Infants' Perception of the Intonation of Broad and Narrow Focus. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Butler, Joseph; Vigário, Marina; Frota, Sónia
• Is Part Of: Language learning and development. Volume 12:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 13
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: Language acquisition -- Research -- Periodicals; Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2015.1020376
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1547-5441

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Infants perceive intonation contrasts early in development in contrast to lexical stress but similarly to lexical pitch accent. Previous studies have mostly focused on pitch height/direction contrasts; however, languages use a variety of pitch features to signal meaning, including differences in pitch timing. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the prosodic contrast that cues the difference between all-new information (broad focus) and the highlighting of a particular word (narrow/contrastive focus) in European Portuguese (EP), and which has been described as having pitch timing as its key feature. Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, EP learning infants discriminated this contrast at 12 months but not at 7 months, deviating from previous findings of a precocious ability to perceive pitch distinctions. These results suggest different developmental trajectories of the perception of different prosodic contrasts, underlining the importance of the nature of the cues signalling a given contrast in a given language.