Burnham Denis, Singh Leher, Mattock Karen, Woo Pei J, Kalashnikova Marina
The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jan 4;8:2190. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02190. eCollection 2017.
This study compared tone sensitivity in monolingual and bilingual infants in a novel word learning task. Tone language learning infants (Experiment 1, Mandarin monolingual; Experiment 2, Mandarin-English bilingual) were tested with Mandarin (native) or Thai (non-native) lexical tone pairs which contrasted static vs. dynamic (high vs. rising) tones or dynamic vs. dynamic (rising vs. falling) tones. Non-tone language, English-learning infants (Experiment 3) were tested on English intonational contrasts or the Mandarin or Thai tone contrasts. Monolingual Mandarin language infants were able to bind tones to novel words for the Mandarin High-Rising contrast, but not for the Mandarin Rising-Falling contrast; and they were insensitive to both the High-Rising and the Rising-Falling tone contrasts in Thai. Bilingual English-Mandarin infants were similar to the Mandarin monolinguals in that they were sensitive to the Mandarin High-Rising contrast and not to the Mandarin Rising-Falling contrast. However, unlike the Mandarin monolinguals, they were also sensitive to the High Rising contrast in Thai. Monolingual English learning infants were insensitive to all three types of contrasts (Mandarin, Thai, English), although they did respond differentially to tone-bearing vs. intonation-marked words. Findings suggest that infants' sensitivity to tones in word learning contexts depends heavily on tone properties, and that this influence is, in some cases, stronger than effects of language familiarity. Moreover, bilingual infants demonstrated greater phonological flexibility in tone interpretation.
本研究在一项新颖的单词学习任务中比较了单语和双语婴儿的声调敏感性。学习声调语言的婴儿（实验1，普通话单语；实验2，普通话-英语双语）接受了普通话（母语）或泰语（非母语）词汇声调对的测试，这些声调对对比了静态与动态（高与升）声调或动态与动态（升与降）声调。学习非声调语言英语的婴儿（实验3）接受了英语语调对比或普通话或泰语声调对比的测试。单语的普通话婴儿能够将声调与普通话高-升对比的新单词联系起来，但不能与普通话升-降对比联系起来；并且他们对泰语中的高-升和升-降声调对比都不敏感。双语的英语-普通话婴儿与普通话单语婴儿相似，他们对普通话高-升对比敏感，对普通话升-降对比不敏感。然而，与普通话单语婴儿不同的是，他们对泰语中的高-升对比也敏感。单语的英语学习婴儿对所有三种对比类型（普通话、泰语、英语）都不敏感，尽管他们对有声调的单词和有语调标记的单词有不同的反应。研究结果表明，婴儿在单词学习情境中对声调的敏感性在很大程度上取决于声调属性，并且在某些情况下，这种影响比语言熟悉度的影响更强。此外，双语婴儿在声调解释方面表现出更大的语音灵活性。
