Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence
Author
Gervain, Judit
Sebastián-Gallés, Núria
Diaz, Begoña
Laka, Itziar
Mazuka, Reiko
Yamane, Naoto
Nespor, Marina
Mehler, Jacques
Publication date
2013-10-02ISSN
1664-1078
Abstract
One universal feature of human languages is the division between grammatical functors and content words. From a learnability point of view, functors might provide entry points or anchors into the syntactic structure of utterances due to their high frequency. Despite its potentially universal scope, this hypothesis has not yet been tested on typologically different languages and on populations of different ages. Here we report a corpus study and an artificial grammar learning experiment testing the anchoring hypothesis in Basque, Japanese, French, and Italian adults. We show that adults are sensitive to the distribution of functors in their native language and use them when learning new linguistic material. However, compared to infants' performance on a similar task, adults exhibit a slightly different behavior, matching the frequency distributions of their native language more closely than infants do. This finding bears on the issue of the continuity of language learning mechanisms.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
8 - language. Linguistics. Literature
Keywords
Llenguatge i llengües -- Adquisició
Gramàtica comparada i general -- Sintaxi
Lingüística
Lenguaje -- Adquisición
Sintaxis
Lingüística
Language and languages -- Acquisition
Syntax
Language acquisition
Linguistics
Pages
12
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Collection
4;
Is part of
Frontiers in Psychology
Citation
Gervain, Judit; Sebastián-Gallés, Núria; Diaz, Begoña [et al.]. Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 4, p. 1-12. Disponible en: <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689/full>. Fecha de acceso: 2 nov. 2020. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689
Grant agreement number
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/269502
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/3PN/PSI2012-34071
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/328671
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Ciències de la Salut [740]
Rights
© 2013 Gervain, Sebastian-Galles, Diaz, Laka, Mazuka, Yamane, Nespor and Mehler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/