Marilyn Vihman
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1453653 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Marilyn Vihman |
| NOMBRES | Marilyn |
| APELLIDO | Vihman |
| FIRMA | VIHMAN M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8912-4840 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 44 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 134 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1969 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Babble and First Word Learning
Production and perception of speech develop in tandem during the first year of life, shaping one another in ways that have only recently been experimentally tested. Canonical babbling, which emerges robustly between 6 and 8 months across languages, is grounded in neuromotor maturation but also depends critically on audition. To account for how production experience might shape word learning, in 1993 Vihman proposed an ‘articulatory filter’ that s…
Building Linguistic Systems
This collection of papers is drawn from those presented in 2022, at a workshop on early phonological, lexical, and morphological development that my co-editors and I called to mark my retirement from the University of York, in 2020. We planned the workshop around the theme, “Building linguistic systems,” although that was not the main focus of all of the papers. Here, I review the reasons for orienting the workshop in that way, divide the nine pa…
Exploring Developmental Connections
Current research indicates likely developmental connections between the evolution of sleep patterns, motor skills progression, and the expansion of vocabulary. These connections are grounded in the well‐established role of sleep in memory and learning, as well as in the cascading effects on language development of the acquisition of new motor skills. However, no study has so far undertaken a comprehensive and systematic examination of these conne…
A Challenge to Whole-word Phonology? A Study of Japanese and Mandarin
Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually salient elements or those that align with their own vocal patterns. Here we ask whether the predicti…
Child phonological responses to variegation in adult words
Variegation – the presence of more than one supraglottal consonant per word – is a key challenge for children as they increase their expressive vocabulary toward the end of the single-word period. Here we consider the prosodic structures of target words and child forms in English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Mandarin to determine whether children learning these languages respond similarly to the challenge or instead differ in ways related to th…
Systematic Review of the Effects of Sleep on Memory and Word Learning in Infancy
This systematic review surveyed research on the associations between sleep and the memory processes involved in word learning in infancy. We found only 16 studies that addressed this topic directly, identifying associations between infant sleep and the memory processes, the identification of word forms in running speech, and the stabilization and generalization of new word form–meaning associations. Some studies investigated changes in brain resp…
How to learn more about how children learn languages
Kidd and Garcia demonstrate that the field of language acquisition must consider a more diverse range of languages. This is certainly needed, to gain a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of language acquisition; to achieve that, we need more longitudinal studies of several children per language, with (trained) fluent-user transcription and analysis. This could, for example, help to establish the size of the unit from which the child ext…
Robust effects of stress on early lexical representation
This study aims to elucidate the factors that affect the robustness of word form representations by exploring the relative influence of lexical stress and segmental identity (consonant vs. vowel) on infant word recognition. Our main question was which changes to the words may go unnoticed and which may lead the words to be unrecognizable. One‐hundred 11‐month‐old Hebrew‐learning infants were tested in two experiments using the Central Fixation Pr…
Vocal production and novel word learning in the first year
Previous studies have demonstrated an effect of early vocal production on infants’ speech processing and later vocabulary. This study focuses on the relationship between vocal production and new word learning. Thirty monolingual Italian-learning infants were recorded at about 11 months, to establish the extent of their consonant production. In parallel, the infants were trained on novel word–object pairs, two consisting of early learned consonant…
An order effect in English infants' discrimination of an Urdu affricate contrast
The role of geminates in infants' early word production and word-form recognition
Infants learning languages with long consonants, or geminates, have been found to ‘overselect’ and ‘overproduce’ these consonants in early words and also to commonly omit the word-initial consonant. A production study with thirty Italian children recorded at 1;3 and 1;9 strongly confirmed both of these tendencies. To test the hypothesis that it is the salience of the medial geminate that detracts attention from the initial consonant we conducted …
How salient are onomatopoeia in the early input? A prosodic analysis of infant-directed speech
Onomatopoeia are frequently identified amongst infants’ earliest words (Menn & Vihman, 2011), yet few authors have considered why this might be, and even fewer have explored this phenomenon empirically. Here we analyze mothers’ production of onomatopoeia in infant-directed speech (IDS) to provide an input-based perspective on these forms. Twelve mothers were recorded interacting with their 8-month-olds; onomatopoeic words (e.g. quack ) were compa…
In search of a learning model
While the four commentaries reflect a range of different perspectives on my target paper (Vihman, 2017), all basically accept the overall approach, which has been central to my research for 30 years. Each commentary proposes ways of deepening aspects of the ideas expressed or points out limitations and potential areas in which elaboration would be useful. This response takes up each commentary in turn
Learning words and learning sounds
Phonological development is sometimes seen as a process of learning sounds, or forming phonological categories, and then combining sounds to build words, with the evidence taken largely from studies demonstrating 'perceptual narrowing' in infant speech perception over the first year of life. In contrast, studies of early word production have long provided evidence that holistic word learning may precede the formation of phonological categories. I…
Infant Recognition of Hebrew Vocalic Word Patterns
The ability of infants to recognize phonotactic patterns in their native language is widely acknowledged. However, the specific ability of infants to recognize patterns created by nonadjacent vowels in words has seldom been investigated. In Semitic languages such as Hebrew, groups of multisyllabic words are identical in their nonadjacent vowel sequences and stress position but differ in the consonants interposed between the vowels. The goals of t…
When do infants begin recognizing familiar words in sentences
Previous studies have shown that by 11 but not by 10 months infants recognize words that have become familiar from everyday life independently of the experimental setting. This study explored the ability of 10-, 11-, and 12-month-old infants to recognize familiar words in sentential context, without experimental training. The headturn preference procedure was used to contrast passages containing words likely to be familiar to the infants with pas…
The Role of Production in Infant Word Learning
Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1)Articulatory filter: The hypothesis that children are influenced in noticing words in input speech by their resemblance to patterns they c…
The role of production practice in lexical and phonological development – a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's ‘Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children’
Carol Stoel-Gammon has made a real contribution in bringing together two fields that are not generally jointly addressed. Like Stoel-Gammon, we have long focused on individual differences in phonological development (e.g. Vihman, Ferguson & Elbert, 1986; Vihman, Boysson-Bardies, Durand & Sundberg, 1994; Keren-Portnoy, Majorano & Vihman, 2008). And like her, we have been closely concerned with the relationship between lexical and phonological lear…
From phonetics to phonology
This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 0 ; 9 or 0 ; 10 to 2 ; 0 – two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to t…
Prosody in production at the onset of word use
Phonological development
“Radical” templatic phonology is a template-based approach to segmental phonological representation. The central hypothesis is that the segmental phonological structure of words is represented as language-specific phonotactic templates, in the sense used in the developmental literature. Template-based organization of the early lexicon has been identified in children acquiring several different languages. It is the result of a usage-based abstract…
A radical approach to early mixed utterances
We take a radical approach to the organizing principles of emergent grammars in bilingual children: (1) We adopt the framework of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft, 2001) and (2) we undertake an extensive analysis of a wide range of utterances, covering the first six months of word combinations in two children. We address two questions: (1) Do predicates fail to match the language context more often than arguments? (2) What is the nature of the…
Getting started without a system
The common formulation which proposes that bilingual children enter into language production with either a single or a dual phonological system is questioned. Instead, it is suggested that implicit learning allows the child to develop considerable distributional knowledge about each of the languages to which he or she is exposed even before the first words are produced, but that explicit learning and use of particular words and phrases establishe…
More crosslinguistic evidence on fillers in the late single-word period
Peters' Note highlights the tight interconnection between phonological advances and the child's discovery of morphosyntactic structure. Taking a constructivist view, or assuming no advance knowledge of what linguistic principles or parameters may be expected, investigators like Peters & Menn (1993) or Veneziano & Sinclair (in press) come to the conclusion that children must begin with the surface regularities of language, only gradually familiari…
Cross-linguistic studies of early grammar
Adaptation to language
Differences among languages offer a way of studying the process of infant adaptation from broad initial capacities to language-specific phonetic production. We designed analyses of the distribution of consonantal place and manner categories in French, English, Japanese, and Swedish to determine (1) whether systematic differences can be found in the babbling and first words of infants from different language backgrounds, and, if so, (2) whether th…
From Babbling to Speech
Controversy exists over whether there is any connection between children's babbling and the development of the adult sound system. The classic proponent of the discontinuity school is Jakobson 1941/1968, who claimed that the pairing of sound and meaning drastically alters the child's sound system. Jakobson's arguments for discontinuity are here evaluated on the basis of data on the transition from babbling to speech in a single set of children re…
Phonological development
“Radical” templatic phonology is a template-based approach to segmental phonological representation. The central hypothesis is that the segmental phonological structure of words is represented as language-specific phonotactic templates, in the sense used in the developmental literature. Template-based organization of the early lexicon has been identified in children acquiring several different languages. It is the result of a usage-based abstract…
Learning words and learning sounds
Phonological development is sometimes seen as a process of learning sounds, or forming phonological categories, and then combining sounds to build words, with the evidence taken largely from studies demonstrating 'perceptual narrowing' in infant speech perception over the first year of life. In contrast, studies of early word production have long provided evidence that holistic word learning may precede the formation of phonological categories. I…
Variable paths to early word production
Beginnings of Prosodic Organization
In this study, some prosodic aspects of the disyllabic vocalizations (both babbling and words) produced by four French and four Japanese children of about 18 months of age, are examined. F 0 contour and vowel durations in disyllables are found to be clearly language-specific. For French infants, rising F 0 contours and final syllable lengthening are the rule, whereas falling F 0 contours and absence of final lengthening are the rule for Japanese …
Phonological Reorganization
Various types of phonological behavior have been identified as evidence of the systematization which is said to occur in the course of the transition from early, “whole-word” phonology to later, segment-based phonology. However, we have a limited understanding of the role of such early phonological behavior in facilitating — or initiating — the emergence of segmental phonology. Furthermore, there has been little acoustic verification of such chan…
External sources of individual differences? A cross-linguistic analysis of the phonetics of mothers' speech to 1-yr-old children
Wide individual differences in early word production characterize children learning the same language, but the role of specific adult input in this interchild variability is unknown. Sampling the speech of American, French, and Swedish mothers (5 in each language group) to their 1-year-old children, this study analyzed the distribution of consonantal categories, word length, and final consonants in running speech, content words, initial consonant…
Prosody in production at the onset of word use
An order effect in English infants' discrimination of an Urdu affricate contrast
The Role of Production in Infant Word Learning
Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1)Articulatory filter: The hypothesis that children are influenced in noticing words in input speech by their resemblance to patterns they c…
Prosodic phonology. The theory and its application to language acquisition and speech processing
A Developmental Perspective on Code-Switching Conversations between a Pair of Bilingual Siblings
interdependence, the optimal age question and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism 19:197-205. Dawe, Lloyd. 1982. The influence of a bilingual child's first language competence on reasoning in mathematics. Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University. Dawe, Lloyd. 1983. Bilingualism and mathematical reasoning ability in English as a second language. Educational Studies in Mathematics 14(4):325-353. Lambert, Wallace E. 1977. The effects …
Biological Foundations of Language . Eric B. Lenneberg
Loss of -n in Livonian
Phonology and the development of the lexicon
Various kinds of children's lexical errors, mostly based on similarity in sound, are presented and classified. At the earliest stage some children are found to pursue a HOMONYM STRATEGY, actively seeking to combine adult word-patterns to limit their output repertoire. The associations between words underlying these productive homonyms, together with perception-based errors, blends, and other word-substitutions, are compared with malapropisms from…
A note on children's lexical representations
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Linguistic Advance and Cognitive Style in Language Acquisition
Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1984), pp. 386-400
Language differentiation by the bilingual infant
This paper traces the process involved in the bilingual infant's gradual differentiation of his two languages, beginning with the acquisition of a dual lexicon. Word combination is at first based indiscriminately on this dual language source; function words account for a disproportionately large number of tokens used in mixed-language utterances. Universal principles of child syntax are at first applied; later, rules specific to each of the langu…
A Developmental Perspective on Code-Switching Conversations between a Pair of Bilingual Siblings
interdependence, the optimal age question and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism 19:197-205. Dawe, Lloyd. 1982. The influence of a bilingual child's first language competence on reasoning in mathematics. Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University. Dawe, Lloyd. 1983. Bilingualism and mathematical reasoning ability in English as a second language. Educational Studies in Mathematics 14(4):325-353. Lambert, Wallace E. 1977. The effects …
From Babbling to Speech
Controversy exists over whether there is any connection between children's babbling and the development of the adult sound system. The classic proponent of the discontinuity school is Jakobson 1941/1968, who claimed that the pairing of sound and meaning drastically alters the child's sound system. Jakobson's arguments for discontinuity are here evaluated on the basis of data on the transition from babbling to speech in a single set of children re…
More on language differentiation
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Phonological Reorganization
Various types of phonological behavior have been identified as evidence of the systematization which is said to occur in the course of the transition from early, “whole-word” phonology to later, segment-based phonology. However, we have a limited understanding of the role of such early phonological behavior in facilitating — or initiating — the emergence of segmental phonology. Furthermore, there has been little acoustic verification of such chan…
Prosodic phonology. The theory and its application to language acquisition and speech processing
Beginnings of Prosodic Organization
In this study, some prosodic aspects of the disyllabic vocalizations (both babbling and words) produced by four French and four Japanese children of about 18 months of age, are examined. F 0 contour and vowel durations in disyllables are found to be clearly language-specific. For French infants, rising F 0 contours and final syllable lengthening are the rule, whereas falling F 0 contours and absence of final lengthening are the rule for Japanese …
Adaptation to language
Differences among languages offer a way of studying the process of infant adaptation from broad initial capacities to language-specific phonetic production. We designed analyses of the distribution of consonantal place and manner categories in French, English, Japanese, and Swedish to determine (1) whether systematic differences can be found in the babbling and first words of infants from different language backgrounds, and, if so, (2) whether th…
Vocal motor schemes, variation and the production-perception link
Variable paths to early word production
When is a word a word
Although adult-based words co-occur in the period of transition to speech with a variety of non-word vocalizations, little attention has been given to the formidable problem of identifying these earliest words. This paper specifies explicit, maximally ‘inclusive’ identification procedures, with criteria based on both phonetic and contextual parameters. A formal system for evaluating phonetic match is suggested, as well as a set of child-derived f…
External sources of individual differences? A cross-linguistic analysis of the phonetics of mothers' speech to 1-yr-old children
Wide individual differences in early word production characterize children learning the same language, but the role of specific adult input in this interchild variability is unknown. Sampling the speech of American, French, and Swedish mothers (5 in each language group) to their 1-year-old children, this study analyzed the distribution of consonantal categories, word length, and final consonants in running speech, content words, initial consonant…
A Developmental Perspective on Codeswitching
This study addresses the broader question of social motivation for codeswitching (CS) as well as the more narrowly linguistic question of structural constraints, based on six recordings of conversations between a pair of bilingual siblings over a period of four years (ages 2;8 to 6;7 and 5;11 to 9;10). Unmarked CS, emblematic of the children's dual identity as members of an Estonian family and an English-speaking community, is found to characteri…
Cross-linguistic studies of early grammar
The transition to grammar in a bilingual child
Recent work on the transition into grammar in children acquiring English has pointed up the role of rote-learned "positional patterns," arguing that both nativist approaches based on Universal Grammar and constructivist approaches assuming semantic underpinnings are unnecessary or inadequate to account for the data. A close analysis of the first four months of word combinations recorded for an Estonian-English learning child suggests that meaning…
More crosslinguistic evidence on fillers in the late single-word period
Peters' Note highlights the tight interconnection between phonological advances and the child's discovery of morphosyntactic structure. Taking a constructivist view, or assuming no advance knowledge of what linguistic principles or parameters may be expected, investigators like Peters & Menn (1993) or Veneziano & Sinclair (in press) come to the conclusion that children must begin with the surface regularities of language, only gradually familiari…
Getting started without a system
The common formulation which proposes that bilingual children enter into language production with either a single or a dual phonological system is questioned. Instead, it is suggested that implicit learning allows the child to develop considerable distributional knowledge about each of the languages to which he or she is exposed even before the first words are produced, but that explicit learning and use of particular words and phrases establishe…
A radical approach to early mixed utterances
We take a radical approach to the organizing principles of emergent grammars in bilingual children: (1) We adopt the framework of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft, 2001) and (2) we undertake an extensive analysis of a wide range of utterances, covering the first six months of word combinations in two children. We address two questions: (1) Do predicates fail to match the language context more often than arguments? (2) What is the nature of the…
Phonological development
“Radical” templatic phonology is a template-based approach to segmental phonological representation. The central hypothesis is that the segmental phonological structure of words is represented as language-specific phonotactic templates, in the sense used in the developmental literature. Template-based organization of the early lexicon has been identified in children acquiring several different languages. It is the result of a usage-based abstract…
Prosody in production at the onset of word use
Linguistics (39 obras) · Psychology (39 obras) · Language Development and Disorders (35 obras) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (24 obras) · Computer Science (21 obras) · Reading and Literacy Development (21 obras) · Phonology (16 obras) · Philosophy (15 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (13 obras) · Cognitive psychology (10 obras)