Learning Vowel Categories from Maternal Speech in Gurindji Kriol

Autor/inn/en	Jones, Caroline; Meakins, Felicity; Muawiyath, Shujau
Titel	Learning Vowel Categories from Maternal Speech in Gurindji Kriol
Quelle	In: Language Learning, 62 (2012) 4, S.1052-1078 (27 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0023-8333
DOI	10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00725.x
Schlagwörter	Acoustics; Foreign Countries; Vowels; Bilingualism; Multivariate Analysis; College Students; Linguistic Input; Second Language Learning; Language Acquisition; Mothers; Speech Communication; Parent Child Relationship; Indigenous Populations; Uncommonly Taught Languages; Language Research; Australia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Akustik; Ausland; Bilingualismus; Multivariate Analyse; Collegestudent; Sprachbildung; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Mother; Mutter; Parents-child relationship; Parent-child-relation; Parent-child relationship; Eltern-Kind-Beziehung; Sinti und Roma; Minderheitensprache; Sprachforschung; Australien
Abstract	Distributional learning is a proposal for how infants might learn early speech sound categories from acoustic input before they know many words. When categories in the input differ greatly in relative frequency and overlap in acoustic space, research in bilingual development suggests that this affects the course of development. In the present study we describe the nature and extent of vowel variation in nearly 900 vowel tokens in maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol, a mixed language of northern Australia, which, like bilingual input, has differences in the relative frequency of adjacent, overlapping vowel categories. In Analysis 1, we provide the first systematic account of vowel variation and phone frequency in maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol. In Analysis 2, cluster analysis was applied to the vowel formant and duration data, to see what categories might emerge from acoustic data alone. The results suggest that, were infants to base their initial vowel categories solely on the clusters emerging in acoustic space, they might likely set up relatively few vowel categories. We discuss implications for how infants may learn Gurindji Kriol and for distributional learning. (Contains 1 note, 1 table and 4 figures.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10