Developing Knowledge of Nonadjacent Dependencies

Characterizing the nature of linguistic representations and how they emerge during early development is a central goal in the cognitive science of language. One area in which this development plays out is in the acquisition of dependencies--relationships between co-occurring elements in a word, phra...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inDevelopmental psychology Vol. 52; no. 12; pp. 2174 - 2183
Main Authors Culbertson, Jennifer, Koulaguina, Elena, Gonzalez-Gomez, Nayeli, Legendre, Géraldine, Nazzi, Thierry
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Psychological Association 01.12.2016
Subjects
Age Differences
Aging - physiology
Association
Cognitive Development
Female
Foreign Countries
French
Grammar
Humans
Infant
Infants
Knowledge
Language Acquisition
Language Development
Male
Preferences
Semantics
Verbal Learning - physiology
Verbs
France (Paris)
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:Characterizing the nature of linguistic representations and how they emerge during early development is a central goal in the cognitive science of language. One area in which this development plays out is in the acquisition of dependencies--relationships between co-occurring elements in a word, phrase, or sentence. These dependencies often involve multiple levels of representation and abstraction, built up as infants gain experience with their native language. The authors used the Headturn Preference Procedure to systematically investigate the early acquisition of 1 such dependency, the agreement between a subject and verb in French, at 6 different ages between 14 and 24 months. The results reveal a complex developmental trajectory that provides the first evidence that infants might indeed progress through distinct stages in the acquisition of this nonadjacent dependency. The authors discuss how changes in general cognition and representational knowledge (from reflecting surface statistics to higher-level morphological features) might account for their findings. These findings highlight the importance of studying language acquisition at close time intervals over a substantial age range.
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/dev0000246