Infant Perception of Non-Native Consonant Contrasts that Adults Assimilate in Different Ways

Language and Speech

Volumn 46, Issue 2-3, 2003, Pages 183-216

  Best, Catherine C ^a,b   McRoberts, Gerald W ^b,c  

^a WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b HASKINS LABORATORIES   (United States)

^c LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Articulately phonology; Cross language; Infant speech perception; Non native consonants; Perceptual assimilation

Indexed keywords

EID: 0345759570     PISSN: 00238309     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/00238309030460020701     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (91)

1. ALWAN, A. A., NARAYANAN, S. S., & HAKER, K. (1997). Toward articulatory-acoustic models for liquid consonants based on MRI and EPG data. Part II: The rhotics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 1078-1089.
2. ASLIN, R. N., & PISONI, D. B. (1980a). Effects of early linguistic experience on speech discrimination by infants: A critique of Eilers, Gavin, and Wilson (1979). Child Development, 51, 107-112.
3. ASLIN, R. N., & PISONI, D. B. (1980b). Some developmental processes in speech perception. In G. H. Yeni-Komshian, J. E. Kavanaugh, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Child Phonology (Vol. 2: Perception, pp. 67-96). New York: Academic Press.
4. BENEDICT, H. (1979). Early lexical development: Comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language, 6, 183-200.
5. BEST, C. T. (1984). Discovering messages in the medium: Speech and the prelinguistic infant. In H. E. Fitzgerald, B. Lester, & M. Yogman (Eds.), Advances in pediatric psychology (pp. 97-145). New York: Plenum.
6. BEST, C. T. (1993). Emergence of language-specific constraints in perception of non-native speech: A window on early phonological development. In B. de Boysson-Bardies, S. de Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. MacNeilage, & J. Morton (Eds.), Developmental neurocognition: Speech and face processing in the first year of life (pp. 289-304). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Academic Publishers B.V.
7. BEST, C. T. (1994a). The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: A perceptual assimilation model. In H. C. Nusbaum (Ed.), The development of speech perception: The transition from speech sounds to spoken words (pp. 167-224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8. BEST, C. T. (1994b). Learning to perceive the sound pattern of English. In C. Rovee-Collier & L. Lipsitt (Eds.), Advances in infancy research (Vol. 8, pp.217-304). Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex Publishers.
9. BEST, C. T. (1995). A direct realist perspective on cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange & J. J. Jenkins (Eds.), Cross-language speech perception (pp. 171-204). Timonium, MD: York Press.
10. BEST, C. T., & AVERY, R. A. (1999). Left hemisphere advantage for click consonants is determined by linguistic significance. Psychological Science, 10, 65-69.
11. BEST, C. T., MCROBERTS, G. W., & GOODELL, E. (2001). American listeners' perception of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to English phonology. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 775-794.
12. BEST, C. T., MCROBERTS, G. W., LAFLEUR, R., & SILVER-ISENSTADT, J. (1995). Divergent developmental patterns for infants' perception of two non-native consonant contrasts. Infant Behavior and Development, 18, 339-350.
13. BEST, C. T., MCROBERTS, G. W., & SITHOLE, N. M. (1988). Examination of perceptual reorganization for non-native speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14(3), 345-360.
14. BROWMAN, C. P., & GOLDSTEIN, L. (1989). Articulatory gestures as phonological units. Phonology, 6(2), 201-251.
15. BROWMAN, C. P., & GOLDSTEIN, L. (1990). Gestural specification using dynamically-defined articulatory structures. Journal of Phonetics, 18, 299-320.
16. BROWMAN, C., & GOLDSTEIN, L. (in preparation). Articulatory phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
17. BURNHAM, D. K. (1986). Developmental loss of speech perception: Exposure to and experience with a first language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 7, 207-240.
18. CANONICI, N. N. (1989). Imisindo Yesizulu: A simple introduction to Zulu phonology. Durban, South Africa: University of Natal.
19. CLEMENTS, N., & OSU, S. (2002). Explosives, implosives and nonexplosives: The linguistic function of air pressure differences in stops. In C. Gussenhoven & N. Warner (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
20. COHEN, L. B. (1998). An information-processing approach to infant perception and cognition. In F. Simion & G. Butterworth (Eds.), The development of sensory, motor and cognitive capacities in early infancy: From perception to cognition, (pp. 277-300.) Hove, England: Taylor & Francis.
21. DELATTRE, P. C., & FREEMAN, D. (1968). A dialect study of American rs by X-ray motion picture. Linguistics, 44, 29-68.
22. DIAMOND, A., WERKER, J. F., & LALONDE, C. (1994). Toward understanding commonalities in the development of object search, detour navigation, categorization, and speech perception. In G. Dawson & K. W. Fischer (Eds.), Human behavior and the developing brain (pp. 380-426). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
23. DOKE, C. M. (1926). Phonetics of the Zulu language. Bantu Studies, 11, 1-138.
24. EILERS, R. E. (1977). Context-sensitive perception of naturally produced stop and fricative consonants by infants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 61, 1321-1336.
25. EILERS, R. E., GAVIN, W. J., & OLLER, D. K. (1982). Cross linguistic perception in infancy: The role of linguistic experience. Journal of Child Language, 9, 289-302.
26. EILERS, R. E., GAVIN, W., & WILSON, W. R. (1979). Linguistic experience and phonemic perception in infancy: A cross-linguistic study. Child Development, 50, 14-18.
27. EIMAS, P. D., SIQUELAND, E. R., JUSCZYK, P., & VIGORITO, J. (1971). Speech perception in infants. Science, 171, 303-306.
28. FENNELL, C., & WERKER, J. (2003). (this issue). Early word learners' ability to access phonetic detail in well-known words. Language and Speech, 46, 245-264.
29. FERGUSON, C. A., MENN, L., & STOEL-GAMMON, C. (Eds.). (1992). Phonological development: Models, research, implications. Timonium, MD: York Press.
30. FOWLER, C. A. (1986). An event approach to the study of speech perception from a direct-realist perspective. Journal of Phonetics, 14, 3-28.
31. GIANNINI, A., PETTORINO, M., & TOSCANO, M. (1988). Some remarks on the Zulu stops. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 13, 95-116.
32. GIBSON, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
33. GIBSON, J. J., & GIBSON, E. J. (1955). Perceptual learning: Differentiation or enrichment? Psychological Review, 62(1), 32-41.
34. HALLÉ, M. (1982). On distinctive features and their articulatory implementation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1, 91-105.
35. HALLÉ, P. A., & De BOYSSON-BARDIES, B. (1994). Emergence of an early receptive lexicon: Infants' recognition of words. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 119-129.
36. HALLÉ, P. A., & De BOYSSON-BARDTES, B. (1996). The format of representation of recognized words in infants' early receptive lexicon. Infant Behavior and Development, 19, 463-481.
37. HARNSBERGER, J. D. (2000). A cross-language study of the identification of non-native nasal consonants varying in place of articulation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 108, 764-783.
38. HAUSER, M. D. (1996). The evolution of communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
39. JUSCZYK, P. W. (1986). Toward a model of the development of speech perception. In J. S. Perkell & D. H. Klatt (Eds.), Invariance and variability in speech processes (pp. 1-35). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Publishers.
40. JUSCZYK, P. W. (1993). From general to language-specific capacities: The WRAPSA Model of how speech perception develops. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 3-28.
41. JUSCZYK, P. W. (1994). Infant speech perception and the development of the mental lexicon. In J. C. Goodman & H. C. Nusbaum (Eds.), The development of speech perception: The transition from speech sounds to spoken words (pp. 227-270). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
42. JUSCZYK, P. W. (1997). The discovery of spoken language. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books: MIT Press.
43. JUSCZYK, P. W., & BERTONCINI, J. (1988). Viewing the development of speech perception as an innately guided learning process. Language and Speech, 31(3), 217-238.
44. JUSCZYK, P. W., LUCE, P. A., & CHARLES-LUCE, J. (1994). Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Jounal of Memory and Language, 33, 630-645.
45. JUSCZYK, P. W., SHEA, S. L., & ASLIN, R. N. (1984). Linguistic experience and infant speech perception: A re-examination of Eilers, Gavin, and Oiler (1982). Journal of Child Language, 2, 453-466.
46. KUHL, P. K. (1993). Innate predispositions and the effects of experience in speech perception: The native language magnet theory. In B. de Boysson-Bardies, S. de Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. McNeilage, & J. Morton (Eds.), Developmental neurocognition: Speech and face processing in the first year of life (pp. 259-274). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
47. KUHL, P. K., & MELTZOFF, A. N. (1982). The bimodal perception of speech in infancy. Science, 218 (December), 1138-1141.
48. KUHL, P. K., & MELTZOFF, A. N. (1984). The intermodal representation of speech in infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 1, 361-381.
49. KUHL, P. K., WILLIAMS, K. A., LACERDA, F., STEVENS, K. N., & LINDBLOM, B. (1992). Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by six months of age. Science, 255 (January), 606-608.
50. LADEFOGED, P., & MADDIESON, I. (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.
51. LALONDE, C. E., & WERKER, J. F. (1995). Cognitive influences on cross-language speech perception in infancy. Infant Behavior & Development, 18, 459-475.
52. LASKY, R. E., SYRDAL-LASKY, A., & KLEIN, R. E. (1975). VOT discrimination by four to six and a half month old infants from Spanish environments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 20, 215-225.
53. LEVITT, A., JUSCZYK, P.W., & CARDEN, G. (1988). Context effects in two-month-old infants' perception of labiodental/interdental fricative contrasts. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 14, 361-368.
54. MACKAIN, K. (1982). Assessing the role of experience on infants' speech discrimination. Journal of Child Language, 9, 527-542.
55. MADDIESON, I. (1984). Patterns of sounds. New York: Cambridge University Press.
56. MAYE, J., WERKER, J. F., & GERKEN, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition, 82, B101-B111.
57. MELTZOFF, A., & MOORE, M. (1997). Explaining facial imitation: A theoretical model. Early Development and Parenting, 6, 179-192.
58. MILLER, C. (1983). Developmental changes in male/female voice classification by infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 6, 313-330.
59. MILLER, G. A., & NICELY, P. E. (1955). Perceptual confusions among some English consonants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 27, 338-352.
60. PEGG, J. E., & WERKER, J. F. (1997). Adult and infant perception of two English phones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 102, 3742-3753.
61. PEPERKAMP, S., & DUPOUX, E. (2002). Coping with phonological variation in early lexical acquisition. In I. Lasser (Ed.), The process of language acquisition (pp. 359-385). Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang, Verlag.
62. PIRELLO, K., BLUMSTEIN, S., & KUROWSKI, K. (1997). The characteristics of voicing in syllable-initial fricatives in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 3754- 3765w.
63. POLKA, L. (1992). Characterizing the influence of native experience on adult speech perception. Perception and Psychophysics, 52, 37-52.
64. POLKA, L., COLANTONIO, C., & SUNDARA, M. (2001). A cross-language comparison of /d/-/∂/ perception: Evidence for a new developmental pattern. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 2190-2201.
65. POULOS, G., & BOSCH (1997). Zulu. München, Germany: Loncom Europa.
66. ROSENBLUM, L. D., SCHMUCKLER, M. A., & JOHNSON, J. A. (1997). The McGurk effect in infants. Perception and Psychophysics, 59, 347-357.
67. ROUX, J. C. (1991). On ingressive glottalic and velaric articualtions in Xhosa. Paper presented at the International Conference of Phonetic Sciences, Aix-en-Provence, France.
68. SLIS, I. H., & COHEN, A. (1969). On the complex regulating the voiced-voiceless distinction. Language & Speech, 12, 80-102.
69. SPROAT, R., & FUJIMURA, O. (1993). Allophonic variation in English /1/ and its implications for phonetic implementation. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 291-311.
70. STAGER, C. L., & WERKER, J. F. (1997). Infants listen for more phonetic detail in speech perception than in word-learning tasks. Nature, 388, 381-382.
71. STREETER, L. (1976). Language perception of two-month-old infants shows effects of both innate mechanisms and experience. Nature, 259, 39-41.
72. STUDDERT-KENNEDY, M. (2002). How did language go discrete? Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Evolution of Language, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
73. STUDDERT-KENNEDY, M., & GOLDSTEIN, L. (in press). Lanuching language: The gestural origin of discrete infinity. In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), Language evolution: The states of the art. Oxford U.K.: Oxford University Press.
74. SWINGLEY, D. (2003). (this issue). Phonetic detail in the developing lexicon. Language and Speech, 46, 265-294.
75. SWINGLEY, D., & ASLIN, R. N. (2002). Lexical neighborhoods in the word-form representations of 14-month-olds. Psychological Science, 13, 480-484.
76. TEES, R. C., & WERKER, J. F. (1984). Perceptual flexibility: Maintenance or recovery of the ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 38, 579-590.
77. TRAILL, A. (1985). Phonetic and phonological Studies of !Xóõ Bushman. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
78. TRAILL, A., KHUMALO, J. S. M., & FRIDJHON, P. (1987). Depressing facts about Zulu. African Studies, 46, 255-274.
79. TREHUB, S. E. (1976). The discrimination of foreign speech contrasts by infants and adults. Child Development, 47(1), 466-472.
80. TSAO, F., LIU, H., KUHL, P. K., & TSENG, C. (2000). Perceptual discrimination of Mandarin Fricative-affricate contrast by English-learning and Mandarin-learning infants. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Brighton, U.K.
81. TSUSHIMA, T., TAKIZAWA, O., SASAKI, M., SHIRAKI, S., NISHI, K., KOHNO, M., MENYUK, P., & BEST, C. T. (1994). Discrimination of English /r-1/ and /w-j/ by Japanese infants at 6-12 months: Language-specific developmental changes in speech perception abilities. Paper presented at the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing.
82. Van WYCK, E. B. (1979). Praktiese fonetik vir taalstudente: 'n inleiding (Practical phonetics for students: An introduction). Durban, South Africa: Butterworth.
83. WALTON, G. E., & BOWER, T. G. R. (1993). Amodal representation of speech in infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 16, 233-243.
84. WERKER, J. F. (1989). Becoming a native listener. Am. Sci., 77, 54-59.
85. WERKER, J. F., GILBERT, J. H. V., HUMPHREY, K., & TEES, R. C. (1981). Developmental aspects of cross-language speech perception. Child Development, 52, 349-355.
86. WERKER, J. F., & LALONDE, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. Develop. Psych., 24(5), 672-683.
87. WERKER, J. F., & PEGG, J. E. (1992). Infant speech perception and phonological aquisition. In C. A. Ferguson, L. Menn, & C. Stoel-Gammon (Eds.), Phonological development: Models, research, implications (pp. 285-311). Timonium, MD: York Press.
88. WERKER, J. F., & TEES, R. C. (1984a). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 49-63.
89. WERKER, J. F., & TEES, R. C. (1984b). Phonemic and phonetic factors in adult cross-language speech perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 75, 1866-1878.
90. YOUNGER, B. A., & COHEN, L. B. (1983). Infant perception of correlations among attributes. Child Development, 54, 858-869.
91. ZIERVOGEL, D., LOUW, J. A., & TALJAARD, P. C. (1985). A handbook of the Zulu language. Johannesburg, South Africa: J. L. van Schaik.