Suprasegmental Perception

Suprasegmental Phonology

• prosodic boundary cues• lexical stress• rhythm• phrasal stress• lexical tone

What parts of language can you hear?

• Farsi passage• Farsi clip

Evidence of general sensitivity to prosody

• newborns and very young infants• we’ve already discussed HAS• Sucking Preference Technique

– each infant’s base rate of sucking rate is established– half of the infants hear the experimental stimulus for sucking

over the base rate and hear the control stimulus for sucking under the base rate

– half hear the control stimulus for sucking over the base rate and hear the experimental stimulus for sucking under the base rate

Sensitivity to prosody using sucking preference

• newborns can discriminate mother’s voice from that of another woman

• newborns can discriminate a Dr. Seuss story that their mother read during pregnancy (e.g., “The Cat in the Hat”) from another Dr. Seuss story (e.g., “The Grinch”)

• newborns can discrimination their native language from another language based on prosody (e.g., French vs. Russian)

Sensitivity to Clausal Prosody

• newborns to 1-year-olds• HAS• Sucking Preference• Headturn Preference• Reinforced Headturn

Infants prefer exaggerated clausal prosody

• clauses are marked more in infant-directed speech– You like vanilla / and I like chocolate.– Mommy’s gonna get you some milk / when she

goes to the store.– / signals clause boundary

• even newborn infants prefer this type of speech, as shown by sucking preference

Infants prefer typical prosodic cues to clauses

• Pauses inserted at slashes– Her wicked stepmother told Cinderella / that she

couldn’t go to the ball. (good prosody)– Her wicked stepmother told Cinderella that she /

couldn’t go to the ball. (bad prosody)• Headturn Preference Procedure• 10-month-olds prefer correct pauses• so do 4.5-month-olds• infants also show sensitivity to prosody in music

(Mozart minuets)

Sensitivity to Phrasal Prosody

• 6- to 12-month-olds• Headturn Preference

Infants prefer typical cues to phrasal prosody

• Pauses inserted at slashes– The caterpillar / became a beautiful butterfly.– The caterpillar became a beautiful / butterfly.

• Headturn Preference Procedure• 9-month-olds, but not younger infants, prefer pauses

at phrase boundaries• Only for infant directed speech (remember when we

get to syntax)• Sensitivity to prosody might cue sentence structure

Sensitivity to Word (Lexical) Prosody

• 6- to 12-month-olds• Headturn Preference Procedure

Infants prefer the typical lexical stress of their language

• infants presented with 2 word lists– SW– WS

• 9-month-olds,but not 6-month-olds, prefer SW

Infants use lexical stress to locate words in sentences

• 9-month-olds were trained on passages like

– SW words - The kingdom was located in a lovely hamlet.

– WS words - The beret was near the guitar.

• they were tested on word lists containing parts of words from the passages or whole words

– king, ham, ray, tar

– kingdom, hamlet, beret, guitar

• Results ...

Finding Words in Passages

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

whole words part words

Trained on SWTrained on WS

Results of Words in Passages

• infants who heard SW passages preferred word lists with whole words as opposed to word parts

• infants who heard WS passages preferred part words• remember this when we get to lexical development

Summary of Suprasegmental Perception

Task OverallProsody

Clauses Phrases Words

When? from birth very young(4.5 mos)

6-12 mos.(9 mos.)

6-12 mos.(7.5 mos.)

How? generalperceptualsensitivity

generalperceptualsensitivity

learn correla-tions of cues

learn stress ofsome words