title: The segmentation of sub-lexical morphemes in english-learning 15-month-olds.
abstract: In most human languages, important components of linguistic structure are carried by affixes, also called bound morphemes. The affixes in a language comprise a relatively small but frequently occurring set of forms that surface as parts of words, but never occur without a stem. They combine productively with word stems and other grammatical entities in systematic and predictable ways. For example, the English suffix -ing occurs on verb stems, and in combination with a form of the auxiliary verb be, marks the verb with progressive aspect (e.g., was walking). In acquiring a language, learners must acquire rules of combination for affixes. However, prior to learning these combinatorial rules, learners are faced with discovering what the sub-lexical forms are over which the rules operate. That is, they have to discover the bound morphemes themselves. It is not known when English-learners begin to analyze words into morphological units. Previous research with learners of English found evidence that 18-month-olds have started to learn the combinatorial rules involving bound morphemes, and that 15-month-olds have not. However, it is not known whether 15-month-olds nevertheless represent the morphemes as distinct entities. This present study demonstrates that when 15-month-olds process words that end in -ing, they segment the suffix from the word, but they do not do so with endings that are not morphemes. Eight-month olds do not show this capacity. Thus, 15-month-olds have already started to identify bound morphemes and actively use them in processing speech.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA ; Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors: Toben H
authors: TH
authors: Mintz
keywords: infancy; language acquisition; lexicon; morphology; psycholinguistics; speech perception
references: Child Dev. 1993 Jun;64(3):675-87
references: 8339688
references: Dev Psychol. 2003 Jul;39(4):706-16
references: 12859124
references: J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Nov;128(5):EL223-8
references: 21110530
references: Dev Sci. 2009 Apr;12(3):419-25
references: 19371366
references: Cognition. 2005 Jul;96(3):233-62
references: 15996560
references: Cogn Psychol. 1999 Nov-Dec;39(3-4):159-207
references: 10631011
references: Cognition. 1998 Dec;69(2):105-34
references: 9894402
references: J Child Lang. 2005 May;32(2):249-68
references: 16045250
references: Infancy. 2007 Jul;12(1):1-29
references: 33412730
references: Cognition. 2011 Jul;120(1):119-35
references: 21497801
references: Child Dev. 2009 May-Jun;80(3):674-85
references: 19489896
references: Cognition. 2012 Jan;122(1):61-6
references: 21937033
references: Cogn Psychol. 1995 Aug;29(1):1-23
references: 7641524
references: J Psycholinguist Res. 1973 Sep;2(3):267-78
references: 24197869
references: PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e36399
references: 22649492
references: Science. 1996 Dec 13;274(5294):1926-8
references: 8943209
references: Infancy. 2010 Sep;15(5):517-533
references: 32693508
references: Dev Sci. 2010 Mar;13(2):339-45
references: 20136930
references: J Acoust Soc Am. 2006 Jun;119(6):EL61-7
references: 16838552