Learning and generalizing non-adjacent dependencies in 18-month-olds: A mechanism for language acquisition?

ABSTRACT: The ability to track non-adjacent dependencies (the relationship between ai and bi in an aiXbi string) has been hypothesized to support detection of morpho-syntactic dependencies in natural languages ('The princess is reluctantly kissing the frog'). But tracking such dependencies in natural languages entails being able to generalize dependencies to novel contexts ('The general is angrily berating his troops'), and also tracking co-occurrence patterns between functional morphemes like is and ing (a class of elements that often lack perceptual salience). We use the Headturn Preference Procedure to investigate (i) whether infants are capable of generalizing dependencies to novel contexts, and (ii) whether they can track dependencies between perceptually non-salient elements in an artificial g

SUBMITTER: Grama I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6181290 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature