Beginnings of Prosodic Organization: Intonation and Duration Patterns of Disyllables Produced by Japanese and French Infants

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 children. These results are congruent with adult prosody in the two languages. They hold for both babbling and utterances identified as words. The disyllables produced by the Japanese infants reflect adult forms not only in terms of global intonation patterns, but also in terms of tone and duration characteristics at the lexical level.