Segmentation of verb forms in preverbal infants

Abstract

It has been observed that children's early vocabulary is dominated by nouns, with verbs being much delayed. The current study investigated if this delay is related to infants' failure to segment verb forms. Using a preferential looking procedure, French-learning preverbal infants were tested on novel verbs segmentation. Infants at the onset of vocabulary learning (11-month-olds) succeeded in segmenting the targets: they listened longer to test sentences containing previously familiarized verbs versus those containing nonfamiliarized verbs, suggesting that the delay in verb learning is not due to segmentation difficulty. Semantic and syntactic complexities of verbs could be among the underlying factors.

Linking infants’ distributional learning abilities to natural language acquisition

“…As the initial trials in infant preference studies are often unstable (e.g., Marquis & Shi, 2008), the first two test trials (one grammatical and one ungrammatical) were excluded from data analysis. Across all 24-month-olds, the average listening time was 9.50 s (SEM = .58) for the grammatical trials and 7.65 s (SEM = .56) for the ungrammatical trials (see Fig.…”

Development of Liaison Representation and its Top-Down Influence on Word Processing in Infants

“…Previous studies in the literature showed that word segmentation begins early in infancy, within the first year of life (e.g., Johnson & Jusczyk, 2001;Johnson & Tyler, 2010;Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995;Marquis & Shi, 2008;Mersad & Nazzi, 2012;Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996;. The stimuli in studies that demonstrated early segmentation typically involved the alignment of the syllable with the word edge, suggesting that the alignment may have played a facilitative role.…”

Distributional structure in language: Contributions to noun–verb difficulty differences in infant word recognition

“…As discussed earlier, previous research found that while 6.0–7.5-month-old infants recognize nouns from fluent speech (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995), infants do not show evidence of recognizing verbs until 11.0–13.5 months (Marquis & Shi, 2008; Nazzi et al, 2005). It is possible that the observed differences in noun and verb recognition were contributed to by differences in the languages that were tested; (Marquis & Shi, 2008 was in French), while the noun studies (Bortfeld et al, 2005; Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) were in English.…”

“…Mintz (2013) found that much older infants (18-months) are facilitated in segmenting novel sound sequences from fluent speech when they are heard in an – ing context (but not an unfamiliar – dut context). Similarly, Marquis and Shi (2008) found that French-learning 11-month-olds show facilitated recognition of French verbs in the highly frequent – er inflectional form (see also Marquis & Shi, 2012). …”

“…It is possible that the observed differences in noun and verb recognition were contributed to by differences in the languages that were tested; (Marquis & Shi, 2008 was in French), while the noun studies (Bortfeld et al, 2005; Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) were in English. It is also possible that these differences were influenced by a simple factor such as the relative frequency of the nouns and verbs used across the studies (the nouns used by Jusczyk and Aslin were quite high in frequency compared to the verbs used by Nazzi et al).…”