Getting There Faster: 18‐ and 24‐Month‐Old Infants' Use of Function Words to Determine Reference

Child Development - Tập 77 Số 2 - Trang 325-338 - 2006
Yarden Kedar1, Marianella Casasola1, Barbara Lust1
1(Cornell University

Tóm tắt

Infants of 18 and 24 months acquiring English were tested in a preferential looking task on their ability to detect ungrammaticalities caused by manipulating a single function word in sentences. Infants heard grammatical sentences in which the determiner the preceded a target noun, as well as three ungrammatical conditions in which the was either dropped, replaced by a nonsense function word (el), or replaced by an alternate English function word (and). Both the 18‐ and 24‐month‐old infants oriented faster and more accurately to a visual target following grammatical sentences. The results suggest that by 18 months of age, infants use their knowledge of determiners in sentence computation and in establishing reference.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Abney S.(1987).The English Noun phrase in its sentential aspect. PhD Dissertation Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

10.1016/j.cognition.2004.06.009

Bowerman M., 1973, Early syntactic development: A cross‐linguistic study with special reference to Finnish

10.4159/harvard.9780674732469

Chomsky N., 1986, Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin and use

Chomsky N., 1995, The minimalist program for linguistic theory

Clark H., 1977, Psychology of language: An introduction to psycholinguistics

Cohen L. B., 2000, Habit 2000: A new program for testing infant perception and cognition (Version 2.2.5c) [Computer software]

10.3758/BF03203646

Egido C.(1983).The functional role of the closed class vocabulary in children's language processing. PhD Dissertation. MIT. Cambridge MA.

10.1111/1467-7687.00209

10.1016/0010-0285(91)90013-E

Foley C. Lust B. Battin D. Koehne A. &White K.(2000). On the acquisition of an indefinite determiner: Evidence for unselective binding. BUCLD 24 Proceedings pp. 286–298. Boston MA.

10.2307/1130023

10.1037/0012-1649.29.3.448

10.1037/0012-1649.26.2.204

Gleitman L., 1990, Structural sources of verb learning, Language Acquisition, 1, 1, 10.1207/s15327817la0101_2

10.1017/S030500090001271X

10.1075/lald.23.12gol

10.1017/S0305000900012083

Grimshaw J., 1981, The logical problem of language acquisition, 165

Hirsh‐Pasek K., 1996, Methods for assessing children's' syntax

Hirsh‐Pasek K., 1996, The origins of grammar, 123

10.1111/1467-7687.00261

10.1207/s15327078in0503_5

Hollich G.(2003).SuperCoder(Version 1.5) [Computer software]. Retrieved fromhttp://hincapie.psych.purdue.edu/Splitscreen/SuperCoder.dmg.

10.1207/s15327078in0701_8

10.2307/1127970

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179163.001.0001

Kedar Y(in preparation).Functional categories in early language acquisition: the case of determiners. Doctoral dissertation. Cornell University.

Landau B., 1985, Language and experience: evidence from the blind child

Lust B., Child language: Growth and acquisition, 10.1017/CBO9780511803413

10.1007/978-94-009-3387-3_12

Macnamara J. T., 1982, Names for things: A study of human learning

Maratsos M. P., 1980, Children's language, 127

Naigles L., 1993, Language and cognition: A developmental perspective

10.1017/S0305000900001604

Pinker S., 1982, The mental representation of grammatical relations, 53

Pinker S., 1984, Language learnability and language development

Radford A., 1990, Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax

10.1017/CBO9781139166706

10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00060-2

Schlesinger I. M., 1971, The ontogenesis of grammar, 63

Schlesinger I. M., The child's construction of language, 223

Shady M. E.(1996).Infants' sensitivity to function morphemes. Doctoral dissertation. The State University of New York University at Buffalo.

10.1017/S0305000998003730

10.1044/jslhr.4104.874

10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00047-5

10.2307/411663

Soderstrom M. Wexler K. &Jusczyk P. W.(2002).English‐learning toddlers' sensitivity to agreement morphology in receptive grammar. InB.Skarabela S.Fish &A. H. ‐J.Do(Eds.) Proceedings of the 26thAnnual Boston University Conference on Language Development Vol. 2 (pp. 643–652). Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.

10.1016/0010-0277(91)90051-5

10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00069-4

10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01462-5

Tomasello M., 2002, The evolution of language out of prelanguage

VanDer Velde M.(2003).Determinants et pronoms en neerlandais et en francais: syntaxe et acquisition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Thèse Université de Paris 8 Paris.

Zangl R. &Fernald A.(2003).Sensitivity to function word morphemes in online sentence processing: Developmental changes from 18 to 36 months. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development Boston MA.