characteristics may cause onomatopoeia to gain attention more successfully. The infants’ present study considers the use of onomatopoeia in IDS, using acoustic analyses of mothers’ interactions with their infants to pinpoint the prosodic characteristics of onomatopoeia in relation to the rest of the input. The analysis will show that onomatopoeia are especially salient; through their limited context in use as a lexical feature of onomatopoeia ‘baby talk’, possess features that render them more salient in the infant input than those words which continue to develop as part of the adult language. These empirical findings prompt us to reconsider the theoretical perspectives posited by Werner and Kaplan (1963) and Imai and Kita (2014), and provide new evidence supporting an input-based approach to infants’ acquisition of onomatopoeia, which corresponds to findings from the wider developmental literature. The current study The goal of this study is to examine the nature of OW production in the early caregivers’ input, through an analysis of the relative salience of OWs in IDS. Based on a sample of parental input to 8-month-old infants, we analyse the prosodic features of onomatopoeic words (OWs, e.g. in relation to their equivalent conventional words (CWs, e.g. woof woof) Here we hypothesise that the status of OWs as effect them to be dog). ‘sound words’ leads prosodically more salient than non-onomatopoeic words. Features that are often cited in the literature as being typical of IDS will be examined (Brent & Siskind, 2001; Fernald & Kuhl, 1987; Soderstrom, 2007); these features are expected to be especially exaggerated in the production of onomatopoeic words. This includes the use of higher pitch and wider pitch range to imitate the sounds in question (for example, compared with as well as meow cat), longer vowels (as in or leading to extended word duration. The presence of moo baa) reduplication in OWs (Ferguson, 1983) is expected to increase the number of individual tokens of these forms in the input (for example, is often reduplicated while is not quack duck
characteristics may cause onomatopoeia to gain infants’ attention more successfully. The present study considers the use of onomatopoeia in IDS, using acoustic analyses of mothers’ interactions with their infants to pinpoint the prosodic characteristics of onomatopoeia in relation to the rest of the input. The analysis will show that onomatopoeia are especially salient; through their limited context in use as a lexical feature of ‘baby talk’, onomatopoeia possess features that render them more salient in the infant input than those words which continue to develop as part of the adult language. These empirical findings prompt us to reconsider the theoretical perspectives posited by Werner and Kaplan (1963) and Imai and Kita (2014), and provide new evidence supporting an input-based approach to infants’ acquisition of onomatopoeia, which corresponds to findings from the wider developmental literature. The current study The goal of this study is to examine the nature of caregivers’ OW production in the early input, through an analysis of the relative salience of OWs in IDS. Based on a sample of parental input to 8-month-old infants, we analyse the prosodic features of onomatopoeic words (OWs, e.g. woof woof) in relation to their equivalent conventional words (CWs, e.g. dog). Here we hypothesise that the status of OWs as ‘sound effect words’ leads them to be prosodically more salient than non-onomatopoeic words. Features that are often cited in the literature as being typical of IDS will be examined (Brent & Siskind, 2001; Fernald & Kuhl, 1987; Soderstrom, 2007); these features are expected to be especially exaggerated in the production of onomatopoeic words. This includes the use of higher pitch and wider pitch range to imitate the sounds in question (for example, meow compared with cat), as well as longer vowels (as in moo or baa) leading to extended word duration. The presence of reduplication in OWs (Ferguson, 1983) is expected to increase the number of individual tokens of these forms in the input (for example, quack is often reduplicated while duck is not
IDS_paper_revised_Jul_2016_final_for_PURE.docx