Prosodic structure and syntactic acquisition: the case of the head‐direction parameter

Anne Christophe · Marina Nespor · Maria Teresa Guasti · Brit van Ooyen

142 citations0/0 files storedDevelopmental Science

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Language Development and Disorders Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Phonetics and Phonology Research

Abstract

Abstract We propose that infants may learn about the relative order of heads and complements in their language before they know many words, on the basis of prosodic information (relative prominence within phonological phrases). We present experimental evidence that 6–12‐week‐old infants can discriminate two languages that differ in their head direction and its prosodic correlate, but have otherwise similar phonological properties (i.e. French and Turkish). This result supports the hypothesis that infants may use this kind of prosodic information to bootstrap their acquisition of word order.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 142 citations exist upstream.

References

1993Lectures on Government and Binding 1994On The Language Instinct 1984Lectures on government and binding . By Noam Chomsky. (Studies in generative grammar, 9.) Dordrecht, Holland, & Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris, 1981. Pp. 371. Cloth f 90.00, paper f 50.00. - Some concepts and consequences of the theory of government and binding . By Noam Chomsky. (Linguistic Inquiry monographs, 6.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. Pp. 110. Cloth $20.00, paper $7.95.1973A First Language 2009Language Acquisition: The State of the Art 1990The Structural Sources of Verb Meanings 1970Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars 1973A First Language

Cited by

2007Recognizing Intentions in Infant-Directed Speech 2008Finding Words and Rules in a Speech Stream 2010The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: A Japanese-English cross-linguistic study 2008DIFFERENT PHRASAL PROMINENCE REALIZATIONS IN VO AND OV LANGUAGES 2011Consonants and vowels: different roles in early language acquisition

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.