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Foundations of psycholinguistics Week 4 Early speech sound development Vasiliki (Celia) Antoniou

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Today Brief review about prosody Speech perception Speech production Assignment queries

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Review: Prosody Includes properties like rhythm/stress, intonation Low auditory frequency information, transmitted to the womb (5-7 month of gestation) Rhythm is used by newborns to recognise and prefer their native language Prosody helps infants to initialise acquisition of other linguistic areas = bootstrapping Lexicon: Stress pattern used to segment words Syntax: Sensitivity to pauses and other prosodic markers that signal clause boundaries

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Prosody and speech perception From what age can English infants use word stress to recognise words in fluent speech? 0 months5 months 7 months10 months

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Speech sound perception Voice Onset Time in stops (e.g. [b] vs. [p]): Time between opening of closure and onset of vocal fold vibrations bpa 0 ms VOT bpa 20 ms VOT bpa 40 ms VOT bpa 60 ms VOT Wood 1976 ba pa

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Categorical perception Human adults are better at discriminating pairs of sounds across category boundaries (e.g. ba1 vs. pa1) than within categories (e.g. ba1 vs. ba2)

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Other contrasts As for adults, speech rate affects categorisation the same token can be perceived as pa in fast speech and ba in slow speech Infants can also perceive subtle differences between vowels (e.g. a vs. o, see Kuhls work) although they have some difficulties with speaker variation

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Audiovisual integration Adults automatically integrate audio and visual information McGurk effect: audio ba and visual ga lead to perception of intermediate da in most adult subjects This effect has also been found in infants as young as 5 months!

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What is human about this? Human speech perception abilities present at birth are shared with other animals chinchillas and quails can be trained to perceive sounds categorically i.e Ba vs. Pa tamarin monkeys and rats can discriminate between rhythmically different languages Cotton-top Tamarin Japanese quail

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Later speech perception Methods to investigate speech sound discrimination later in life (4-18 months) Conditioned Headturn ProcedureInfant EEG

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Engl. 6-8m Engl. 8-10 ms Engl. 10-12m Native 11-12m Werker & Tees (1984) Changes in speech perception Percentage of infants reaching CHT criterion

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sensitivity loss for other non-native contrasts Decrease for r-l distinction in Japanese infants at 8m Decrease for [u]-[y] in English infants at 6m but: stable performance for some clicks, and for d-th distinction in French learners enhancement for difficult native contrasts between 6 and 12 months r-l discrimination increased in English learners na- a increased in Filipino learners Changes in speech perception

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Birth Language preference 6 m Vowel perception 8 12 mths Consonant perception Milestones in native speech perception 6 - 9 m Stress perception

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Native speech production Birth 1 month Crying, sounds of (dis) comfort 1 month 5 months Vocalisations with mouth closure Cooing, first productions that sound like glottal or back vowel or consonants First vocal play, imitation First vocalisations

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Speech production preparation Larynx descent and speech larynx is higher in infants (b) than in adults (a) descent starts at 3 months speech and choking possible from 4-6 months descent finishes at 4 years (boys: more changes during puberty)

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Native speech production Birth 1 month Crying, sounds of (dis) comfort 1 month 5 months Vocalisations with mouth closure Cooing, first productions that sound like glottal or back vowel or consonants First vocal play, imitation 5-6 months Reduplicative canonical babbling (i.e. babababa) First vocalisations Babbling phases

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Babbling Phase I reduplicative/ canonical babbling first speech-like productions repetitions of one syllable e.g. [babababa]

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Native speech production Birth 1 month Crying, sounds of (dis) comfort 1 month 5 months Vocalisations with mouth closure Cooing, first productions that sound like glottal or back vowel or consonants First vocal play, imitation 5-6 months Reduplicative/ canonical babbling (i.e. babababa) First vocalisations Babbling phases 8-10 months Variegated babbling (i.e. bagota)

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Babbling Phase II variegated babbling combinations of different syllables e.g. [badotu] sounds and intonation adapt to resemble target language e.g. more stops in Swedish

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Native speech production Birth 1 month Crying, sounds of (dis) comfort 1 month 5 months Vocalisations with mouth closure Cooing, first productions that sound like glottal or back vowel or consonants First vocal play, imitation 5-6 months Reduplicative/ canonical babbling (i.e. babababa) First vocalisations Babbling phases 8-10 months Variegated babbling (i.e. bagota) 10-12 months: jargon Unintelligible chains (babble stories)

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Native speech production Birth 1 month Crying, sounds of (dis) comfort 1 month 5 months Vocalisations with mouth closure Cooing, first productions that sound like glottal or back vowel or consonants First vocal play, imitation 5-6 months Reduplicative/ canonical babbling (i.e. babababa) First vocalisationsBabbling phases 8-10 months Variegated babbling (i.e. bagota) 10-12 months: jargon Unintelligible chains (babble stories) 10 -16 months First word production 1. Transition from babbling 2. No silent period in between smooth transition, babbling and words co - occur

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More about early phonology Good summary on infants speech perception -Houston (2011). Infant speech perception. In Seewald & Tharpe: Comprehensive Handbook of Pediatric Audiology. Plural Publishing (on Moodle) Good book on early speech and language -de Boysson-Bardies (1999). How Language Comes to Children: From Birth to Two Years. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

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1 st Assignment Deadline?? Friday, November 9 Try testing the Online submission system (OCS) Check the Departmental handout for formatting your essay and referencing rules (p. 89 96): http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/publications/booklets/undergraduate_ handbook/Handbook%20UG%202012-13.pdf http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/publications/booklets/undergraduate_ handbook/Handbook%20UG%202012-13.pdf Exemplary essays: http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/current_students/Guidelines_e_d_t/ Assignment/exemp_essays.aspx http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/current_students/Guidelines_e_d_t/ Assignment/exemp_essays.aspx Word limit? 1000 words Topic? How does infants perception of speech sounds change during the first year of life?

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1 st assignement Read your sources: the coursebook, the lecture slides, the additional reading materials, the class slides and notes Make a plan! Introduction, Main Body, Conclusion, make a note of the key points you need to address Hints: Vowel vs consonant contrasts and perception Infants get better at different native contrasts Check our previous class presentations for more about prosody and its contribution to speech perception E-mail me an outline! Support your arguments with examples and reference to studies where possible. Acknowledge your sources otherwise you commit plagiarism!

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Format Fonts: 12, Times New Roman, double spaced Italicise Journal names, article / book titles that appear in your main text body Be consistent! Whatever way you choose to do things it should be (p. 66) when you cite pages and not (Mehler: 66) and further down (Mehler, 69) or (Mehler, p. 69) Follow this link for additional help with structure, vocabulary and expressions, writing your references, abbreviations: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~vanton/ScanImage004.pdf http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~vanton/ScanImage004.pdf

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Common essay mistakes Include an introduction and a conclusion! Reference all the resources you have used and remember to include page numbers. Create a reference list at the end of your essay...... Create paragraphs according to topic..when you change topic, change paragraph. Pay attention to punctuation. Avoid using long sentences. When you write something use an example to illustrate what you say, and if needed, reference the example. Make sure that what you put in the essay is absolutely necessary this will reduce your word count Use theory and references, your textbook etc. and do not simply rely on class/lecture notes

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When youve written your essay leave it for 1- 2 days and get back to it later..youll be surprised! When you cant find a reference here are a few tips: Search the reference list of our text book, usually the reference will be there. If not search the library catalogue or google the reference (authors name, date).

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Read the essay 3 times 1 st you read in order to check the content: Have I answered the questions? Is what I write correct according to what Ive read? Have I left anything important out? Do I have any examples? The 2 nd time you read in order to check the structure: intro-conclusion, cohesion, do the ideas flow logically?, long sentences, do I have paragraphs, a reference list, have I used signposting?

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The 3 rd time you read in order to check the punctuation, whether youve followed one way in referencing, line spacing, fonts and font size, page numbering, your details, etc. Dont forget to write your class instructors name!