Acoustic/phonological saliency

[Marilyn Vihman]

>I have a question about this concept which seems to be bandied about 
>a lot in the language acquisition literature.  While there do seem 
>to be some empirical studies, for example of the amplitude of 
>particular phonemes compared to other phonemes, it also seems to be 
>a concept that many assume in studies - for example, assuming that 
>initial syllables or phonemes, or final ones, or stressed ones, will 
>be more salient to children learning language.  I am using this 
>concept in the field of literacy (spelling, in particular) and 
>although I can find many papers in spoken language acquisition which 
>draw on the concept of saliency to explain children's preferences 
>for particular words/sounds, I can't seem to find any discussion of 
>the concept per se, or measurements, either acoustic or behavioural, 
>of some aspects of salience.
>
>Does anyone have any ideas - is this lost in the mists of time, or 
>something that linguists take in with their mothers' milk and I 
>missed out in my neuroscience education? Or am I confusing two 
>different concepts?
>
For some experimental study relevant to the salience of word-initial 
C to infants acquiring either English or French (age 11 mos.) - given 
the contrasting accentual patterrns of the adult lgs., see Vihman, 
Nakai, DePaolis & Hallé, JMem&Lg 2004.

-marilyn
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