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ABSTRACT
How does phonological development differ in children exposed to one versus two variants of a single language? If children receive mixed evidence for a phonological contrast (i.e., one language variant in the environment maintains a contrast while another neutralizes it), will they treat this contrast as noncontrastive (i.e., as allophonic)? Or will they learn that only some speakers maintain the contrast and use this information to strategically optimize online word recognition? We examine these issues in two groups of Dutch 24-month-olds. One group had exposure to a single variant of Dutch that devoices all fricatives; the other had exposure to two Dutch variants, only one of which devoices all fricatives. We find that children who receive mixed evidence for a phonological contrast rapidly adapt their signal processing strategies to suit different speakers. Moreover, children routinely exposed to only one language variant demonstrate similar capabilities if given time to adapt to an unfamiliar variant.
Acknowledgments
All experiments were conducted in the Nijmegen Baby Research Center. We thank Angela Khadar and the rest of the Nijmegen Baby Research Center members, as well as all of the participating families for their assistance in the completion of this study. We thank Susanne Brouwer and Bertha van Heugten for their help with recordings. Portions of this work were presented at SRCD 2009 (Denver, Colorado), BUCLD 2011 (Boston, Massachusetts), and ICIS 2012 (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
Funding
The research was supported by the NWO Spinoza grant “Native and Non-native Listening” awarded to Anne Cutler. Additional funding was provided by an NWO (Dutch NSF) Rubicon grant to Suzanne V. H. van der Feest and SSHRC and NSERC Grants to Elizabeth K. Johnson.