title: Delayed acquisition of non-adjacent vocalic distributional regularities.
abstract: The ability to compute non-adjacent regularities is key in the acquisition of a new language. In the domain of phonology/phonotactics, sensitivity to non-adjacent regularities between consonants has been found to appear between 7 and 10 months. The present study focuses on the emergence of a posterior-anterior (PA) bias, a regularity involving two non-adjacent vowels. Experiments 1 and 2 show that a preference for PA over AP (anterior-posterior) words emerges between 10 and 13 months in French-learning infants. Control experiments show that this bias cannot be explained by adjacent or positional preferences. The present study demonstrates that infants become sensitive to non-adjacent vocalic distributional regularities between 10 and 13 months, showing the existence of a delay for the acquisition of non-adjacent vocalic regularities compared to equivalent non-adjacent consonantal regularities. These results are consistent with the CV hypothesis, according to which consonants and vowels play different roles at different linguistic levels.
authors: Oxford Brookes University,Department of Psychology,Oxford,England,and Université Paris Descartes,Sorbonne Paris Cité,Paris,France.
authors: Nayeli
authors: N
authors: Gonzalez-Gomez
authors: Université Paris Descartes,Sorbonne Paris Cité,Paris,France,and CNRS (Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8158),Paris,France.
authors: Thierry
authors: T
authors: Nazzi
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception