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Comparative Study
. 1989 Feb;16(1):1-17.
doi: 10.1017/s0305000900013404.

A crosslinguistic investigation of vowel formants in babbling

B De Boysson-Bardies, P Halle, L Sagart, C Durand
Comparative Study

A crosslinguistic investigation of vowel formants in babbling

B De Boysson-Bardies et al. J Child Lang. 1989 Feb.

Abstract

A cross-cultural investigation of the influence of target-language in babbling was carried out. 1047 vowels produced by twenty 10-month-old infants from Parisian French, London English, Hong Kong Cantonese and Algiers Arabic language backgrounds were recorded in the cities of origin and spectrally analysed. F1-F2 plots of these vowels were obtained for each subject and each language group. Statistical analyses provide evidence of differences between infants across language backgrounds. These differences parallel those found in adult speech in the corresponding languages. Implications of an early build-up of target-language-oriented production skills are discussed.

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