title: English-learning one- to two-year-olds do not show a consonant bias in word learning.
abstract: Following the proposal that consonants are more involved than vowels in coding the lexicon (Nespor, Peña & Mehler, 2003), an early lexical consonant bias was found from age 1;2 in French but an equal sensitivity to consonants and vowels from 1;0 to 2;0 in English. As different tasks were used in French and English, we sought to clarify this ambiguity by using an interactive word-learning study similar to that used in French, with British-English-learning toddlers aged 1;4 and 1;11. Children were taught two CVC labels differing on either a consonant or vowel and tested on their pairing of a third object named with one of the previously taught labels, or part of them. In concert with previous research on British-English toddlers, our results provided no evidence of a general consonant bias. The language-specific mechanisms explaining the differential status for consonants and vowels in lexical development are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Plymouth,UK.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Floccia
authors.affiliation: University Paris Descartes,France.
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nazzi
authors.affiliation: University of Plymouth,UK.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Delle Luche
authors.affiliation: University Paris Descartes,France.
authors.forename: Silvana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poltrock
authors.affiliation: University of Plymouth,UK.
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Goslin
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics