Frequency and form as determinants of functor sensitivity in English-acquiring infants.
High-frequency functors are arguably among the earliest perceived word forms and may assist extraction of initial vocabulary items. Canadian 11- and 8-month-olds were familiarized to pseudo-nouns following either a high-frequency functor the or a low-frequency functor her versus phonetically similar mispronunciations of each, kuh and ler, and then tested for recognition of the pseudo-nouns. A preceding the (but not kuh, her, ler) facilitated extraction of the pseudo-nouns for 11-month-olds; the is thus well-specified in form for these infants. However, both the and kuh (but not her-ler) facilitated segmentation for 8-month-olds, suggesting an initial underspecified representation of high-frequency functors.
Shi
Rushen
R
Cutler
Anne
A
Werker
Janet
J
Cruickshank
Marisa
M
D000367:Age Factors; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary