Intonational differences between the reduplicative babbling of French- and English-learning infants.
The two- and three-syllable reduplicative babbling of five French-learning and five English-learning infants (0;5 to 1;1) was examined in two ways for intonational differences. The first measure was a categorization into one of five categories (RISING, FALLING, RISE-FALL, FALL-RISE, LEVEL) by expert listeners. The second was the fundamental frequency (F0) from the early, middle and late portion of each syllable. Both measures showed significant differences between the two language groups. 65% of the utterances from both groups were classified as either rising of falling. For the French children, these were divided equally into the rising and the falling categories, while 75% of those utterances for the English children were judged to have falling intonation. Proportions of the other three categories were not significantly different by language environment. In both languages, though, three-syllable utterances were more likely to have a complex contour than two-syllable ones. Analysis of the F0 patterns confirmed the perceptual assessment. Several aspects of the target languages help explain these intonational differences in prelinguistic babbling.
Whalen
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DH
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06511.
Levitt
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AG
Wang
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Q
D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D010700:Phonetics; D014481:United States