Segmentation of verb forms in preverbal infants

Alexandra Marquis, Rushen Shi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)EL105-EL110
JournalJournal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume123
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

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