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A crosslinguistic investigation of vowel formants in babbling*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies ,
Pierre Halle ,
Laurent Sagart  and
Catherine Durand
Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies*
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S. & E.H.E.S.S.Université Paris V
Pierre Halle
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S. & E.H.E.S.S.Université Paris V
Laurent Sagart
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S. & E.H.E.S.S.Université Paris V
Catherine Durand
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S. & E.H.E.S.S.Université Paris V
*
Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale, 54 Bld Raspail, 75006 Paris, France.
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Abstract

A cross-cultural investigation of the influence of target-language in babbling was carried out. 1047 vowels produced by twenty 10-month-old infants from Parisian French, London English, Hong Kong Cantonese and Algiers Arabic language backgrounds were recorded in the cities of origin and spectrally analysed. F1-F2 plots of these vowels were obtained for each subject and each language group. Statistical analyses provide evidence of differences between infants across language backgrounds. These differences parallel those found in adult speech in the corresponding languages. Implications of an early build-up of target-language-oriented production skills are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 1989 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

Part of this data was presented at the Fourth International Congress for the Study of Child Language and at the Eleventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. This research was supported by A.T.P. no. 955138 C.N.R.S. We would like to thank Saleha Chabani and D. Ben Sultana from Algiers, and J. Philips from the MRC Cognitive Development Unit, London, for their help. We are also grateful to the infants' parents who allowed us to conduct our recordings.

References

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