Cross-language analysis of phonetic units in language addressed to infants.

• In the early months of life, infants acquire information about the phonetic properties of their native language simply by listening to adults speak. The acoustic properties of phonetic units in language input to young infants in the United States, Russia, and Sweden were examined. In all three countries, mothers addressing their infants produced acoustically more extreme vowels than they did when addressing adults, resulting in a "stretching" of vowel space. The findings show that language input to infants provides exceptionally well-specified information about the linguistic units that form the building blocks for words.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Adult

Female

Humans

Infant

Language Development

Mothers

Phonetics

Russia

Speech Acoustics

Speech Perception

Sweden

United States

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)