Representations of consonants and vowels in French and English from infancy to adulthood
Lead Research Organisation:
Plymouth University
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
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Organisations
Publications
Bouchon C
(2014)
Call me Alix, not Elix: vowels are more important than consonants in own-name recognition at 5 months
in Developmental Science
Camillia Bouchon (Author)
(2011)
Consonantal specificity of name recognition in French- and English-learning 5-month-olds
Camillia Bouchon (Author)
(2013)
At 5 months, vowels weigh more than consonants for own name recognition in French_learning infants
Camillia Bouchon (Author)
(2012)
Vowels and Consonants at Birth: a NIRS study
Camillia Bouchon (Author)
(2012)
Consonantal specificity of name recognition in French- and English-learning 5-month-olds
Claire Delle Luche (Author)
(2012)
English-speaking toddlers do not have a consonant bias for learning words in an interactive task
Claire Delle Luche (Author)
(2012)
Sixteen- to 24-month-old English-speaking toddlers do not have a consonant bias for learning words in an interactive task
Delle Luche C
(2014)
Differential processing of consonants and vowels in the auditory modality: A cross-linguistic study
in Journal of Memory and Language
Delle Luche C
(2017)
Infants' First Words are not Phonetically Specified: Own Name Recognition in British English-Learning 5-Month-Olds.
in Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
Floccia C
(2011)
Lexical stress and phonetic processing in word learning in 20- to 24-month-old English-learning children.
in Developmental science
| Description | It has been proposed that vowels and consonants play distinct roles in language, with vowels tending to carry intonation and grammar and consonants conveying the meaning of words (Nespor et al., 2003). Whilst this distinction appears relatively clearcut in experimental behaviour with adults, its developmental origin is a matter of considerable conjecture, with far reaching implications to our understanding of language acquisition. Three main hypotheses have been suggested to account for this asymmetry. The first hypothesis posits that it is a property of the linguistic system, whilst the second indicates that the relative roles of consonants and vowels is driven by the disparities in their acoustic properties. In the final hypothesis the asymmetry arises from differences in the distribution of vowels and consonants for a particular language. In this project we directly compared the processing of vowels and consonants between adult, toddler, and infant listeners of English and French. As there are considerable differences in the distribution and acoustic properties of vowels and consonants between these languages we were able to judge the relative merits of the competing hypotheses by tracking the asymmetry at different stages of language acquisition. All experiments with adults were conducted using computer-controlled classic decision and reaction time experiments, in the visual or auditory modalities, in both sites. All experiments with toddlers were conducted either using object manipulation tasks, or computer-controlled procedures with eye-trackers in both sites. All experiments with young infants were conducted using the head-turn preference procedure (HPP) in both sites. In adults, we confirmed the existence of a "universal" consonant bias by showing that both English and French listeners were faster in recognising a spoken word (i.e. atom) preceded by a prime sharing its consonants (etim) rather than its vowels (azol; Delle Luche et al., 2014). In French, we showed that the consonant bias is related to the phonological and lexical levels, but not the orthographic one (New & Nazzi, in press). In toddlers, we found that English toddlers at 16 or 23 months did not show evidence of a consonant bias when tested in an interactive word learning situation (Floccia et al., 2013), contrary to well-established results in French toddlers at the same age (Floccia et al., 2009; Havy et al., 2011; Nazzi, 2005). Another series of experiments using eye-tracking instead of experimenter-child interaction suggests a similar asymmetry in English and French toddlers (Poltrock et al., in preparation). In French we also established that the bias is not an artefact of the relative position of consonants and vowels in the words (Havy et al., 2011, in press; Nazzi & Polka, submitted; Poltrock et al., in prep). Lastly, our findings suggest that the bias is not present at 5 months, since the recognition of their first names by French infants is blocked by a vocalic change but not a consonantal change (Bouchon et al., 2014). British infants showed no evidence of name recognition in either condition, suggesting some delay in the ability to process segmental information which is to be linked to the well-documented delay in vocabulary learning in British infants as compared to American ones (Hamilton et al., 2000). On the other hand, in French it was found that phonotactic constraints are acquired earlier on consonants (10 months) than on vowels (13 months), suggesting a consonantal advantage at the lexical level already by 10 months. All of these data support the acoustic/phonetic hypothesis. In her ESRC-funded PhD, Turner examined whether replacing vowels and consonants in English words produced similar effect than transposing them, to examine conflicting results in the literature (Turner et al., in prep A). In addition, she identified different ERP signature to consonant and vowel changes in 11-month-olds and adults (Turner et al., in prep B). Atogether these results suggest that the consonant bias does not seem to be a property of the early linguistic system as proposed by Nespor et al. (2003) but rather a byproduct of the exposure to the language-specific acoustic and possibly, distributional, properties of consonants and vowels. |
| Exploitation Route | This project opens the way to further cross-linguistic investigations of the perceptual biases towards consonants versus vowels, especially in languages such as Swedish or Danish where vowels outnumber consonants. Another area of research will be the understanding of the phonetic/phonological information in speech that infants use to abstract out the differences between vowels and consonants across various languages. |
| Sectors | Education |
| Description | Our data suggest strongly that past the age of 30 months, English and French speakers have acquired a consonant bias when processing spoken language, and later, written language. As was originally suggested in our impact plan, this knowledge could be usable in orienting children's attention to vowels and consonants during literacy acquisition; it could also be a useful knowledge in speech and language therapy interventions. In the UK we have been regularly active in the media (BBC radios, newspapers: Guardian, Plymouth Herald) in promoting the Babylab research, discussing the topic of consonants and vowels whenever possible. Similarly, in France, the team has been visible on several TV broadcasts ("nuit des chercheurs", "les maternelles" on France5, AL Andreutti Chaine Encyclo). This year, because we are now working on another language development ESRC-funded project involving a collaboration with 5 British universities (to examine the differences between bilingual and monolingual development), we are planning to obtain more visibility in the media. Specifically in the next year we should organise an important dissemination operation thanks to our contacts amongst speech and language therapists; we also plan to disseminate our findings in education conferences to target researchers interested in learning strategies. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | The differing role of consonants and vowels in spoken word recognition : the effect of replaced versus transposed phonemes in English |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at the workshop Cognitive Modules and Interfaces, SISSA, Trieste, 18-19 September 2012. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |