Abstract
![CDATA[Adults rely on various cues to differentiate among utterance types (e.g., declarative vs. interrogative utterances), including the conversational context, morpho-syntactic markers, and intonation. Infants have limited access to many of these language-specific cues, but they can rely on prosodic information in their speech input to learn the intonational patterns that differentiate utterance types in their language. Unlike monolinguals, bilingual infants must also use this information to differentiate the intonational patterns of each of their native languages. This study investigated the role that prosodic adjustments in bilingual caregivers’ infant-directed speech (IDS) play in facilitating this task for young bilingual infants (12-30 months). This was assessed in naturally produced IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS) by Spanish-Basque bilinguals. These two languages differ drastically in their lexicon, morpho-syntactic structure, and prosody. We measured pitch and intonational contours of mothers’ infant-directed and adult-directed productions of declarative, wh- and yes/no interrogative utterances. Across utterance types and languages, IDS prosody was exaggerated compared to ADS. Additionally, intonation contours in Spanish and Basque IDS magnified the differences between wh- and yes/no interrogative utterances. These findings suggest that bilingual caregivers’ IDS may contain prosodic cues that facilitate infants’ early acquisition of the intonational patterns of their two languages.]]
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody, May 23-26, 2022, Lisbon, Portugal |
Publisher | International Speech Communication Association |
Pages | 382-386 |
Number of pages | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Event | International Conference on Speech Prosody - Duration: 23 May 2022 → … |
Conference
Conference | International Conference on Speech Prosody |
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Period | 23/05/22 → … |