Infants Learning of Second Order Phonotactic Constraints
This study examines the phenomenon of learning phonotactic constraints of a given language. The knowledge of phonotactic constraints is comprised of an understanding of which sound sequences are possible in a given language. Infants are sensitive to the phonotactic regularities of their native language as demonstrated by previous studies. This study will determine how 16.5 month-old infants learn phonotactic constraints. Previous studies have shown that infants can learn first order constraints of a miniature artificial language based on brief auditory exposure. First order constraints are words in which specific consonants can only be in initial or final positions. Because phonotactic constraints are very complex in natural language an understanding of only first order constraints of a language is not sufficient. Therefore, this study will determine whether 16.5-month-old infants are able to acquire second order phonotactic regularities, in which consonant position in a word depends on the vowel. Participating in the headturn preference procedure the subjects in this study will listen to an artificial language comprised of nonsense consonant-vowel- consonant (CVC) syllables displaying the experimental constraints. The subjects will then discriminate between syllables that follow the experimental constraints and syllables that violate them. The learning of phonotactic constraints of a language is essential for infants to gain to a complex understanding of their native language and this task will bring us one step closer to uncovering the phenomenon of infant language learning.
School:
Xavier University of Louisiana
Department:
Speech-Language Pathology / Audiology
Research Advisor:
Cynthia Fisher
Department of Research Advisor:
Psychology
Year of Publication:
2002