还将扩展到对知觉发展的研究 学龄前儿童和学龄儿童。语言专门化的发展 幼儿言语感知的组织能力也将与母语人士一起考察 和非本土对比，包括变音变体，音节对比， 协同发音组织和语调模式。 第二部分的重点是关于早期特定于语言的调谐 言语产生对语前语段和超语段特征的影响 发声和早期有意义的讲话。的手势组织 婴儿和儿童的自发和模仿发声将是 通过专家听众的知觉判断和声学判断进行检查 分析。在婴儿研究中，首席调查员将扩展 最近关于语言差异的跨语言研究结果 婴儿在第二阶段说话的节奏和语调模式 半年的寿命到额外的韵律和节段特征， 在目标语言之间有所不同。在对幼儿的研究中，它是 建议研究节段结构与较大结构的区别 韵律单位。该项目的总体意义在于其 试图把言语和语言的发展放在物理和语言的基础上 孩子的生理学。

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted From Applicant's Abstract) The long-range goal of this program is to understand how phonological structure begins to emerge as the infant acquires its first language. The project's central theoretical assumption is that the primitives for perceiving and producing the sound pattern of a language are articulatory gestures, rather than the abstract phonemes and features of traditional linguistic description. These gestures are vocal tract movements or coordinated patterns of movements that effect some phonetic end, such as lip closure, velum lowering, and so on. Languages differ in their choice of gestures and in how they organize them into the functional patterns, or constellations, that are termed phonemes; thus, the gesture is a unit of linguistic contrast. The gestural view makes it possible to account for the ontogenetic origins of the standard abstract units, rather than positing them as innately given. This approach thus permits the examination of perception and production from a common theoretical framework. It provides a basis for positing a continuous line of development from the language-general organization of speech in prelinguistic infants to the gradual emergence of the phoneme (and its featural descriptors) as a unit of linguistic contrast. The specific aim of the project is to understand how phonological structure begins to emerge in infants by investigating the ontogeny of attunement to the gestural properties of the ambient language. The first section focuses on attunement in speech perception to several prosodic and segmental properties of the native language. These studies include discrimination tests with linguistic contrasts from languages other than the one the infants are learning. The results are expected to confirm the previously reported language-general discrimination capabilities of young infants (6-8 months) and will explore the pattern of perceptual reorganization found in the previous grant period for older infants (10-12 months) and adults. This research will also be extended to a study of perceptual development in preschool and school-aged children. The development of language-specific organization in infant speech perception will also be examined with native and nonnative contrasts including allophanic variants, syllabic contrasts, coarticulatory organization, and intonational patterns. The focus of the second section is on early language-specific attunement in speech production for segmental and suprasegmental properties of preverbal vocalizations and of early meaningful speech. The gestural organization of the infants' and children's spontaneous and imitative utterances will be examined through both perceptual judgments by expert listeners and acoustic analyses. In the infant studies, the principal investigator will extend recent cross-language findings of language-specific differences in the rhythmic and intonational patterns of infant babbling during the second half-year of life to additional prosodic and segmental characteristics that differ among target languages. In the studies of young children, it is proposed to examine the differentiation of segmental structure from larger prosodic units. The overall significance of the project lies in its attempt to ground the development of speech and language in the physics and physiology of the child.