Dr. Thierry Nazzi (Université Paris Descartes)

[web]

Title: Learning (or not) the C-bias: new evidence from Cantonese

Date: Wednesday, 17 April 2019
Time: 17:00-18:30
Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Oktober 6 st. 7, room 101

Abstract:

Nespor et al. (2003) proposed a functional dissociation in language processing, according to which consonants would be given more weight than vowels in lexical processing, and vowels would be given more weight than consonants in prosodic/syntactic processing. Accordingly, we investigated the proposed consonant bias at the lexical level both from a developmental and a crosslinguistic perspective. Developmentally, lexically-related studies focusing on French-learning infants between 5 and 11 months suggest that these infants switch from an early (acoustic/phonetic) V-bias around 5/6 months of age to a functional (phonological) C-bias around 8/11 months. Crosslinguistically, the C-bias was found to be pervasive in French and Italian, while a different pattern was found in both English (late emergence of the C-bias) and Danish (observation of a V-bias). This variation suggests that the originally proposed C-bias is language-modulated. We will discuss these findings in relation to early phonological and (pre)lexical developments, and will present some recent and ongoing studies on these issues conducted on tone languages.

We are looking forward to see you.

Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events

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EDIT VITRAI

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