摘要：In Japanese, some homophones can be distinguished by their lexical pitch accentual patterns. When and how do Japanese children start using pitch accent information as a cue to lexical distinction? In this research, we taught children two novel labels as names for two different objects. One label was a novel homophone whose accentual pattern was different from a familiar word, and the other, a novel non-homophone of a familiar word. The children ’s learning of these two labels was tested by a picture fixation task and an object choice task. The two-year-old children learned the novel non-homophone; however, they failed to learn the novel homophone (Experiment 1). On the other hand, three- to five-year-old children succeeded in learning both the la- bels, and their performance improved with age (Experiment 2). These results suggest that Japanese children gradually develop the ability to use pitch accent information as a cue to lexical distinction in words throughout their childhood. The findings are discussed in terms of how Japanese children pay attention to pitch information in the learning of words.
