Bosch Laura, Sebastián-Gallés Núria
University of Barcelona, Spain.
Lang Speech. 2003;46(Pt 2-3):217-43. doi: 10.1177/00238309030460020801.
Behavioral studies have shown that while young infants can discriminate many different phonetic contrasts, a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of discrimination is found during the second semester of life, beginning earlier for vowels than for consonants. This age-related decline in sensitivity to perceive non-native contrasts has been generally attested in monolinguals. In order to analyze the impact of bilingual exposure on the perception of native-sound contrasts and the early building of language-specific contrastive categories, four-month-old and eight-month-old infants from Spanish monolingual, Catalan monolingual and Spanish-Catalan bilingual environments have been tested with a familiarization-preference procedure on a vowel contrast present only in Catalan: /e/-/epsilon/. As expected, younger infants were all able to perceive this contrast, independently of the language of exposure. However, by eight months, only infants from Catalan monolingual environments succeeded. Although the decline in sensitivity with the monolingual Spanish group was expected, the results with the bilingual group challenge the view that mere exposure is enough to maintain the capacity to perceive a contrast. An additional experiment at 12 months of age indicated that bilinguals finally regained discrimination. Together these results suggest a specific developmental pattern of perceptual reorganization in bilingual exposure.
行为研究表明，虽然年幼的婴儿能够区分许多不同的语音对比，但在生命的第二个学期会出现从通用语言到特定语言的辨别模式转变，元音的转变比辅音更早开始。这种与年龄相关的对非母语对比感知敏感性的下降在单语者中普遍得到证实。为了分析双语接触对母语语音对比感知和特定语言对比类别早期构建的影响，对来自西班牙语单语、加泰罗尼亚语单语和西班牙语 - 加泰罗尼亚语双语环境的4个月和8个月大的婴儿进行了测试，采用熟悉度 - 偏好程序，针对仅在加泰罗尼亚语中存在的元音对比：/e/-/epsilon/。正如预期的那样，较小的婴儿都能够感知这种对比，与所接触的语言无关。然而，到了8个月大时，只有来自加泰罗尼亚语单语环境的婴儿成功了。虽然西班牙语单语组敏感性下降在意料之中，但双语组的结果挑战了仅仅接触就足以维持感知对比能力的观点。一项针对12个月大婴儿的额外实验表明，双语者最终恢复了辨别能力。这些结果共同表明了双语接触中感知重组的特定发展模式。
