Cover not available

In:Sources of Variation in First Language Acquisition: Languages, contexts, and learners
Edited by Maya Hickmann †, Edy Veneziano and Harriet Jisa
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 22] 2018
► pp. 63–80

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 3
Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition

 | Center for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
 | Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, EHESS & Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University
 | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh
 | Zukunftskolleg & University of Konstanz
 | Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet
 | Laboratoire d’Etude de l’Apprentissage et du Développement, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté & CNRS
 | Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle, CNRS & Université Paris Diderot
 | Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, EHESS & Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University & CNRS
Published online: 22 February 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.22.04bru
Abstract
How does language acquisition start? Having access to words and their meaning should help infants to learn about syntax, but learning about word meaning would be facilitated if infants had access to syntactic structure (Gleitman 1990). Phrasal prosody and function words may bootstrap lexical and syntactic acquisition. Infants have access to phonological phrases, and they use these to constrain the syntactic analysis of utterances by 18 months. At that same age, they can use function words to infer the syntactic category of unknown content words (nouns vs. verbs) and guess their plausible meaning (object vs. action). Moreover, computational work suggests that infants might be able to learn noun and verb contexts by generalizing from a small number of known words (the semantic seed).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Phrasal prosody constrains online syntactic analysis
  • 3.Function words signal the syntactic category of the following content words
  • 4.Building a syntactic skeleton with phrasal prosody and function words
  • 5.Conclusions and perspectives
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
References
Bergelson, E. & Swingley, D. 2012. At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(9): 3253–3258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. The acquisition of abstract words by young infants. Cognition 127(3): 391–397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernal, S., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Millotte, S. & Christophe, A. 2010. Two-year-olds compute syntactic structure online. Developmental Science 12: 69–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernal, S., Lidz, J., Millotte, S. & Christophe, A. 2007. Syntax constrains the acquisition of verb meaning. Language Learning and Development 3: 325–341. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brusini, P., Amsili, P., Chemla, E. & Christophe, A. 2011. Learning to categorize nouns and verbs on the basis of a few known examples: A computational model relying on 2-word contexts. 2011 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Montreal, Canada.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2014. Simulation de l’apprentissage des contextes nominaux/verbaux par n-gramme. Paper presented at the Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles, Marseille, France.
Brusini, P., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dutat, M., Goffinet, F. & Christophe, A. 2016. ERP evidence for online syntactic computations in 2-year-olds. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 19: 164–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brusini, P., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Van Heugten, M., de Carvalho, A., Goffinet, F., Fiévet, A-C. & Christophe, A. 2016. Ambiguous function words do not prevent 18-month-olds from building accurate syntactic category expectations: An ERP study. Neuropsychologia. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carey, S. 2009. The Origin of Concepts. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cauvet, E., Limissuri, R., Millotte, S., Skoruppa, K., Cabrol, D. & Christophe, A. 2014. Function words constrain online recognition of verbs and nouns in French 18-month-olds. Language Learning & Development 10: 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chemla, E., Mintz, T. H., Bernal, S. & Christophe, A. 2009. Categorizing words using “Frequent Frames”: What cross-linguistic analyses reveal about distributional acquisition strategies. Developmental Science 12: 396–406. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christophe, A., Millotte, S., Bernal, S. & Lidz, J. 2008. Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition. Language and Speech 51: 61–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christophe, A., Nespor, M., Guasti, M. T. & van Ooyen, B. 2003. Prosodic structure and syntactic acquisition: The case of the head-direction parameter. Developmental Science 6: 211–220. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conwell, E. & Morgan, J. 2012. Is it a Noun or is it a Verb? Resolving the ambicategoriality problem in language acquisition. Language Learning and Development 8: 87–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dautriche, I., Fibla, L. & Christophe, A. 2015. Learning homophones: Syntactic and semantic context matters. Presented at the 40th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston MA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I. & Christophe, A. 2014. Phrasal prosody constrains online syntactic analysis in two-year-old children. Presented at the 39th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston MA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016. Preschoolers use phrasal prosody online to constrain syntactic analysis. Developmental Science 19: 235–250. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I., Lin, I. & Christophe, A. 2017. Phrasal prosody constrains syntactic analysis in toddlers. Cognition, 163, 67–79. .Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Carvalho, A., He, A. X., Lidz, J. & Christophe, A. 2015. 18-month-olds use phrasal prosody as a cue to constrain the acquisition of novel word meanings. Presented at the 40th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston MA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferry, A., Flo, A., Brusini, P., Cattarossi, L., Macagno, F., Nespor, M. & Mehler, J. 2016. On the edge of language acquisition: Inherent constraints on encoding multisyllabic sequences in the neonate brain. Developmental Science 19: 488–503. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerken, L., Jusczyk, P. W. & Mandel, D. R. 1994. When prosody fails to cue syntactic structure: 9-month-olds' sensitivity to phonological versus syntactic phrases. Cognition 51: 237–265. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. 1990. The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition 1: 3–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gout, A., Christophe, A. & Morgan, J. 2004. Phonological phrase boundaries constrain lexical access: II. Infant data. Journal of Memory and Language 51: 548–567. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gutman, A., Dautriche, I., Crabbé, B. & Christophe, A. 2015. Bootstrapping the syntactic bootstrapper: Probabilistic labelling of prosodic phrases. Language Acquisition 22: 285–309. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hallé, P., Durand, C. & de Boysson-Bardies, B. 2008. Do 11-month-old French infants process articles? Language and Speech 51: 45–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hawthorne, K. & Gerken, L. 2014. From pauses to clauses: Prosody facilitates learning of syntactic constituency. Cognition 133(2): 420–428. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hawthorne, K., Mazuka, R. & Gerken, L. 2015. The acoustic salience of prosody trumps infants' acquired knowledge of language-specific prosodic patterns. Journal of Memory and Language 82: 105–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
He, A. X. & Lidz, J. 2014. Development of the verb-event link between 14 and 18 months. Paper presented at the 39th Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston MA.
Höhle, B., Weissenborn, J., Kiefer, D., Schulz, A. & Schmitz, M. 2004. Functional elements in infants' speech processing: The role of determiners in the syntactic categorization of lexical elements. Infancy 5: 341–353. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakubowicz, C., Nash, L., Rigaut, C. & Gérard, C. -L. 1998. Determiners and clitic pronouns in French-speaking children with SLI. Language Acquisition 7: 113–160. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, E. K., Seidl, A. & Tyler, M. D. 2014. The edge factor in early word segmentation: Utterance-level prosody enables word form extraction by 6-month-olds. Plos One 9(1): e83546. 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, M. 2013. Language acquisition as statistical inference. In The Language-Cognition Interface, S. R. Anderson, J. Moeschler & F. Reboul (eds), 109–134. Geneva: Libraire Droz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kedar, Y., Casasola, M. & Lust, B. 2006. Getting there faster: 18- and 24-month-old infants’ use of function words to determine reference. Child Development 77: 325–338. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kjelgaard, M. M. & Speer, S. R. 1999. Prosodic facilitation and interference in the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguity. Journal of Memory and Language 40: 153–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P. W., Lambertz, G., Halsted, G., Bertoncini, J. & Amiel-Tison, C. 1988. A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition 29: 143–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Millotte, S., Morgan, J., Margules, S., Bernal, S., Dutat, M. & Christophe, A. 2010. Phrasal prosody constrains word segmentation in French 16-month-olds. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 9: 67–86.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Millotte, S., René, A., Wales, R. & Christophe, A. 2008. Phonological phrase boundaries constrain online syntactic analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 34: 874–885.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Millotte, S., Wales, R. & Christophe, A. 2007. Phrasal prosody disambiguates syntax. Language and Cognitive Processes 22: 898–909. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Millotte, S., Wales, R., Dupoux, E. & Christophe, A. 2006. Can prosodic cues and function words guide syntactic processing and acquisition? In Speech prosody: 3rd International Conference, R. Hoffmann & H. Mixdorff (eds), 174–177. Dresden: Dresden TUD Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mintz, T. H. 2003. Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child-directed speech. Cognition 90: 91–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morgan, J. L. 1986. From Simple Input to Complex Grammar. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. 1996. Signal to syntax: An overview. In Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from Speech to Grammar in Early Acquisition, J. L. Morgan & K. Demuth (eds), 1–22. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nespor, M. & Vogel, I. 1986. Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saxe, R. & Carey, S. 2006. The perception of causality in infancy. Acta Psychologica 123(1–2): 144–165. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. O. 1984. Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. & Turk, A. E. 1996. A prosody tutorial for investigators of auditory sentence processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 25: 193–247. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, R. 2014. Functional morphemes and early language acquisition. Child Development Perspectives 8(1): 6–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, R., Cutler, A., Werker, J. & Cruickshank, M. 2006. Frequency and form as determinants of functor sensitivity in English-acquiring infants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119: EL61–EL66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, R. & Gauthier, B. 2005. Recognition of function words in 8-month-old French-learning infants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 117: 2426–2427. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, R. & Melançon, A. 2010. Syntactic categorization in French-learning infants. Infancy 15: 517–533. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shi, R., Morgan, J. L. & Allopenna, P. 1998. Phonological and acoustic bases for earliest grammatical category assignment: A cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of Child Language 25: 169–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shukla, M., Nespor, M. & Mehler, J. 2007. An interaction between prosody and statistics in the segmentation of fluent speech. Cognitive Psychology 54: 1–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Snedeker, J. & Yuan, S. 2008. Effects of prosodic and lexical constraints on parsing in young children (and adults). Journal of Memory and Language 58(2): 574–608. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Heugten, M. & Johnson, E. K. 2011. Gender-marked determiners help Dutch learners' word recognition when gender information itself does not. Journal of Child Language 38(1): 87–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Veneziano, E. & Parisse, C. 2011. Retrieving the meaning of words from syntactic cues: A comprehension study. Presented at the XIIIth International Conference on the Study of Child Language, Montreal, Canada.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Veneziano, E. & Sinclair, H. 2000. The changing status of “filler syllables” on the way to grammatical morphemes. Journal of Child Language 27: 1–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waxman, S. R., Lidz, J. L., Braun, I. E. & Lavin, T. 2009. Twenty four-month-old infants' interpretations of novel verbs and nouns in dynamic scenes. Cognitive Psychology 59(1): 67–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zangl, R. & Fernald, A. 2007. Increasing flexibility in children’s online processing of grammatical and nonce determiners in fluent speech. Language Learning and Development 3: 199–231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Benítez‐Burraco, Antonio & Wendy Elvira‐García
2023. Human self‐domestication and the evolution of prosody. Language and Linguistics Compass 17:3 DOI logo
Vapnarsky, Valentina & Edy Veneziano
2017. Lexical Polycategoriality: Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches. In Lexical Polycategoriality [Studies in Language Companion Series, 182], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue