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Function words constrain on-line recognition of nouns and verbs in French 18-month-olds
Auteur(s)
Cauvet, Elodie
Alves Limissuri, Rita
Millotte, Severine
Cabrol, Dominique
Christophe, Anne
Date de parution
2014
In
Language Learning and Development, Taylor & Francis, 2014/10/1/1-18
Résumé
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”/<i>the ball</i>) or a target verb (“je mange”/<i>I eat</i>). 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”/<i>a ball</i> or “on mange”/<i>they eat</i>), or by an incorrect function word, signaling a word from the other category (*“on balle”/<i>they ball</i> or *“une mange”/<i>a eat</i>). 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).
Identifiants
Type de publication
journal article
