Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 86. kötet (1984)

Tanulmányok - Gósy Mária: A beszédmegértés kezdetei [The Beginnings of Speech Perception] 23

A BESZÉDMEGÉRTÉS KEZDETEI 35 speech production and speech perception, which are in close interaction during the process of language acquisition (LAP), (ii) Speech perception is always more advanced than production of speech during LAP. (iii) Speech perception, as a procédure, is reinforced by extra- and paralinguistic factors of the communication, (iv) The function of extra- and paralinguistic factors in understanding is taken over more and more by linguistic forms. (v) Even in case the child is capable of perceiving and discriminating both segmental and suprasegmental levels of speech, this ability does not allow him yet a complète understanding of speech. Experiments suggest that neonates and infants hâve the capacity to discriminate various distinct types of speech sounds as well as différent sine sounds from each other. Furthermore, the results provide évidence of specific discrimination abilities of infants and young children. They can, for example, discriminate voice and voiceless stop consonants by the aid of the VOT of the consonants in question. Babies are able to identify the segmentai level of their mother tongue in frequently used expressions containing regulär linguistic contents at the âge of 7 months. The perceptual procédure of a one year old child can be interpreted as a strategy for global identification of complex speech signais. This means that the understanding of an utterance dépends simultaneously on several factors, such as segmental and suprasegmental levels, extra- and paralinguistie factors and the communicative situation. In further development, i.e. between the âges of 2 and 3 years, several degrees are to be observed. First, the child tries to understand an utterance by decoding one or two words or word combinations. Later on, two séries of potential représentations of the word are simultaneously stored, the one according to the pronunciation of the child and the other to that of the adult model. The rôle of thèse représentations in perception changes during the acquisition process. In the first period decoding follows the schemes of the adults' language just in case when decoding by the child's own représentations runs the risk of failure. In the last period, perception, as a procédure of identification, will exclusively be carried out on the basis of the adult's représentation. 'Perception base' as a fundamental degree of development occurs at the âge of 3 years. Global perception of speech can be characterized by the ability of differentiating of meanings. Phonological segmentation of sound séquences dépends on the fact, whether the phonème in question has already appeared in the child's speech production, has already phonological function. The author compares perceptual performance of children with normal hearing with that of hearing impaired ones between the âges of 3 and 6 years. The results suggest that there are différent types of the perception process depending on hearing performance. A six-year old child is able to analyze the sound séquences to a certain degree while understanding of speech at this âge is still quite différent from that of the adults. Männer and duration of the development of what is called the perception base might also dépend on the specific typological attributes of the language. The author's experiments carried out on 6 and 16 years old children led to the following conclusions, (i) Individual degrees of effectiveness of speech understanding at various stages of the LAP differ from each other in a considerably greater extent as was recently assumed. (ii) The degree of effectiveness of speech perception is in close relation with the ability of reading and writing (for the first class children) and of the acquisition of foreign languages (for the children of the âge of 16). (iii) Speech perception can be developed with best results in the first six years of life.