Abstract
This article describes the development of an auditory coding system and an associated web-based XML database to document and analyze speech development in infants from Canada, Morocco, France, and China. The XML database will allow researchers on this international research project, based at the Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria, to collaborate in data collection and analysis, facilitating a better understanding of phonetic development in infants from diverse language backgrounds. We hypothesize that infants from all language backgrounds employ laryngeal constriction as the primary means of phonetic development in the first months of life, using this experience as a base to learn the sounds of their native language in the second half of the first year. Preliminary results from English-speaking infants support this hypothesis.
Highlights
This article describes an international research project on infant speech acquisition based at the Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria, with particular emphasis on developing an auditory coding system and an associated web-based XML database to document and analyze the speech development process
We have developed an auditory coding method that will allow us to document the speech development of infants from these four language backgrounds in a phonetically principled manner
The physical maneuvers involved in “grunts”, for example, are more accurately described in phonetic terms as voiced or voiceless pharyngeal fricatives or trills, while “coughs” usually correspond to voiced or voiceless pharyngeal stops. This auditory coding method allows project researchers to classify the full range of sounds that infants make, providing a different interpretation of the origins of infant phonetic development than those found in previous studies
Summary
Since the majority of researchers in this field have been speakers of Indo-European languages, most commonly English, they have tended to focus exclusively on “speechlike” sounds with “normal” or modal phonation from an English perspective, excluding laryngeally “strained” and “tense” vocalizations from their analyses (Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986; Oller, 1980; 2000), on the grounds that these sounds are “vegetative” or “reflexive” Given that these sounds comprise a large percentage of the vocalizations produced in early infancy (Esling, Benner & Bettany, 2004a; Bettany, 2004; Stark et al, 1975) and that they occur in a variety of languages spoken around the world, we believe this approach is unwarranted. This coding method serves as the basis for a web-based XML database that will facilitate collaborative annotation and sharing of data and analysis over the course of the project
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