The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese
Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin) develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English) also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to ab...
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doaj-0a76ebb28b794ed3b9df1d758a05ceca2020-11-24T22:45:11ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782018-01-01810.3389/fpsyg.2017.02354297370The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in JapaneseMitsuhiko Ota0Naoto Yamane1Reiko Mazuka2Reiko Mazuka3School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United KingdomLaboratory for Language Development, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, JapanLaboratory for Language Development, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, JapanDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United StatesLearners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin) develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English) also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational) features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months.http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02354/fullpitch accentintonationJapaneseinfantsword recognition |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Mitsuhiko Ota Naoto Yamane Reiko Mazuka Reiko Mazuka |
spellingShingle |
Mitsuhiko Ota Naoto Yamane Reiko Mazuka Reiko Mazuka The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese Frontiers in Psychology pitch accent intonation Japanese infants word recognition |
author_facet |
Mitsuhiko Ota Naoto Yamane Reiko Mazuka Reiko Mazuka |
author_sort |
Mitsuhiko Ota |
title |
The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese |
title_short |
The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese |
title_full |
The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese |
title_fullStr |
The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese |
title_sort |
effects of lexical pitch accent on infant word recognition in japanese |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
series |
Frontiers in Psychology |
issn |
1664-1078 |
publishDate |
2018-01-01 |
description |
Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin) develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English) also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational) features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months. |
topic |
pitch accent intonation Japanese infants word recognition |
url |
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02354/full |
work_keys_str_mv |
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