The phonetic and phonologic continuity in first language acquisition studies María Ramírez Cruz Máster en estudios fónicos CSIC-UIMP.

The phonetic and phonologic continuity

in first language acquisition studies

María Ramírez CruzMáster en estudios fónicos CSIC-UIMP

Research Presentation

D. K Oller (1980): Infant vocalizations have long been studied

on the assumption that their form reveal aspects of a developing capacity for speech. However, we can difference two sounds types:

- Vocalization types whose physical form differs too from mature linguistic utterances (non speech-like).

- Infant sounds in the second half of first year of life which are adult speech-like.

Research presentation

Aims

The purposes of this research respond to both different wide stages :

1. To analyze methaphonological features (Oller, 1980) between internal stages of non speech-like from 0-6 months, to show there is a continuity as it ‘s been demonstrated by some authors (Oller, 1980). The acoustic parameters to analyze are:

Research presentation

2. To analyze phonetic and prosody parameters from prelinguistic stages to the first linguistic stage (first words stage) and see if there is or not a lack of prosody continuity between these particular stages as it’s been postulated by some authors (Rory A. DePaolisa,,Marilyn M. Vihman and Sari Kunnari, 2008). The parameters to analyze are:

- Syllable duration.

- Intensity.

Research Presentation

Methodology

Longitudinal study of three Spanish children, two boys and a girl, with Spanish as a first language, since 1 months to one year and a half.

Weekly recordings of three children’s productions in different but constant familiar setting.

Only audio record not video (even video is more informative but also more complex).

Research Presentation

We recorder with a Marantz PMD 620 in PCDM or *wav formant . The sample frequency is 41KHz .

To export meaningful segments, syllabes and words for our acoustic and phonological study.

The validation of these categories by trained investigators (acoustic).

Compilation for creating three corpora (one per baby) with PHON software.

Non speech-like

The vocalizations continuity in the first half of year (Oller, 1980).

These occurs in a more frequent way until 6 months. The stages of these vocalizations can be defined

taking in account relative frequency of occurrence of sound types at each stage:

- The phonation stage (0-1 month): QRNs “Quasi- resonant Nuclei include normal phonation but not involve any contrast between opening an closure of the vocal tract and do not make use of the full potential of the vocal cavity to fuction as a resonatingf tube.

Non speech-like

- The GOO stage (2-4 month): QRN and a tendency for velar closure.

- The expansion stage (4-6 month): FRNs “Full Resonant Nuclei”, or vowel-like elements; SQ “Squealing” or a highly tense pithc register; Growling or very low-pitch; Yelling: high amplitude nondistresss vocalization; IES: ingressive-egressive sequences.

* Marginal babbling: consisting of sequences in which a closure of the vocal tract is opposed with an FRN, (Doyle, 1976, Oller, 1976).

Non speech-like

Specific methodology

These kinds of infant sounds that differ substantially from speech, are impossible to describe in terms of concrete phonology (plosive, fricative, high vowel…) so we need another type of phonology and this is Oller’s “metaphonology”, (Oller, 1980).

The “metaphonological features” to analyse are:

Non speech-like

- picht.

- phonation type (voice quality).

- resonance pattern.

- timing (syllabicity) .

- amplitude .

Selection criteria: Oller’s and Suneeti criteria in “Beyond ba-ba and gu-gu: challenges and strategies in coding infant vocalizations”, Behaviour Research Methods, Instruments and Conmputers, 2001.

Acoustic programs CSpeech (TF32 2000), PRAAT or Glotex for an oscillographic, spectographic, and F0 analysis to analyze Specific Aim the metaphonological control continuity between these stages .

Non speech-like

For the study of these stages it makes no sense to use PHON because:

- We study metaphonological objects which can be studied only with acoustic programs to let us describe them ( pitch, amplitude resonance).

- It’d be really hard, complex and usefulness to make corpora with these kind of sounds and between other reason is they have not phonological features but metaphonological so we can’t transcribe them with phonetic and phonologic symbols-diacritics of adult speech-like.

Non speech-like

Bibliography Murai, J. (1963): “The sounds of infants: their Phonemicization and

symbolization” Studia Phoonologica, 3, 18-34. Oller, D. K. (1976): “Infant vocalizations: a linguistic and speech

scientific perspective” Miniseminar for the American Speech and Hearing Association, Houston.

Oller, D. K (1991).: “Computational approaches to trasncription and analysis in child phonology”, Journal for computer users in speech and hearing, 7, 44-59

Doyle, W. J. (1976): “On the verge of meaningful speech”, Master’s Thesis, university of Washington, Seattle.

Zlatin, M. A. (1975): “Preliminary descriptive model of infant vocalization during the first 24 weeks: Primitive syllabification and phonetic exploratory behavior” Final Report, Project No. 3-4014, Grant NE-G00-3-0077.

Speech-like

The phonetic and prosody continuity between pre-linguistic stages and first linguist stage.

It’s true that the adult-like production of prosody is a difficult task for the prelinguistic infant, “requiring that their perceptual sensitivity to elements of prosody be translated into fine motor adjustments affecting fundamental frequency, timing, and intensity over more than one syllable” (Rory A. DePaolisa, Marilyn M. Vihmanb, Sari Kunnaric, 2008).

These authors see the first control of prosody when infants produce their first words. However, we’ll analyze

Speech-like

the syllabe structure, intensity and duration, as acoustic parameters of prosody features, before the first words stadium, in order to see if there is some kind of continuity between these stages.

The pre-linguistic stages to analyse are:

- Canonical Babbling (6-10 months):

- Rigid timing characteristics of syllabification .

- Reduplicated babbling: syllables with an important negative characteristic: its lack of substantial variation.

Speech-like

- Variegated Babbling (10-12):

- Different consonantal and vocalic elements.

- Contrasts of syllabic stress.

- Proto-words (from 10 months): “stable child phonetic forms with a referential meaning emerging from the context, not a symbolic one” (Menyuk and Menn, 1979). Others: “call sounds” (Werner and Kaplan 1984), “prewords” (Ferguson, 1978).

First linguistic stage

First words (from 12 months)

- Adult-word-based forms which reflect at least partial awareness or understanding of the adult meaning.

- Referential and symbolic meaning in a consistent phonetic form.

Prelinguistic-linguistic

Specific methodology To prove the last results which confirm how phonetic and

phonologic tendencies in early speech can be seen in babbling ( Oller, Doyle, Wieman, Ross 1976, 1980 and Locke, 1980) we need acoustic analysis of:

- Syllable duration.

- Intensity.

Selection criteria: Disyllables were considered candidates for inclusion if they were

separated from surrounding utterances by at least 400 ms (following Branigan, 1979).

Prelinguistic-linguistic

Disyllables separated by less than 400ms were included if there were clear prosodic breaks with the surrounding speech (such as a clear inhalation to start a new breath group).

Disyllables were included if they minimally contained two open (vocalic) phases separated by a closed (consonantal) phase.

Words were separated from babble following Vihman and McCune (1994).

Disyllables that showed excessive shifts ofregister, excessive vocal effort, creaky voice, or whisper were also excluded.

Prelinguistic-linguistic

For the analysis we need acoustic programs like CSpeech (TF32 2000), PRAAT or Glotex for an oscillographic, spectographic, to analyze the prosody control continuity between these stages .

PHON is not useful in the specific acoustic analysis but it can help in making projects, counting different segments and in others analysis like:

PHON utilities

1. To create three digitized corpora, one per child, following RETAHME methodology which allow us to record, transcribe and analyze spontaneous peech samples in the project of a computerized database with another investigators’s corpora.

PHON utilities (modificar)

2. It’s the only software which gives us phonetic transcription in an universal code, IPA, so once our corpora are ready and upload ed to PHON database, everyone in the world can access and study them (not whit DIME or PERLA).

PHON utilities

3. For baby’s speech transcriptions is an useful resource the fact that PHON configuration/tools let us have the phonetic transcription aligned with audio files and always with the option of modify phonetic transcription if in a new listening of the audio we think there is another transcription ([e]> [ɛ])

PHON utilities

4. Multi-blind mode is an important PHON function for our research.

The fact that different transcribers can listen the same fragment and then transcribe it without other transcriptions are available for them, give us different approximations to babbling phonetic segments.

PHON utilities

PHON utilities

Having different transcriptions of the same babbling fragment , facilitate the creation of a research group where everyone can transcribe what he considers and then the transcriptor manager by a systematic comparation can choose the best option after having debating.

PHON utilities

5. The Phon function of calculating inventories of different categories is highly useful to show us the degree of continuity in the universal categories of language development:

- phones.

- syllabes.

- stress patterns

It spares us the hard, tedious and time-consuming job of counting every phone, syllabe and stress pattern, stage by stage.

(linguistic annotation and syntax known by linguistic researches)

PHON utilities

Phone type:

PHON utilities

Syllabe type:

A phone's syllable constituent type can be specified

PHON utilities

Stress patterns:

- Unstressed vs stressed.

- Continuity of trocaic foot from babbling and in first words.

- Which type of syllabic structure has the stress (which phones and which possition)

PHON utilities

6. PHON search options are completely necessary for studying the degree of continuity in baby’s linguistic development.

PHON utilities

PHON searches (simple and complex queries) allow us to know which segments are more frequent in syllabe structure in every stage and in which position. Consequently we can set comparisons between stages.

- Data tiers searches

PHON utilities

- Syllabe types search show us the frequent syllabic structure in each stage.

PHON utilities

- PhonEx:

Segmtents:

{Coronal, Stop}: this will match all cornal stops transcribed in teh selected session.

Syllabe stress information searches

Example phonEx query ; Oral expression

{Vowel}:NoStress ; vowels in unstressed syllabes

Phon utilities

Aligned Phones - queries stress patterns and/or aligned phones on the Syllable Alignment tier, useful for comparing target and actual data.

PHON utilities

- Aligned Groups- queries two tiers of choice, useful for comparing aligned Word Groups on any tier.

- Harmony- compares target and actual utterances for instances of vowel or consonant harmony.

- Epenthesis.

PHOn utilities

- Deletion:

PHON utilities

7. Colourful syllabic alignment is useful for codified baby’s speech for two reasons:

To change the automatic syllabic alignment reflexing the baby’s actual syllabic alignment:

PHON improvements

1. PHON is not sufficient for narrow babies phonetic transcription, for example for babbling. To the difficulty we have to use acoustic programs to find out which segment the baby is articulating, (se suma) adding the lack of specific symbols for transcribed this particular phonetic.

PHON disadavantages

Even IPA PHON map has some combining diacritics which can help in babbling transcription:

PHON disadvantages

Specific symbols,as the specific for disordered speech of ExtIPA symbols for disordered speech (1997), are needed for babbling transcription (Oller specific for infraphonology:

PHON disadvantages

Another option is to include disordered symbols in PHON IPA map because some of them can be used for babies segments:

- (¯) for undeterminated sounds. - (V) for undeterminated vocalic sounds (the acoustical formants analysis shows is a vocalic sound but it doesn’t seem to a known vowel).

Thank you so much!

Acknowledgements:Special thanks to the entire GrEP group, the subjects, and especially to Phon and Yvan Rose for all of his continued help.

Bibliography

Boersma, P., & Weenink, D., (2005): Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 4.3.14), retrieved May, 26, 2005.

Cruttenden, A. (1970): “A phonetic study of babbling” British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 5, 110-118.

Davis, B. L., MacNeilage, P. F., Matyear, C. L., & Powell, J. K. (2000). Prosodic correlates of stress in babbling: An acoustical study.Child Development, 71, 1258–1270.

Halle´ , P. A., Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Beginnings of prosodic organization: Intonation and duration patterns of disyllables produced by Japanese and French infants. Language and Speech, 34, 299–318.

Levitt, A. G. (1993). The acquisition of prosody: Evidence from French- and English-learning infants. In B. de. Boysson-Bardies, S. de.Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. MacNeillage, & J. Morton (Eds.), Developmental neurocognition: Speech and face processing in the first year oflife (pp. 385–398). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Bibliography

McCarthy, D. (1952): “Organismic interpretation of infant vocalizations”, Child Development, 23, 273-80.

MacWhinney, B., & Rose, Y., (2007): “PHON” supported by grant RO1-HD051698 from NIH-NICHHD to Brian MacWhinney and Yvan Rose in CHILDES project, 1995.

Oller, D. K (1980): “The emergence of the sounds of speech in infancy” in Child phonology, ed. Yeni-Komshian, Grace H:, Kavanahg, James F., Ferguson, Charles, Academic Press, London, vol. 1.

Oller, D. K., Wieman, L. A., Doyle, W., and Ross, C. (1975): “Infant babbling and speech”, Journal of Child Language, 3, 1-11.

Robb, M. P., & Tyler, A. A. (1995). Durations of young children’s word and nonword vocalizations. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 98, 1348–1354

Bibliography

Rory A. DePaolisa,,Marilyn M. Vihmanb, Sari Kunnari (2008): ”Prosody in production at the onset of word use:A cross-linguistic study”, Journal of phonetics,36, pp. 406-422.

Vihman, M. M., & DePaolis, R. A. (1998). Perception and production in early vocal development: Evidence from the acquisition of accent. In M. C. Gruber, D. Higgins, K. S. Olson, & T. Wysocki (Eds.), Chicago Linguistic Society 34, Part 2: Papers from the panels (pp. 373–386). Chicago, IL: CLS.

Yeni-komshian, Grace H:, Kavahagh, James F., Ferguson, Charles, A. (1980): Child phonology, Academic Press, London, vol. 1.