The Trans-Linguistic Robustness of Prosodic Cues

in Language Acquisition

Kara Hawthorne & LouAnn Gerken Reiko Mazuka June 7th, 2012University of Arizona RIKEN BSI, Japan Minneapolis, MN

The Question

The Approach

The Experiment

The Question

The Approach

The Experiment

Repeat

The Question

Can children use prosody for syntactic learning?

Gleitman & Wanner (1982)Morgan (1986)

When Grandma gets here, we'll go to the zoo!

final syllable lengthening

pausepitch resetSoderstrom, Blossom, Foygel, & Morgan (2008)

Hirsh-Pasek et al. (1987)

John doesn't know what rabbits eat. Leafy vegetables taste so good. They don't cost much either.

Soderstrom, Kemler Nelson, & Jusczyk (2005)

Many animals prefer some things. Rabbits eat leafy vegetables. Taste so good is rarely encountered.

Can children use prosody

for syntactic learning?

**beyond just locating substrings

The Approach

syntax = a system of hierarchically organized constituents

constituent = a group of words that acts together

act together = move together

[When Grandma gets here ] [we'll go to the zoo! ]

[We'll go to the zoo ] [when Grandma gets here! ]

The First Experiment

19-month-olds

10 + 2 minutes of familiarization

Head-Turn Preference Procedure

Familiarization Sentences1-clause group: ABCDEF2-clause group: ABC, DEF

Familiarization Sentences

1-clause group: ABCDEF2-clause group: ABC, DEF

Test Sentences

consistent: DEF, ABCinconsistent: EFA, BCD

Words

A: bup, nimB: div, peletc.

Hypothesis: Children can use prosody to locate clausal constituents

Children in the 2-clause group should discriminate between the consistent and inconsistent test items

Children in the 1-clause group should not discriminate

Results

Experiment 1 Results

Children can use prosody to chunk a string of speech into substrings and they recognize those substrings when they have moved and have a new prosodic contour.

The Question

The Approach

The Experiment

Repeat

The Question

Why??

Hypothesis 1: The children used their acquired knowledge of English prosody

Hypothesis 2: The children capitalized on the general acoustic salience of the prosodic cues

The Approach

Can Japanese-acquiring children use

English prosody for locating clauses?

Englishstress timed

final-syllable lengthening

exaggerated pitch in IDS

SVO

Japanesemora timed

final-syllable amplitude decrease

*Fisher & Tokura (1996)

subtler pitch changes in IDS, pitch accents

*Fernald et al. (1989)

SOV*Nespor et al. (2008)

Hypothesis 1: The American children used their acquired knowledge of English prosody

Japanese children should act differently from the American children

Hypothesis 2: The American children capitalized on the general acoustic salience of the prosodic cues

Japanese children should act like the American children

The Second Experiment

19-month-old Japanese children

10 + 2 minutes of familiarization

Head-Turn Preference Procedure

Familiarization Sentences

1-clause group: ABCDEF2-clause group: ABC, DEF

Test Sentences

consistent: DEF, ABCinconsistent: EFA, BCD

Words

A: bup, nimB: div, peletc.

Results

Experiment 2 Results

Japanese children can use non-native prosody to chunk a string of speech into substrings and they recognize those substrings when they have moved and have a new prosodic contour.

Implications?

Prosodic cues are sufficiently robust that they can be used for syntax acquisition without prior language-specific prosodic learning.

Comparative ResultsComparison of Experiments 1 and 2

Thank you:Drs. Rebecca Gomez, Heidi Harley, Diane Ohala, & Colin Dawson

Sara Knight, Brianna McMillan, JulietMinton, Erin Huff, Omar Aujani, Kelly McGinn

Yuka Miyake, Ai Kanato, Mihoko Hasegawa, Mari Kanamura, Yuri Hatano, Yumiko Maeda

This research was supported by NSF 0950601 to LouAnn Gerken, NSF GRFP and EAPSI grants to Kara Hawthorne, and by RIKEN Brain Science Institute funding to Reiko Mazuka.