PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF LARYNGEAL CONSTRICTION IN THEEARLY VOCALIZATIONS OF BAI AND ENGLISH INFANTS

摘要

This exploratory study investigates the relationship between infants' production of laryngeal voice quality in the first year of life and adult perceptions of these features in infant vocalizations, building on the work of the Infant Speech Acquisition (InSpA) team at the UVic (Benner et al., 2007; Esling et al., 2006) and the phonetic model provided by Esling (2005). In exploring this relationship, the study focuses on two languages that differ in their use of laryngeal voice quality: English, a Germanic language that uses voice quality non-contrastively in paralinguistic expression (Laver, 1980); and Bai, a Tibeto-Burman language that employs laryngeal voice quality distinctively at the syllabic level in its register tone system (Esling & Edmondson, 2002).