Do English-learning infants use syllable weight to determine stress?

A linguistic factor governing the assignment of English lexical stress is syllable weight. Heavy syllables which have either a long (tense) vowel or are closed with a consonant are heavy and automatically bear stress. Are infants sensitive to this aspect of the English stress system? Previous resear...

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Publicado en:Language & Speech Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 143 - 159
Autores principales: Turk AE, Jusczyk PW, Gerken L
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. Apr-Jun95
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Do English-learning infants use syllable weight to determine stress?
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          Turk AE
          Jusczyk PW
          Gerken L
        affil: Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LL
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        subj:
          Language Development In Infancy and Childhood
          Attention
          Two-Way Analysis of Variance
          Funding Source
          Word Lists
          Audiorecording
          T-Tests
          Time
          Comparative Studies
          Infant
          Male
          Female
          Human
          Infant: 1-23 months
          Male
          Female
      ab: A linguistic factor governing the assignment of English lexical stress is syllable weight. Heavy syllables which have either a long (tense) vowel or are closed with a consonant are heavy and automatically bear stress. Are infants sensitive to this aspect of the English stress system? Previous research by Jusczyk, Cutler, and Redanz (1993) showed that nine-month-olds listened longer to words exhibiting Strong-Weak than Weak-Strong stress pattern. However, they did not investigate the role of syllable weight in this preference. A series of three experiments explored infants' preference for Strong-Weak versus Weak-Strong lists, but systematically manipulated the syllable weight of Strong syllables. The results suggest that syllable weight is not a necessary component of the Strong-Weak preference observed in previous studies. Rather it appears that infants prefer both words that begin with a Strong syllable and Strong syllables that are heavy. Thus, the results suggest that sensitivity to surface linguistic patterns and the principles that underlie them may be independent in early language acquisition.
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    language: English
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