Early phonology revealed by international adoptees' birth language retention

被引:37
作者
Choi, Jiyoun [1 ,2 ,3 ,4 ]
Broersma, Mirjam [1 ,5 ]
Cutler, Anne [1 ,3 ,4 ]
机构
[1] Max Planck Inst Psycholinguist, NL-6500 AH Nijmegen, Netherlands
[2] Hanyang Univ, Hanyang Phonet & Psycholinguist Lab, Seoul 04763, South Korea
[3] Western Sydney Univ, MARCS Inst, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
[4] Western Sydney Univ, Australian Res Council, Ctr Excellence Dynam Language, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
[5] Radboud Univ Nijmegen, Ctr Language Studies, NL-6500 HD Nijmegen, Netherlands
基金
新加坡国家研究基金会; 澳大利亚研究理事会;
关键词
language acquisition; adoption; phonology; language memory; SPEECH-PERCEPTION; CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE; PHONETIC PERCEPTION; 2-DAY-OLD INFANTS; NATIVE LANGUAGE; 1ST LANGUAGE; MAINTENANCE; KNOWLEDGE; PATTERNS; CHILDREN;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.1706405114
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Until at least 6 mo of age, infants show good discrimination for familiar phonetic contrasts (i.e., those heard in the environmental language) and contrasts that are unfamiliar. Adult-like discrimination (significantly worse for nonnative than for native contrasts) appears only later, by 9-10 mo. This has been interpreted as indicating that infants have no knowledge of phonology until vocabulary development begins, after 6 mo of age. Recently, however, word recognition has been observed before age 6 mo, apparently decoupling the vocabulary and phonology acquisition processes. Here we show that phonological acquisition is also in progress before 6 mo of age. The evidence comes from retention of birth-language knowledge in international adoptees. In the largest ever such study, we recruited 29 adult Dutch speakers who had been adopted from Korea when young and had no conscious knowledge of Korean language at all. Half were adopted at age 3-5 mo (before native-specific discrimination develops) and half at 17 mo or older (after word learning has begun). In a short intensive training program, we observe that adoptees (compared with 29 matched controls) more rapidly learn tripartite Korean consonant distinctions without counterparts in their later-acquired Dutch, suggesting that the adoptees retained phonological knowledge about the Korean distinction. The advantage is equivalent for the younger-adopted and the older-adopted groups, and both groups not only acquire the tripartite distinction for the trained consonants but also generalize it to untrained consonants. Although infants younger than 6 mo can still discriminate unfamiliar phonetic distinctions, this finding indicates that native-language phonological knowledge is nonetheless being acquired at that age.
引用
收藏
页码:7307 / 7312
页数:6
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