Cross‐linguistic evidence for the influence of native language prosody in infant speech segmentation.

Abstract

Research using artificial languages with English‐learning infants has shown both prosodic and distributional cues are used for speech segmentation by 7 months. When these cues conflict, infants younger than 7 months rely on distributional cues while older infants rely on prosodic cues). In the present study we assessed the role of prosodic information in segmentation when it is not favorably aligned with distributional cues, to determine whether language‐specific rhythmic biases guide segmentation as suggested by studies using natural speech. Two continuous streams of naturally produced syllables (English and French) were constructed using nines syllables that are permissible in both languages. Within each stream statistical cues were manipulated independently of language‐appropriate stress cues. English‐ and French‐learning 8‐month‐olds were familiarized with their native language stream and then present test probe strings to determine what syllable sequences were extracted from the stream. Probes were selected to assess the role of stress cues in segmentation. Findings show that English infants make use of a trochaic template; Canadian‐French infants show a weaker and less focused reliance on stress cues to segment words from connected speech. These cross‐linguistic differences reflect processing biases that may be set by language experience and/or elicited by speech input properties.