title: Frequency and form as determinants of functor sensitivity in English-acquiring infants.
abstract: 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.
authors.forename: Rushen
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cutler
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Werker
authors.forename: Marisa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cruickshank
mesh_terms: 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