When does native language input affect phonetic perception? The precocious case of lexical tone

• Published in: Journal of memory and language Vol. 68; no. 2; pp. 123 - 139
• Main Authors: Yeung, H. Henny, Chen, Ke Heng, Werker, Janet F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.02.2013; Elsevier; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Acoustics; Age Differences; Auditory Perception; Biological and medical sciences; Cantonese; Child development; Children & youth; Chinese languages; Developmental psychology; English; English language; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Infancy; Infants; Language; Language acquisition; Linguistic Input; Listening Comprehension; Mandarin Chinese; Native Language; Newborn. Infant; Perceptions; Phonemes; Phonetics; Phonology; Preferences; Production and perception of spoken language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Sino Tibetan Languages; Speech perception; Tone; Vowels; Young Children; English; Infancy; Mandarin Chinese; Tone; Cantonese; Speech perception; Human; Lexicon; Infant; Cognition; Verbal perception; Experimental study; Intonation; Language; Mother language; Language development; Phonetics; Chinese; Speech; Stimulus discrimination
• ISSN: 0749-596X; 1096-0821
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.09.004

► Lexical tone perception was tested in both 4- and 9-month-old infants. ► English-learners showed a decline in discrimination by 9months. ► Chinese-learners discriminated tones at both ages, but only in some contexts. ► Mandarin- and Cantonese-learners also had language-specific patterns at both ages. ► Phonetic input affects tone perception earlier than vowel or consonant perception. Previous studies have suggested that the perception of vowels and consonants changes from language-universal to language-specific between 6 and 12months of age. This report suggests that language-specific perception emerges even earlier for lexical tones. Experiment 1 tested English-learners’ perception of Cantonese tones, replicating declines in tone discrimination from 4 to 9months of age. Experiment 2 tested infants learning non-native versus native tone systems (Mandarin-learners versus Cantonese-learners). All Chinese-learners discriminated the tones, but showed language-specific differences in tone preferences at both ages. Indeed, English-, Mandarin-, and Cantonese-learning 4-month-olds all exhibited distinct preferences. With other work, this shows that language-specific speech perception emerges over a more complex and extended schedule than previously thought: first for lexical stress and tone (<5months), then vowels (6–8months), consonants (8.5–12months), and finally phoneme duration (18months). Acoustic salience likely plays an important role in determining the timing of phonetic development.