Zheng Xiaobei, Ji Yinglin, Meng Xiangzhi
Research Centre for Language and Cognition, School of Foreign Languages, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Research Centre for Language and Cognition, School of Arts and Humanities, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jul 5;10:1512. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01512. eCollection 2019.
Studies have shown that infants from cultures with tone languages develop categorical perception of their native lexical tone before their first birthday, but few studies have explored whether, and when, they interpret the phonemic function of lexical tone in word learning. Two habituation-switch experiments were conducted to explore whether Mandarin-learning infants could exploit tonal cues during their word learning, and detect a change when the association of two word-object pairs was switched. In Experiment 1, two words were solely differentiated by their lexical tones (/fāi/ vs. /făi/), and Mandarin-learning infants failed to detect the switch of tones at 14 months, but succeeded at 18 months. In Experiment 2, two words were markedly distinct (/fāi/ vs. /bǒu/), and infants could detect the change of words as early as 14 months. The results indicate that infants may not refer to the lexical function of tone during their novel word learning until 18 months, even though infants from birth are able to distinguish the Tone 1 vs. Tone 3 contrast. Given that lexical tone is expressed by variations of the pitch contours, which are also related to intonation, infants' increasing knowledge of both tone and intonation may contribute to their misinterpretation of pitch contours in word learning at 14 months and, further, to their development of a sophisticated use of the phonemic function of lexical tone at 18 months of age.
研究表明，来自有声调语言文化的婴儿在一岁前就对其母语的词汇声调形成了范畴感知，但很少有研究探讨他们在词汇学习中是否以及何时会理解词汇声调的音位功能。我们进行了两项习惯化转换实验，以探究学习普通话的婴儿在词汇学习过程中是否能够利用声调线索，并在两个单词-物体对的关联发生转换时察觉到变化。在实验1中，两个单词仅通过其词汇声调来区分（/fāi/ 与 /făi/），学习普通话的婴儿在14个月时未能察觉到声调的转换，但在18个月时成功察觉到了。在实验2中，两个单词有明显区别（/fāi/ 与 /bǒu/），婴儿早在14个月时就能察觉到单词的变化。结果表明，婴儿在18个月之前的新单词学习过程中可能不会参考声调的词汇功能，尽管婴儿从出生起就能区分一声和三声的差异。鉴于词汇声调是由音高轮廓的变化来表达的，而音高轮廓也与语调有关，婴儿对声调和语调的不断了解可能导致他们在14个月时对单词学习中的音高轮廓产生误解，并进而在18个月大时发展出对词汇声调音位功能的复杂运用。
