Bilingual infants' acquisition and perception of phonemes

几乎所有关于婴儿语言发展的实验工作都集中在单语婴儿身上。然而，由于移民、官方语言政策、文化偏好和规范，许多婴儿在双语环境中长大。从出生开始学习两种语言可能并不容易，因为婴儿必须比学习一种语言的婴儿获得更多的语言声音和单词。尽管存在这些潜在的困难，双语婴儿确实通过了语言的里程碑，比如第一个单词的出现，在与单语者相当的时间内，并且在考虑两种语言的单词时，与单语者具有相似的词汇量。然而，相对而言，人们对习得两种语言的声音和单词的学习过程知之甚少。双语者和单语者达到相似目标的途径不同吗？我建议进行两组研究，以检验双语者对音素的习得和使用，音素是语言中声音的最小意义单位。目的是确定学习两种语言的婴儿如何获得这些声音（例如，[b]和[d]），以及他们如何使用或误用音素来消除词典中发音相似的单词的歧义（例如，“bog”和“dog”）。第一组研究将探索习得模型，通过调查是否：1)单语者可以在实验室诱导的“双语”环境中学习音素；2)双语婴儿的自然语言暴露（与单语者的自然语言暴露有很大不同）是否会导致这些学习者群体在音素辨别方面的直接差异。第二组研究将探讨双语婴儿在早期单词学习中的音素使用。一岁以内音素辨别能力的差异是否会导致两岁以后在单词学习中使用音素的差异？通过对双语婴儿的研究，我们可以对所有婴儿的语言发展有更深入的了解。此外，这些研究的发现将通过揭示年轻双语者如何习得语言以及识别可能给他们带来困难的声音，对父母和教育工作者具有实际意义。

Nearly all experimental work in infant language development has focused on monolingual infants. Yet, due to immigration, official language policies, and cultural preferences and norms, many infants are being raised in a bilingual environment. The task of learning two languages from birth is potentially not an easy one, as the infants have to acquire more language sounds and words than an infants learning one language. Despite these potential difficulties, bilingual infants do pass language milestones, like onset of first word, at comparable times to monolinguals and have similar sized vocabularies as monolinguals, when words from both languages are taken into account. However, relatively little is known about the learning processes involved in acquiring the sounds and words of two languages. Do bilinguals take a different path to reach similar goals as monolinguals? I propose two sets of studies examining bilinguals' acquisition and use of phonemes, the smallest meaningful units of sound in a language. The aim is to ascertain how infants learning two languages acquire these sounds (e.g., [b] and [d]) and how they use, or misuse, phonemes to disambiguate similar-sounding words in their lexicon (e.g., "bog" and "dog"). The first set of studies will explore models of acquisition by investigating if: 1) monolinguals can learn phonemes in a laboratory-induced "bilingual" setting and 2) whether bilingual infants' natural linguistic exposure, which differs greatly from that of monolinguals, leads to direct differences in phoneme discrimination between these learner populations. The second set of studies will investigate bilingual infants' phoneme use in early word learning. Will any differences seen in phoneme discrimination in the first year of life lead to differences in the use of those phonemes in word learning in the second year of life? Through studies with bilingual infants, we can gain a deeper understanding of language development in all infants. In addition, the findings that will emerge from these studies will have practical implications for parents and educators by revealing how young bilinguals acquire language, and identifying sounds that may give them difficulty.