TY  - GEN
ID  - cogprints869
UR  - http://cogprints.org/869/
A1  - Ramus, Franck
A1  - Nespor, Marina
A1  - Mehler, Jacques
Y1  - 1999///
N2  - Spoken languages have been classified by linguists according to their rhythmic properties, and psycholinguists have relied on this classification to account for infants’ capacity to discriminate languages. Although researchers have measured many speech signal properties, they have failed to identify reliable acoustic characteristics for language classes. This paper presents instrumental measurements based on a consonant/vowel segmentation for eight languages. The measurements suggest that intuitive rhythm types reflect specific phonological properties, which in turn are signaled by the acoustic/phonetic properties of speech. The data support the notion of rhythm classes and also allow the simulation of infant language discrimination, consistent with the hypothesis that newborns rely on a coarse segmentation of speech. A hypothesis is proposed regarding the role of rhythm perception in language acquisition.
PB  - Elsevier Science
KW  - speech rhythm
KW  -  phonetics
KW  -  consonant
KW  -  vowel
KW  -  language discrimination
KW  -  phonological bootstrapping
KW  -  speech segmentation
KW  -  syllable structure
KW  -  language acquisition
TI  - Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal
SP  - 265
AV  - public
EP  - 292
ER  -

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