Learning word order: early beginnings.
bootstrapping hypotheses
content words
functors
grammar
language acquisition
word order
Journal
Trends in cognitive sciences
ISSN: 1879-307X
Titre abrégé: Trends Cogn Sci
Pays: England
ID NLM: 9708669
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
09 2021
09 2021
Historique:
received:
18
11
2020
revised:
22
04
2021
accepted:
23
04
2021
pubmed:
31
5
2021
medline:
28
9
2021
entrez:
30
5
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
We examine the beginning of the acquisition of the relative order of function and content words, a fundamental but cross-linguistically highly variable aspect of grammar. A review of the existing empirical literature shows that infants as young as 8 months of age can distinguish between functors and content words, and have a rudimentary knowledge of the order of these two universal lexical categories in their native language. Furthermore, human adults and non-human animals such as rodents process the same linguistic information differently from infants, emphasizing the developmental relevance of bootstrapping function/content word order from surface cues available in the input. We discuss the implications of these findings for a synergistic view of language acquisition, considering how grammar acquisition interacts with word learning.
Identifiants
pubmed: 34052109
pii: S1364-6613(21)00121-2
doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.04.011
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Review
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
802-812Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Declaration of interests The authors have no interests to declare.