Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants

How to cite this article: Gervain, J and Werker, J.F. Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Nat. Commun. 4:1490 doi: 10.1038/ncomms2430 (2013).

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Abstract
Abstract Introduction Results Discussion Methods Additional information References Acknowledgements Author information Supplementary nformation Comments

A central problem in language acquisition is how children effortlessly acquire the grammar of their native language even though speech provides no direct information about underlying structure. This learning problem is even more challenging for dual language learners, yet bilingual infants master their mother tongues as efficiently as monolinguals do. Here we ask how bilingual infants succeed, investigating the particularly challenging task of learning two languages with conflicting word orders (English: eat an apple versus Japanese: ringo-wo taberu ‘apple.acc eat’). We show that 7-month-old bilinguals use the characteristic prosodic cues (pitch and duration) associated with different word orders to solve this problem. Thus, the complexity of bilingual acquisition is countered by bilinguals’ ability to exploit relevant cues. Moreover, the finding that perceptually available cues like prosody can bootstrap grammatical structure adds to our understanding of how and why infants acquire grammar so early and effortlessly.

Deux chercheuses ont démontré que les bébés évoluant dans un environnement bilingue pouvaient repérer les différences grammaticales de chacune de leur langue dès 7 mois.

Les bébés qui évoluent dans une famille bilingue pourraient, dès l’âge de 7 mois, différencier les spécificités grammaticales de chaque langue. C’est ce que révèle une étude publiée le 14 février dans la revue Nature Communications.
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Les bébés distinguent deux langues grâce à la prosodie
Les bébés s’adapteraient sans effort au bilinguisme
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