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Vihman, Marilyn May; Ota, Mitsuhiko; Keren-Portnoy, Tamar; Choo, Rui Qi; Lou, Shanshan – Language Learning and Development, 2023
Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually…
Descriptors: Phonology, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Contrastive Linguistics
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Canault, Mélanie; Yamaguchi, Naomi; Kern, Sophie – Language Learning and Development, 2023
Cross-linguistic studies describing the syllabic structures of babbling productions agree on the high prevalence of the CV structure, but few have addressed the other types of syllables emerging during this pre-linguistic stage. However, studying the evolution of the distribution of syllabic structures during babbling would make it possible to…
Descriptors: French, Syllables, Language Acquisition, Child Language
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Janna B. Oetting – Language Learning and Development, 2024
Shin and Mill (2021) propose four steps children go through when learning "variable form use." Although I applaud Shin and Miller's focus on morphosyntactic variation, their accrual of evidence is post hoc and selective. Fortunately, Shin and Miller recognize this and encourage tests of their ideas. In support of their work, I share data…
Descriptors: Language Impairments, Language Research, Contrastive Linguistics, Comparative Analysis
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Benjamin Luke Davies; Katherine Demuth – Language Learning and Development, 2024
When acquiring the English plural, children correctly produce plural words long before they develop an understanding of morphological structure. When acquiring Sesotho noun prefixes, children are aware of the multiple constraints governing variation from a young age. Both of these cases raise questions about the Shin and Miller (2022) account of…
Descriptors: African Languages, Morphology (Languages), Syntax, Second Language Learning
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Brandt, Silke; Nitschke, Sanjo; Kidd, Evan – Language Learning and Development, 2017
Structural priming is a useful laboratory-based technique for investigating how children respond to temporary changes in the distribution of structures in their input. In the current study we investigated whether increasing the number of object relative clauses (RCs) in German-speaking children's input changes their processing preferences for…
Descriptors: Priming, German, Phrase Structure, Linguistic Input
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Omaki, Akira; Davidson White, Imogen; Goro, Takuya; Lidz, Jeffrey; Phillips, Colin – Language Learning and Development, 2014
Much work on child sentence processing has demonstrated that children are able to use various linguistic cues to incrementally resolve temporary syntactic ambiguities, but they fail to use syntactic or interpretability cues that arrive later in the sentence. The present study explores whether children incrementally resolve filler-gap dependencies,…
Descriptors: Sentences, Language Processing, Japanese, English
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Grünloh, Thomas; Lieven, Elena; Tomasello, Michael – Language Learning and Development, 2015
In the current study we investigate whether 2- and 3-year-old German children use intonation productively to mark the informational status of referents. Using a story-telling task, we compared children's and adults' intonational realization via pitch accent (H*, L* and de-accentuation) of New, Given, and Contrastive referents. Both children and…
Descriptors: Young Children, Intonation, Suprasegmentals, Language Patterns