Prosody in bilingual caregiver's infant-directed speech : cues for infants' acquisition of their languages' intonational structure

Marina Kalashnikova, Cristina Naranjo

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paperpeer-review

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody, May 23-26, 2022, Lisbon, Portugal
PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
Pages382-386
Number of pages5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
EventInternational Conference on Speech Prosody -
Duration: 23 May 2022 → …

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Speech Prosody
Period23/05/22 → …

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