The study of phonological development has important implications for the diagnosis, understanding, and treatment of developmental language disorders. It also has implications for the understanding of language patterns in stuttering, disfluency, aphasia, bilingualism, second language learning, and dementia. Recent computational advances now make it possible for researchers to link high quality digital recordings to phonological and phonetic transcriptions. Using standards such as Unicode, IPA, and XML, the CHILDES database project now provides universal Internet access to large corpora of transcripts linked to audio for students of both first and second language acquisition, along with a wide array of tools for lexical, syntactic, and discourse analysis. However, the CHILDES Project has not provided effective tools for phonological and phonetic analysis. PhonBank seeks to bridge this gap by providing a new database on phonological development with transcripts linked directly to audio records. It also provides a program that automates creation and analysis of these new corpora. The construction of this database is being be supported by a group of 60 researchers and their students who have agreed to contribute already collected and transcribed corpora from children learning 17 different languages. Subjects include bilingual children, normally-developing monolinguals, and children with language disorders. The data are being structured to facilitate testing of models regarding babbling universals, variant paths in segmental and prosodic development, markedness effects, prosodic context effects, segmentation patterns, statistical learning, frequency effects, interlanguage transfer, diagnosis of disability, stuttering patterns, disfluency patterns, and the effects of morphology and syntax.

Public Health Relevance

The study of phonological development has important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of developmental disorders such as articulatory impairment, specific language impairment, and stuttering. The tools and methods used in this area can also be used for the study of adult language disorders such as aphasia, apraxia, and dementia, as well as for understanding normal and abnormal patterns of second language learning.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01HD051698-06A1
Application #
8234545
Study Section
Language and Communication Study Section (LCOM)
Program Officer
Mccardle, Peggy D
Project Start
2005-09-01
Project End
2016-12-31
Budget Start
2012-01-05
Budget End
2012-12-31
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$292,839
Indirect Cost
$78,098
Name
Carnegie-Mellon University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
052184116
City
Pittsburgh
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
15213
MacWhinney, Brian; Fromm, Davida; Rose, Yvan et al. (2018) Fostering human rights through TalkBank. Int J Speech Lang Pathol 20:115-119
Byun, Tara McAllister; Rose, Yvan (2016) Analyzing Clinical Phonological Data Using Phon. Semin Speech Lang 37:85-105
Rose, Yvan; Stoel-Gammon, Carol (2015) Using PhonBank and Phon in studies of phonological development and disorders. Clin Linguist Phon 29:686-700
Arbib, Michael A; Bonaiuto, James J; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina et al. (2014) Action and language mechanisms in the brain: data, models and neuroinformatics. Neuroinformatics 12:209-25
MacWhinney, Brian (2014) Challenges facing COS development for aphasia. Aphasiology 28:1393-1395
Macwhinney, Brian (2014) What we have learned. J Child Lang 41 Suppl 1:124-31
Miyata, Susanne; MacWhinney, Brian; Otomo, Kiyoshi et al. (2013) Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese (DSSJ). First Lang 33:200-216
Andreu, Llorenç; Sanz-Torrent, Mònica; Legaz, Lucia Buil et al. (2012) Effect of verb argument structure on picture naming in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Int J Lang Commun Disord 47:637-53
Andreu, Llorenç; Sanz-Torrent, Monica; Guàrdia Olmos, Joan et al. (2011) Narrative comprehension and production in children with SLI: an eye movement study. Clin Linguist Phon 25:767-83
Rose, Yvan; Dos Santos, Christophe (2010) Stress Domain Effects in French Phonology and Phonological Development. Roman Linguist 2008 (2008) 2008:89-104

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