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Chapter 3. Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition

  • Anne Christophe , Séverine Millotte , Perrine Brusini und Elodie Cauvet
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Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems

Abstract

Infants acquiring language have to learn about the lexicon, the phonology, and the syntax of their native language, among others. For each of these domains, being able to rely on knowledge from the other domains would simplify the learner’s task. For instance, having access to words and their meaning should help infants to learn about syntax, but learning about the meaning of words would be greatly facilitated if infants had access to some aspects of syntactic structure (Gleitman 1990). This chapter focuses on how phrasal prosody and function words may interact during early acquisition. Experimental results show that infants have access to intermediate prosodic phrases (phonological phrases) during the first year of life, and use these to constrain lexical segmentation. In addition, by two years of age they can exploit function words to infer the syntactic category of unknown content words (nouns vs verbs) and guess their plausible meaning (object vs action). We speculate on how infants may build a partial syntactic structure, the ‘syntactic skeleton’, by relying on both phonological phrase boundaries and function words, and present adult results strengthening the plausibility of this hypothesis.

Abstract

Infants acquiring language have to learn about the lexicon, the phonology, and the syntax of their native language, among others. For each of these domains, being able to rely on knowledge from the other domains would simplify the learner’s task. For instance, having access to words and their meaning should help infants to learn about syntax, but learning about the meaning of words would be greatly facilitated if infants had access to some aspects of syntactic structure (Gleitman 1990). This chapter focuses on how phrasal prosody and function words may interact during early acquisition. Experimental results show that infants have access to intermediate prosodic phrases (phonological phrases) during the first year of life, and use these to constrain lexical segmentation. In addition, by two years of age they can exploit function words to infer the syntactic category of unknown content words (nouns vs verbs) and guess their plausible meaning (object vs action). We speculate on how infants may build a partial syntactic structure, the ‘syntactic skeleton’, by relying on both phonological phrase boundaries and function words, and present adult results strengthening the plausibility of this hypothesis.

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction. New perspectives in the study of first and second language acquisition 1
  4. Part I. Emergence and dynamics of language acquisition and disorders
  5. Chapter 1. A tale of two paradigms 17
  6. Chapter 2. Dynamic systems methods in the study of language acquisition 33
  7. Chapter 3. Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition 53
  8. Chapter 4. Language acquisition in developmental disorders 67
  9. Part II. First language acquisition
  10. Chapter 5. Language development in a cross-linguistic context 91
  11. Chapter 6. A typological approach to first language acquisition 109
  12. Chapter 7. Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition 125
  13. Chapter 8. On the importance of goals in child language 147
  14. Chapter 9. Promoting patients in narrative discourse 161
  15. Chapter 10. On-line grammaticality judgments 179
  16. Chapter 11. The expression of finiteness by L1 and L2 learners of Dutch, French, and German 205
  17. Part III. Bilingualism and second language acquisition
  18. Chapter 12. Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism 225
  19. Chapter 13. The development of person-number verbal morphology in different types of learners 249
  20. Chapter 14. Re-thinking the bilingual interactive-activation model from a developmental perspective (BIA-d) 267
  21. Chapter 15. Foreign language vocabulary learning 285
  22. Chapter 16. Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning 299
  23. Chapter 17. The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition and bilingualism 307
  24. Index of languages 323
  25. Index of subjects 325
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.52.05chr

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction. New perspectives in the study of first and second language acquisition 1
  4. Part I. Emergence and dynamics of language acquisition and disorders
  5. Chapter 1. A tale of two paradigms 17
  6. Chapter 2. Dynamic systems methods in the study of language acquisition 33
  7. Chapter 3. Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition 53
  8. Chapter 4. Language acquisition in developmental disorders 67
  9. Part II. First language acquisition
  10. Chapter 5. Language development in a cross-linguistic context 91
  11. Chapter 6. A typological approach to first language acquisition 109
  12. Chapter 7. Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition 125
  13. Chapter 8. On the importance of goals in child language 147
  14. Chapter 9. Promoting patients in narrative discourse 161
  15. Chapter 10. On-line grammaticality judgments 179
  16. Chapter 11. The expression of finiteness by L1 and L2 learners of Dutch, French, and German 205
  17. Part III. Bilingualism and second language acquisition
  18. Chapter 12. Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism 225
  19. Chapter 13. The development of person-number verbal morphology in different types of learners 249
  20. Chapter 14. Re-thinking the bilingual interactive-activation model from a developmental perspective (BIA-d) 267
  21. Chapter 15. Foreign language vocabulary learning 285
  22. Chapter 16. Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning 299
  23. Chapter 17. The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition and bilingualism 307
  24. Index of languages 323
  25. Index of subjects 325
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Heruntergeladen am 9.11.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/lald.52.05chr/html
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