Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:43:50.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A phonological, lexical, and phonetic analysis of the new words that young children imitate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2018

Tania S. Zamuner*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa
Andrea Thiessen*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa

Abstract

As children learn language, they spontaneously imitate the speech of those around them. This article investigates the new words that five children imitated between 1 and 2 years of age. Children were more likely to imitate new words as they aged and as their productive language developed. After controlling for age, children also were more likely to imitate new words that were shorter and with high neighborhood densities, and that contained sounds the children had previously produced accurately. Together, the findings demonstrate that both the patterns of the target words and children's productive abilities are predictors of children's imitative speech. This supports models of language development where there are influences stemming not only from phonological and lexical representations, but also from phonetic representations.

Résumé

Au cours de leur développement langagier, les enfants imitent spontanément le discours des gens qui les entourent. La présente recherche s'intéresse à certains mots nouveaux imités par cinq enfants âgés de 1 à 2 ans. Les enfants imitent plus souvent les mots nouveaux avec l'avancée en âge et avec le développement de leurs compétences en production. Après avoir tenu compte du facteur ‘âge’, les enfants sont également plus enclins à imiter des mots nouveaux courts et avec une haute densité de voisinage, et contenant des sons que les enfants avaient produits correctement auparavant. Les résultats montrent que les modèles lexicaux des mots cibles et les capacités productives des enfants peuvent prédire leur discours imitatif. Cela soutient les théories de développement linguistique selon lesquelles les influences proviennent non seulement des représentations phonologiques et lexicales, mais également des représentations phonétiques.

Type
Article
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by a SSHRC grant awarded to Zamuner. We thank Cynthia Core, Yvan Rose, Sophia Stevenson, Ana Sofia Niembro, Katherine Lam, and anonymous reviewers for helpful input and feedback.

References

de Bree, Elise, Zamuner, Tania S., and Wijnen, Frank. 2014. Neighbourhood densities in the vocabularies of Dutch children with a familial risk of dyslexia. In Where the principles fail. A festschrift for Wim Zonneveld on the occasion of his 64th birthday, ed. Kager, René, Grijzenhout, Janet, and Sebregts, Koen, 1728. Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.Google Scholar
Bruderer, Alison G., Danielson, D. Kyle, Kandhadai, Padmapriya, and Werker, Janet F.. 2015. Sensorimotor influences on speech perception in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(44): 1353113536.Google Scholar
Carlson, Matthew T., Sonderegger, Morgan, and Bane, Max. 2014. How children explore the phonological network in child-directed speech: A survival analysis of children's first word productions. Journal of Memory and Language 75: 159180.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1959. A review of B.F. Skinner's verbal behavior. Language 35(1): 2658.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 2007. Young children's uptake of new words in conversation. Language in Society 36(2): 157182.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V., and Wong, Andrew D-W.. 2002. Pragmatic directions about language use: Offers of words and relations. Language in Society 31(2): 181212.Google Scholar
Clark, Ruth. 1977. What's the use of imitation? Journal of Child Language 4(3): 341358.Google Scholar
Coady, Jeffry A., and Aslin, Richard N.. 2004. Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 89(3): 183213.Google Scholar
Curtin, Suzanne, and Zamuner, Tania S.. 2014. Understanding the developing sound system: Interactions between sounds and words. WIREs Cognitive Science 5(5): 589602.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine, Culbertson, Jennifer, and Alter, Jennifer. 2006. Word-minimality, epenthesis and coda licensing in the early acquisition of English. Language and Speech 49(2): 137173.Google Scholar
DePaolis, Rory A., Vihman, Marilyn M., and Keren-Portnoy, Tamar. 2011. Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants? Infant Behavior and Development 34(4): 590601.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles A., and Farwell, Carol B.. 1975. Words and sounds in early language acquisition. Language 51(2): 419439.Google Scholar
Fraser, Colin, Bellugi, Ursula, and Brown, Roger. 1963. Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, and production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 2(2): 121–35.Google Scholar
Goldinger, Stephen D. 1998. Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychological Review 105(2): 251279.Google Scholar
Gonzalez-Gomez, Nayeli, Poltrock, Silvana, and Nazzi, Thierry. 2013. A “bat” is easier to learn than a “tab”: Effects of relative phonotactic frequency on infant word learning. PloS ONE 8(3): e59601.Google Scholar
Hoff, Erika, Core, Cynthia, and Bridges, Kelly. 2008. Non-word repetition assesses phonological memory and is related to vocabulary development in 20-to 24-month-olds. Journal of Child Language 35(4): 903916.Google Scholar
Icht, Michal, and Mama, Yaniv. 2015. The production effect in memory: A prominent mnemonic in children. Journal of Child Language 42(5): 11021124.Google Scholar
Johnson, Elizabeth, and Zamuner, Tania S.. 2010. Using infant and toddler testing methods in language acquisition research. In Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition Research, ed. Blom, Elma and Unsworth, Sharon, 7394. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kaushanskaya, Margarita, and Yoo, Jeewon. 2011. Rehearsal effects in adult word learning. Language and Cognitive Processes 26(1): 121148.Google Scholar
Keren-Portnoy, Tamar, Vihman, Marilyn M., DePaolis, Rory A., Whitaker, Chris J., and Williams, Nicola M.. 2010. The role of vocal practice in constructing phonological memory. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 53(5): 12801293.Google Scholar
Kymissis, Effie, and Poulson, Claire L.. 1990. The history of imitation in learning theory: The language acquisition process. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 54(2): 113127.Google Scholar
Leonard, Laurence B., Schwartz, Richard G., Folger, M. Karen, Newhoff, Marilyn, and Wilcox, M. Jeanne. 1979. Children's imitation of lexical items. Child Development 50(1): 1927.Google Scholar
Lewis, Morris M. 1999. Infant speech. New York: Routledge. [1936].Google Scholar
Locke, John L. 1983. Phonological acquisition and change. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
MacLeod, Colin M., Gopie, Nigel, Hourihan, Kathleen L., Neary, Karen R., and Ozubko, Jason D.. 2010. The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36(3): 671685.Google Scholar
Macken, Marlys A. 1975. The acquisition of intervocalic consonants in Mexican Spanish: A cross-sectional study based on imitation data. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 9: 2942.Google Scholar
Macrae, Toby. 2013. Lexical and child-related factors in word variability and accuracy in infants. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 27(6–7): 497507.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. 3rd ed. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
McAllister Byun, Tara, and Tessier, Anne-Michelle. 2016. Motor influences on grammar in an emergentist model of phonology. Language and Linguistic Compass 10(9): 431452.Google Scholar
McAllister Byun, Tara, Inkelas, Sharon, and Rose, Yvan. 2016. The A-map model. Language 92(1): 141178.Google Scholar
Maekawa, Junko, and Storkel, Holly L.. 2006. Individual differences in the influence of phonological characteristics on expressive vocabulary development by young children. Journal of Child Language 33(3): 439459.Google Scholar
Masur, Elise Frank, and Eichorst, Doreen L.. 2002. Infants’ spontaneous imitation of novel versus familiar words: Relations to observational and maternal report measures of their lexicons. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 48(4): 405426.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, Andrew N. 2005. Imitation and other minds: The “Like Me” hypothesis. In Perspectives on imitation: From cognitive neuroscience to social science, ed. Hurley, Susan and Chater, Nick, 5577. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, Kurtz, Beth A., and Windsor, Jennifer. 2005. The influence of vocabulary size, phonotactic probability, and wordlikeness on nonword repetitions of children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 48(5): 10331047.Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, Edwards, Jan, and Beckman, Mary E.. 2011. Phonological representations in language acquisition: Climbing the ladder of abstraction. In The Oxford handbook of laboratory phonology, ed. Cohn, Abigail C., Fougeron, Cécile, and Huffman, Marie K., 288309. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Olmsted, David L. 1971. Out of the mouths of babes: Earliest stages in language learning. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Ota, Mitsuhiko, and Green, Sam J.. 2013. Input frequency and lexical variability in phonological development: A survival analysis of word-initial cluster production. Journal of Child Language 40(3): 539566.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2003. Phonetic diversity, statistical learning, and acquisition of phonology. Language and Speech 46(2–3): 115154.Google Scholar
Reed, Phil, and Wu, Yaqionq. 2013. Logistic regression for risk factor modelling in stuttering research. Journal of Fluency Disorders 38(2): 88101.Google Scholar
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Arbib, Michael A.. 1998. Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences 21(5): 188194.Google Scholar
Rose, Yvan, and MacWhinney, Brian. 2014. The PhonBank project: Data and software-assisted methods for the study of phonology and phonological development. In The Oxford handbook of corpus phonology, ed. Durand, Jacques, Gut, Ulrike, and Kristoffersen, Gjert, 308401. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Yvan, MacWhinney, Brian, Byrne, Rodrigue, Hedlund, Gregory, Maddocks, Keith, O'Brien, Philip, and Wareham, Todd. 2006. Introducing Phon: A software solution for the study of phonological acquisition. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. Bamman, David, Magnitskaia, Tatiana, and Zaller, Colleen, 489500. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Rvachew, Susan. 1994. Speech perception training can facilitate sound production learning. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37(2): 347357.Google Scholar
Saffran, Jenny R., and Estes, Katharine Graf. 2006. Mapping sound to meaning: Connections between learning about sounds and learning about words. Advances in Child Development and Behaviour 34: 138.Google Scholar
Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1988. Private speech: Evidence for second language learning strategies during the ‘silent period’. Journal of Child Language 15(3): 567590.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Richard G., and Leonard, Laurence B.. 1982. Do children pick and choose? An examination of phonological selection and avoidance in early lexical acquisition. Journal of Child Language 9(2): 319336.Google Scholar
Skinner, B. F. 1957. Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Smit, Ann Bosma, Hand, Linda, Freilinger, J. Joseph, Bernthal, John E., and Bird, Ann. 1990. The Iowa articulation norms project and its Nebraska replication. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 55(4): 779798.Google Scholar
Snow, Catherine E. 1989. Imitativeness: A trait or a skill? In The many faces of imitation, ed. Speidel, Gisela and Nelson, Keith, 7390. New York: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Sosa, Anna V., and Stoel-Gammon, Carol. 2012. Lexical and phonological effects in early word production. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 55(2): 596608.Google Scholar
Sosa, Anna V., and Bybee, Joan L.. 2008. A cognitive approach to clinical phonology. In The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics, ed. Ball, Martin J., 480490. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Speidel, Gisela E., and Nelson, Keith E., eds. 1989. The many faces of imitation in language learning. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, Carol. 1998. Sounds and words in early language acquisition: The relationship between lexical and phonological development. In Exploring the speech–language connection, ed. Paul, Rhea, 2552. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, Carol. 2011. Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children. Journal of Child Language 38(1): 134.Google Scholar
Stokes, Stephanie F. 2010. Neighborhood density and word frequency predict vocabulary size in toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 53(3): 670683.Google Scholar
Storkel, Holly L. 2004. Do children acquire dense neighborhoods? An investigation of similarity neighborhoods in lexical acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics 25(2): 201221.Google Scholar
Storkel, Holly L. 2006. Do children still pick and choose? The relationship between phonological knowledge and lexical acquisition beyond 50 words. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 20(7–8): 523529.Google Scholar
Storkel, Holly L. 2009. Developmental differences in the effects of phonological, lexical, and semantic variables on word learning by infants. Journal of Child Language 36(2): 291321.Google Scholar
Storkel, Holly L., and Hoover, Jill R.. 2010. An online calculator to compute phonotactic probability and neighborhood density on the basis of child corpora of spoken American English. Behavior Research Methods 42: 497506.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M. 1993. Variable paths to early word production. Journal of Phonetics 21(1): 6182.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M. 2002. The role of mirror neurons in the ontogeny of speech. In Mirror neurons and the evolution of brain and language, ed. Stamenov, Maksim, and Gallese, Vittorio, 305314. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M. 2009. Word learning and the origins of phonological system. In Language acquisition, ed. Foster-Cohen, Susan, 1539. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M. 2017. Learning words and learning sounds: Advances in language development. British Journal of Psychology 108(1): 127.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M., DePaolis, Rory A., and Keren-Portnoy, Tamar. 2014. The role of production in infant word learning. Language Learning 64(1): 121140.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M., DePaolis, Rory A., and Keren-Portnoy, Tamar. 2016. Babbling and words: A dynamic systems perspective on phonological development. In The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, ed. Bavin, Edith L., and Naigles, Letitia R., 207228. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn M., Macken, Marlys A., Miller, Ruth, Simmons, Hazel, and Miller, Jim. 1985. From babbling to speech: A re-assessment of the continuity issue. Language 61(2): 397445.Google Scholar
Werker, Janet F., and Curtin, Suzanne. 2005. PRIMIR: A developmental framework of infant speech processing. Language Learning and Development 1(2): 197234.Google Scholar
Yeung, H. Henny, and Werker, Janet F.. 2013. Lip movements affect infants’ audiovisual speech perception. Psychological Science 24(5): 603612.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S. 2009a. Phonotactic probabilities at the onset of language development: Speech production and word position. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52(1): 4960.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S. 2009b. The structure and nature of phonological neighbourhoods in children's early lexicons. Journal of Child Language 36(1): 321.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., Gerken, LouAnn, and Hammond, Michael. 2004. Phonotactic probabilities in young children's speech production. Journal of Child Language 31(3): 515536.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., and Kharlamov, Viktor. 2016. Phonotactics and syllable structure. In Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics, ed. Lidz, Jeffrey, Synder, William, and Pater, Joe, 2742. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., Morin-Lessard, Elizabeth, Strahm, Stephanie, and Page, Michael P.A.. 2015. Developmental differences in the effect of production on word-learning. Paper presented at the International Child Phonology Conference, St. John's, Newfoundland.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., Strahm, Stephanie, Morin-Lessard, Elizabeth, and Page, Michael P.A.. In press. Reverse production effect: children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced. Developmental Science.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., Yeung, Henny H., and Dumos, Myriam. 2017. The many facets of speech production and its complex effects on phonological processing. British Journal of Psychology 108(1): 3739.Google Scholar
Zamuner, Tania S., Morin-Lessard, Elizabeth, Strahm, Stephanie, and Page, Michael P.A.. 2016. Spoken word recognition of novel words, either produced or only heard during training. Journal of Memory and Language 89: 5567.Google Scholar