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Segmentation of vowel-initial words is facilitated by function words*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2014

YUN JUNG KIM  and
MEGHA SUNDARA
YUN JUNG KIM*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles
MEGHA SUNDARA
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles
*
Address for correspondence: e-mail: yun.ucla@gmail.com
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Abstract

Within the first year of life, infants learn to segment words from fluent speech. Previous research has shown that infants at 0;7·5 can segment consonant-initial words, yet the ability to segment vowel-initial words does not emerge until the age of 1;1–1;4 (0;11 in some restricted cases). In five experiments, we show that infants aged 0;11 but not 0;8 are able to segment vowel-initial words that immediately follow the function word the [ði], while ruling out a bottom-up, phonotactic account of these results. Thus, function words facilitate the segmentation of vowel-initial words that appear sentence-medially for infants aged 0;11.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 709 - 733
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

[*]

This study is part of Yun Jung Kim's master's thesis. It was partly supported by a UCLA Research Mentorship Award (2011–2012) to YJK and NSF BCS-0951639 to MS. Parts of this research were presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (2010), the Acoustical Society of America (2010), and the International Conference on Infant Studies (2012).

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