Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:02:25.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reduplication facilitates early word segmentation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2017

MITSUHIKO OTA  and
BARBORA SKARABELA
MITSUHIKO OTA*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh, UK
BARBORA SKARABELA
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Mitsuhiko Ota, University of Edinburgh – Linguistics and English Language, Dugald Steward Building, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, United Kingdom. E-mail: mits@ling.ed.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study explores the possibility that early word segmentation is aided by infants’ tendency to segment words with repeated syllables (‘reduplication’). Twenty-four nine-month-olds were familiarized with passages containing one novel reduplicated word and one novel non-reduplicated word. Their central fixation times in response to these as well as new reduplicated and non-reduplicated words introduced at test showed that familiarized reduplicated words were segmented better than familiarized non-reduplicated words. These results demonstrate that infants are predisposed to segment words with repeated phonological elements, and suggest that register-specific words in infant-directed speech may have evolved in response to this learning bias.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 204 - 218
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J023825/1).

References

REFERENCES

Aslin, R. N., Woodward, J. Z., LaMendola, N. & Bever, T. G. (1996). Models of word segmentation in fluent maternal speech to infants. In Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. (eds), Signal to syntax: bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition, 117–34. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Boll-Avetisyan, N. & Kager, R. (2014). OCP-PLACE in speech segmentation. Language and Speech 57, 394–421.Google Scholar
Bortfeld, H., Morgan, J. L., Golinkoff, R. M. & Rathbun, K. (2005). Mommy and me: familiar names help launch babies into speech-stream segmentation. Psychological Science 16, 298–304.Google Scholar
Christiansen, M. H. & Ellefson, M. R. (2002). Linguistic adaptation without linguistic constraints: the role of sequential learning in language evolution. In Wray, A. (ed.), Transitions to language, 335–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Endress, A., Dehaene-Lambertz, G. & Mehler, J. (2007). Perceptual constraints and the learnability of simple grammars. Cognition 105, 577–614.Google Scholar
Endress, A. D., Nespor, M. & Mehler, J. (2009). Perceptual and memory constraints on language acquisition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, 348–53.Google Scholar
Ference, J. & Curtin, S. (2013). Attention to lexical stress and early vocabulary growth in 5-month-olds at risk for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116, 891–903.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1964). Baby talk in six languages. American Anthropologist 66, 103–14.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1978). Talking to children: a search for universals. In Greenberg, J., Ferguson, C. A. & Moravcsik, E. A. (eds), Universals of human language. Volume 1: method and theory, 203–24. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Floccia, C., Keren-Portnoy, T., DePaolis, R., Duffy, H., Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., White, L., Goslin, J. & Vihman, M. (2016). British English infants segment words only with exaggerated infant-directed speech stimuli. Cognition 148, 1–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerken, L., Dawson, C., Chatila, R. & Tenenbaum, J. (2015). Surprise! Infants consider possible bases of generalization for a single input example. Developmental Science, 18, 80–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gervain, J., Berent, I. & Werker, J. F. (2012). Binding at birth: the newborn brain detects identity relations and sequential position in speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24, 564–74.Google Scholar
Gervain, J., Macagno, F., Cogoi, S., Peña, M. & Mehler, J. (2008). The neonate brain detects speech structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 14222–27.Google Scholar
Gervain, J. & Werker, J. F. (2008). How infant speech perception contributes to language acquisition. Language and Linguistics Compass 2, 1149–70.Google Scholar
Gómez, R. L. & Gerken, L. (1999). Artificial grammar learning by 1-year-olds leads to specific and abstract knowledge. Cognition 70, 109–35.Google Scholar
Gómez, R. L., Gerken, L. & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (2000). The basis of transfer in artificial grammar learning. Memory & Cognition 28, 253–63.Google Scholar
Goodsitt, J. V., Morgan, J. L. & Kuhl, P. K. (1993). Perceptual strategies in prelingual speech segmentation. Journal of Child Language 20, 229–52.Google Scholar
Goodsitt, J. V., Morse, P. A., Ver Hoeve, J. N. & Cowan, N. (1984). Infant speech recognition in multisyllabic contexts. Child Development 55, 903–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, E. K. & Jusczyk, P. W. (2001). Word segmentation by 8-month-olds: when speech cues count more than statistics. Journal of Memory and Language 44, 548–67.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W. & Aslin, R. N. (1995). Infants’ detection of the sound patterns of words in fluent speech. Cognitive Psychology 29, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jusczyk, P. W., Hohne, E. A. & Bauman, A. (1999). Infants’ sensitivity to allophonic cues for word segmentation. Perception & Psychophysics 61, 1465–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jusczyk, P. W., Houston, D. M. & Newsome, M. (1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology 39, 159–207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirby, S. (2001). Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure–an iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 5, 102–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klatt, D. H. (1989). Review of selected models of speech perception. In Marslen-Wilson, W., (ed.), Lexical representation and process, 169–226. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G. F., Fernandes, K. J. & Johnson, S. P. (2007). Infant rule learning facilitated by speech. Psychological Science 18, 387–91.Google Scholar
Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. B. & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science 283, 77–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mattys, S. L., Jusczyk, P. W., Luce, P. A. & Morgan, J. L. (1999). Phonotactic and prosodic effects on word segmentation in infants. Cognitive Psychology 38, 465–94.Google Scholar
Maye, J., Werker, J. F. & Gerken, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition 82, B101–11.Google Scholar
Monaghan, P. & Zuidema, W. (2015). General purpose cognitive processing constraints and phonotactic properties of the vocabulary. Paper presented at the Workshop on the Evolution and Phonetic Capabilities: Causes, Constraints and Consequences. Retrieved from <https://ai.vub.ac.be/sites/default/files/proceedingsfinal.pdf#page=24>..>Google Scholar
Oakes, L. M., Sperka, D. J. & Cantrell, L. (2015). Habit 2. Unpublished software. Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis. Online: <habit.ucdavis.edu>..>Google Scholar
Onnis, L., Monaghan, P., Richmond, K. & Chater, N. (2005). Phonology impacts segmentation in online speech processing. Journal of Memory and Language 53, 225–37.Google Scholar
Ota, M. & Skarabela, B. (2016). Reduplicated words are easier to learn. Language Learning and Development 12, 380–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pozdniakov, K. & Segerer, G. (2007). Similar place avoidance: a statistical universal. Linguistic Typology 11, 307–48.Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N. & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saffran, J. R., Pollak, S. D., Seibel, R. L. & Shkolnik, A. (2007). Dog is a dog is a dog: infant rule learning is not specific to language. Cognition 105, 669–80.Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R. & Thiessen, E. D. (2003). Pattern induction by infant language learners. Developmental Psychology 39, 484–94.Google Scholar
Sandoval, M. & Gómez, R. L. (2016). Overriding the metrical bias with lexical information: English-learning 7·5-month-olds use mommy to segment iambic words. Language Learning and Development 12, 398–412.Google Scholar
Storkel, H. L. & Hoover, J. R. (2010). An online calculator to compute phonotactic probability and neighborhood density on the basis of child corpora of spoken American English. Behavior Research Methods 42, 497–506.Google Scholar
Thiessen, E. D. & Erickson, L. C. (2013). Discovering words in fluent speech: the contribution of two kinds of statistical information. Frontiers in Psychology 3.Google Scholar
Tincoff, R. & Jusczyk, P. W. (1999). Some beginnings of word comprehension in 6-month-olds. Psychological Science 10, 172–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tunney, R. J. & Altmann, G. (2001). Two modes of transfer in artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 27, 614–39.Google Scholar