11.1987, Qs: Categorical Sound Discrimination, "End-focus"

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-1987. Wed Sep 20 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.1987, Qs: Categorical Sound Discrimination, "End-focus"

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1)
Date:  Tue, 19 Sep 2000 21:03:28 -0400
From:  Sean P McGrew <spmcgrew at juno.com>
Subject:  infant categorical sound discrimination

2)
Date:  Wed, 20 Sep 2000 10:28:30 +0200
From:  Denis Jamet <denis.jamet at libertysurf.fr>
Subject:  end-focus

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 19 Sep 2000 21:03:28 -0400
From:  Sean P McGrew <spmcgrew at juno.com>
Subject:  infant categorical sound discrimination

Our undergraduate language acquisition class
is looking for a solution to a seeming contradiction,
and our prof siezed the opportunity to introduce us
to the question-answering power of this
huge community of linguists, assigning me the job
of posting the question.

Our textbook is the fourth edition (1997) of Jean Berko
Gleason. In pages 82-83, citing a 1971 study
by Eimas et al., Gleason says that one-month old infants
show a categorical discrimination between /b/ and /p/,
 i.e. they distinguish the sounds based on different
voice onset time, but they "ignored similar-sized timing
differences involving different tokens within
the categories of /b/ or /p/."

He goes on to say that
infants less than three months old are able to discriminate
between similar-sounding segments from any language,
giving as examples studies by Trehub (1976) and
Werker and Tees (1984).

Here's our problem: given that languages vary
considerably in voicing onset, it seems that if
one-month old infants are already classing sounds
into mother-tongue phonemes, they shouldn't
exhibit the ability to discriminate differences
that are non-meaningful in their mother tongue.
For example, wouldn't an English-hearing infant
which correctly grouped all english /b/ and /p/
necessarily mis-class some French or Spanish
or Korean /p/ sounds?

Or is there some categorization that is really
universal?

Thanks for any insight or help.

Sean McGrew
University of NC, Chapel Hill


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 20 Sep 2000 10:28:30 +0200
From:  Denis Jamet <denis.jamet at libertysurf.fr>
Subject:  end-focus

Dear linguists,

A colleague of mine is wondering about the origin of the term
"end-focus"; who coined it for the first time (Halliday???), where?
Any suggestion will be greatly appreaciated.

Denis Jamet
Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
FRANCE


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LINGUIST List: Vol-11-1987