Based on White et al.'s 2008 study, you would predict that the 8.5-month-old baby of English-speaking parents would A) use the fact that [t] and [t^h] are in complementary distribution as a cue to learn that they are variants of the same phoneme. B) ignore the fact that /d/ and /t/ can appear in the same phonetic environments when learning which sounds represent different phonemes. C) be able to distinguish between words with voiced and unvoiced fricatives (e.g., zip, sip) but not between words with voiced and unvoiced stops (e.g., bony, pony). D) be able to predict the voicing of a fricative such as /z/ in zip based on the previous word presented before zip.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

White et al.'s 2008 study suggests that infants use the distributional properties of sounds in their ambient language to learn phonemic categories. The fact that [t] and [tʃ] (represented here as [t^h]) are in complementary distribution would be used by an 8.5-month-old baby to infer that they are allophones of the same phoneme in English.

Based on White Et Al