Vocalic and consonantal processing biases in early word‐learning: Cross‐language differences?

Abstract

Previous research showed that French‐learning 16‐ or 20‐month‐olds could learn pairs of words that differed by a single consonantal but not vocalic feature. Danish has a richer vowel inventory than French, allowing for 31 phonological vowel contrasts, including vowel length and presence/absence of stod (laryngealization). The purpose of Experiment 1 was to test whether Danish‐learning 20‐month‐olds, in spite of the importance of vowels in Danish phonology, showed a lack of sensitivity to one‐feature vocalic differences in lexical learning similar to that of French‐learning infants. The experiment made use of the same word‐learning task as that used for French 16‐month‐olds. As opposed to the French‐learning infants, the Danish‐learning infants successfully learned the vowel pairs indicating sensitivity to small vocalic differences in word‐learning. Experiment 2 tested the use of vowels in word‐learning in French‐learning 20‐month‐olds using the same task. They failed again. On the other hand, ongoing tests indicate that Danish‐learning 20‐month‐olds, as opposed to French‐learning 16‐ or 20‐month‐olds, fail to use one‐feature consonantal differences in word‐learning. These results may suggest that infants develop processing biases in word‐learning depending on the sound‐structure of their language. [Work supported by Widex A/S (A.H.) and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (T.N.), ANR‐07‐BLAN‐0014‐01 and ANR‐09‐FRBR‐015.]