Language differentiation in multilingual Ghanaian infants and adults: The roles of rhythm, tone and intonation

• Applicant: Professorin Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 557720443

Multilingualism is very common around the world (e.g., Omane et al., 2024). However, the mechanisms allowing for becoming multilingual have hardly been explored. This project aims to explore the auditory mechanisms that enable infants to distinguish between multiple native languages, a critical prerequisite for multilingualism. Prior studies have shown that it is easier to discriminate between languages that are prosodically more dissimilar (see Gasparini et al., 2021). However, this research presents significant gaps that reflect the Western, Indo-European language bias in present research (see Kidd & Garcia, 2022): most studies have focused on monolingual populations, for whom the distinction between two languages is not relevant to everyday life. Moreover, despite the multitude of tone languages globally, no prior language discrimination studies have investigated tone-language-learning infants. This is problematic, as findings from non-tone language populations cannot be generalized, because they perceive prosody in a different way (e.g., Creel et al., 2018). Furthermore, most studies have, following Nazzi et al. (1998), focused on rhythm-based language discrimination, and ignored the potential role of pitch cues. We will therefore establish whether infants multilingually raised with tone and non-tone languages are able to distinguish between their languages using prosodic cues. Moreover, we will investigate whether pitch is sufficient as a cue for language discrimination, and whether this depends on similarities between the languages in rhythm, tone and intonation. Building on our research experience in Ghana (e.g., Omane et al., 2024), we will test multilingual Ghanaian adults and infants, who grow up with tone (Akan and Ewe) alongside non-tone languages (Ghanaian English, GhE). The project consists of three work packages (WPs). In WP1, we will build a corpus of productions of Akan, Ewe and GhE. Acoustic measurements will be applied to determine the prosodic differences in rhythm and pitch between the languages that multilingual infants in Ghana receive as input. Next, we will probe whether multilingual adult speakers of these languages can discriminate them using rhythmic and/or pitch cues. In WP2, we will investigate whether multilingual infants can discriminate between their native languages, and we will probe whether they discriminate between two native languages with similar tone systems as well as between a native tone and a native non-tone language. In WP3, we probe native language discrimination by multilingual infants if only pitch cues are available. The project expands language acquisition research in linguistic and cultural diversity and thus contributes to advancing theory building.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants