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The role of morphophonological regularity in young Spanish-speaking children's production of gendered noun phrases*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2011

BRITTANY A. LINDSEY  and
LOUANN GERKEN
BRITTANY A. LINDSEY*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
LOUANN GERKEN
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
*
Address for correspondence: Brittany Lindsey, Language Development Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0068. e-mail: blindse2@email.arizona.edu
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Abstract

Adult Spanish speakers generally know which form a determiner preceding a noun should have even if the noun is not in their lexicon, because Spanish demonstrates high predictability between determiner form and noun form (la noun-a and el noun-o). We asked whether young children learning Spanish are similarly sensitive to the correlation of determiner and noun forms, or whether they initially learn determiner–noun pairings one-by-one. Spanish–English bilingual children and adults repeated Spanish words and non-words preceded by gender congruous and incongruous determiners. If children learn determiner–noun pairings one-by-one, they should show a gender congruity effect only for words. In contrast with this prediction, both children and adults demonstrated congruity effects for words and non-words, indicating sensitivity to correlated morphophonological forms. Furthermore, both age groups showed more facility in producing phrases with nouns ending in -a, which are more frequent and predictable from the preceding determiner.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , September 2012 , pp. 753 - 776
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by NIH R01 HD042170 to LouAnn Gerken.

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