Perception of vowel length by Japanese- and English-learning infants.
This study investigated vowel length discrimination in infants from 2 language backgrounds, Japanese and English, in which vowel length is either phonemic or nonphonemic. Experiment 1 revealed that English 18-month-olds discriminate short and long vowels although vowel length is not phonemically contrastive in English. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that Japanese 18-month-olds also discriminate the pairs but in an asymmetric manner: They detected only the change from long to short vowel, but not the change in the opposite direction, although English infants in Experiment 1 detected the change in both directions. Experiment 4 tested Japanese 10-month-olds and revealed a symmetric pattern of discrimination similar to that of English 18-month-olds. Experiment 5 revealed that native adult Japanese speakers, unlike Japanese 18-month-old infants who are presumably still developing phonological perception, ultimately acquire a symmetrical discrimination pattern for the vowel contrasts. Taken together, our findings suggest that English 18-month-olds and Japanese 10-month-olds perceive vowel length using simple acoustic?phonetic cues, whereas Japanese 18-month-olds perceive it under the influence of the emerging native phonology, which leads to a transient asymmetric pattern in perception.
Mugitani
Ryoko
R
NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Corporation, Japan. mugitani@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp
Pons
Ferran
F
Fais
Laurel
L
Dietrich
Christiane
C
Werker
Janet F
JF
Amano
Shigeaki
S
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D044466:Asian People; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014706:Verbal Learning