Abstract
Monolingual infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language around 6 to 9 months of age, a fact marked by the development of preferences for predominant prosodic patterns and a decrease in sensitivity to non-native prosodic properties. The present study evaluates the effects of bilingual acquisition on speech perception by exploring how stress pattern perception may differ in French-learning 10-month-olds raised in bilingual as opposed to monolingual environments. Experiment 1 shows that monolinguals can discriminate stress patterns following a long familiarization to one of two patterns, but not after a short familiarization. In Experiment 2, two subgroups of bilingual infants growing up learning both French and another language (varying across infants) in which stress is used lexically were tested under the more difficult short familiarization condition: one with balanced input, and one receiving more input in the language other than French. Discrimination was clearly found for the other-language-dominant subgroup, establishing heightened sensitivity to stress pattern contrasts in these bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. However, the balanced bilinguals' performance was not better than that of monolinguals, establishing an effect of the relative balance of the language input. This pattern of results is compatible with the proposal that sensitivity to prosodic contrasts is maintained or enhanced in a bilingual population compared to a monolingual population in which these contrasts are non-native, provided that this dimension is used in one of the two languages in acquisition, and that infants receive enough input from that language.
Highlights
Growing up in a bilingual environment is a reality for the vast majority of children
An ANOVA with the within-subject factor of familiarity and the between-subject factors of pattern and condition was conducted. It revealed a significant main effect of familiarity, F(1, 28) = 7.16, p = .012, gp2 = .20, and a significant interaction between condition and familiarity, F(1, 28) = 11.39, p = .002, gp2 = .29. This interaction is due to the fact that the subgroup of French monolingual infants in the long (2minute) familiarization condition oriented less to the sequences with the familiarized stress pattern (M = 5.62 s; SE = .55) than to the sequences with the new stress pattern (M = 7.30 s; SE = .52), F(1, 28) = 18.3, p = .0002, gp2 =
The goal of the present study was to explore for the first time stress sensitivity at the lexical level in bilingual infants learning two languages with different lexical stress systems
Summary
Growing up in a bilingual environment is a reality for the vast majority of children. Children acquiring more than one language simultaneously are exposed to a more complex and less homogenous speech input than monolinguals. [1] suggested that there are quantitative and qualitative differences in the input received by bilinguals compared to monolinguals (since both languages can be produced by native or non-native speakers) which could affect the acquisition process. Language acquisition in bilinguals might not be as challenging as it seems, and it might rely on the remarkable plasticity of early speech processing systems, as found in monolingual infants’ ability to process information in foreign languages [3,4] in spite of their early specialization for the processing of the native language [5,6,7]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
