Becoming biased:

Early acquisition of the consonant bias in lexical

processing in French Thierry Nazzi Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité

Main research focus Interaction between - phonetic/phonological processing - lexical acquisition/processing - Do infants use detailed phonetic information in the process of acquiring new words, and accessing the lexicon? - Are all types of phonemes equally well processed at the lexical level: consonants versus vowels?

On consonants and vowels…

they differ on many aspects:

- Energy, duration, pitch

- Consonants are processed more categorically than vowels (Fry et al., 1962; Liberman et al., 1957)

- Consonants are more numerous than vowels in most of the languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996)

- In Semitic languages: lexical roots mostly carried by consonants (McCarthy, 1985)

- …

Division of labor hypothesis (Nespor, Peña & Mehler, 2003)

- Consonants Lexical: consonant bias (C-bias)

- Vowels Prosody & Syntax: vowel bias (V-bias)

21

ADULT experimental basis for C-bias van Ooijen (1996): - English (24 Cs / 17 Vs) Cutler, Sebastian-Galles, Soler-Vilageliu & van Ooijen (2000): - Dutch (19 Cs / 16 Vs) - Spanish (20 Cs / 5 Vs) Participants hear a non-word: kebra, and have to change it to a real word by substituting 1 phoneme: - vowel-change: cobra - consonant-change: zebra (press a button when they have thought of the word, then name it)

In all 3 languages: Faster answers and lower error rates for vowel-changes consonant bias

ADULT experimental basis for C-bias Bonatti, Peña, Nespor & Mehler (2005)

Artificial language paradigm: segmentation of pseudowords from fluent speech 3 families of words (lexical roots): - Constant consonants (p_r_g_, b_d_k_, m_l_t_): puragibidukapuregymalitubidokeporagymalytobydukemelitobydokaporegimelytu…

preference for words over part-words - Constant vowels (e.g., _õ_i_a, _o_ê_y, _u_e_ã): põkimamopêkypõrilakumepãmotêrytõkilakuletãlopêryrumetãlotêkytõrimarulepã…

no preference (in most conditions, see also Newport & Aslin, 2004) consonant bias

ADULT experimental basis for C-bias BEYOND speech. C/V asymmetry in reading (French adults) New, Araujo & Nazzi (2008) Procedure Lexical decision with masked priming (50 ms) Stimuli 4 x 16 low frequency words (CVCV, CVCVCV, VCVC, VCVCVC)

identity same consonants

same vowels

unrelated

CVCV judo jidé ruto rité

CVCVCV favori févuré tadodi tédudé

VCVC anis unos apir upor

VCVCVC opinel upanul ogigef ugaguf

Results - C-priming compared to both V- und unrelated - No priming for V vs. unrelated Effects not due to: Phonetic feature differences, letter frequency, neighborhood or bigram differences…

540

560

580

600

620

640

660

680

Identity Consonant-

related

Vowel-related UnrelatedR

Ts

CV structure VC structure All targets

C-bias in lexical processing: adult crosslinguistic data C-bias found cross-linguistically in adulthood (but Danish not tested)

What about its origin? 22

Languages Tasks

Van Ooijen (1996) English Word reconstruction

Cutler et al. (2000) Dutch & Spanish Word reconstruction

Bonatti et al. (2005) French Segmentation

Carreiras et al. (2007) Carreiras & Price (2008)

Spanish Lexical decision (written) + ERPs/ fMRI

Toro et al. (2008) Italian Segmentation

New et al. (2008) New & Nazzi (2014)

French Lexical decision (written)

Delle Luche et al. (2014) French & English Lexical decision (auditory)

Havy et al. (2014) French Word learning

Origin of the C-bias

Three hypotheses:

- Initial bias hypothesis (Nespor et al., 2003)

- Lexical bias hypothesis (Keidel et al., 2007)

- Acoustic/phonetic bias hypothesis (Floccia et al., 2014; Bouchon et al., 2015 in press; Poltrock & Nazzi, 2015)

23

Origin of the C-bias Predictions according to the hypotheses

27

Hypotheses Origin Cross-linguistic differences?

When?

Initial Innate No At birth

Lexical

Learned through experience with the native lexicon

Yes Around 12 months

Acoustic/phonetic Learned through phonological experience

Yes Before 12 months

Research questions

STEP 1: establishing the C-bias in early lexical processing in French

STEP 2: crosslinguistic extensions

- Is the expression of the bias dependent on the properties of the language in

acquisition?

STEP 3: origins of the bias

- origin of the bias? Is it linked to the acquisition of a large vocabulary? Or can it

be observed before the acquisition of a large vocabulary?

Directly compare Cs and Vs

Test different native languages

French: 17 consonants, 15 vowels

English: 24 consonants, 12 vowels

Danish: 16 consonants, 21+10 (stød) vowels

Test infants before 1 year of age

- Familiar word recognition at 11 months

- Name recognition at 5 months

- Word segmentation at 6 and 8 months

STEP 1 Establishing the C-bias in early lexical processing in French

Initial study: Name-based categorization task (Nazzi, 2005)

- Procedure

-- 6 each experimental trials per experiment

-- for each experimental trial:

3 objects, all visually different – 2 objects receive the same label

each object labeled 6 times

/pize/ /pize/ /tize/ or /pyze/

Name-based categorization task (Nazzi, 2005): “Can you give me the object that goes with this one?”

Experimental conditions

Nazzi (2005), Nazzi & New (2007)

-- Very different words (e.g., pize/mora)

-- Minimal contrasts

CONSONANTS VOWELS - Plosive consonants, word-initial - minimal contrast, initial syllable duk/guk duk/dk

pize/tize pize/pyze kepd/tepd kepd/kpd

- Plosive consonants, word-non-initial - 1+ features, initial syllable duk/dut duk/dk

pide/pige pize/paze kepd/ketd kepd/kupd

- Continuous consonants, word-initial - 1+ features, word-final position

muk/nuk da/di

lize/rize pize/pizu fepd/epd kepro/kepri

(note: all C contrasts are place contrasts)

Main results

Significant effect

of label similarity

CONSONANTS

- 20-month-olds can learn

new words that differ by

only one place feature,

(found for different word

structures, and for initial

and non-initial word positions)

VOWELS

- Performance at chance level at 20 months

Compatible with C-bias at the lexical level (Nespor et al., 2003).

Quickly accepted for publication by Jacques!

BUT…

0

50

100

phonetic conditions

% c

orr

ect

Different labels

C plos ini

C plos non-ini

C cont ini

V 1feature

V +1feature

V +1feature f inal

* * * *

First questions: Limitations for French

(1) found only with one task (name-based categorization task)

(2) found only at 20 months

(3) effect could be due to a word/syllable onset (rather than a consonant

advantage per se)?

(1) Setting up new word learning tasks

(2) Extensions to larger age span: 16 months to adulthood

- Simplified word learning task

removing the categorization component

- Conflict task between consonantal and vocalic constancy

tidé pidé pudé

- Computer controlled TOBII experiments

learning phase test phase

???

Simplified word learning task at 16 months Havy & Nazzi (2009)

Consonant/Vowel asymmetry at 16 months stimuli (all 1-feature contrasts) Experiment 1 Experiment 2

Consonant/Vowel asymmetry at 16 months simplified procedure CONSONANTS - Correct scores - Looking times (360-2000 ms) = LT Target – LT Distracter x 100

LT Target + LT Distracter

* * * *

Consonant/Vowel asymmetry at 16 months simplified procedure VOWELS - Correct scores - Looking times nothing significant

Consonant/Vowel asymmetry at 16 months Summary of results -- C/V asymmetry found at 16 months, similar to that found at 20 months - found with different word structures (CVC and CVCV) - found even when comparing Cs and Vs on the same feature (place) - found using both scores and looking times (with between-experiment baseline)

-- C/V asymmetry found using a new task that is a straightforward word learning task what about at a later age???

- found at 30-month-olds with conflict task - found at 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds and adults with tobii

C-bias in early lexical processing in French?

- Found using a range of procedures: all 4 variants of the word learning tasks

- Found using scores or looking times

- Independent of: --- lexical structure (mono- and bisyllabic words)

--- kind of consonants (plosive, fricative, nasal contrasts)

--- feature (Cs: place, voicing; Vs: place, height, rounding)

--- position (Cs in onset or coda; Vs in word-initial position)

Pervasive C-bias in early lexical processing in French

Language Authors Age Bias

French

Havy et al., 2011, 2014 3/4/5 years, adults C

Nazzi et al., 2009 30 months C

Nazzi, 2005; Nazzi & Bertoncini, 2009; Nazzi & Polka, in prep

20 months C

Havy & Nazzi, 2009 16 months C

Zesiger & Jöhr, 2014 14 months C

STEP 2

Crosslinguistic extensions

- English

- Danish

Extension to languages other than French

Choice of languages:

French: 17 consonants, 15 vowels

ENGLISH: 24 consonants, 12 vowels

C-bias in adults (Cutler et al., 2000; van Ooijen, 1996), but little evidence in

infancy, for known word recognition (Mani & Plunkett, 2007)

DANISH: - 16 consonants, 21+10 vowels (glottalization/stød of long vowels)

- many consonants are vocalic in final position

- both diachronic and synchronic trends towards reducing

consonants from stops to fricatives, to approximants to zero

“vocalic” language, reversed bias???

Study 1: C/V asymmetry at 16 months in ENGLISH

Floccia, Nazzi, delle Lucche & Goslin (2014)

Participants: English-learning 16-month-olds

Procedure: as in Havy & Nazzi (2009)

Stimuli: CVC words, all 1-feature contrasts

No C-bias

same above chance performance for consonants (62.2%) and vowels (62.5%)

Different from French

0

50

100

voicing place

Consonantal features

% S

co

res

ked / ged

noop/noob

teeb/keeb

cag/cad

0

50

100

height place

Vocalic features%

Sco

res

sib/seb

mart/mort

vab/vub

teep/toop

* *

Study 2. Relative weight of consonants and vowels in ENGLISH

Floccia et al. (2014); Nazzi et al. (2009)

Participants: English-learning 16-, 23- and 30-month-olds

Procedure: Conflict task, as in Nazzi et al. (2009)

Stimuli: CVC words, all 1-feature contrasts

- at chance level at 16 (53%) and 23 (50%) months

- above chance (56.5%, p = .046) at 30 months

a C-bias seems to emerge in English between 23 and 30 months, contrary

to French where it is already found by 16 months

what is the extent of the influence of the native language?

can the bias be reversed?

a good study case: DANISH

Consonant/Vowel asymmetry at 20 months, DANISH

Hojen & Nazzi (2015 in press)

Participants: Danish-learning 20-month-olds

Procedure: as in Havy & Nazzi (2009)

Stimuli

- CVC words, either 1- or 2-feature contrasts

- vowel contrast and consonant contrast in separate experiments

- vocalic use at 20 months

- NO consonant use at 20 months,

contrary to data on French and English

V-bias in Danish

*

SUMMARY Crosslinguistic summary

Variation in word-learning biases

Infants develop different biases, even for the same linguistic sub-domain (here,

word learning), across languages

Importance of testing infants learning tone languages

(as tones are mostly carried by vowels) 28

Language Authors Age Bias

French

Havy et al. (2011, 2014) 3/4/5 years, adults C

Nazzi et al. (2009) 30 months C

Nazzi (2005) 20 months C

Havy & Nazzi (2009) 16 months C

Zesiger & Jöhr (2014) 14 months C

Italian Hochmann et al. (2010) 12 months C

English

Nazzi et al. (2009) 30 months C

Mani & Plunkett (2007) 18/24 months No

15 months C

Mani & Plunkett (2010) 12 months No

Floccia et al. (2014) 14/23 months No

Danish Højen & Nazzi (2015 in press) 20 months V

Origin of the C-bias Predictions according to the hypotheses

27

Hypotheses Origin Cross-linguistic differences?

When?

Initial Innate No At birth

Lexical

Learned through experience with the native lexicon

Yes √ Around 12 months

Acoustic/phonetic Learned through phonological experience

Yes √ Before 12 months

STEP 3

Origins of the bias: the case of French

- familiar word recognition at 11 months - name recognition at 5 months - word segmentation at 6 and 8 months

1.a Baseline

Familiar word recognition at 11 months Poltrock & Nazzi (2015)

Baseline Experiment 1: familiar words vs. pseudowords

Familiarity preference (same as Hallé & Boysson-Bardies, 1994; Swingley, 2005; Vihmann et al., 2004)

- 24 French-learning 11-month-olds - procedure: HPP - C-bias prediction: familiar >> nonword

Exp. 2: Conflict task (C-MPs vs. V-MPs)

- 24 French-learning 11-month-olds

- procedure HPP

- C-bias prediction: V-MPs >> C-MPs

- vowel changes were considered as less

lexically relevant than consonant changes C-bias at 11 months

Name recognition at 5 months Bouchon, Floccia, Fux, Adda-Decker, & Nazzi (2015 in press)

Evidence that infants recognize their own name at 5 months

Mandel, Jusczyk & Pisoni (1995) in English

Replicated Nazzi, Plateau & Taffou (in prep) in French

How specific is the representation/processing of this very early word?

How would infants respond to

a CONSONANT change?

versus

a VOWEL change?

Specificity of name recognition at 5 months

Participants 4 x 30 French-learning 5-month-olds

Method HPP

Stimuli

2 words presented:

- the infant’s NAME

- a MISPRONOUNCIATION of their name

(one phonetic feature change)

Félix ! Vélix !

2 CONTROL experiments Same stimuli to infants with

different names

- Control C-change (30)

- Control V-change (30)

2 MAIN experiments - C-change (30)

- V-change (30)

Stimuli

Results

- No evidence of reaction to C-change

- Evidence of reaction to V-change (related to spectral distance)

V-bias at 5 months

Zictor

!

Victor

!

Alix ! Elix ! C change V change

Results

Moreover

- Vs more salient (longer, more energy) than Cs

- Cs were spectrally more distant than Vs

- Only reaction to V-changes were related to spectral distance

5-month-olds pay more attention only to more salient sounds?

Zictor

!

Victor

!

Alix ! Elix ! C change V change

Discussion

familiar word and name recognition at 5/11 months

- At 5 months, name recognition: V-bias

- At 11 months, familiar word recognition: C-bias

This suggests that the C-bias emerges in French

(in which it is consistently found from 11 months onward)

However:

- different words used at both ages/in the 2 experiments.

- own name could have a special status?

Explore again this potential developmental change, using the same

procedure/stimuli at different ages

Word form segmentation study at 6 and 8 months Nishibayashi, L.-L. & Nazzi, T. (in preparation)

- English-learning infants – 7.5/8 months: monosyllabic (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) and trochaic bisyllabic

(Jusczyk et al., 1999) words

– 10.5 months: iambic bisyllabic words (Jusczyk et al., 1999)

- French-learning infants – 6 months: monosyllabic words and embedded syllables (Goyet et al., 2013;

Gout, 2001; Nishibayashi et al., 2015 in press)

– 7.5/8 months: bisyllabic words (Polka & Sundara, 2011; Nazzi et al., 2014)

lapin

Segmentation task and mispronunciation

Familiarization Test

Passages misp control

C-misp

condition

Les DOUX (/du/) vivent heureux et toujours souriants.

La bonté se ressent chez ces doux russes. Un doux est

attendu à la réception. Des sages ont encensé ce doux

courageux. Certains doux sont écoutés pour leurs

conseils. Parfois ils ont pensé à devenir doux rouge.

GU ka

V-misp

condition

Les DOUX (/du/) vivent heureux et toujours souriants.

La bonté se ressent chez ces doux russes. Un doux est

attendu à la réception. Des sages ont encensé ce doux

courageux. Certains doux sont écoutés pour leurs

conseils. Parfois ils ont pensé à devenir doux rouge.

DO ka

Participants: 2x 20 French-learning 8-month-olds

Method: Headturn preference procedure

Ex. stimuli:

Predictions:

- Segmentation effect only if mispronunciation considered as “good enough” target

- C-bias prediction: larger segmentation effect in V-misp condition

Stimuli: 16 monosyllabic words

C-bias study

30

Vowel condition

Roundness /fã/ /fɔ̃/

Height /ti/ /te/

Place /py/ /pu/

/gø/ /go/

Consonant condition

Place /ta/ /ka/

/di/ /gi/

Voicing /py/ /by/

/ʒu/ /ʃu/

Results

Compatible with C-bias

However: - between-subject design

- CV words only (hence possible positional effect)

C-bias study

31

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Vowel Consonant

OR

IEN

TA

TIO

N T

IME

S (S

)

MP

Ctrl

**

Conflict task

Familiarization Test

Passages C-misp V-misp

Target wd 1

Les DOUX (/du/) vivent heureux et toujours souriants.

La bonté se ressent chez ces doux russes. Un doux est

attendu à la réception. Des sages ont encensé ce doux

courageux. Certains doux sont écoutés pour leurs

conseils. Parfois ils ont pensé à devenir doux rouge.

GU DO

Target wd 2

Le CORPS (/kor/) des marines est parvenu à la paix.

Ce cor tant attendu sonne la fin des combats. Des cors

en bronze produisent un son unique. Nous aimons le

timbre grave des cors d’antan. Les musiciens de

l’orchestre portent les cors dorés. Vous serez surpris

d’entendre ces cors magnifiques.

KOL KUR

Participants: - 2 x 24 French-learning 8-month-olds

- 2 x 24 French-learning 6-month-olds

Method: Headturn preference procedure

Ex. stimuli:

Stimuli

Conflict situation

32

CV words

Vowel Consonant

Roundness /fã/ /fɔ ̃/

Place

/fã/ /sã/

/sã/ /sɔ ̃/ /fɔ ̃/ /sɔ ̃/

Height /du/ /do/ /du/ /gu/

/gu/ /go/ /do/ /go/

Place

/vo/ /vø/

Voicing

/vo/ /fo/

/fo/ /fø/ /vø/ /fø/

/by/ /bu/ /by/ /py/

/py/ /pu/ /bu/ /pu/

CVC words

Vowel Consonant

Height

/kɔl/ /kul/

Place

/kɔl/ /kɔr/

/kɔr/ /kur/ /kul/ /kur/

/sik/ /sεk/ /sik/ /sit/

/sit/ /sεt/ /sεk/ /sεt/

Place

/rys/ /rus/

Voicing

/rys/ /ryz/

/ryz/ /ruz/ /rus/ /ruz/

/bag/ /bεg/ /bag/ /bak/

/bak/ /bεk/ /bεg/ /bεk/

33

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

6 months 8 months

Ori

en

tati

on

tim

es

(s)

V-misp

C-misp

*** *** *** ***

Results

- Same effect found for Cs in

both onsets or codas

- Given familiarity effects

at both 6 and 8

months, the present

findings establish:

–- a V-bias at 6 months

-- a C-bias at 8 months

Developmental change (from V-bias to C-bias) consistent with findings

on name and familiar word recognition

Consistent with J.R. Hochmann dissertation data in Italian

Origin of the C-bias Predictions according to the hypotheses

27

Hypotheses Origin Cross-linguistic differences?

When?

Initial Innate No At birth

Lexical

Learned through experience with the native lexicon

Yes √ Around 12 months

Acoustic/phonetic Learned through phonological experience

Yes √ Before 12

months √

Proposed developmental scenario

(1) Why an initial V-bias? - vowels are more salient than consonants (more energy, longer

durations)

- 6 months: period of phonological acquisition of native vowels

Moreover, data consistent with Bertoncini et al. (1988), Benavides-Varela

et al. (2012) on newborns

(2) Factors explaining the emergence of language-specific lexical

biases …

Proposed developmental scenario

(1) Why an initial V-bias? …

(2) Factors potentially explaining the emergence of language-

specific lexical biases - Consonants are more contrastive than vowels

(in many languages including French, but opposite might be true for Danish)

- 8 months: beginning of phonological acquisition of native vowels

(Hoonhorst et al., 2009)

( test other languages)

- Since 6 months, memorization of a prelexicon of word forms (so possible

effects from its structure)

Take home message

STEP 1: establishing the C-bias in lexical processing (for French):

STEP 2: crosslinguistic extensions

STEP 3: origins of the bias

Support for the acoustic/phonetic hypothesis

C-bias in French from 8 months to adulthood

C-bias is modulated by native language:

- pervasive C-bias in French

- No C-bias < 30mos in English

- V-bias at 20mos in Danish

- Tone languages???

Biases in infants before 1 year

- In French, from a V-bias (5/6 months) to a C-bias

(8/11 months)

Acknowledgments

Collaborators

LPP, Paris:

Josiane Bertoncini

Judit Gervain

Silvana Poltrock

Mélanie Havy, Léo-Lyuki Nishibayashi, Camillia Bouchon

Boris New, U. Savoie

Martine Adda-Decker, Thibaut Fux, U. Paris 3

Caroline Floccia, Claire delle Luche, Jeremy Goslin; U. Plymouth

Anders Hojen, Odense U.

Acknowledgments

All infants and their parents

CNRS – Université Paris Descartes

ANR-ESRC (ANR-09-FRBR-015) grant to ThN and C Floccia

ANR blanche (ANR-13-BSH2-0004) to ThN

LABEX EFL (ANR-10-LABX-0083)

and thank you/obrigado

Exp 1: Vowel-MP vs. Control 20 French-learning 8-month-olds

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Vowels Round./Height Place

Ori

en

tati

on

Tim

es

(s)

Type of feature changes

V-MP Control

* * p = .002 p = .09 p = .007

as predicted

Exp 2: Consonant-MP vs. Control 20 French-learning 8-month-olds

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Consonants Voicing Place

Ori

en

tati

on

Tim

es

(s)

Type of feature changes

C-MP Control

p = .68 p = .90 p = .55

as predicted