The role of phonetics for vocabulary and morphology acquisition:

evidence from Danish and other languages

Dorthe Bleses Center for Child Language

University of Sourthern Denmark

Seminar, Center for Child Language, 26.4.2011

PHONETIC LEARNING IN INFANCY (1)

• Segmentation of the fluent speech signal (Jusczyk, 1999)

• Several cues to word boundaries (Nazzie et al., 2008)

• Cues are probabilistic with language-specific differences (Bates & MacWhinney, 1987)

• Languages challenge the learner in different ways

• Cross-linguistic differences in (Vihman et al., 2006; Kooijman et al., 2008)

Det var en god kage

D etvaren go (d) k a(ge)

DANISH CHALLENGE:CONSONANT GRADATIONSCHWA REDUCTIONS

Skal vi bage alle kagerne i ovnen

Skal vi baka alla kakorne i ugnen

HYPOTHESIS DANISH HAS LOW SEGMENTABILITY SLOW LANGUAGE LEARNING RATE

1. Language-specific factorsAffected negatively by the phonetic characteristics of Danish?

X

CROSS-LINGUISTIC CDI-STUDY (1)

• 18 population based studies – Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Non-IE languages– N=72-2398– Age 0;8 -1;3 years

• Median comprehension score

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson, Dale et al. 1993)

Words & Gestures: 303-434 words

Bleses et al., 2008b

DISTRIBUTION OF COMPREHENSION SCORE, BY AGE AND LANGUAGE (MEDIAN)

CONCLUSION (1)

• Danish children comprehend fewest words across languages

• Low segmentability?

• Only lexicon?

NORDIC LANGUAGES NATURAL LAB

Lexicon SIMILAR SIMILAR SIMILAR SIMILAR

Morphology SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE COMPLEX

Phonetics COMPLEX SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE

X

CROSS-NORDIC CDI-STUDY

• 3 population based studies – Danish, Norwegian and Swedish– Age 0;8 -1;3 years– N=228-2359

• Median comprehension score

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson, Dale et al. 1993)

Words & Gestures (303 to 434 words)

Bleses, Basbøll & Vach, 2011

DISTRIBUTION OF COMPREHENSION SCORE, DANISH, NORWEGIAN, SWEDISH

CROSS-NORDIC PAST TENSE EXPERIMENT

• Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish– Age 4, 6 & 8 years– N=87-174

• 60 verbsPICTURE ELICITATION TASKThe boy knows how to shoot (skyde)The boy shoots (skyder)The boy did the same last year. Whatdid he then do?He shot (skød)

Bleses, Basbøll & Vach, 2011

SALIENCY & STRENGTS OF PHONETIC CUES

FREQUENCY OF WORD-INTERNAL SUFFIX BOUNDARIES IN THREE LANGUAGE CONDITIONS

% CORRECT PT-ANSWERS BY LANGUAGE AND AGE

CONCLUSION (2)

• In controlled comparisons with languages that primarily differ phonetically Danish children score lowest

• Not only lexicon but also (later) morphology

• Phonetic structure not local (lexical) but global effecton the acquisition of different dimensions

• Language-specific or language-general factors?

HYPOTHESIS DANISH HAS LOW SEGMENTABILITY SLOW LANGUAGE LEARNING RATE

1. Language-specific factorsAffected negatively by the phonetic characteristics of Danish?

2. Language-general factorsAffected negatively by phonetic factors which apply ”universally”?

PHONETIC LEARNING IN INFANCY (2)

• Statistical learning mechanisms recruited mainly for word segmentation (Gervain & Mehler, 2010)

• The consonant/vowel asymmetry (Nespor et al., 2003)

• Privileged role for consonants in early lexical development (Nazzi et al., 2009)

• The consonant/vowel asymmetry revisited– Phonetic level + learning rate

X

CROSS-LINGUISTIC CDI-STUDY (3)

• 7 population based studies from Bleses et al., 2008b– Comparable phonetic inventory could be obtained (IPA)– Danish, Dutch, French, Am. English, Galician, Croatian

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson, Dale et al. 1993)

Words & Gestures (303 to 434 words)

Bleses, Basbøll, Lum & Vach, 2010

DEVELOPMENT OF RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY BY LANGUAGE AND AGE

RANKING OF LANGUAGES BASED ONVOCOID/CONTOID INDEX

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VOCOID/CONTOID INDEX AND LEARNING RATE

CONCLUSION (3)

• Languages with low(er) vocoid/contoid ratio faster vocabulary rate and vice versa

• Danish has the highest vocoid/contoid ratio

• The lower acquisition rate of Danish children can be explained by a factor which apply more generally

• Limitations (statistics used)

• Individual children? Other domains? Other languages?