Lexical representation of variable prosodic patterns in infants

1. 孩子们必须学会如何识别母语中不同的单词。这意味着他们必须足够准确地记住单词的发音模式，以区分发音相似的单词。例如，接触英语的婴儿必须学会，像“pin”和“bin”这样的单词指的是不同的东西，因为第一个辅音的不同。由于之前的研究，我们已经开始了解这个过程何时以及如何发生。例如，婴儿对声音的感知在8到10个月大的时候变得有语言特异性。也就是说，大约这个年龄的婴儿开始识别母语中使用的语音差异。发展的下一步是学习如何使用这些知识来记住不同单词的形式。这似乎在第二年逐渐发生。例如，在14到17个月之间的某个时候，讲英语的婴儿能够将两个发音相似的合成词（如“bih”和“dih”）与两个不同的物体联系起来。2. 目的和目标本研究项目的目的是解决两个特定的问题，这两个问题在以前的研究中没有得到充分的解决。首先，人们对婴儿何时以及如何开始学习那些根据所谓的韵律特征来区分的单词知之甚少，这些韵律特征包括：声音的持续时间、响度和音调（高或低）。例如，在日语中，“ame”用降调轮廓发音意味着，而同样的序列用升调轮廓发音意味着。说日语的婴儿什么时候学习如何基于这种区别来记忆和识别不同的单词？这种情况是否发生在他们学会如何记住和识别基于不同辅音或元音的单词之前（比如英语中“pin”和“bin”的区别）？其次，迄今为止的研究还没有系统地调查当声音模式的关键方面在不同的语境中发生变化时，儿童是如何学习这些单词形式的细节的。例如，日语中的单词For除了上面提到的上升轮廓外，还可以有一个平坦的音高轮廓，这取决于单词在短语中的位置。说日语的婴儿是如何应对这种变化的呢？他们首先关注的是一个上下文中的表单吗？他们是怎么知道“ame”的意思是如果它有一个上升或平坦的音高轮廓，但如果它有一个下降的轮廓？这些问题将在这个项目中通过实验室实验来解决，在实验中，婴儿暴露在录制的声音刺激（即，虚构的单词）中，与不熟悉的物体的视觉呈现相匹配。日本婴儿对重复或变化的声音和视觉材料组合的反应可以表明他们在不同条件下利用音高模式区分新词的程度。潜在的好处在这个项目中使用日语的原因是，语言中的音高对比使我们能够将韵律对比（音高）的学习与片段对比（辅音和元音）的学习分开，并系统地观察变化的影响。然而，该项目的结果将对婴儿学习韵律对比有更广泛的影响，例如，英语中的重音对比。此外，这将为进一步研究儿童对词形语音变化的学习奠定基础，这是人类语言语音识别的一个标志。这项研究将有助于理解幼儿如何开始将单词中的声音和含义联系起来——这是语言发展过程中的关键一步。因此，这项研究的结果将受到许多学科的研究人员的赞赏，尤其是语言学、心理学、认知科学和教育。

1. Context of ResearchChildren must learn how to recognise different words in their language. This means that they must remember the sound patterns of the words accurately enough to distinguish similar sounding words. For instance, infants exposed to English must learn that words such as 'pin' and 'bin' refer to different things because of the difference in the first consonant. Thanks to previous research, we have begun to understand when and how this process takes place. For instance, infants' perception of sounds becomes language-specific around 8 to 10 months of age. That is, infants around that age begin to recognise the phonetic distinctions used in their native language. The next step in the development is to learn how to use this knowledge to remember the forms of different words. This seems to happen gradually during the second year. For example, some time between 14 and 17 months, English-speaking infants become able to associate two similar sounding made-up words (such as 'bih' and 'dih') with two different objects. 2. Aims and ObjectivesThe purpose of this research project is to address two particular issues that have not been fully addressed in previous research on this developmental process. First, little is known about when and how infants begin to learn words that are differentiated in terms of what is known as prosodic features: duration, loudness and pitch (highness or lowness) of sounds. For example, in Japanese, 'ame' pronounced with a falling pitch contour means while the same sequence pronounced with a rising contour means . When do Japanese-speaking infants learn how to remember and recognise different words based on such a distinction? Does it happen before they learn how to remember and recognise words based on different consonants or vowels (as in the difference between 'pin' and 'bin' in English)?Second, research so far has not systematically investigated how children learn such detail of word forms when the crucial aspect of the sound pattern changes from one context to another. For instance, the word for in Japanese can also have a flat pitch contour in addition to the rising contour mentioned above, depending on the position of the word in a phrase. How do Japanese-speaking infants deal with this variability? Do they first focus on the form in one context? And how do they learn that 'ame' means if it has a rising OR flat pitch contour, but if it has a falling contour? These questions will be addressed in this project using laboratory experiments in which infants are exposed to recorded sound stimuli (i.e., made-up words) paired with visual presentation of unfamiliar objects. How Japanese infants respond to repeated or changed combinations of the sound and visual materials can indicate the extent to which they can use pitch patterns to differentiate new words under different conditions.3. Potential BenefitsThe reason Japanese is used in this project is that the pitch contrast in the language allows us to tease apart the learning of prosodic contrasts (pitch) from that of segmental contrasts (consonants and vowels) and also systematically observe the effects of variability. However, the outcome of the project will have broader implications for infants' learning of prosodic contrasts in general, including, for example, stress contrasts in English. Furthermore, it will lay a foundation for further research on children's learning of sound variability in word forms, which is a hallmark of speech recognition in human language.This research will make a contribution to the understanding of how very young children begin to associate sounds and meanings in words -- a key step in the process of language development. As such, the results of this research will be appreciated by researchers in many disciplines, most notably linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and education.