Fernald A, Taeschner T, Dunn J, Papousek M, de Boysson-Bardies B, Fukui I
J Child Lang. 1989 Oct;16(3):477-501. doi: 10.1017/s0305000900010679.
This study compares the prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants in French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and American English. At every stage of data collection and analysis, standardized procedures were used to enhance the comparability across data sets that is essential for valid cross-language comparison of the prosodic features of parental speech. In each of the six language groups, five mothers and five fathers were recorded in semi-structured home observations while speaking to their infant aged 0;10-1;2 and to an adult. Speech samples were instrumentally analysed to measure seven prosodic parameters: mean fundamental frequency (f0), f0-minimum, f0-maximum, f0-range, f0-variability, utterance duration, and pause duration. Results showed cross-language consistency in the patterns of prosodic modification used in parental speech to infants. Across languages, both mothers and fathers used higher mean-f0, f0-minimum, and f0-maximum, greater f0-variability, shorter utterances, and longer pauses in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech. Mothers, but not fathers, used a wider f0-range in speech to infants. American English parents showed the most extreme prosodic modifications, differing from the other language groups in the extent of intonational exaggeration in speech to infants. These results reveal common patterns in caretaker's use of intonation across languages, which may function developmentally to regulate infant arousal and attention, to communicate affect, and to facilitate speech perception and language comprehension. In addition to providing evidence for possibly universal prosodic features of speech to infants, these results suggest that language-specific variations are also important, and that the findings of the numerous studies of early language input based on American English are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.
本研究比较了法语、意大利语、德语、日语、英式英语和美式英语中，母亲和父亲对处于语言前阶段婴儿说话时的韵律变化。在数据收集和分析的每个阶段，都采用了标准化程序，以提高数据集之间的可比性，这对于有效跨语言比较父母言语的韵律特征至关重要。在六个语言组中，分别记录了五位母亲和五位父亲在半结构化家庭观察中与他们0;10至1;2岁的婴儿以及一位成年人交谈时的情况。对语音样本进行了仪器分析，以测量七个韵律参数：平均基频（f0）、f0最小值、f0最大值、f0范围、f0变异性、话语时长和停顿时长。结果显示，父母对婴儿说话时所使用的韵律变化模式具有跨语言的一致性。在所有语言中，母亲和父亲在对婴儿说话时，相较于对成年人说话时，都使用了更高的平均f0、f0最小值和f0最大值，更大的f0变异性，更短的话语以及更长的停顿。母亲（而非父亲）在对婴儿说话时使用了更宽的f0范围。美式英语父母表现出最极端的韵律变化，在对婴儿说话时的语调夸张程度上与其他语言组不同。这些结果揭示了不同语言中照顾者语调使用的共同模式，这在发展过程中可能起到调节婴儿觉醒和注意力、传达情感以及促进语音感知和语言理解的作用。除了为可能普遍存在的对婴儿说话的韵律特征提供证据外，这些结果还表明特定语言的差异也很重要，并且基于美式英语的众多早期语言输入研究结果不一定能推广到其他文化中。
