Contributions of infant word learning to language development.
Infants learn the forms of words by listening to the speech they hear. Though little is known about the degree to which these forms are meaningful for young infants, the words still play a role in early language development. Words guide the infant to his or her first syntactic intuitions, aid in the development of the lexicon, and, it is proposed, may help infants learn phonetic categories.
Swingley
Daniel
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Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Walnut Street 302C, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. swingley@psych.upenn.edu
D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary