Learning novel phonological neighbors: Syntactic category matters

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 143; pp. 77 - 86
• Main Authors: Dautriche, Isabelle, Swingley, Daniel, Christophe, Anne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.10.2015
• Subjects: Female; Humans; Infant; Language; Language acquisition; Language Development; Lexical access; Male; Phonetic sensitivity; Verbal Learning - physiology; Vocabulary; Word learning; Phonetic sensitivity; Word learning; Language acquisition; Lexical access

•French 18-month-olds succeed in learning novel nouns that sound like a verb they knew.•But they failed to learn novel words that sound like a noun they knew.•To learn new words, toddlers are not overwhelmed by phonological proximity alone.•18-month-olds interpret new words in context, using multipl...