Prosody in production at the onset of word use: A cross-linguistic study

Abstract

An investigation of the acoustic correlates of prosody in infant disyllabic vocalizations was undertaken on the basis of data from 10 each of American- and Finnish- and five each of French- and Welsh-learning infants at the onset of word use (10–18 months). The 639 disyllables were analyzed acoustically for duration, intensity and fundamental frequency ( f0). The infants differed in their production patterns with regard to all three acoustic cues, although they agreed in exhibiting high variability in the production of intensity and f0. Infants exposed to each of the four languages showed evidence of final syllable lengthening and the production of both first- and second-syllable-stressed or accented disyllables. However, Finnish and Welsh infants produced proportionally more trochaic and iambic patterns, respectively. The use of acoustic prosodic cues at the onset of word use is argued to reflect a combination of biological predispositions and response to prosodic cues that show consistency in the input signal, while a more complete integration of prosody and segmental features seems to require more lexical knowledge or experience.