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Function words constrain on-line recognition of nouns and verbs in French 18-month-olds
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Abstract:
In this experiment using the conditioned head-turn procedure, 18-month-old French-learning toddlers were trained to respond to either a target noun (“la balle”/ the ball ) or a target verb (“je mange”/ I eat ). They were then tested on target word recognition in two syntactic contexts: the target word was preceded either by a correct function word (“une balle”/ a ball or “on mange”/ they eat ), or by an incorrect function word, signaling a word from the other category (*“on balle”/ they ball or *“une mange”/ a eat ). We showed that 18-month-olds exploit the syntactic context on-line to recognize the target word: verbs were recognized when preceded by a personal pronoun but not when preceded by a determiner and vice-versa for nouns. These results suggest that 18-month-olds already know noun and verb contexts. As a result, they might be able to exploit them to categorize unknown words and constrain their possible meaning (nouns typically refer to objects whereas verbs typically refer to actions).
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URL: http://doc.rero.ch/record/306373/files/Skoruppa_Katrin_-_Function_Words_Constraint_On-Line_Recognition_of_Verbs_20180109.pdf
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Language-specific stress perception by 9-month-old French and Spanish infants
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