CONTRASTIVE PHONEMES AND DIFFERENT LEXEMES: A STUDY ON INFANTS' LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE SINGAPOREAN CONTEXT

Abstract

Extant literature on infants’ language acquisition is rich in studies on monolinguals, but a lot less abundant when it comes to multilinguals. To this end, the current study examined the linguistic development of Singaporean infants between the ages of 6 and 12 months with a specific focus on their performance in perceptual narrowing and associative word-learning. Contrary to prior studies, it was found that there were no significant results to suggest that these Singaporean infants were able to discriminate between two phonemes that are contrastive in their native languages, or between those that are non-contrastive in their native languages. It was postulated that this deviance from existing research could be due to exogenous factors or other cognitive factors. These Singaporean infants were also not observed to exhibit the associative word-learning potential that had otherwise been observed in their monolingual peers. Possible reasons for these findings were discussed.