Fillers as signs of distributional learning

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20366557
AutoresHELENA TAELMAN (0000-0003-2922-588X, University of Antwerp), GERT DURIEUX, Steven Gillis (0000-0002-2067-0576, University of Antwerp)
Año2009
Volumen36
Número2
Páginas323-353
Fecha de publicación2009-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Child Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0305-0009 • E-ISSN: 1469-7602
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0305000908008982
PMID18793474
OpenAlexW2049478919
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas29

A longitudinal analysis is presented of the fillers of a Dutch-speaking child between 1 ; 10 and 2 ; 7. Our analysis corroborates familiar regularities reported in the literature: most fillers resemble articles in shape and distribution, and are affected by rhythmic and positional constraints. A novel finding is the impact of the lexical environment: particular function words act as ‘anchor’ words that attract occurrences of schwa fillers after them. The child inserts significantly more schwa fillers in these contexts. The anchor words are among the most frequent words preceding articles in the input, indicating a sharp sensitivity to such distributional regularities. Nasal fillers too are affected by distributional learning, but at the phonological level: the child first uses nasals before [h]-initial nouns, and then generalizes this usage to all [h]-initial words. These observations are related to the growing body of evidence for the impact of distributional learning on early language production

Cognitive psychology · Language acquisition · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Noun · Phonology · Schwa · Language Development and Disorders · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation