Early development of abstract language knowledge: evidence from perception-production transfer of birth-language memory.

ABSTRACT: Children adopted early in life into another linguistic community typically forget their birth language but retain, unaware, relevant linguistic knowledge that may facilitate (re)learning of birth-language patterns. Understanding the nature of this knowledge can shed light on how language is acquired. Here, international adoptees from Korea with Dutch as their current language, and matched Dutch-native controls, provided speech production data on a Korean consonantal distinction unlike any Dutch distinctions, at the outset and end of an intensive perceptual training. The productions, elicited in a repetition task, were identified and rated by Korean listeners. Adoptees' production scores improved significantly more across the training period than control participants' scores, and, for adopt

SUBMITTER: Choi J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5319333 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature