In:The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Pilar Prieto and Núria Esteve-Gibert
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 23] 2018
► pp. 79–100
Chapter 5The role of prosody in early speech segmentation and
word-referent mapping
Electrophysiological evidence
Maria Teixidó | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition,
Development and Educational Psychology
Clément François | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition,
Development and Educational Psychology | Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group (Bellvitge
Biomedical Research Institute) IDIBELL | Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu
(IRSJD)
Laura Bosch | University of Barcelona, Department of Cognition,
Development and Educational Psychology | Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu
(IRSJD) | Institut de Neurociències, University of
Barcelona
Claudia Männel | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain
Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology and Department of
Neurology | University of Leipzig, Medical Faculty, Clinic for
Cognitive Neurology
Published online: 24 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.23.05tei
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.23.05tei
This chapter reviews electrophysiological studies on early word-form
segmentation and word-referent mapping, with a focus on the role of
prosody in these early abilities closely related to vocabulary
acquisition. First, we will review event-related brain potential
(ERP) studies on word segmentation showing the impact of lexical
stress cues, infant-directed speech (IDS) properties and melodic
information on word-form extraction. Then, we will review research
on word-referent mapping, revealing the scarcity of ERP studies
specifically exploring the contribution of prosody in this domain.
Throughout the chapter we will emphasize how electrophysiological
methods offer a more fine-grained perspective of the brain processes
supporting segmentation and mapping abilities, often revealing
infants’ sensitivities to auditory input before overt responses from
behavioral methods can be obtained.
Article outline
- Introduction
- The method of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in language acquisition research
- Word segmentation
- ERP indicators of word segmentation
- Language-specific prosodic cues to word segmentation: lexical stress patterns
- Properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) supporting word segmentation: Prosodic emphasis on sentence-embedded words
- From IDS to song: How early can melodic cues contribute to word segmentation?
- Word-referent mapping
- ERP indicators of word-referent mapping
- The contribution of prosody to word-referent mapping: From behavioral to ERP studies
- Conclusions
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